A Surefire Way to Spend your Retirement in the Poor House

After speaking to various older coworkers and family members, I’ve come to the realization that it’s not only the younger generations that need a crash course in personal finance — many of the ones closing in on retirement need a refresher course too.

The red flag that signifies this need for a major overhaul of financial planning and education is the fact that people seem genuinely surprised when they’re five years away from retirement and lose 50% of their 401(k)’s because they kept all their holdings in stocks.    I think most people would roll their eyes if someone took $100,000 of their savings and gambled it away in a casino, yet we’re shocked and appalled when a 60-year old loses half of their retirement savings because of having a majority of  stock holdings.  This isn’t bad luck — this is bad planning.

Take for instance my father.  At 62 years old, he’s getting close to the day when he’ll be able to kick back, relax, and maybe play a little golf.  Or will he?  In October, he lost a good chunk of his 401(k) after the stock market plummeted.  Although he had amassed a nice pile of retirement cash and had a strong company match, he neglected to check on where his holdings laid — which turned out to be completely in stocks — and lost half of his savings.  I love my father dearly — he’s an intelligent man, but that clearly wasn’t the smartest of moves.

Over the past 25 years, companies have become varied and (somewhat) generous with their retirement plans, offering a myriad of pensions and 401(k)’s.  And for the most part, I think that’s great.  But someone has to be responsible for educating people in what these plans actually do and what risks are inherent in each of them.  As a country that emphasizes the importance of wealth building,  we are seriously falling short in our ability to educate our citizens on how to prepare themselves for the financial future.

This lack of personal financial knowledge when it comes to the risks and uncertainties of investing, is going to keep hurting uninformed individuals unless we start focusing on financial education.  I think we need to start with our high school and college students and not stop until work our way up to Gen Xers and Baby Boomers who haven’t yet clearly mapped out their future finances.

Stock markets do nose dive, like we recently witnessed, and until we start educating the masses about their investments, the people that lack a basic financial know-how will be the ones who come out of it marred and flat broke.

Looking for a New Pad? Strike While the Iron’s Hot!

As you may have guessed from previous posts, I’m a big fan of Craigslist.  I’ve found pretty much every apartment and every job I’ve had in New York on the old Craigs.  So when I decided to check out what the city’s rental market was doing, I hopped back on the to see what rents were looking like in the borough I call home — Brooklyn.   Read more

This Weekend: Free Ice Box Derby in Central Park

Looking for some free weekend fun to hold you over til next payday? You can do some spectatin’ or participatin’ at New York’s  First Ice Box Derby.  Zombie Unicorn (a group of New Yorkers who get together to “engage in mischief”) is hosting the event for free on the east side of Central Park (104th Street area). Read more

Credit Karma’s Ken Lin on FICO’s New Scoring Model

In the age of the credit crunch, credit scores are the passport to your financial future.  The new year has brought many things, and with it, a new scoring model.  We spoke to Ken Lin, CEO of Credit Karma (a website that lets you check your credit score for free — anytime, anywhere) about the change in the FICO credit scoring model to get a better idea of what the changes are and how they will affect you.

Can you give us an overview of the new scoring formula?
It hasn’t been fully disclosed or anything.  They’ve selectively agreed to point out certain things.  But the way it looks like things are going to work, it’s going to be a more holistic view on a person’s credit.  So what that means, is that it takes fewer of the micro late payments and looks at your credit on a more holistic level –  late payments or single late payments don’t matter as much on your credit score, but long term late payments will have a bigger impact.  I think that’s one of the first changes.

I think a secondary change is really around the authorized users and the notion of piggybacking your credit.  I think that’s been one of those things where people have gamed the system — where if you add an authorized user in your credit report, you are in fact transferring some of your good credit over to that person — and basically stop that process or that loophole, if you will.  And really the third component or maybe the global picture, they’re really trying to help lenders better determine who are lower risk people.  I think that’s the ultimate objective.  But at the high level, it’s all about making more of a holistic view on the credit score, rather than the minutia, as well as fixing a few of the loopholes in the hopes of getting a better [read] for lenders.

