Checking out Charities

When you give money to a charity it is a good idea to make sure that the money is being used well. CharityNavigator.org and GuideStar.org are two sites that give you financial information on charities.

CharityNavigator

I find Charity Navigator easy to navigate and their information is pretty straight forward. However they don't seem to have that many charities. Charity Navigator gives a star rating to grade the charity based on their financials. Plus they also show you what % of the charity's expenses go to fundraising. A low star rating and a high % of money going to fundraising is not a very effective charity. It can help you avoid charities that seem to do nothing but spend money on fundraising like Disabled Veterans Associations which spends 94.6% of their money on fundraising and 1% on their executive's pay. A local TV station in Ohio looked into Disabled Veterans Associations with this report. Its easy to find charities on Charity Navigator. You can search by region, star rating and cause.

GuideStar

Guidestar has the full form 990 which the charity has to file with the government but you do have to register on the Guidestar site (free) to view the forms. Guidestar is harder to navigate and there isn't much there except the 990 forms. The 990 form details what the income and expenses are for the charity. The information includes specifics on where money they get comes from and what they are spending money on. Digging into the details on the 990's can give pretty interesting detail. For example you can find out from its 990 that the Goodwill in Oregon pays their CEO over $400k in 2007 and that they have half a dozen other executives making over $100k. By comparison the 990 for the Southern California Goodwill shows that they paid their President/COO a bit over $300k.

If you want a quick and easy picture of a charities finances then Charity Navigator is a good choice. If you want details on charities spending and income then Guidestar has the full 990 forms.

Be Wary of Who's Who Registry Offers

Earlier today I got a couple emails from a company about a Who's Who registry. They were pleased to inform me that I'd been recommended for listing in their Who's Who registry. Of course there is no cost to be included. But I should hurry and sign up before September 16th (I got the email on Oct. 2nd). I followed the link to their website and get a form with my mailing address and phone # as well as a few fields about my information. Shortly after I got that email I got a second one sent to another email address with a different spelling of my first name. I guess I'm so special they wanted to make sure they included me under both spellings? I don't think so. The email I got failed to say WHY they were including me. What had I done to warrant such an honor? Apparently nothing at all except for having a publicly visible email address.

I would bet you that this company makes all their money by selling copies of their book to people that they list in the book. Given that they sent me 2 mails in the same day to different addresses, I'm pretty sure they don't do any real screening or filtering to decide who is really 'worthy' of the 'prestige' of being included. They probably spammed that same email to 100 million people.

Wikipedia entry on Who's Who mentions this practice and they explain : "Many Who's Who publications are vanity publications, where the inclusion criterion is the biographee's willingness to buy the book, with the business model consisting of selling books directly to the biographees."

When I was a teenager in high school I got a fancy letter in the mail from such a who's who company saying that they were going to put me in the who's who of high school students. The letter didn't say exactly why they were adding me to their book, but it offered to sell me a copy for a keepsake. Initially I was pretty honored to be included in such a book, but since I hadn't done anything really note worthy in high school I was wary. And then the sales pitch to buy their book as a condition for being included cemented it for me that it was really just a way for them to sell the books. I'm sure many parents would be so proud of their kid for such an accomplishment that they'd buy such a book.

The who's who books in question will also tell you how their book is in many libraries. That makes it seem legitimate. The only problem with that is that the maker of the book donates a copy of their book to those libraries just so they could brag about it being on the library shelves.

So I'd say be wary of these offers. Ask yourself, have you ever desired to look up anyone in a who's who book? Probably not. They are probably just feeding off your own vanity in an attempt to sell you a book.

Your noteworthy accomplishments are their own benefit. Getting your name listed in a book with 1000's of other people really isn't an accomplishment.

Don't Over Pay for HDMI Cables

Recent home entertainment video technology like HDTV's or video game consoles use the HDMI interface to connect the audio/video signals. HDMI cables sometimes can be very expensive for the higher end models. But there is really no reason to pay a high price for an HDMI cable.

HDMI cables aren't like traditional audio / video cables. It used to be that the quality of the cables for your home entertainment system would effect the quality of your video and audio. If you connect a low quality cable to your TV or stereo then you'd get a low quality signal. But HDMI cables are digital in nature so the signal either gets through in tact or it doesn't get through. So a higher price cable made with the very best stuff won't get you higher quality signal.

If a $10 cable works fine then its just as good as a $20, $40 or $100 cable. There is usually really no reason to pay more for a higher cost HDMI cable. You won't get a better picture.

Don't just take my word for it. Refer to these other sources.

• Gizmodo has a series on the Truth About Monster Cable where they talk about the quality of cheapest cables vs the very expensive Monster cable brand. They test some cheap cables versus Monster cables in : The Truth About Monster Cable, Part 2 (Verdict: Cheap Cables Keep Up...Usually) they found that for normal situations the cheap cables are just fine.
• What HDMI Cable Should I Buy? from CNet. They put it succinctly : "Expensive cables aren't worth it"
• PC World's article The Cable Game said : "Once you get a good HDMI connection, our tests indicate, you can expect flawless performance from any 4-meter cable, regardless of price"
  

This is not to say that there is no value to a higher quality HDMI cable. If you have a longer distance, plan to run higher bandwidth in the future, or have some problems with your signals due to interference or something then there might be situations where a higher quality cable might really be helpful. But I think for 99% of us the cheaper cables will be just as good as an expensive cable.

Its fairly easy to pay $30 or more extra for a cable of essentially the same functionality.

On Bestbuy.com the cheapest 6' HDMI cable they have is $20 and you can pay $40 or more for a name brand HDMI cable like Monster.

I look on Newegg and do a search for "hdmi cable" and filter to 5-10' cables. There are 20 options for cables under $8 with some as low as $5. Almost all of those cables have customer ratings averaging 4-5 out of 5 stars which is a pretty good sign the cables work fine.


I bought a fairly cheap HDMI cables from Newegg myself and they have worked perfectly fine for me.

So rather than spending $50 or more for a cable at a retailer I'd strongly recommend you shop around and get a lower cost HDMI cable for $5-20 and save yourself some money.

Image from BestBuy.com

Finally got my refund from Verizon

I wrote before how it was taking months to get a refund from Verizon. They originally charged me $99.99 in July for not returning a broken modem that they hadn't asked me to return. I called initially and they admitted that I shouldn't have been charged and said I didn't have to return the modem. On the first call they said they'd refund me the $99.99. Time passed and I got my next statement with no credit so I called them again. Again in the second call they said that they would credit me but it would take 1-2 months to show up. That irritated me at the time and prompted me to write about it here. The September statement showed up and I had no credit still. So this time instead of calling them I I wrote Verizon another email asking them what is going on and when I'd get my credit. After that mail I finally got a credit from Verizon for the $99.99 that they had charged me. The credit showed up on my account last week.

It took two phone calls and an email to get the credit. Verizon had apparently 3 people in a row mishandle this. The first person caused the charge to go on my account when it shouldn't. Then two customer reps in a row said they would fix it and didn't. It took me about 2 months to get the whole thing cleared up and by the time I get a refund Verizon will have had my money for 3 months. Thankfully $100 isn't going to hurt me, but the principal of the issue is very annoying.

This is one major strike against Verizon in my personal book.