A law professor in Arizona teaches his students to walk away from the house and refuse repaying mortgage even if it loan amount exceeds one dollar than the current house value. Wow! What an insightful thought. And he wants the kids to be proud about it rather than guilty. Is he trying to be witty? Or may be he is simply foolish?

I don’t know about his wittiness or foolishness but he is definitely trying to be famous around the globe. At least that’s what you can conclude from the new educational paper he has released that urges more than 15 million American citizens to stop paying mortgage amount because it is not worth than the cost price.

He also reveals a method to do so. He says it would be foolishness just to walk away and ruin your credit score which could have helped you to buy another house or a car. So according to our foolishly witty professor, get a new home and new vehicle first and then generously default.

May be that’s a part of his law literature. However, isn’t he liable to teach a bit moral ethics to his students?

Here is what I can say he is trying to teach his students and other 15 million Americans:

1st example: Move inside a bank swiftly. Pick up hundred million dollars and walk away. It is definitely theft.

2nd example: You want money so you take a loan from the bank. As soon as you get the money, you choose not to repay it. Isn’t it a theft?

Now Mr. Professor, what you are trying to teach is how to do the first case with the help of second case. Just because you want to avoid being caught by the police under some law, in case you understand what law is.

There are many defaulters we have heard about recently. I am not blaming all of them for non payment. We completely understand if you are not able to repay the mortgage due to job loss and really don’t have money. We also understand if you were hospitalized and the bills took away almost all your savings and other money. We can also understand you being a defaulter if the bank tried to misinform you about the payment structure and tried to get additional money out of your pocket.

However, if you don’t repay the mortgage just because you purchased the house at a higher price, it’s no less than a theft. Who forced you to buy the house at a higher price? The bank?

Because it’s possible to fool a bank in such a manner doesn’t mean you should do it. It is also possible to blowup your own house or walk naked on the runway. Why don’t you do it?

You better learn some ethics Mr. Brent T. White, or ask any other professor from your University of Arizona Law School to teach you. Oops! I just revealed your identity. Is it a moral crime?

ADLAND – James P. Othmer

Othmer’s ADLAND is an entertaining memoir about his experiences in the advertising world. As you and I might think, the advertising world is far from being glamorous. The job is a highly stress filled one. Othmer talks about the benefits of branding. He gives an entertaining account of how advertising cleverly manipulates us to get its profits.

According to Kirkus Reviews – “Othmer uses his often hilarious experiences to discuss the stress-fueled environment advertising springs from, how its message is targeted to consumers, and how branding can actually be a good thing … [His] engaging dissection of advertising gives consumers valuable insight into how companies manipulate messages to convince us to give them our money.”

Viral Loop -Adam N. Penenberg

The author, Fast Company writer and New York University professor, writes about internet businesses that have become very successful in record time. The stories are so inspiring that even during this recession recovery period, you’ll be motivated to start off on your own business. The viral loop is portrayed in his case studies in which a customer recruiting another customer in turn takes a loop like path.

“If you want to understand all things viral, this is the place to start. Penenberg’s reporting gives us a ringside seat for some of the biggest viral success stories in history, from Tupperware to Ning”, according to Dan Heath, co-author, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Connected – Nicholas A. Christakis

Today most of us are members of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. We are all connected and influence each other with our views. The author, a sociologist and physician and scientist, James Fowler show the impact of social networking on our lives today.

According to Andrew Gelman, Author of Red State, Blue State, “Margaret Thatcher said there is no such thing as society. Hillary Clinton wrote that it takes a village. In their new book, Christakis and Fowler write, “We don’t live in groups, we live in networks,” and they back this up with dozens of interconnected stories of research findings by themselves and others, ranging from bank runs to suicide prevention, from nut allergies among schoolchildren to epidemics in virtual worlds, from the spread of happiness to the spread of voting. The combination of speculation and science is fascinating and leaves me eager to learn about the next wave of research in this area.”

