I happened to pass by a gas station today that had a sign advertising a credit card with a 5% cashback option. While there was probably a catch since I whizzed by the advertisement sign, I was with another person who made a comment on how he felt that credit card rewards with points such as airmiles are a waste in comparison.

I personally prefer cashback options, although from a value point of view in most cases the reward options you receive seems to be almost inline with each other. The only main difference I see is that with one option you are forced to get something that you don’t necessarily want.

One thing is for sure though, I hate having to pay for those premium reward options and would usually avoid them if they require any kind of additional fee.

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I was at a seminar yesterday and one of the topics that came up was about making patents and how even if you don’t want to be the person who actually executes the idea, just thinking them up can generate people a lot of wealth.

I was then reading up about an individual named Ronald Katz who owns over 50 different patents with most of them consisting of technology patents that businesses use everyday. As a result, he generates billions of dollars licensing out his patents.

While this is not exactly the same, just by reading this it almost sounds like a person who just sits down while trying to think of the best domain names to register and then hoping that someone will pay top dollars for it. I can only assume that trying to patent an idea requires more financial investment, but it sure puts it in perspective when people say you just have to be the first to think of it.

It definitely made me more curious to learn more about the industry and process though.

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Many times when we buy items we tend to look at just the immediate price tag of a product which lures us to spend money as we think it is such a great deal. Today I took a casual gander on Ebay as there is this electric toothbrush I was potentially interested in and how I thought this would give me an idea on a price comparison if I was to buy it from a store.

When I first did a search I found a listing for the item for about $99 with a $25 shipping rate which didn’t seem too bad considering the item was about $180 normally at retail stores.

I then saw another listing that indicated it was $81.50 and thought that was even better. However, I then looked at the shipping rate and was stunned.

As you can see, the seller was charging a shipping fee of $75.73. Granted the shipping service is different, but that is still a substantial amount. So while it looked better at first, in the end it would be way more.

I knew a person once who said he simply sold these dishes on Ebay at a loss and instead just hiked up the shipping fee which made him a lot of profit in the end. As he mentioned, for some reason people simply just focused on the price of the item itself.

Just like all those hidden charges on specific services, you really have to be aware of what you are really paying in the end.

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Just recently I had an interesting experience as there is this company that I used for awhile for various technical related services and what I liked about them is that they frequently advertised the fact that they were a local business where its model was to invest their money in its staff/support system as a strategy to provide better service as oppose say more on hardware to make things run faster.

That did seem to be the case before as the service was fast and professional and as a result the company appeared to be growing too. Just recently, I had to contact the support line for a quick question and to my surprise the person I was talking to had a very heavy accent and didn’t seem to have a very good grasp of the English language. Upon talking to the person it appeared that the company had decided to outsource their technical help line to India.

While at the end my questions were still handled pretty efficiently, the fact that they still advertised the investing in people gimmick kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. It made me wonder if this will turn into a situation where when you are doing well you tend to think you no longer need to worry about the things that made you successful as you assume the profits will just keep coming in.

In general, it is so important I think to not let the enticement of being able to make more money blind you from abandoning the general foundation on what made you successful.

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Since it is a long weekend due to the Easter holiday, for most people that usually means time off away from work/business. At the same time, a lot of people actually want to work on these days as many companies throw out incentives for people to want to work.

For example, I know one person who works for a cable company which requires around the clock customer service. To encourage people to work on holidays they are willing to pay people two to three times as much the legal requirement. Sure enough, a lot of people are more than happy to do so as a result.

When I think about it, when I was younger I used to always want to work on holidays as it was a great way to save a lot of money and not to mention the work was usually easier since it wouldn’t be that busy due to people going on vacations. Whatever works for your lifestyle I suppose.

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