RISCARIO INSIDER

September 29, 2012

WHERE FINANCIAL BLOGGERS FAIL (#CPFC12)

What a treat! I met dozens of Canada's personal finance bloggers at the Canadian Personal Finance Conference (CPFC12) last week. For details, visit My Own Advisor and Squawkfox.

Bloggers play an important role in fighting innumeracy (i.e., in improving our financial literacy). I was struck by how nice and well-intentioned the bloggers were. They have passion. They must since blogging is rarely a big money-maker (e.g., this blog has no advertising). The bloggers have a calling. Otherwise they quit before long.

Part-TimeRs

Many bloggers have day jobs. Their writing may be a hobby that’s unrelated to their area of expertise. For instance, I also blog about marketing. I’ve got no training yet last week I spoke about building trust with LinkedIn. A speaker (or blogger) with nothing to sell made can be more credible and desirable than an expert looking for clients.

Herbert Simon’s 10,000 hour rule says that mastery comes from long, boring deliberate practice. Hobbyists may invest many hours but they aren't insiders working in that field every day. They aren’t getting coached by professionals. They are not learning by vicariously by watching what occurs around them.

Outsiders

The big challenge comes from being an outsider. There's an advantage: different perspectives. There's a weakness: not knowing the inner workings. The financial sector is tough to dissect from outside and those who know rarely tell their secrets. The few exceptions include bloggers Preet Banerjee (LinkedIn), Joe Barbieri (LinkedIn) and Dean Paley (LinkedIn).

Our personal experiences are limited. Insiders and journalists can get answers from their networks. A hobbyist blogger may not have those connections or get invited to industry events.

Personal Experience

Some bloggers write about what they're doing to increase their wealth. That's interesting but knowing what the wealthy actually do may be more valuable. There's a big difference between someone who's made millions and someone who's trying to make millions.

Guest Posts

A blogger without expertise in an area or with too much work may run guest posts. The writer might be an insider but have biases. It's fascinating to see what they leave out or assume. I won't give any examples. The same thing happens when insiders write for newspapers or magazines. If you know about them, you can anticipate what they'll say --- and not say.

Training

Bloggers are rarely journalists or researchers. They aren't trained in fact-checking. That's not to imply they're fools. They do extremely well with what they know. Thoughtful readers help by leaving comments.

Perceived Biases

Even when disclosed, affiliate links and advertising can create biases.

I think ING Direct has a decent savings account. Plus, you (and I) each get a bonus of $25 if you open an account and use my orange key 22329871S1. That’s all true but my self-interest may reduce my credibility in your eyes.

Canadian Capitalist writes that ING Direct lags the competition. By coincidence, that page has an ad from ING Direct. That’s probably an automated placement.

When I wrote about our switch to Ooma phone service, would you have been skeptical if you saw affiliate links?

There's lots to write about. What gets ignored to avoid offending advertisers? That's also an issue for paid publications like newspapers and magazines. That’s why I was surprised when The Globe and Mail investigated the insurance loophole. There’s a reason why Consumer Reports takes no advertising. For bloggers looking for revenue, automated ad placement services like AdSense look like a reasonable solution.

Overall

I'm amazed at how much financial bloggers are able to figure out. Kudos and what they do for us for little (if any) financial gain. We need them.

Podcast 188

direct download | Internet Archive page | iTunes

PS What do you think of financial bloggers?

September 22, 2012

WHY WE SWITCHED TO OOMA PHONE SERVICE

(Skeptical? This post has no affiliate links.)

Since the whole family has mobile phones, we don’t use our home phone much. Somehow, we still manage to get billed $40 to $60 a month. We tried VOIP service in the past but the quality was lousy. There were noticeable time lags and the signal would fade in/out.

Since then, the technology has improved. Skype now works nicely, even for calls to landlines. The ideal VOIP service has excellent sound quality, works with your current phones and doesn’t require a computer.

MagicJack Plus

I was thinking of trying magicJack Plus but the website looks amateurish and gimmicky. There’s a reference to a PC Magazine Editor’s Choice award from 2008 for an older product that required you to leave your computer on. Isn’t that misleading?

I could not find the pricing or return policy. The cost seems to be $70 for hardware and $100 for five years of service. If you prepay, you’re trusting the magicJack company to stay in business.

Check out the lawsuits on Wikipedia and the reviews on Amazon (2.7 stars) and The Gadgeteer (1,500+ comments).

Vonage

With Vonage, you pay $12/month for 300 outgoing minutes to the US/Canada. Who wants a meter? Unlimited costs $25/month. There may be additional charges and taxes. Unappealing.

Ooma Whooma?

We trust Costco for excellent products, reasonable prices and risk-free return policies. We never heard of Ooma before but decided to get the Ooma Telo. The device costs $180+tax, which includes a WiFi adapter. This is important because you want to place your device in a convenient location without worrying about ethernet cables.

You get countrywide phone calls for “free” … but pay for taxes and fees. There’s a calculator. For us, the cost is $4 a month.
For $10/month, you get Ooma Premier with lots of nifty features: US/Canada calling, better Caller ID, call forwarding, a second phone number (which can be in a different city) and more. Since you’re not always home, you can have your mobile phone ring at the same time as your home phone. If you don’t answer, the voicemail gets converted to an MP3 file and sent to you at one or more email addresses.

None of this matters if the service is lousy.

The Trial

Installing Ooma was easy. You select a phone number during the process. That lets you experiment without losing your current service. To our surprise, the sound quality is generally as good as our landline.

We forwarded calls from our landline to our new Ooma phone number. Callers didn’t notice problems with the quality. There were occasional glitches but they may have been caused by the caller’s equipment. To improve call quality, Ooma claims to give your call priority over other Internet traffic. This is handy if you have other users at home.

Another surprise is Ooma’s phone support. I’ve called several times and a real human answered within seconds.

The Glitch

We decided to move our home phone number to Ooma. The porting process takes up to a month and you must keep your landline in service until the transfer takes place.

For some reason, our landline got disconnected on Friday before the porting was finished. On Saturday, I called Ooma and they said the fault was with Primus and they could not complete the transfer until our landline was restored. I called Primus and was told they received instructions to disconnect our line, we might have lost our old number, and that getting service restored would not start until after the weekend.

I’m annoyed at Primus. They could have phoned or emailed before disconnecting our service. You’d think they would want to retain customers. Also, I called twice (via Ooma) and spent a total of 50 minutes on hold.

I don’t know who did what but on Monday we had full service with Ooma. That was weeks ago. We’ve been happy ever since.

Podcast 187

direct download | Internet Archive page | iTunes

PS We have the fastest Internet service available to us; 75 Mbps. Results may be worse with slower speeds.