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A new tool for tracking your finances. Lots of features in the works.

My wife recently found a great sale on cereal at a local grocery store, Price Choppers. It was for 3 boxes of Post cereal for $5. It worked out to be almost 3 for the price of 1.

She purchased 180 boxes ($300 worth!) and was very strangely looked at for purchasing such a large amount (even had to get store manager approval for such a large purchase). She admits being embarrassed buying such a large amount but weighed the embarrassment against the savings we’d have in the long run. It turns out that she saved our family just under $600. My family of 7 (5 daughters) have cereal for breakfast everyday (and I go for cereal if there isn’t anything ready to eat ). So we average 1 to 3 days for a single box of cereal – depending on what kind it is. This stash of cereal will last us 6 to 7 months – and at huge savings!

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I recently read the book The Next Millionaires by Paul Pilzer. Its a great book on the new economics that will shape our generation and challenges many old economic principles. One of the great gems I found was an equation that Paul discovered.

W = P * T

Wealth = Personal resources * Technology

He submits that our wealth as a society is determined by the resources we have times the technology that we have. This is a very interesting way of looking at things. He gives the example of the oil/gas crisis of the 1970’s in America. There was a real shortage of gas, it was even rationed. At that time gas mileage was about 9 miles/gallon from a $300 mechanical carburetor. The next decade’s technology introduced the computerized electronic fuel injector at a cost of $25 and yielding mileage of 22 miles/gallon. The resource quantity of gas remained about the same (actually went down slightly) but the technology effectively doubled the supply. Technology can truly have a great impact.

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