Personal Finance Firewall

Unautomate the Unpredictable Parts Of Your Life

Jesse Michelsen — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:58:43 +0000

This week I have talked about using a sprinkler system and the importance of keeping the system properly maintained. I also brushed on air conditioning and comfort. Talking about both those things got me thinking about another aspect of maintaining a home, automation.

I am a big fan of automating my finances. I am a software developer by degree and automation is something that I really enjoy creating and using. It can really simplify things, when used properly.

On the other hand, when automated and forgotten, things get put out of mind and run their own course which is not always what you initially desired. So, not to be confused with Baker@ManVsDebt’s book, Unautomate Your Finances (affiliate link) I want to talk about unautomating some of the aspects of your home.

First, one of the big new things in the past decade has been having a programmable thermostat. You can create a schedule and your thermostat will adjust on a set schedule. This is a pretty cool concept and I do have a programmable thermostat at home. You can set it to cool down the house when you anticipate being at home, and you can set it to turn the temperature to a more cost friendly digit when you plan to be away. The same goes with the heating side of things.

Here’s my problem with all that. When we first got our central air installed, we started using the programmable thermostat. We set it to our estimated schedule but we soon found that we were changing the temperature twice as often as the thermostat’s program was changing it.

You see, the thermostat doesn’t know if I change my schedule. It doesn’t know if I plan to stay out later on one particular night, or if I plan to be home early.

Personally, my schedule changes pretty drastically. I have a wife and kids and if they decide we are going to go to Grandma’s house for the day, and stay there till 10pm that night, that’s what happens!

The same goes for the sprinkler system. The system is awesome, don’t get me wrong. You can set it to water the lawn at specific times, during specific days. You can even set each sprinkler head to run for a different duration. But the weather in Utah is almost as unpredictable as my wife and kids. Earlier this week, it was 100 degrees and as dry that guy’s armpits on the AXE commercial, after the weird stranger puts antiperspirant in them. Today, there is a very high chance of rain for the rest of the week, and it’s rained every day since Monday.

One of the tips in my How To Create A Lush and Beautiful Lawn Inexpensively was to not run the sprinklers when it’s going to rain but when it’s on an automatic schedule, and I’m not there, it runs and floods the lawn whether I like it or not.

So, what can you do about these two problems as well as any other unpredictable aspects of your life that are on an automatic schedule?

Unautomate things! One of the main things I thought about when reading Unautomate Your Finances (review to come) was getting your hands dirty with your finances. Getting hands on and knowing exactly what was going on with things as well as controlling things yourself. That principle also applies to these parts of life that can but don’t have to be automated.

Instead of allowing my thermostat program to control my schedule, we turn off the automatic program and control it manually. Yes, some nights we come home to a hot house and have to be uncomfortable for about ten minutes. It’s better than leaving the house, or not even getting home till late in the evening to find your air conditioning has been keeping your vacant house a pleasant 70 degrees (with an outside temperature of 110) for the past 8 hours.

Instead of setting and forgetting my sprinkler system schedule I wait till I’m ready to go to bed at about midnight, and turn them on myself. Yes, I have to actually switch the sprinkler system to run. But that’s far better than allowing the sprinkler system to run when it’s raining, flooding the lawn and wasting not only a presious resource, but my moneey too!

The best thing to do is figure out the things in your life that actually benefit from being automated, and take advantage of those. For the other automated aspects, if they are ending up being wasteful, cancel the automation and get hands on.

In the end, computers can’t predict the unpredictability of human life.

Image by tallkev

How Much Money Would It Take To Sacrifice Comfort?

Jesse Michelsen — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:12:09 +0000

Here in Utah, the average temperature during the summer is only about 86 degrees. The record high is only 107 degrees which pales in comparison to many of the neighboring desert states. So when the major electric company here sent out fliers offering a cut on your electric bill if you signed up for a program called the Cool Keeper, it piqued my interest.

In general, I am not one to worry much about the temperature. I stay pretty comfortable at whatever the natural temperature is in the house, or even outside. Yea, sometimes I get hot when I’m outside in the middle of the day, but I let my body do it’s natural thing which is sweating to cool the body down. I have no problem with a little sweat.

