Which of the following TV dads do you think has the greater need for life insurance: mob boss Tony Soprano, Cliff Huxtable of the Cosby Show, or Mike Brady of the Brady Bunch? According to a national survey conducted for the non-profit Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education (LIFE), most people assume Tony Soprano has the greatest need. After all, his line of work is a bit on the risky side. However, LIFE executives say it's a common mistake to focus first on the likelihood that a breadwinner will die instead of the needs of the family that would be left behind. In Tony Soprano's case, while he lives dangerously, he probably has enough money "stashed away" to provide for his family, the LIFE representatives explain. Mike Brady, on the other hand, is likely to have the greatest need for life insurance. Seven other family members plus a full-time housekeeper are dependent on his income as an architect.
Matt's View
Kudos to LIFE for taking a boring topic and injecting a bit of fun into it with these surveys about the insurance needs of TV characters. A past survey compared the life insurance needs of Spiderman to those of Fred Flintstone. Most people thought Spiderman had the greater need because of his penchant for scaling skyscrapers and jumping on moving cars. However, he would need insurance only if his elderly aunt were dependent on him, whereas Fred Flintstone, with a wife a child, has a clear need. To get a sense of how much life insurance your family needs, LIFE offers a free calculator on its web site.
Are you looking for a little extra Christmas cash this year? How about giving yourself a raise? You may be able to if you were one of the nearly 99 million taxpayers who received a refund from their 2005 taxes. With the average refund totaling $2,200, that amounts to about $185 per month that people are needlessly loaning to the government interest free.
Matt's View
Kiplinger's offers an online calculator to help determine if you're having too much money withheld from your income. The IRS also offers a calculator. In order to change your withholding, just contact your benefits or human resources department and they'll walk you through the process.
In a quest to more effectively separate us from our money, retailers have tried music to tickle our ears, lighting to please our eyes, and special flooring to comfort our feet. Now they're taking their appeal straight to our nose. According to an article in the 10/16 issue of Time magazine, businesses ranging from bedding stores to hotels are paying big bucks for scents custom tailored to what they sell--soothing scents for bed buyers, an orange/vanilla blend with a hint of cedarwood to stimulate sales at Sony's retail stores. Some businesses use the same scent throughout their store, while others "decorate" each department with a different scent. Bloomingdale's uses the smell of baby powder in its infant clothing department, while a lilac/coconut concoction wafts through its intimate apparel area. Does it work? One upscale ice cream shop reported a one-third rise in sales after it added a laboratory-made waffle cone smell to its store. Apparently its own waffle cones don't generate a strong enough scent.
Matt's View
The poor shopper just doesn't stand a chance today. With cultural anthropologists monitoring our every move, psychologists getting inside our head, and now smell specialists figuring out how to best "in-scent" us to spend, it's no wonder why the typical shopper leaves the mall with more than they intended to buy. I wonder what scent would get us to save more. As you ponder that, you can test your nose knowledge with this online quiz.
What type of car do you think the average CEO drives? What types and brands come to mind? As reported on BusinessWeek Online on 10/6, a recent survey from CareerBuilder.com and Cars.com found that most people think the typical company leader drives a luxury sports car costing over $70,000. However, when CEOs were asked, they claimed to spend an average of just $25,000 on their primary car and only 19 percent reported driving a luxury car.
Matt's View
One possibility is that the CEOs surveyed were not coming clean with their car buying practices. The boss' car where I used to work, parked prominently in the reserved spot that most employees had to walk past, cost way more than $25,000. The other possibility is that the average CEO lives like The Millionaire Next Door profiled in the excellent book by the same name. Authors Thomas Stanley and William Danko found that the typical millionaire paid just under $25,000 for their most recently purchased car and 30 percent paid $19,500 or less. While the book was published in 1996, even after factoring in inflation, the wealthy, it seems, spend less on their cars than most people think. Hmm. Maybe there's a connection between building wealth and spending modestly on items that depreciate quickly.
