Frequent travelers are often the greatest users of budget car rental as they know the convenience it provides; if you use taxis regularly you will not need reminding how expensive this form of transportation is, so perhaps it is time you tried something else. However, the rental car market can be fiercely competitive so be careful you are not given a car with an engine that would be better fitted to a bike. Well maybe not that bad, but sometimes, well most of the time, the people that assist you in car rentals just doesn't have your best interest in mind, so you end up paying a truckload of money for a pool of frustrations. To avoid this here are a few tips to get the budget, out of your rental car.
One way that can help is to use a web site for budget car rental that allows you to set your own upper spending limit. These companies will try and get you the best deal available and often offer other upgrades or incentives to get your custom. It is not unusual to find that package deals that incorporate a flight and rental car, provide other incentives such as a vehicle upgrade for instance although this is rarely the case if you book with one of the airlines directly. Unfortunately, airlines although convenient aren't really the more economic way to go, their car rental prices are hardly budget, and tend to be higher than those of outside firms.
Just remember that you are likely to come across some amazing budget car rental deals on the internet if you look. Internet only bookings are fast becoming the only way you are able to receive a discount on your car rental. Shopping around on the internet can be fun and save you money as there is almost always a special offer available with one car Rental Company or another. Don't forget that the only effort required to find these car rental deals is to logon to the internet, how easy is that.
Another thing to ask is whether your credit card company has negotiated special discounts with the budget car rental company you are going to use. Perhaps your frequent flyer program or military service can help reduce the cost of renting a car; it's a long shot but it's worth a try.
Most rental cars are low on maintenance so when you rent a car, check all sides for damage. I mean every side and every nook and cranny of that car, make sure to inform the renter of these so that you wont have to pay for damages once you return the car. In addition to a physical check for collision damage, make sure everything works as it should or you might find yourself paying for something that wasn't your fault.
One other thing to remember is to check your vehicle insurance policy as you will more than likely find that it provides rental car insurance cover so that's another saving. Even though rental car insurance isn't going to cost you a fortune, there is no point in paying it if you are already covered; always make sure you have auto insurance anyway, as the penalties for driving without adequate cover are severe.
So don't think that it isn't an important aspect either because insurance is still required by law.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Budget problem
What the hell is burning in here?" my wife demanded.
She didn't wait for my reply. She had smelled the block of wood burning in my home office all the way from hers. She left the room, retuned with a fire extinguisher, placed it on the floor, and went back to her office without another word.
A recent client of mine named David McInnis had just launched a startup company building parts via Stereolithography (SLA) and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS); two bleeding edge technologies designed to build parts directly from 3D-CAD files by using lasers. This technology enables users to create these renditions without using any additional tools.
I submitted a proposal to the Air Force outlining a plan for David's company to make parts for the F35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) using the SLS technology. The Air Force specifications presented an obstacle; they needed the parts to function at elevated temperatures of up to 270°F. This specification required that we use some new materials that Roger Spielman, the Director of Operations, and I had recently developed. We needed to test "tensile specimens" made from this new material, commonly called dog bones, at these elevated temperatures.
The problem was this: we were a startup company and we didn't own or have access to any tensile testing machines or a way to test the specimens at elevated temperatures. The testing machines are very expensive, so purchasing one of these machines was out of the question.
A company intern, Mike Sherwood, informed us that the local university, BYU, had one of the tensile testing machines on campus. We figured that his idea was worth a shot. After all, we had nothing to lose. We picked up the phone and called one of the professors at the college. We explained our situation and asked if they would be interested in letting us use the machine at a reasonable rate.
Dr. Brent Strong gave us the go-ahead to start using the machine, and even said that the school wouldn't charge us a dime right then. He added that down the road, if we needed to use the machine a lot that we could pay a very small fee.
Problem solved... or at least one of them. Now we had a machine, but still no way to test the specimen at elevated temperatures. The manufacturer of the testing machines does sell an environmental chamber accessory that would have allowed us to measure the effectiveness of the specimen at high temperatures, but the accessory cost thousands of dollars.