The other books that are in the series are Happy at Work, Happy at Home by Caitlin Friedman and Kimberley Orio which tells women on how to be efficient working moms; Top Producer by Norb Vonnegut about a stockbroker trying to decode the clauses of his murdered friend’s business; The Lost Symbol By Dan Brown, author of the DA Vinci Code, unravels the mysteries of the capital and the capitol of America; I Am A Genius Of Unspeakable Evil And I Want To Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb.

Security Enhancement

You wanted to have that special Mint.com four digit password to protect your device right? Now you can do that with the new application updates. Also you could also use your device passcode to protect your device as you used to earlier. Damn these hackers! The security set up is too good for them. But if some hacker tries to break your code and fails for five times (which this enhanced security feature promises) your account will be reset with all your personal information deleted. If you lose or misplace your phone, just deactivate your iPhone application. That should put all your security apprehensions at rest and make you breathe easy.

Transactions Editing

The mobile features of the new iPhone application update are being continuously worked upon for the convenience of the users. The iPhone application allows you to edit essential information on your transactions like the description, note, category, date and tag. This helps you be more accurate with your budgeting and also track your virtual and real time expenses. You can also come up with more precise results of your spending while you are on the move. You can also track your actual spending versus your budgeting from anywhere which is a truly mobile feature.

Notifications in Real Time

Earlier you might  have got notifications via email or SMS but now the revolutionary new notification technology of the iPhone Application program will push notifications to your device as and when they are generated. This method is quick and cheaper in comparison to the other methods.  So, if you’ve been spending more than your planned amount, or you get payments from somewhere or any such activity you’ll be notified about all these as soon as they are generated. Now isn’t that faster than an email or an SMS which are slower as you get to know about the information only when it is delivered to your device and not when it is actually generated?

With these new features, your iPhone doubles up as an efficient financial services tool for you. Unlike most application development companies that offer you features thought about them, Mint has come up with features requested by you for you. So they should be really useful for you. Just go through them and upgrade your iPhone with this application services and use them to your best advantage.

Cook is all impressed with Mint. If you can see, the reason for this merger was the better features, management and services of Mint over the Intuit product Quicken that bowled over Intuit and they thought of acquiring Mint. The latter, on the other hand, is more than pleased to get a wider platform for canvassing. So the symbiosis is going to be a huge success, as I can see! Cook felt that his Quicken was sort of outdated for the present century and the coming times, and it was time they had revolutionized their products and services in the financial world. Well, they could have developed products of their own, in competition to Mint ,but I think, their past experience might have taught them to better not do it. Quicken Online was originally developed as a competing product for Mint financial services.  But Mint online services performed better in the markets because of the larger client database. A clever business strategy was to join hands with a business that was already thriving in the markets. Intuit can get access to the 1 million user database of Mint.

Scott Cook assures, “So let me set the record straight: Mint.com isn’t changing. It is remaining free. Following the close of the acquisition, Aaron Patzer and the Mint team will remain in charge of Mint.com to continue both its principles and its fast pace of progress.

We’re not planning to change Mint.com and make it like Quicken. Quite the opposite. Aaron and team will also run Quicken and Quicken.com to ensure this doesn’t happen. Plus they will benefit from this larger pool of resources. I want Mint thinking to infuse Quicken.”

Earlier Mint users were very apprehensive about the acquisition. All links to their personal banking, investment and credit history are available on Mint. They were concerned about the security of their finances when a new company would be accessing them. They might also have been concerned about any new policies of membership and usage coming into acquisition after the merger. But, with Scott’s assurance, Mint users can be assured that for them Mint is remaining the same- as free as before. They can also avail the benefits of Quicken. You get to access the features of Quicken also. Quicken Online can now use the database of Mint.

This collaboration seems to be a win-win situation for all the three parties concerned. Intuit comes into contact with a huge customer base, Mint gets the canvas advantage and users get greater resources. Let’s hope that the best works out here and the merger turns out to be big hit!

