MONEY Magazine and salary.com present a list of the Best Jobs in America. Software engineering is at the top of the list. The average annual income of a software engineer is $80,427. Other parts of the site state outsourcing as a worry of software engineers, and neck, wrist, and back pain are recognized as common problems.
Lately, I’ve been collecting my 1099s from banks for interest income that I received in 2005. The disparity in my income from these banks as reported in my 1099-INT is surprising.
I opened my first bank account when I was 14. I was fairly content with the interest income from Coast Federal since my savings was small, the amount of interest was greater than a couple of dollars per month, and I have not taken a class on personal finance. Although I was able to balance a check book, I was not introduced to the concept of compounding interest and rate of return until I studied AP microeconomics and macroeconics under Mr. Lamb. He encouraged his class to investigate mutual funds and gather prospectuses. Mr. Lamb showed how people could have become millionaires after contributing a couple of thousand dollars to an IRA over twenty to forty years. He also introduced me to taking risks, and since he knew that most of us were going to Las Vegas at some point in our lives, he suggested that blackjack was the table game with the best odds against the casino. Mr. Lamb and his class provided a lot of concepts that have been useful in my life. These concepts include measuring risks versus returns, evaluating opportunity costs, and determining marginal utility. Whatever we do with our finances, we should start early. This includes taking greater risks for a chance at higher returns while still young with plenty of years to recover from failure.
I opened a savings account with Wells Fargo when Home Savings of America bought out Coast Federal and the lines to see a teller went out the door. The move was one of convenience rather than on financial prowess.
Recently, I opened a savings account with California National Bank. At the time, the Wells Fargo’s savings account gave an APY of 0.1% while California National Bank offered a savings account with an APY of 0.6%. I left my Wells Fargo account open since it helps provide me with a longer financial history. I was content with the increased interest income from California National Bank. Within a year of opening an account at California National Bank, a colleague referred me to ING. While California National Bank had an APY of 0.6% and Wells Fargo had an APY of 0.1%, ING had an APY of 3.25%! I opened an account with ING, but I deposited only a small amount of money. I am very paranoid, especially when it comes to money and banks that do not have visible branch offices in my area. After completing a year with all three of these savings accounts, I was able to more clearly see how much money I lost through complacency and unfounded paranoia by looking at my 1099-INTs.
After ten years with the above annual percentage yields denoted above, $10,000 would become $10,100 at Wells Fargo, $10,616 at California National Bank, and $13,768 at ING. A good first step in managing money wisely is choosing a relatively safe and conservative savings instrument, such as an Internet savings account. The significant difference in the growth of one’s savings through interest should be enough to encourage one to become aware of the rate of returns provided by several banks and to seek a more competitive savings account.
In What’s Happening to Boys, Leonard Sax reinforces the idea that mainstream media reflects social reality. He uses “Failure to Launch” to introduce a discussion on an increasing trend for males, who are aged in their twenties and early thirties, to continue living with their parents. Sax writes, “According to the Census Bureau, fully one-third of young men ages 22 to 34 are still living at home with their parents — a roughly 100 percent increase in the past 20 years.”
The increase of men living with their parents may serve as evidence of gender role subversion and the reshaping of social norms. Perhaps, their decision to live at home prepares them for their potential future of staying home to raise children while their female counterparts earn money to support the family financially.
There are alternative reasons that men choose to stay at their parents’ home. Due to an increased life expectancy, men may be intentionally slowing their personal growth. They are simply delaying their experiences with life’s great disappointments or simply avoiding them altogether.
In any case, the current trend invalidates quips such as “men have the will, women have the won’t.”
A lot of effort has been exerted lately on providing the same user experience on a web site through all web browsers. Although implementing Internet applications to target requirements of the lowest common denominator would be optimal for greater reach, like other decisions that are made where resources are scarce, the decision to continue investing more resources to strive for an optimal solution should be made after light analysis on its gains. Economists have studied an interesting phenomenon and formulated an economic law: the law of diminishing returns. This law states that the amount of additional benefit decreases with each additional quantity of resource that is applied.
The gains from sacrificing more time and effort into implementing compatibility with Internet Explorer for Mac is worthy of thought. There are several factors to consider. Adding code for compatibility may make the integrity of the system brittle. With each modification of the system, the structure and design of the software code decays. The number of people that use Internet Explorer for Mac should be compared against the total number of people who use a Mac. Then, the number of people who use a Mac relative to the number of people who use a general personal computer should be considered. Analyzing the benefit of implementing compatibility with Internet Explorer for Mac and the risk of breaking the system for all other users in an effort for a compatible solution should make the decision to discontinue support of Internet Explorer for Mac easier.
Insistence on compatibility with Internet Explorer for Mac is misguided. Microsoft, the maker of the Internet Explorer line of software, received a net income of $12 billion and ended support for Internet Explorer for Mac in 2005. Microsoft has the resources to improve compliance of Internet Explorer with Internet standards, but the company decided to discontinue the product line. Modifying a web application that is compatible with the majority of browsers, which includes Internet Explorer for Microsoft Windows, in order to gain compatibility with a single browser that is not supported by anyone is a serious misallocation of valuable resources.
Terror originates from many sources, including those who are privileged to serve the public or outraged by the government. American fixation on the belief that Arab peoples are the primary source of terrorism is very troubling and misguided. Politicians want people to believe that barring a company, which is headquartered within the United Arab Emirates, from operating US ports increases national security. This ultimately creates international tension, an environment where it is US versus them. It also makes the US highly hypocritical on its stances for free trade and international cohesion. It also has surely dispelled the illusion of a united front in the war against terror.
Although it may seem more cost-effective to focus on particular sources of harm, the nation would be best served by more generic security measures. Ethnic profiling has an inherent flaw, which can be exploited easily by people with the ability to navigate through myopic countermeasures and deliver large payloads of terror. A generic security protocol that is well implemented will protect people from threats that are foreign or domestic. Such a protocol will be effective against unknown or unexpected sources, or sources that are simply overlooked by highly targeted measures. When both are almost equally costly, a generic solution should always be preferred over one that is riddled with special cases.