So, the next challenge was determining how to test the specimens at 270°F with no budget. What resources did we already have available to accomplish this objective?
I thought about my oven at home. The appliance reaches temperatures of up to 425°F - I know because I do all of the cooking in our family. The oven is more than twenty years old and we need a new one anyway, so I figured I could just cut the oven in half, and clamshell the oven around the tensile specimen while we tested them. That probably would have worked, but tearing my oven out of the wall sounded like a hassle. I know that your first idea is rarely your best idea, so I kept thinking, "What else might work? Is there another right answer?"
Then I thought about my photography lights. I wondered, "How hot will these lights get?" I know that they get pretty hot when I use them to shoot my videos, but I was doubtful that they could reach 270°F.
Since I am always curious, I decided to try the lights out in spite of my doubts. I'd never measured the temperature of the lights before, so I thought that maybe, just maybe, the lights would work.
I jammed a metal rod into a block of wood I'd found in my garage and stood the wood up vertically in my office. I went downstairs, got my photography lights, turned them on, and shined them directly at the piece of wood from about three inches away.
In order to track the temperature readings, I retrieved my laser thermometer from the closet. I know what you are thinking: "Ha-ha look at that engineering nerd and his laser thermometer," but in my defense, the LT does have some real, practical uses like measuring the temperature of the air in my hot air balloon, checking the peanut oil temperature when I'm deep frying a turkey, and other things like that.
I pointed the laser at the wood to measure the temperature and watched the readings climb: 150°F, 200°F, 250°F, 400°F ... When the wood reached 650°, the smoke started. I quickly turned the light off before I set my house on fire. I didn't want to have to use the extinguisher my wife had placed on the floor.
Wow. A simple photography light can heat a block of wood to temperatures over 600°F? I would have never guessed; and I never would have known if I hadn't been curious enough to test the lights out. I'd found my solution. I simply turned the lights on my specimen, adjusted the lights' distance from the sample until the temperature stabilized at 270°F, and voila: mission accomplished.
My plan worked like a charm, and best of all, it didn't cost us a cent.
Have you ever tried this exercise yourself? Conduct a brainstorming session to accomplish your task assuming you have no budget and only current available resources to get the job done. You will think it is a waste of time, but in my experience it almost never is. You can almost always find some creative and innovative approaches assuming you have no budget to work with.
In the end you may end up spending some money, but by coming at it from this viewpoint you can often save you bookoo bucks.
She didn't wait for my reply. She had smelled the block of wood burning in my home office all the way from hers. She left the room, retuned with a fire extinguisher, placed it on the floor, and went back to her office without another word.
A recent client of mine named David McInnis had just launched a startup company building parts via Stereolithography (SLA) and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS); two bleeding edge technologies designed to build parts directly from 3D-CAD files by using lasers. This technology enables users to create these renditions without using any additional tools.
I submitted a proposal to the Air Force outlining a plan for David's company to make parts for the F35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) using the SLS technology. The Air Force specifications presented an obstacle; they needed the parts to function at elevated temperatures of up to 270°F. This specification required that we use some new materials that Roger Spielman, the Director of Operations, and I had recently developed. We needed to test "tensile specimens" made from this new material, commonly called dog bones, at these elevated temperatures.
The problem was this: we were a startup company and we didn't own or have access to any tensile testing machines or a way to test the specimens at elevated temperatures. The testing machines are very expensive, so purchasing one of these machines was out of the question.
A company intern, Mike Sherwood, informed us that the local university, BYU, had one of the tensile testing machines on campus. We figured that his idea was worth a shot. After all, we had nothing to lose. We picked up the phone and called one of the professors at the college. We explained our situation and asked if they would be interested in letting us use the machine at a reasonable rate.
Dr. Brent Strong gave us the go-ahead to start using the machine, and even said that the school wouldn't charge us a dime right then. He added that down the road, if we needed to use the machine a lot that we could pay a very small fee.
Problem solved... or at least one of them. Now we had a machine, but still no way to test the specimen at elevated temperatures. The manufacturer of the testing machines does sell an environmental chamber accessory that would have allowed us to measure the effectiveness of the specimen at high temperatures, but the accessory cost thousands of dollars.