My wife on the other hand comes from a family that loves their AC units like a member of the family. If it’s even a few degrees over what she thinks is comfortable, there is no end to the complaints she doesn’t care what it costs to run the AC as long as she is comfortable. We have come to a compromise in the years we have been together and keep the thermostat in a range that is easy on the wallet and keeps my wife happy but she was very standoffish when I told her about the Cool Keeper program.

Let me explain the program in a bit more detail..

Once you enroll in the Cool Keeper program, the electric company installs a device on your air conditioning unit that basically deactivates the cooling process during peak electricity usage. The device only runs during the hottest months of the year, June, July and August. It runs between the hours of 2pm and 8pm and It does not run on holidays or weekends.

Although the device deactivates your air conditioners ability to cool, it does this in 15 minute intervals during it’s time of activation and your air conditioners fan system still runs allowing cold air that is already in the house to circulate.

From the electric companies website, they explain that all the Cool Keepers that are installed in a neighborhood are activated or deactivated in coordination with each other to help keep the energy demand balanced. They say that the temperature in your home may drop between 1 and 3 degrees during the time the Cool Keeper is activated but out of all people surveyed that use the device, most customers don’t notice the change in temperature.

The installation and support of the device is free, and in exchange for having it installed, you are given a $20 “thank you” credit on your electricity bill every Fall. There is no contract to join the program, and you can opt out if you find it too troublesome, plus the company will give you a partial credit if you did have the device during some of the Summer months.

For me, seeing the benefits of the program, the monetary gain, and the fact that 98% of Cool Keeper participants are satisfied with the program according to the electric company, I have been trying to convince my wife to let them install it for about four years now. This past Winter, the electric company was offering an additional $25 in cash for those that signed up. That credit plus the annual credit alone could cover a few of our Winter month electric bills (at about $14 a month during the colder months) so I made the call.

So far, being a participant of the Cool Keeper program has been uneventful and my wife said that there was only one day that she noticed the Cool Keeper running. It was a couple weeks ago, and the outside temperature reached nearly 100 degrees during the time the Cool Keeper would have been activated.

A quick calculation ($20 divided by 270 hours (540 total hours, 15 minute intervals = .074) tells me that we are paid approximately .8 cents for every hour during the peak months as participants of the Cool Keeper program.

Would you join the Cool Keeper program for .8 cents an hour?

Image by Anosmia

How To Create A Lush and Beautiful Lawn Inexpensively

Jesse Michelsen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:55:27 +0000

Oh Summer, what a beautiful time of year. Here in Utah, the weather change is drastic, sometimes from the upper 50′s to the 90′s in one week skipping over Spring temperatures altogether, but it is a welcomed change from the bleak Winter cold.

As soon as the weather warmed up, my loving wife got out the Summer Honey-Do list. The first thing I did on the list was change out a broken sprinkler head at a cost of about $30 plus a couple hours labor digging, installing and tweaking the spray range. In previous years, I would have drug my feet for at least a couple weeks because I feel like sprinkler heads are too expensive, I don’t really like getting wet during the middle of the day which in inevitable with sprinkler repair, and mostly because that sprinkler head gets hit by a snow plow almost every year.

Two years ago it got hit, the plow came right up on the lawn and just knocked that sprinkler head clean off. Since it was Winter, I was reluctant to go out in the near freezing weather and change the sprinkler head. That Summer, I continued to drag my feet and I paid for it.

Around August that year, we got our water bill. I was shocked, this had to be a mistake! The bill was TWICE what it should have been, jumping from $75 to $145! I called the city to see if a mistake had been made but they said that we had used water in excess of our agreement and the extra gallons came at a premium. That explained the bill hike, but I still couldn’t understand how we had used so much water. It was that broken sprinkler head..