Billshrink has conducted study on five areas of wireless mobile phone services on five major giants of the industry namely AT& T, Sprint, T-mobile and Verizon:

Average monthly Fee:

Being a user of AT&T, I was surprised to know that the users of this service provider pay the second highest monthly fee touching almost $114 per month. But Verizon users pay more than us. For them it comes to more than $114 a month. T –mobile users come 3rd on the list by paying halfway between $110- 112. Sprint users come last on the list by paying a little over $110. If you are a user of Verizon better know that you are paying the highest. Coming to realize that I’m amongst the higher payers of monthly mobile fee, the voice from the customer service cell doesn’t appear to be so attractive anymore! …Well, I ‘m just joking. Well, I’m satisfied with the services. If you are a Verizon or an AT& T user and tempted to jump over to other providers such as T-Mobile or Sprint, don’t do so in haste. Maybe you’ll have to base your decision on a number of factors like the features offered and the customer service etc.

Average Minutes Used

When you compare the four major industry honchos on the number of minutes used by their users, you’ll be surprised to know that the trend is absolutely the reverse of what we’ve got to see in terms of monthly fee. Sprint tops the list with its subscribers spending almost 1100 minutes on an average! T-Mobile users come next with a little over 850 minutes on an average. AT &T comes third, being exactly on the 850 minute mark. Verizon comes last with a little below 850 minutes. So T-Mobile and Verizon are on either side of the 850 minute wall.

Well, the ranking in comparison to the monthly fee paid statistics might be surprising, but on closer scrutiny, you’ll come to know that this is not surprising at all. After all, commonsense says that one will naturally want to spend more time using services that charge less. If you are expensive, the lesser time your services are utilized. Who wants to spend huge money on mobile bills anyway?

Average Data Usage

The average data usage statistics interestingly don’t follow the inverse trends as seen in the case of average monthly fee and time usage statistics. Of course, here too Sprint tops the list with an average usage of about 58 Mb. followed  by Verizon with a little below 50 Mb. AT & T’s data usage statistics are above 25 Mb. making the company the third highest data accessed company. Last on the list is T-mobile with a little below 15 Mb of data usage by its subscribers.

Average SMS Usage

If you are a T-Mobile user, you might have most probably topped the list of SMS usage in comparison to your contemporaries using the other services because T-Mobile stands first on the list with an average SMS usage of approximately 800. Sprint is the runner up with an average SMS usage of 700 followed by Verizon and AT& T competing with each other very closely with figures touching 500.

Mobile Phone Bills

Last, but not the least, an issue of prime concern is that of mobile phone bills and I’m sure you were waiting all this while to take a peep into this matter! Sorry to keep you waiting so long. Here are the results- Dallas tops the list with a monthly average of $117 followed by Philadelphia at $115 and Houston at $114. Last on the list are San Francisco and San Diego with a monthly average usage of $97 only.

A monthly phone bills based on the service provider could have given us a picture of which service providers are the most expensive when it comes to billing.

After seeing this, you might want to switch over to another service provider or stay with your own. Read up a lot of reviews about the service providers and the services they offer. Also read a lot of customer reviews because that is where you’re going to get some reliable information about each of these service providers and then decide.

I would like to conclude by saying that your phone bills and usage satisfaction eventually depend on you. Whatever your service provider, if you use your mobile frugally, you’re going to be a happy customer. So before you think of changing lanes on your race track to mobile usage efficiency just try to rectify any snags that you have as a user regardless of your ser vice provider, because  if you are extravagant, you’re going to get enormous bills even from the cheapest service provider.

So, why shouldn’t we landlords try to exercise our grey cells a bit and choose our tenants in the correct way? For that we need to understand the modern day client. Beware! These people are no novices and you might get easily sucked in by a smart one. So you should exactly know the tricks tenants can play on you and be ready with your defensive moves. I’m not saying that all tenants are bad. But you should always be prepared to counter if you come across one such. Here are some tenant machinations that you can consider giving a thought.

Hey This Is Recession Time, So Let’s Make The Best Of It!