So, the next challenge was determining how to test the specimens at 270°F with no budget. What resources did we already have available to accomplish this objective?
I thought about my oven at home. The appliance reaches temperatures of up to 425°F - I know because I do all of the cooking in our family. The oven is more than twenty years old and we need a new one anyway, so I figured I could just cut the oven in half, and clamshell the oven around the tensile specimen while we tested them. That probably would have worked, but tearing my oven out of the wall sounded like a hassle. I know that your first idea is rarely your best idea, so I kept thinking, "What else might work? Is there another right answer?"
Then I thought about my photography lights. I wondered, "How hot will these lights get?" I know that they get pretty hot when I use them to shoot my videos, but I was doubtful that they could reach 270°F.
Since I am always curious, I decided to try the lights out in spite of my doubts. I'd never measured the temperature of the lights before, so I thought that maybe, just maybe, the lights would work.
I jammed a metal rod into a block of wood I'd found in my garage and stood the wood up vertically in my office. I went downstairs, got my photography lights, turned them on, and shined them directly at the piece of wood from about three inches away.
In order to track the temperature readings, I retrieved my laser thermometer from the closet. I know what you are thinking: "Ha-ha look at that engineering nerd and his laser thermometer," but in my defense, the LT does have some real, practical uses like measuring the temperature of the air in my hot air balloon, checking the peanut oil temperature when I'm deep frying a turkey, and other things like that.
I pointed the laser at the wood to measure the temperature and watched the readings climb: 150°F, 200°F, 250°F, 400°F ... When the wood reached 650°, the smoke started. I quickly turned the light off before I set my house on fire. I didn't want to have to use the extinguisher my wife had placed on the floor.
Wow. A simple photography light can heat a block of wood to temperatures over 600°F? I would have never guessed; and I never would have known if I hadn't been curious enough to test the lights out. I'd found my solution. I simply turned the lights on my specimen, adjusted the lights' distance from the sample until the temperature stabilized at 270°F, and voila: mission accomplished.
My plan worked like a charm, and best of all, it didn't cost us a cent.
Have you ever tried this exercise yourself? Conduct a brainstorming session to accomplish your task assuming you have no budget and only current available resources to get the job done. You will think it is a waste of time, but in my experience it almost never is. You can almost always find some creative and innovative approaches assuming you have no budget to work with.
In the end you may end up spending some money, but by coming at it from this viewpoint you can often save you bookoo bucks.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Budget Deficits By Increase In Tax Revenue
A budget deficit occurs when Government spending is greater than tax revenues. For political reasons a budget deficit often occurs. Politicians never gain votes by raising taxes and cutting spending. With many major World economies facing a large budget deficit. It is worth considering the main economic disadvantages of Government borrowing.
Increased Borrowing
The govt will have to borrow from the private sector, in the UK the government does this by asking the Bank of England to sell bonds and gilts to the private sector.
Higher debt interest payments
Selling bonds will increase the national debt, this is currently £300 billion. The annual interest payments is approximately £23 billion, this has a high opportunity cost because it requires future generations to pay higher taxes.
Increased AD
A budget deficit implies lower taxes and increased G, this will increase AD and this may cause higher Real GDP and inflation.
Higher Taxes and lower spending
In the future the govt may have to increase taxes or cut spending in order to reduce the deficit. This may cause reduced incentives to work
Increased Interest rates
If the govt sells more bonds this is likely to cause interest rates to increase. This is because they will need to increase interest rates in order to attract investors to buy the extra debt. If govt interest rates increase this will push up other interest rates as well.
Crowding Out
Increased govt borrowing may cause a decrease in the size of the private sector (see fiscal policy)
Inflation
In extreme circumstances the govt may increase the money supply to pay the debt, however this is unlikely to occur in the UK
If the govt sells short term gilts to the banking sector then there wil be an increase in the money supply, this is because banks see gilts as near money therefore they can maintain there lending to customers. However they will also be increasing the money supply by lending to the govt.
note the effect of a budget deficit depends to some extent on the cause. For example in a recession a budget deficit may be necessary to get the economy out of recession. If the government is borrowing to invest in infrastructure and education this can benefit the economy in the long term.