So, when does this new scoring method go into effect?
Well, it’s interesting.  So what happens most of the times with these scores, lenders will actually test it.  So it launched I think actually today or yesterday, with TransUnion.  I think Equifax is coming down the road, and Experian hasn’t actually released the date.  But normally  what happens with new credit scores is that financial institutions have billions of dollars in their portfolio based on existing credit scores, so they’re generally hesitant to switch over completely or unilaterally to new credit scoring systems without testing it.  What I suspect, is that banks will slowly migrate as they test it.  And what they’ll ultimately do is test this score against the old score and see if there are actually pickups in the performance of being able to detect chargeoffs or risk.  I think once those numbers come in, they’ll be more likely to make a final switch.

What spurred this change, or does FICO regularly and routinely change their methodology?
You know, credit scores haven’t stayed the same, really ever.  I think historically there have always been updates.  There have always been tweaks to get them to normalize for different years or economic conditions.  But even if you look at the current FICO score, its been updated five or six times since its original release in the late 90’s.  So this is a constant, but I think this one is a little bit more radical from the standpoint that they’re trying to address more of the macro level issues instead of the loopholes that we spoke about.  But you have to keep in mind that credit scores are constantly evolving, and its never the case where you have one consistent score from the beginning of time for you.

OK.  I was wondering if it had anything to do with banks lending money to unattractive borrowers and the whole sub prime debacle that we just went through?
You know, I think that probably is a little bit of the underlying effect.  I mean, credit scores, they’ve performed well.  I think the whole sub prime debacle is more of the factor that the banks got a little more greedy.  They were continually lowering their criteria or their threshold in the hopes of making more profits, and it just ultimately backfired.  I think part of this is grounded in the fact that you always want to be able to better mitigate your loss or predict losses based on your credit score.  I don’t think credit scores ultimately brought down the industry.  It was more of a case that the industry was a little too greedy and willing to lower their standards.

Do you think this new method will prove to be more beneficial to people, or do you think that a lot of people will see their scores being lowered?
Its too early to tell, but this score is meant to benefit banks and lenders — quite honestly, right?  Credit scores are always built for lenders.  Consumers are finally becoming aware of it because they know how much impact it has on their financial well being.  But historically these things are built for lenders.  And the ultimate gauge of whether this score is successful, is if it will be able to differentiate good borrowers from bad borrowers.  And that will be the decision.  So from a consumer’s standpoint, it’s important for them to always be aware of what their credit scores are, and making sure their credit reports are accurate.  But I think this particular change will have little impact on the consumer — more of the impact is really going to be focused on the lender and their profitability.

Like you said earlier, it’s going to be focused more on the minutia.  I heard that the smaller problems, like if you have a doctor’s bill for $100 that accidentally went into collections, it would mean less.  Is that true?
Correct.  Right.  It de-emphasizes the smaller aspects and looks more at the macro level trends.  So if you have a long history of always being late or being delinquent on your bills, that’s taken into more of significance, rather than if you have a small doctor’s bill, a collections notice, for a $100 or less — it has less of an impact.  And along the same lines, if you recently missed a payment, but you’ve always paid your bills on time, that will also have a much lower impact on your credit score.

I was also reading that they’re going to be focusing more on the credit to debt ratio.  Does it hurt your score to have a credit card open, but to never use it, if it’s paid off?
So, they’re starting to look a little bit more closely on inactive accounts.  I think the general rule of thumb is if you have a line of credit that’s available to you that you don’t use often, use it every couple of months to show that there is activity so that it continues to contribute to your active credit line.  I think the new model suggests that they are going to be de-emphasizing credit limits if you don’t use them.  So a simple way around that is to buy a tank of gas every other month with your card so that you continue to show usage.  That will kind of mitigate any of the negative impact of having credit lines that sit dormant.

Will the new scoring model change the way they differentiate between labeling scores good, fair, poor and excellent.
I don’t think so.  Historically, credit scores have been normalized.  Meaning that at any given year, they expect the same score to have the same amount of chargeoff.  So I think because everyone is so used to that standard, they’re not going to be changing the definition of good, bad, and poor.