You see, we never saw our sprinklers run because we blindly set them on automatic each year so we didn’t see that rogue broken sprinkler spewing gallon after gallon of water onto one particular (albeit green by the end of the Summer) spot of grass as well as into the street. So here are some Summer lawn maintenance tips that should keep your bills down, and if you so choose, your yard looking top notch.

Make sure all your sprinklers are in correct working order. At the beginning of Summer, run your sprinkler system and keep a close eye on each head. Make sure they are all spraying the way they should be, hitting all the necessary zones, and not wasting any water. Hitting the street or sidewalks at all wastes precious and expensive water.
Adjust your sprinkler run time. Over-watering can be just as hard on your grass as under-watering. Run your sprinklers for about 10 minutes in each zone and then check your soil. Typically, you want to water between 6 and 12 inches deep depending on the type of soil and grass you have but an estimation somewhere in between usually works just fine. Dig a small hole and see how deep the water went after 10 minutes. If you find that the water only went 4 inches deep, adjust the time your sprinklers water in each zone so they will reach your desired root depth. If you hit 4 inches at 10 minutes per zone, 20 minutes will get approximately 8 inches into the soil.
Water in the coolest and calmest part of the day. This can vary for each of you depending on what your typical weather is like during the middle of the night but watering when it’s coolest and has the least amount of wind will allow all the water you are spraying onto the lawn, to actually land on the lawn (not evaporate or be blown away by wind) and will keep your sprinkler system efficiently hydrating your lawn with minimal waste.
Avoid Runoff or pooling water. Because you want to water your soil deep, you may experience runoff if watering in one zone too long. If you do experience runoff see if your sprinkler system can switch zones earlier and do a second rotation through all zones a little later that same day. This will give the grass more time to absorb the water and give enough water to promote deep root growth.
Don’t water when it looks like rain! I see this all the time around nicer neighborhoods and it goes right back to the fact that over-watering is not only bad for the grass, but bad for the wallet. Let the rain do your work for you, it’s free! You can install rain sensors to turn off automatic sprinkler systems when rain is sensed, or you can just pay attention to weather reports and turn off your sprinklers when rain is predicted to fall. Since rain falls at unpredictable amounts, you can get a rain gauge to see how much fell, and you can supplement your lawn with more water if the rain wasn’t enough.

Following these tips can help reduce your Summer lawn maintenance costs and make sure your lawn is the envy of the neighborhood.

Image by mcunn934

Linkworthy: Cash, Condoms and Apple Options

Jesse Michelsen — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:04:21 +0000

I pride myself in being able to pay cash for most things. I am actually embarrassed when I buy a big purchase and put it on a credit card because I know I actually have the cash to pay for it (but use the credit card for points/miles) and I’m worried that the salesperson may think I am like every other consumer that comes into their shop and finances their large purchases. Not that I will ever see that salesperson again, but it does bother me to some extent..

So this week, I have to highlight this article about a family that actually paid cash for their car..not just cash backed credit cards like I use, they actually walked in, paid $17,000 in cash, and left with just a receipt! That’s got to be an amazing feeling! Over at Personal Finance By The Book, the article titled This Family Paid Cash For Their Car; You Can Too. It’s an interview with the family members as well as a bit about them which is pretty interesting.

You Can’t Spend What You Don’t Have With You

Jesse Michelsen — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:46:58 +0000

A good friend of mine was discussing the weather with me, yea really…and now that spring has finally sprung around here (Utah is a couple month behind), she was telling me all the things they plan to do to their home and yard this year. I instantly mentioned how costly landscaping is ..hey I write a personal finance blog, what do you expect ..and she told me, “Yea, my husband and I have to leave our wallets in the car when we go to such and such hardware store so we don’t buy anything we shouldn’t be buying”

I made a mental note of that and thought, that is a great idea! So, the leave wallet in the car savings method was born, at least in my mind.