You know, quite a number of tenants are opportunists. They know that in the economically lean recent, when market rates of properties have gone down, you have no option but to drop the tenancy rates of your apartments. They’ll try to make the best use of this advantage and you should not give in. Of course you need to be a bit relaxed with your rental quotes, but don’t go down too low as this is what they are looking out for. Always consult other owners of your area and quote a comparable amount, not more, not less.

We Are The Know-Alls!

Many tenants of these days are very well informed about the current house rents in your area. They have friends and plenty of online websites to tell them the ideal rental rates. So be careful while you quote. You might think that your apartment deserves the best rates as it has some special features. But know that your tenants are no novices. They know what the features should ideally cost and they’re going to bargain for that rate. Even if you think you can convince your tenants into paying more by using some tactics, you won’t be able to do that for long because, they are smart enough for that. Very soon they’re going to find out the truth and take you to task. In my housing complex, the owner of an apartment charged almost double the normal rent for that apartment. The new tenant who was unaware of all this came to know later and filed a case against the owner for taking advantage of his inexperience. Don’t let your greed for huge rental charges get the better of you, and create trouble for yourself.

You Can’t Throw Us out Whenever You Want To

Gone are the days when landlords could ask their tenants to leave their properties whenever they wanted to. Owners would reason out that since they owned the apartments, they had the right to take the decision without giving sufficient reason to tenants. But now the scene has changed. Remember that even when a tenant occupies your property, he/she has tenancy rights which you’ve got to respect. If you ask your tenant to leave, he might just tell you that he has paid his rents on time and kept the apartment in a good condition and that he cannot be thrown out for an invalid reason. You, as the owner, should ideally draft out a contract in which you mention the terms of occupancy of your property and get it approved by the tenant. If something is not mentioned in the contract, you simply cannot do anything about it, till the period of contract is over.

In my neighborhood, there was this gentleman who urgently wanted his tenant to vacate his apartment for his son was shifting from abroad. But this was a sudden development and there was nothing of the sort agreed upon in the tenancy contract. The tenant, who was unprepared, did not agree to leave before the end of the contract. The owner had no option but to wait till the end of the contract term which was for a period of two years.

We’ll stay With Friends, That’ll save us Money!

In my building there was a bachelor who hired an apartment on his name and later brought in a couple of his friends to stay with him. Of course, this was not mentioned in the contract, so the owner opposed to it. The tenant argues that as the owner was getting his payments every month he should not really bother about the number of occupants. In another incident, a tenant hired out the apartment to a friend on a profit. As an owner, you always can raise opposition to this kind of a behavior. Better, when you make the occupancy contract mention your concerns regarding these points and have your tenant agree to them. If you don’t specifically mention the tenant will take advantage saying that as it wasn’t mentioned in the contract he has the liberty to do what he/she wants and in such a situation, you’ll not be in a position to fight out for justice.

Now, We Want Tenancy Perks Too!

A new trend that is being observed these days is of owners offering perks to tenants on the occupancy of their apartments. Either they give a rebate on their utilities bill or a free parking space, or something else of the kind to attract their tenants. Giving out a property on rent these days is no different from selling a consumer product in the supermarket where you’ve got to boost the sales of your products with attractive selling strategies! Gone are the days when tenants were at the receiving end. This recession has made times all the more difficult for property owners, who due to slackening businesses have to bow down to the whims and fancies of their tenants who are very fastidious and who can easily find themselves another owner who can oblige them if you don’t.

Better Let the Old Tenants Stay!

Old is always gold. If you’ve got a good rapport with your old clients don’t disturb them now. You might of the idea, that by getting your apartment vacated and making a complete turnover might actually fetch you more rents. That’s a good idea, but not in the present times because, due to recession, a complete turnover is going to prove quite an expensive venture for you. New tenants will ask for subsidized rents which have become a common feature of this financially lean period. The wise thing for you to do would be to not make any changes right now. Since it looks as though the economy is going to improve in a few days wait till then and bring modifications.