Picking a Family Car

If you have kids and are looking for a new car it can be very challenging. The car industry is having some issues, as we all know, so a lot of deals are to be had. I have a preference for domestic cars, mostly because my dad was a car guy I guess. While it is true that the foreign cars used to be better quality then US cars they are much closer in reliability these days and foreign cars are now built in the US. All this really means is that the "origin" of the car should not be a deciding factor in choosing a car, but the features of the car should be the deciding factor.

1. Family Sedan - This would be the Honda Accord's or Saturn Aura's of the world. These are are a good choice if you are have a small family, 1 or 2 kids, and don't do much traveling or take friend's anywhere. They tend to get good gas mileage and are a comfortable ride.
2. Small SUV - Nissan Xterra or Toyota 4Runner are example of these cars. Actually a lot of cars fit in this category. They have a lot of the same drawback of a Sedan, but are bigger and can carry more. Some come with a third row, but once you add that third row - no more storage.
3. Large SUV - Ford Expedition and Chevy Tahoe are classic example of large SUV's. The number one problem in this segment is gas mileage. You can fit a lot of people and stuff in these vehicles. The drawback here is that if you have two small children in car seats you will not be able get into the back seat.
4. Crossovers - Saturn Outlook and Ford Flex fit this category. They have many similarities to SUV, but drive more like a car and do not have the "ruggedness" of an SUV. They also usually get better gas mileage.
5. Mini VAN - Chrysler Town and Country or Hyundai Entourage. The most dreaded of all family vehicles, yet the most practical. Many people try to avoid this option at all cost, but the fact of the matter is their is no better family car for the money on any car lot in the land.

Obviously, I can not cover every options here in this list. I have a Town and County which is my third mini van (first two were Ford's) and the fold flats seats are the best invention ever. For those people who need two vehicles I would recommend a Pick-up truck as the second car (if you own a home). They will allow for transportation of all kinds of stuff. If you don't want a Pick-up get a good utility trailer and a tow hitch for your van/SUV. Keep on trucking.

Investing Is Important

With the market crumbling, bank being untrustworthy and the economy free falling it is hard to think about investing anything. However, it is important to invest, you work hard for your money and your money should work hard for you. Here is a compilation of some simple investment strategies that may not hurt so bad.

1. Get a high interest savings account. Many of the online only bank have high interest rates on saving and even checking accounts. ING is a good option, easy use web site a lots of other options, including good options for kids accounts. This is a good simple way to earn extra money with no risk.
2. A drip account is low overhead investment account that allows you to invest small amounts of money at a regular interval. ING, once again, had a service called Sharedbuilder which allows you to do just that. You will need to pick a couple of companies you have confidence in or to diversify your risk mutual funds are a good option.
3. Research! Know what you are getting into. Subscribing to a good monthly magazine or daily newspaper is worth the investment. Baron's and Kiplinger's are good monthly magazines that have good investment advise and are easy to read. Go to your local book store and read a couple of magazines for a couple of month before you make your subscription.
4. 401K plans are great. If your company offers a 401K be sure to put as much money in it as you can. Make sure to put in to the plan enough to max our your employers match. You will not be able to access your money while it is in the 401K unless you have an emergency, but that is the point.
5. Employee Stock Purchase plans are a easy investment option. They work like drip accounts in that you take a small about of money out of your check and invest it in your employer, generally at a discount, on a monthly basis. The caveat here is that you do not want to have to much money invested in your employer (think Enron). Every so often transfer the stock your personal trading account (tdameritrade or scotttrade are easy to use and have a low overhead cost) and sell the stock buy something else.
6. Invest in your home. While the real estate market is falling apart if you are a home owner it is still smart to keep up your home. Home improvements make you feel better about your house and improve your life experience. It is also a good time to buy investment properties. The credit market is very tight, but you may be able to get a good multi family house that will provide long term income for years to come.

The thing to keep in mind is that no matter how bad things are with the markets they always go back up. If you put at least a small amount of your money to work for you now you'll be ahead of the curve as the markets expand.