You go to a store and leave you wallet in the car. Therefore you have no way of buying anything until you return to your car and get your wallet. Personally, that would be enough for me to just get in the car and drive away unless the purchase was completely necessary and already planned for. A few months back when I was quite a bit heavier, the walk alone in the heat of spring would have caused me to have to get in the car and take a breather anyway

The best part about this strategy is it forces you to think about what you are buying, which is not a common practice among most people. Is this purchase worth the effort to go out to my car and get my money, walk all the way back in and pay for it? Is it worth the shame? My wife get’s pretty embarrassed (don’t ask me, I have no idea ) when she bumps into a store employee more than once during a shopping trip, I can’t imagine what she would feel like if she bumped into them, coming into the store twice in the same visit.

Not many things are worth that unless you actually plan on the purchase, and go to the store specifically to get it. I certainly wouldn’t march back and forth for a pack of gum.

So this system eliminates the possibility of impulse buying even on big purchases as it creates and takes the same amount of effort to buy anything.

Of course there is one flaw, when you get your wallet from the car, you may see something you like on your way out, or at the hardware store it could even be on the way in which is usually worse as those items outside are high ticket.

To eliminate or at least deter you from impulse buying a little bit more, what if we coupled this method with the sticky note reminder method? I can’t recall where I read this one, so if you read is some place else, drop me a comment and I’ll add it in here, but some people just put a sticky note on their credit cards that say something like, “Do you really need that purchase?” or ever something as loud as “DON’T DO IT!!!” and just seeing the note makes them think twice about the purchase they are about to make.

I guess it all comes down to your priorities though. Would any of these methods stop a shopping addict? I doubt it. But for those of us that are recovering addicts or simply are trying to get a better handle on our spending, simple reminders like this can be very effective.

What little tricks and methods do you use to discourage impulse spending?

Image by Wrote

Five More Awesome Personal Finance Apps for Android

Jesse Michelsen — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:30:16 +0000

Last October I highlighted five of the best Personal Finance Applications for Android phones. Since then, that article has been one of my most popular to date.

On the mobile front, Android has climbed the ranks and actually surpassed the iPhone in unit market share. The Android app market now contains nearly a whopping 100,000 apps compared to the meager 10,000 that were there when I got my first Android phone less than a year ago. In light of that huge increase in apps, I thought it would be appropriate to review another handful of great Personal Finance Android apps!

Mint.com Personal Finance

This would have topped my list last year, if the app was around. It was available on the iPhone but only this past May did it make it to the Android phone. Nevertheless, it is a fantastic tool to have. The app can do almost everything you can do from the web interface in your Mint.com account. If you are unfamiliar with Mint..ya gotta be kidding me! Seriously, you should sign up for a free account because it is one of the most versatile and powerful personal finance tools you will find on the web.

Their app is no different, the start page shows an at-a-glance summary of your total cash, and debt; your total budget and your standing within; any alerts you may have; and you monthly cash flow. This summary screen is very informative, but each of these sections is a button and clicking them will give you detailed information about each. You can read your alerts, view details about cash flow and where you are spending by category or vendor, view your individual budgets in detail and view all your accounts in detail. You can even go into each account, see transactions and change categories if mint happened to put something in the wrong place.

I waited and petitioned for this app since I got my phone, and Mint.com didn’t disappoint!

Pay Off Debt App

This app was actually orchestrated by a personal finance blogger! Jackie@MoneyCrush didn’t design it herself but is the brains behind the app.

The app is based on the snowball debt payoff system and does a great job at organizing, tracking and reporting your snowball progress. You enter your debt totals, balances and interest rates and it gives you a summary of how much you have left, and when you are estimated to be debt free.

Below that, it sorts your debts in ways of your choice, lists all the info about your debts and shows a bar graph displaying your paid off percentage. It even has an alert feature to remind you when your bills are due.

The app is really great visually and I could see it helping many people get out of debt. It’s available for the iPhone as well.

Market Millionaire Enhanced

This one is a bit funner than others you may use in the personal finance category. It’s a game that puts you in a vertual stock market, gives you a set amount of money and lets you go hog wild. You compete against other players to reach the highest net worth and it ranks you along the way.