What about precautions?  Are there any new ones that we should follow or should we stick with the same rules that we’ve been doing, like keeping a healthy credit to debt ratio and keeping accounts that are paid off open?
Yeah.  There are so many components that go into a credit score — I think at the last count it was over 200.  And for a consumer to actively monitor 200 or try to you know, eek that last 2 or 3 points of improvement really becomes difficult.  So following the general rule of thumb of not carrying too much debt, making sure your credit reports are accurate, not having too high of a utilization — those general types of tips will be always true.  I think consumers should be more worried about those macro trends, instead of doing X,Y, and Z to get the last three points of improvement.

And is there any advice to someone who’s planning to purchase a house or car this spring, and will need to have a good score?
Yeah.  Well, I think credit scores are more important than they’ve ever been in the last ten years, if you will.  If you’re looking to make a major purchase, I think consumers need to start being aware of their credit scores today.  And anything lower than a 720 for example, on a mortgage is going to be really difficult to get good financing or at least financing at the best rate.  So consumers need to be diligent about monitoring their credit scores probably 6 months to a year ahead of that purchase.  Ideally they’re constantly monitoring their credit score.  They need to be very cognizant of cleaning up their [credit] lines, making sure they’re paying down their debt, and getting to the threshold of 720 plus, so they can get the best rates.

Will consumers be able to get a free copy of their credit score once the majority of the banks transition over to the new scoring model?
Well, this is a really interesting point.  I mean, historically you can only get your FICO score from myFICO.  Experian recently cut off their relationship with them.  So you can only get two of your FICO scores through myFICO.  But even FICO released the fact that they’re actually not planning to release this new FICO score to consumers for another two to three years, so these recent changes kind of, again, support the fact that from a consumer’s perspective, they can’t get too caught up in what they need because they still won’t technically have access to it for a few more years.

Is there anything else you’d like to throw out to our readers?
You know, I think the continuing message that we continue to support is that credit scores are very important for almost every aspect of financial health.  This is a minor change that consumers should be aware of, but they should definitely be aware of those macro level changes in terms of the economy and having good credit.  That’s just one thing that we continue to tell consumers — be diligent about knowing your credit score and really how they work.

Free Pancakes at IHOP Tomorrow!

Attention foodies:  this update is for you.  IHOP will be celebrating National Pancake Day (February 24) by giving away a free short stack of mouth watering buttermilk pancakes to patrons from 7am until 10pm tomorrow.  Read more

A Crash Course In Free Wi-Fi Etiquette

As a writer, universal, free public Wi-Fi is the dream that I hope is made manifest within my lifetime, but until that day comes, cafes make for a fine option for connecting to the web to fetch information for stories, check e-mail, and chat with friends. From the looks of things at my local coffee house, Vox Pop, and similar spots throughout the five boroughs, you concur: you can’t walk into a cafe without seeing at least one Apple or Dell logo. The prospect of free internet gathers both the diversion-seeker and workaholic.

That said, there is a strict code of conduct that must be adhered to while going about your business. Although many of the following suggestions are followed to the letter by the vast majority of coffee house Wi-Fi users, there’s always that one funky monkey that manages to ruin the party for the do-gooders. For s/he we’ve assembled this list of tips to make the experience pain-free for all parties involved.

Don’t Be A Free Wi-Fi Mooch
Is there really such a mystical energy known as free Wi-Fi? In a nutshell, no–unless Nikola Tesla manages to work his eccentric magic from beyond the grave. If your local cafe has the courtesy of serving up unrestricted internet access to its patrons, that 802.11 signal that you’re hopping on in order to check e-mail or Wikipedia is coming from a router attached to a cable, DSL, or some other information pipe; a pipe that costs a pretty penny per month to maintain. So if your goal is to get out of the apartment and take in a Hulu movie marathon at the neighborhood coffee joint, and you don’t have any intention of buying anything, you’ve crossed over from the realm of human being into that of the Wi-Fi Mooch.