Watching TV Away from Home

From time to time you may want to watch you TV somewhere other then your living room. Maybe you have to work the night shift? Maybe you Travel a lot on business? Or maybe you just don't have a TV hookup in your den. When this happen you may want to look into some alternative for getting to you TV service, whether it be Cable, FIOS or Satellite.

1. Possibly the most popular name in this space in the slingbox. If you have not heard of a slingbox it is device that basically connects your set top box to the Internet and streams whatever channel your box is set to. You then install a client software that connects to the slingbox and is capable of sending remote control signals to the set top box.
2. A second option is a HAVA box. While similar to slingbox, but less well know and therefor cheaper this may be a good alternative. One feature the HAVA has available is the ability to add a hard drive to the HAVA box and use it as a DVR.
3. A software solution, among many, is ORB. Orb works as a media server you can access from anywhere in your house or over the Internet. The software is free to download and use, however if you want to use it to stream your TV service you will need a video capture card.
   
4. While not technically watching "your TV" online services like HULU.com, the newly relaunched TV.com and FanCast allow you to watch popular and sometime not so popular TV show, movies and clips.

As with most things in life one solution does not always solve all problems. I personally use a HAVA Platimum HD as well as HULU.com. The HAVA works well for watching my Comcast cable from any PC in my house as well as from any computer outside my house with the HAVA Client installed. If you get either a HAVA or Slingbox make sure you get an HD version, it may cost a little more but in the long run you will be happier with the quality of the the video you get remotely.

How to protect digial photo library

The first thing my wife and I did when we found out we were pregnant was buy a new digital camera. We bought a nice Canon PowerShot S3 IS. We take a ton of pictures and videos (we even sometimes upload them to youtube). It has become increasingly important for us to backup the picture and for a while I would burn them to DVD and take them to our safety deposit box. This did not last long as the library got to large to fit on a reasonable about of DVD's. I then came up with three possible solutions:

1. Manual Backup to an external disk. As the cost of these disks continues to fall this works well and is not very costly. You do run the risk of loosing pictures if your computer crashes and you have not backed up the library in a while. It is possible to schedule the backup if you keep the computer on all the time. Alternatively a backup script can be run every time you login to your computer, but that may get annoying quickly and required the external hard drive to be on all the time and increases the risk of drive failer.
2. Hardware RAID in a computer. RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk) has been used by corporations for years. There are several RAID levels, but most consumer level computers these days will run level 0, 1 or 5. RAID 0 uses 2 disk simultaneously to increase speed of the computer, but does not provide redundancy of data. This is good for computers that need speed, such as PC gaming or video editing. RAID 1 also uses two disks, but in this configuration one disk is an exact copy of the other. This is not any faster, but if one drive crashes the other should still have all the data. Finally RAID5 uses 3 or more disks. It writes the data across all 3 disks, but keeps parity so if one disk is lost the data can be recreated from what is on the other two disks. RAID5 is the best option but the most expensive and can be slow so RAID1 may be the work best for most people.
3. NAS device. A NAS (Network Attached Storage) again has been used in by corporations for years and is now becoming more popular for home use. As people start having more then one computer at home as well as devices like XBOX360 and Playstation3 having pictures and music even movies available on the network all the time can be very useful. Many of the consumer level NAS devices available have built in media servers, iTunes server even FTP options for remote access to files. The can range in price from around $100 to $500 without disks.

I chose option 3 and purchased a DLink 321 NAS and two 1T SATA drives. This gives me 1Teribyte of storage and automatic data redundancy. The DLink was available from several on-line retailers for about $100 and the 1T dives were also $100. So my total cost was $300 plus tax and shipping (the drives were free to ship but not the NAS from the etailer I used). The DLink 321 has a power saver option which spins down the drives after a set amount of time to save both power and wear and tear on the drive. That being said, I do plan to buy a third drive in a couple of months and swap one out so the drives have different hours of use just to make sure. I also plan to manually backup the data and store it in our safety deposit box periodically.