The virtual market within the game is actually based on the real stock market, and everything is real time so if you are buying virtual stocks of Apple or Google, they will be at the same price as those companies’ real stocks. I’ve seen the benefit of learning in a virtual world and I think this is not only a really fun app to learn the basics of stock trading, but really educational too.

pFinance

This one is sort of a catch all and can do just about anything you could want from a personal finance app, it’s just not as specialized as other apps available such as Mint.com or the Pay Off Debt App.

This app has an expense manager where you can hand enter your expenses and it will keep a running tally of them. It has a deal search engine where you can find the latest deals though I’m not sure what critiria it searches on as it just spews out random “deals” from a bunch of different sources. It has a bank rate list that gives loan, mortgage, savings, credit card and even auto rates. It has a currency convertor. It has a tip, loan, interest rate and retirement calculators. It even has a section to track your stock portfolio, which can be imported from an external source such as Google Finance, or can be manually entered by stock symbol. Along with personal portfolio tracking, it has a section to track the entire market standings and market news.

Although I would never use it’s expense tracking features, and I already use Google’s Finance app for Android to track my personal portfolio, I am very impressed with not only the quantity of features this app has, but the overall quality as well. It’s a great Swiss army knife of personal finance tools.

Money Tips

Last in the list this go around is Money Tips. This app is another “fun” one but it’s actually really useful. It’s very simple to use. You open the app, and there on the screen is a tip to save money! It has a ton of tips within and I have yet to have one repeated. It gives you the ability to text the tips you see out to other phones, or email them to yourself or friends.

These apps are all available by searching the Android app market for their title.

With nearly 100,000 apps in the market, I have yet to use every personal finance app in the market so this will not be my last review of Personal Finance Apps for Android!

Image by Iwallenstein

Linkworthy: IPhones, Restaurants and Retail Shoppers

Jesse Michelsen — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:08:36 +0000

As the fourth iteration of the iPhone came out this past week or so, and everyone and their dog is jumping on the huge bandwagon, dropping hundreds of dollars, waiting in lines at extreme hours of the night to get one, I couldn’t resist highlighting this post as my editors choice this week.

So to the featured post, Wealth Informatics lays out the truth about owning an iPhone 4 and how much it will really cost you over the years.

Just to clear the air, I think the iPhone was an innovative device and paved the way for smart phones as we know them today. However, I don’t agree with the cult mentality behind Apple and their products. I also don’t agree with upgrading just because it’s the new thing when the majority of people buying the latest gadgets have far too much debt and have a bloated cell phone bill as it is to warrant the inappropriately high charges the iPhone requires.

My cell phone bill was one of the very first things I cut when trying to save money, and it was a huge cut without losing any of the convenience the cell phone brings..

enough ranting

Here are a few more greats from this week:

Speaking of cell phones, Wealth Artisan wrote about the cost of having a land line in your home and what some of the alternatives are. Having a land line really is an antiquated notion that some people still hold on too..I hope none of you still have a land line without a very good reason!

Financially Poor shares a little vocab lesson as he talks about things we should not be picky about. Those include generic grocery products, clothes labels and vehicles. I agree 100%. I buy as much in generics as I can. I have done extensive research into how generics are manufactured and there is very little difference in quality or taste. As for the others, well just check out the article and see what he thinks!

Bucksome Boomer discusses a restaurant where the prices are suggested. I think its an awesome and innovative idea but of course it could have negative repercussions. So far though, the restaurant is a success and most patrons pay the suggested price or more. The restaurant chain is also helping the community in different ways. Very interesting..what would you pay?

A couple weeks back when trying feverishly to get some things done, we lost power and I was unable to work on my computer. Worse, we had to bust out the candles and we found ourselves utterly unprepared for the blackout. So, appropriately, Everyday Tips and Thoughts writes Tips for Handling a Power Outage. Too bad it came a few days after my little emergency.

And highlighting another post about shopping, Roger at The Amateur Financier who has recently become a Wal-Mart employee gives a little rant with tips for retail shoppers. He gleaned these tidbits from his new experiences working in the huge retail chain, and I find them well laid out and pretty cool.