It goes without saying that some will shout “Well, if they didn’t want me on their signal, they’d secure it.” Very true, I’d retort, but with this addition: most businesses give you access to their signals in the unspoken hope that you’d purchase a small item or three during your session (except for Starbucks–expensive coffee and paid Wi-Fi? WTF!). Thanks to mooches, establishments sometimes post signs requesting that you make purchase per hour. Order a snack, drink, or drop a dollar into the Wi-Fi pot, leech.

Don’t Be A Bandwidth Hog
The absolute last thing that fellow web-surfers and the ownership needs is for someone to BitTorrent the entire run of House. Why? All of that cascading data can create a virtual traffic jam that slows down the Web experience for your fellow surfers. Former senator Ted Stevens can explain far more eloquently than I.

The Coffee Shop Is Not Your Office
This is one of the most overlooked, yet vital, tips to remember. Simply because you can work from your favorite cafe seat, doesn’t mean that you can transform the area into your personal workspace. I’m not talking about miscellaneous books or magazines, I’m talking about hardware. If you complement your notebook or netbook with a monitor, scanner, external mic, speakers, or other gear, you’ve officially crossed the line from mobile professional to become a person that should be banned from any coffee house’s premises. In short, don’t be this guy.

Pimping Out the Office Attire with Bonobos’s Dave Eisenberg

An earlier story we wrote touched on the subject of integrating your own personal style into the workplace, which consequently led us to discuss the merits of viewing a career wardrobe as a personal investment.  To build on that topic, we’ve hooked up with the guys over at Bonobos, a funky pants startup in NYC to talk about, well, pants — and building a worthwhile wardrobe one piece at a time.

So in a time when pinny pinching is necessary, are Bonobos worth the $100 – $275 price tag?  In a word, yes.  And I’ll tell you why:  quality-made wardrobe pieces are a career necessity that should last you years to come — not provide a measly six to nine month lifespan.  Another big kicker?  You’re supporting local jobs at a time when many New Yorkers are losing theirs to cutbacks and companies outsourcing their labor.  So to get a better handle on what makes Bonobos such an excellent pair of pants, we spoke to their Chief of Staff, Dave Eisenberg, to find out where the company got its roots, why they’re a better buy than a pair of Old Navy slacks, and where they’re headed in the future.  We also picked up a few fashion recommendations in the process.

For our readers who aren’t familiar with Bonobos, can you tell us how Bonobos got its start? Sure.  Bonobos got its start by our two founders, Brian and Andy, who were business school students at Stanford in 2007, and the pants were created because Brian had a problem — he could never find pants that really fit well.  He knew that pants that fit well were incredibly expensive and at the highest end of the market, costing between $200 and $500 bucks a pop at some of the highest end boutiques and department stores.  And he knew that stuff that fit him and was geared towards him at some of the mainstream places like J. Crew or Banana Republic — things like that — were just cut to fit as many guys as possible, so they’d have a very boxy cut.

So he borrowed a sewing machine from a girlfriend and learned how to make a pair of pants that had a better cut and some of those attributes that he could find in those higher end pants and started to make them on campus, using really high quality fabrics and American manufacturing.  He started selling them to his friends and they started buying them, saying that they were the best pants that had ever fit [them].  And Andy, who was his roommate at the time, had a real passion for creating consumer businesses, and a lot of his experiments to date had been around that idea.  It was a perfect combination to create a new, better fitting pair of pants with a new distribution model going direct to the customer rather than through the store — and Bonobos was born.

Wow – had Brian ever created a pair of pants before? Brian’s kind of a clothes horse, you know.  He really knows what is a great value out there and what looks great.  And so while he had never had a background in fashion — he’d been an investor his whole life — he’s always been looking around for a great opportunity to find high quality products at a great price. And he just worked on it for a long time. He worked on the pattern and he worked on the experimentation until he was satisfied with his final production.

What about you?  Had you ever worked in the apparel industry before this? I have never. You know we only have one member of our team — out of fifteen — who had ever worked in fashion before. And that’s our designer, Brett, who works with Brian, and he was the senior menswear designer at Vineyard Vines before he heard about what we were up to and how he could get involved and so he joined to kind of supplement our efforts there.

But my background is in management consulting — as well as running a few startups when I was younger — and I wanted to get back in [startups] very badly. So I left my job working in strategy consulting for a large prestigious strategy consulting firm and joined a pants startup as the first employee.