Increased Borrowing
The govt will have to borrow from the private sector, in the UK the government does this by asking the Bank of England to sell bonds and gilts to the private sector.
Higher debt interest payments
Selling bonds will increase the national debt, this is currently £300 billion. The annual interest payments is approximately £23 billion, this has a high opportunity cost because it requires future generations to pay higher taxes.
Increased AD
A budget deficit implies lower taxes and increased G, this will increase AD and this may cause higher Real GDP and inflation.
Higher Taxes and lower spending
In the future the govt may have to increase taxes or cut spending in order to reduce the deficit. This may cause reduced incentives to work
Increased Interest rates
If the govt sells more bonds this is likely to cause interest rates to increase. This is because they will need to increase interest rates in order to attract investors to buy the extra debt. If govt interest rates increase this will push up other interest rates as well.
Crowding Out
Increased govt borrowing may cause a decrease in the size of the private sector (see fiscal policy)
Inflation
In extreme circumstances the govt may increase the money supply to pay the debt, however this is unlikely to occur in the UK
If the govt sells short term gilts to the banking sector then there wil be an increase in the money supply, this is because banks see gilts as near money therefore they can maintain there lending to customers. However they will also be increasing the money supply by lending to the govt.
note the effect of a budget deficit depends to some extent on the cause. For example in a recession a budget deficit may be necessary to get the economy out of recession. If the government is borrowing to invest in infrastructure and education this can benefit the economy in the long term.
Effects On Federal Expenses Through Federal Budgets
After studying the regional economic collapse of the last several previous recent decades, I see unfortunate turbulence that will disturb our in flight movie this evening. Why you ask? Well, because the Federal Government has over spent, some was due to irresponsible fiscal policy and much was due to the outrageous cost of the Iraq War.
When money flows from the Federal Government, those areas that are in the flow of those expenditures see a huge economic benefit and this scenario has been repeated many many times over the last century. Within the last three decades I have had the pleasure of watching the rise and falls of such areas. I watched Southern California tank after all the aerospace workers got laid off (88,000). I have I watched military towns collapse when the government stopped spending on National Defense and BRAC closed bases.
Yes, this also happens when private sector money stops flowing. For instance, The Dot Com bubble burst in Silicon Valley or the many large cities hit by the Telecom Crash, the S&L debacle and those are just a few. Right, now our Online Think Tank is reviewing the proposed Budget coming up for the Federal Government, and we see some economic fall-out that is actually long overdue, from a fake economy propped up by wasteful spending.
Indeed the biggest issue I see is that the areas in and around Washington DC will be hit hardest and that will affect real people, folks who live there and work there. Does that mean Washington should keep spending? Heck no, spending must come under control. Nevertheless, this will cause the housing markets there to go thru a much longer bottom that is projected. Something to contemplate in 2008.
When money flows from the Federal Government, those areas that are in the flow of those expenditures see a huge economic benefit and this scenario has been repeated many many times over the last century. Within the last three decades I have had the pleasure of watching the rise and falls of such areas. I watched Southern California tank after all the aerospace workers got laid off (88,000). I have I watched military towns collapse when the government stopped spending on National Defense and BRAC closed bases.
Yes, this also happens when private sector money stops flowing. For instance, The Dot Com bubble burst in Silicon Valley or the many large cities hit by the Telecom Crash, the S&L debacle and those are just a few. Right, now our Online Think Tank is reviewing the proposed Budget coming up for the Federal Government, and we see some economic fall-out that is actually long overdue, from a fake economy propped up by wasteful spending.
Indeed the biggest issue I see is that the areas in and around Washington DC will be hit hardest and that will affect real people, folks who live there and work there. Does that mean Washington should keep spending? Heck no, spending must come under control. Nevertheless, this will cause the housing markets there to go thru a much longer bottom that is projected. Something to contemplate in 2008.
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