And a couple mentions of PFFirewall to highlight:

A huge round-up at Funny about Money
An Independence day roundup at The Online Investing IA Blog
A Memorial day roundup at Free From Broke (ya ya, I’m way behind on gratitude )
and Another HUGE roundup at Deliver Away Debt

Another great week in the world of finance!

The Importance of Extreme and Specific Focus

Jesse Michelsen — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:37:39 +0000

Months ago a joined a challenge called the Yakezie challenge, started by Financial Samurai. The requirements of the challenge were simple and attainable though the goal was lofty, yet I don’t think any of us that joined, nor Sam himself could have imagined the effect this challenge had on the members as well as the community we are a part of.

After being a part of the challenge for a short time, and seeing the amazing results that had come out of it on my blog as well as on other’s blogs, I started to think about why it was such a success. Then it hit me.

The challenge created one thing, and one thing only; A specific focus for participants.

What does that mean?

When I started this blog, I had some very broad goals, no idea what I was doing and although I had a passion, I had no idea how to succeed or even what I was trying to succeed at. I read all sorts of How to start a successful blog and How to improve your content articles but I was never really focused on anything specific. Not even my content is specific as I focus on the general topic of personal finance.

But with the Yakezie challenge, I was given specificity. With that I was able to hone my focus.

New years resolutions are another example of vague and nonspecific goal setting. I want to get out of debt. I want to lose weight. I want to enjoy life. I want to make more money. Year after year these goals are made and these goals are forgotten only to be set again the following year because they are not specific!

I had some of these same goals, one of which to lose weight this year. This time around I did something specific and I joined another challenge. This was a weight loss challenge and again, I had a very specific goal. I had a weight written down that I wanted to hit. I had specific requirements that I needed to meet at specific intervals. Everything I did from the start of that challenge was driven towards that extreme focal point I had created.

How can you use extreme and specific focus to succeed

Be extremely specific. I’m not talking, “get out of debt” specific, or even, “pay off this or that debt” specific. I’m talking specific to the point of obsession. Plan out the specifics of every step of the journey you will be making. Know when bills need to be paid, how much you will pay, how often and how much will be left in your accounts afterward…each and every month..each and every paycheck.

Create specific requirements for yourself. In both of these challenges, I set specific things I would do each and every day or week. These things were specific in and of themselves but they were also very integral to the success of the complete and specific challenge. By creating and focusing on the specific requirements of the challenge, I was able to forget how far away the end result was. I was able to lose myself in the tasks and as a result, before I knew it I had dropped 30 lbs, had broken into the 100k range on Alexa and was just completely blown away!

Be flexible. All things change with time even goals you set for yourself. The important thing is to be flexible to change but remember your specific end goal, and make sure you align those changes with that goal. Make sure you are still going in the right direction and continue taking steps towards your goal. Emergencies happen. Life happens. But you can’t let that derail you from the eventual success so taking changes as they come is paramount.

As a final thought, I have one question for you. How do you climb a ladder?

…One rung at a time…

Image by margolove

Instinct, Choice and Outside Influence

Jesse Michelsen — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:30:40 +0000

This is abstract so consider yourselves warned

I have been reading a lot lately about personality, the way brains are wired and I’ve been trying to figure out some things about my own thought patterns that have always been a little weird when thinking back on my decisions. In doing so, I had a great conversation with a friend about how we are influenced by others and what that crowd mentality does to our individuality.

He told me about a study done at a college years back. It went something like this:

The situation is set up and everyone knows something aside from one outside person (referred to here as the one in the dark), brought into the classroom without being told anything about the study about to take place. There are six people involved, as well as a classroom spectating. The six people are lined up in front of the class, the one person being kept in the dark is 5th in line. They are each shown a piece of paper with two lines on it, one short and one obviously longer.

The test subjects are asked which line is longer, starting with the person farthest from the one in the dark. Each and every person says the opposite of the truth..that the shorter line is the longer one including the person that is in the dark, even though he knows that the longer line is longer. This happens with 80% of the time this test is done.

When the person in the dark gets asked, they stop and analyze his choice. “Why did you pick that line?” The answer is always, because everyone else did.