Very nice.  At least you have some fresh ideas coming in. Yeah, it was a great business overview background to have — just kind of knowing a little bit about a lot of different types of problems. And being in an operating environment has allowed me to practice many of the best practices that you learn in a place like the firm I used to work at.

How is the recession affecting your business, since you guys are sort of a small boutique company? You know, the truth is, we grew 25%, month on month, in 2008 from January to December.  We had a great year. I don’t know how much better it would have been had the recession kind of not hit, and hit our customer base pretty hard in New York. That being said, I think the advantages of buying online are that you’re not paying for models, you’re not paying for retail spaces. You’re really just paying for the quality of the products and customer service — which are two areas that we try and use the best [techniques].

So for some folks, I think we may be better positioned than others in a recession environment. The flip side of that coin is we might be a lot bigger if everyone were spending a little bit more on their wardrobe, and we think we’re a great value for guys that buy their pants from us. So we hope that throughout the recession that people will continue to invest in really high quality clothes that are going to last them a long time. And our generous return policy of “Any pant, any time, for any reason” is also a really nice hedge in this type of environment.

We had a story a few months ago which actually spurred this interview, basically talking about how to avoid the monkey suit for men working in a corporate environment.  Do you have any tips for our male readers who want to jazz up their look? Yeah.  I think people often overlook the importance of a really great fitting pair of pants.  A lot of guys just kind of go with the default thing they find off the rack. Oftentimes, it’s a really baggy look: it’s really pleated, it doesn’t have any design attributes. And I think that one of the things that Bonobos offers is the chance to have a really formal piece of business casual clothing made from really high quality wool, cashmere and silk.

And yet, is interesting enough that people at work are gonna notice you as being a really great dresser. But more importantly, that has a fit that will allow you to have it be comfortable enough that you feel fine working around the office all day, but you can also transition that wardrobe piece from your work environment to your night activities — which is a really great, versatile piece of clothing I think that often gets overlooked when people think about dressing for work. They think about putting on really boring clothes and feeling lame about wearing those out and about when they leave work. But Bonobos is kind of a happy medium there.

I noticed on your Facebook page that you had some photos of everyone in the office wearing Capertons at the Christmas party.  Those are some pretty bold colors.  How do you make something like that work for the office?  Is it even possible? First off, you need an office environment that’s a little bit fun and a little friendly. I don’t think that for a lot of guys wearing monkey suits that the Capertons are a viable alternative. That being said,  some of our other corduroy offerings particularly the Samurais in navy and the Black Flags in black offer somewhat of a business casual environment. A really dark, very soft pant, when paired with a light button down or a light-colored buttondown, can make a really excellent business casual outfit.

What about New Yorkers who are notorious for wearing black and grey?  Are there any do’s and don’t’s for implementing color into the mix? Yeah, you just want to be very careful about wearing colors that are too similar. You know a lot of guys think that they can get away with matching a black and a brown or a black and a navy, and those are very very tricky color combinations to navigate. You need to be kind of an expert level dresser.  It also helps to have an awesome color that looks great with your skin and then pair it with accessories that complement that color well.

So if you’re going to look at some of our black pants like the SL Savage Verde or the Destros or some of our grey pants like the Truth or the G6 or the G5 — you just want to make sure to take a look at some of the photos that we use because Brian puts a ton of thought into what shoes he wears with a lot of our stuff, and see if you’ve got anything in your closet that matches those really well. Then you can create some pretty versatile outfits based on varying up kind of the shoes and the belt — we’re a little biased, we want people to base their outfits around their pants.  But, there’s a lot you can do with black and grey and particularly when you’re not dealing with something that everyone else has kind of in a store environment and you get a unique piece, it can be really cool. Guys love to get noticed for their shoes, and we want them to start getting noticed for their pants now.

What about you?  What’s your favorite style of Bonobos pants? My favorite pair? So, it’s split in terms of my sort of casual vs formal mood. I love the Shoguns, which is now the Samurais – or the straight leg version of it, for the casual wear.  I wear it all the time.  I used to be kind of a jeans guy, and they’ve replaced my jeans entirely because they’re so much lighter weight and they’re also a lot more comfortable to wear for a few days in a row. So that’s my favorite on the casual front.  And on the dressy front, I love the Truth.  It’s my favorite pair of pants ever made. It’s a pure cashmere grey herringbone wool lined with black silk.  And you can pair it with so many different cool blazers and dress shirts.  It’s a really unique pair. They always get compliments when I wear them out.

How much do those cost, the Truth? The Truth are part of our pure cashmere line, so they are $275. They are within our range of prices — they’re on the higher end.  What I would encourage customers who are thinking about getting a really nice pair of dress pants to do, is compare them to similar products at a place like Barneys or Bergdorfs where you’d find a product running from between $500 and $900 depending on the brand you were looking at.

You know, someone just coming to the website might look at your pants and think that they’re on the expensive side.  Can you explain why spending $100 on a pair of Bonobos is better than buying a pair of $40 slacks at Old Navy? Sure. You know there are a few things. Old Navy is going to be great for a guy who needs to dress on a budget and who, to be honest, isn’t concerned about having a pair of pants that fits in a compelling and unique way. What you get  with Bonobos by coming up, compared to products that are half our price are, you get a much more quality fabric.

All of our fabrics are sourced in Europe, as opposed to Old Navy who sources their fabrics in Asia or sometimes in South America. Same thing with the construction. We’re using American labor here in New York City, and a lot of times the quality that we get from hand sewing a curved waistband is just dramatically higher when people are putting their production overseas. And lastly, you get our service. Very few places — Old Navy included — are going to allow you at any time to call up and get fashion recommendations to help you find the right size, to do personal fittings, to have our return policy where if anything happens that may not even be your fault, we can help you exchange them out for a new pair.

So, when you put all those things together, it starts to make sense to say for a little bit extra, I can get a product that I’m really gonna love as opposed to have serve a function. Which is how I think about the difference. One is that you can buy something that you really are attracted to and love and the other is that it’s just another pair of pants.

So wait — you guys will really give fashion advice? [Laughs] We will. Anybody who’s a Bonobos customer and who wants some help on pairing colors with things that they like or outfits — all you have to do is contact our customer service ninja team and we’ll be absolutely thrilled to offer our advice.

And if you look at our blog actually, Brian has written some really cool posts about how to avoid common problems like the 10 things that are really problematic when traveling — how they affect your wardrobe and how that could affect everything from your mood to your ability to perform at a high level. And I encourage readers who are interested in our fashion advice part of our business, to check out our blog.

What about customers that are located in New York — Can they come into the showroom or office? Yeah.  Definitely. Our office doubles as a showroom, and so anybody in New York who’d like to come and try stuff on in person, all they have to do is shoot us a quick email or give us a phone call and we’d love to have them come visit us and check out the whole line.

That’s sounds great. It seems like you guys make it a really personal experience. Yeah, it’s fun I think. Most of the guys that come in and shop end up enjoying it a lot more than they do anywhere else. And you know, we started the company because we didn’t really like shopping. But for those guys who prefer to have the in-person experience, we want to make it work for them.

What about expansion? Do you guys have any plans to expand to anything more than pants?  Maybe some sports jackets? Absolutely. Yes. We think we can innovate across every vertical in men’s clothing. We started with pants cause we thought that’s where the biggest problem was.  But I’d definitely have your readers keep an eye out for us innovating in the areas of polos and swim products, and later on in 2009, dress shirts as well. And hopefully in a few years, we’ll actually have everything you can find in men’s clothing elsewhere on Bonobos.com. We’d like to make all of it, and we’d like to make it all really high quality and really great fitting. Those are kind of our two principles.

And what about a women’s line? Or are you guys just totally focused on providing men’s clothing? You know, we think that men are a little more under-served in terms that are catering towards their fashion needs.  And I think it’s going to take up all of our energy for the immediate future. I can’t say what will eventually happen. But you know, a bunch of women have gone for our smallest size of Bonobos — a size 28– and some of them look pretty good in it.  Some of the stuff has a little bit of a crossover ability.