Now 20% of the people still spoke the truth, which leads me to believe that some people either are compelled to voice the truth, or compelled to be different.

I may catch some flack for this but I personally don’t care for Dave Ramsey. Why?

Because everyone else involved with finance reveres him so highly, he practically has a cult following..

I have been this way all my life, when someone has such a huge influence on a subject and they are considered an authority, but I haven’t found that for myself, I am compelled to think the opposite is true until I prove the material myself and make up my own opinion on the subject.

My point here being, how can we combat our natural instincts to become better in the ways we want to?

First, find out what kind of person you are. Do you question others beliefs when impressed on your or do you accept them as fact until proven otherwise?

Or like me, do you question everything until it’s proven one way or another?

Once you find out what kind of personality you have, you can make conscious decisions on your natural instincts.

I told you this was abstract, but I would love to hear your thoughts on thought. Are any of you psychologists?

Image by Paro for Piece

Are Digital Books Worth It? A Kindle Review

Jesse Michelsen — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:55:28 +0000

The digital age has brought some amazing innovations to our fingertips. E-books are one of those. Now it is possible for just about anyone to write a book and publish it in e-form at very little to no cost. The book becomes available to anyone and everyone with an internet connection and in essence, more and more people can become published authors than ever before.

With the birth of the e-book, typically published in PDF format, came the birth of the Kindle, and other such e-reader devices. These devices are stand alone readers with a few other bells and whistles such as a wireless internet connection, mp3 playing capability and even simple games.

The Kindle is Amazon.com’s rendition of the e-reader device and probably the most popular because it connects to the Amazon store and you can purchase books directly from the Kindle, have them instantly downloaded wireless to your device and even have your bookmark’s synced from one device to another.

I’ll admit right now that I am intrigued by this device and the technology it uses but I don’t typically spend any money on single use devices like these, especially to the tune of $200+.

So when I noticed a Kindle application on my Android phone, I did a little research into the app. It appears that Amazon has released an app for the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Mac and Windows so just about anyone can take advantage of the Kindle book library and Kindle functionality.

I happily installed the app to give Kindle a whirl. The following are my thoughts.

I found the application very well designed. The different reading color contrast options, font sizes and brightnesses were welcomed and they all worked well. Navigating a book was very intuitive and I actually really enjoyed using the app to read on my phone.

I was able to jump onto the Amazon store and browse for books available for the Kindle and you can even download samples of any books available there. The sample books download right to the device like a full book would and they let you read a chapter or so in, just enough to get you really interested

Buying books was, dare I say, too easy. I accidentally bought a book that I was sampling because of the “One Click” buy method used by the Kindle. The majority of the books available on the Kindle are $10 although there is a section of free books (Most of them so obscure, I doubt I would ever read any of the titles there).

So all in all I found the app to be really well designed and I would love to use it to read PDF’s and other content, but I don’t think actually buying a Kindle device, or buying e-books from the Kindle store to be worth it for a few reasons.

Firstly, most of the books are $10 which isn’t too bad considering you get instant delivery and you can have the book an all of your Kindle devices such as your computer, your phone, and your Kindle reader but how often do you go to Amazon to buy a NEW book? I always check to see what options are available in the used category before I ever buy new and you can get most books, in physical form for under $10.

Secondly, when you buy in physical form, you have a physical copy. You can do with it what you please, once you have read it. You can give it away, or resell it to recoup part of the original cost.

One last thing I found interesting while reading more about Kindle on Amazon.com is that they tout the ability to take your entire library whith you where ever you go. Now I consider myself an avid reader, and always have a book on hand, but I can’t see why anyone would want to take their entire library with them everywhere they went. When I read a book, I read a book..not five or five hundred. It’s seems more like a trophy case than anything else and to me, a bit frivolous.

After thoroughly reviewing the app, I intend to return the digital copy of the book I purchased and I have already purchased a physical copy for a few dollars cheaper including shipping. Digital copies of books can be returned within 7 days, and from what I read, the return is hassle free.

Image by L’eau Bleue