And we will have some t-shirts as well. Pretty soon we’ll have designed a line for women to help us spread the word about helping guys look better in their pants — getting rid of Khaki Diaper Butt.

That’s great. Are the t-shirts going to have the Bonobos logo on it or they going to have a specific design? Um, To be determined.  I know that some of them will definitely have the Bonobos logo, but I need to chat with our designer about what else we’re going to be coming out with on the t-shirt front.

Well, it looks like we’re at the end of the road.  Is there anything else you’d like to throw in for our readers? For guys who haven’t tried buying pants online before, we really do try and make it a hassle free arrangement. We pay for all return shipping, and we really will help you find stuff that works well for you. So, we’d appreciate folks giving it a shot. We think we can make it a better experience. That would be my last pitch.

Can Someone Please Help Me Find My Sympathy? I Seem to Have Lost it.

Heads rolled after Obama’s stimulation restrictions were voted into place allowing companies receiving federal support to limit executive salaries to $500,000.  According to an article from StockWire, Crain’s, a New York business weekly, conducted an impromptu study of the Manhattan banking elite’s typical expenses.  Read more

Recession-Proof Activities III: Bigger, Badder, Harder

So, New Yorkers…how are your finances? If you’re like the majority of Americans riding out the recession wave, penny pinching, saving, and being financial responsible is more vital now than in any other time in our lives. Still, you can have plenty of smile without opening your wallet, purse, or murse. It’s Recession-Proof Activities III, the follow up to follow up to Recession-Proof Activities I and II. Consider this a sequel that doesn’t suck.

Download free music from RCRD LBL: The brainchild of GDGT’s visionary Peter Rojas, the vowel-less RCRD LBL is an ad-supported site that lets users download free, legal MP3s–no RIAA lawsuits up in this piece. The MP3 catalog is a mix of new and established artists (Black Dice, Santogold) who get a cut of ad profits. The icing on the cake? You don’t even have to sign up for an account–point your browser toward RCRD LBL and commence partying.

Resurrect an old notebook with Linux: Have an old PC that chokes, wheezes, and coughs when you power it on? Put it to good use with Linux, a free open source operating system that has less bloat than Windows, so it runs fine on ancient hardware. Linux comes in many flavors, but we recommend Ubuntu which has an easy level of entry for wannabe techies. Simply download the ISO file, burn to CD/DVD, and boot your PC from the disc.

Check Out the NYC Public Library Cultural Calendar: If you’re looking to take in some learnin’, the NYC Public Library is here to help. The institution hosts lecture series covering a range of topics from business to science in various locations around the city.

Get A New Do–For Free!: The hair stylist ninjas at Bumble & Bumble (the salon to the stars), have to start somewhere–and the somewhere is Bumble & Bumble University. There the students learn to trim, dye, and cut with real human heads. Sign up, get styled, and take pride in knowing you’re assisting stylists-in-training make steps towards their dreams — and get a kick-ass hundred dollar haircut for nary a dime (they don’t accept tips).

Take A Ride on the Staten Island Ferry
The Staten Island Ferry shuttles 20 million people a year between St. George on Staten Island and Whitehall Street–without charge! Enjoy the terrific view of Ellis Island, Lady Liberty, and the city’s skyline as you cruise one of NYC’s most under-appreciated modes of transportation.

Sit In on a TV Show Taping
Many popular TV shows are taped right here in NYC such as the Daily Show, The View, The Colbert Report, Letterman,  and SNL,  and it won’t cost you a thing to sit in as a member of the studio audience. Tickets, naturally, can be hard to come by so you may have to call/request them online several times to nab one (or even stand in line outside of the studio in hopes of copping the seat of someone that’s canceled).

That’s Recession-Proof Activities III for you. Keep those eyes peeled for more freebie activities that will put a smile on your face no matter if you’re home or out on the town.

Fun Contest Alert: Win a Wii

I tend to brush off contests where you submit your name for a random draw — sheer luck tends to evade me.  But creativity and performance-based contests?  Sign me up!  And that’s what The Printed Blog (an aggregate of blogosphere content printed up newspaper style) is doing. Read more

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