The opposite of outsourcing is insourcing (my word), which is, bringing lower cost labor to your country (the US in my case) rather than sending the jobs overseas.  In the computer industry, this has been done for years.  But changes are brewing in Washington that bring this to the spotlight again.

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FeeMoneyFinance has an interesting article on how to spend your tax refund.  Well, mine has come and gone, so I thought I’d do a post-mortem on where that refund went.

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Sometimes the small things add up.  This time it was something simple, but potentially costly.  My spouse mentioned that someone noticed a low tire on our vehicle while I was out driving, so I pulled over to check it out.  Sure enough, the passenger side rear tire was very low.

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I use my debit card (instead of a credit card) now but, I’m always a little leery about it.  The money comes straight out of my checking account.  If there’s an error, then there’s at least going to be a temporary problem.  I recently came across two stories that illustrate the problems with debit cards:

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My reading on IKEA’s founder prompted a little more research on the billionaire mind - and lifestyle.  Its true that IKEA’s founder is the exception, rather than the rule for billionaires, but an article in Slate gives interesting insights into billionaire’s minds and lifestyles.

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One of the things I’ve learned about millionaires is that they’re often frugal.  It seems to fly in the face of what people typically think of when they think of a millionaire - yachts, limos and mansions.  But the fact is, people become wealthy by living on less than they earn, and that means the f-word - Frugality.

One living example of this is Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA.  Yahoo! News just ran a story on him and his frugal lifestye.  He writes on both sides of a sheet of paper, drives a 15 year old car and has his own IKEA furniture in his home.

But why would a man at age 80 live like that?  At this point he could be in Vegas, living large.  He still has plans to enlarge his business and uses cash to build it.  It’s an amazing story and an inspiration to me.  If a billionaire can live on less, so can I.

I’m lucky to have received some very sound career advice during my very first job change.   It came from a recruiter I had at the time, who had all the financial incentive to steer me towards the job he was trying to fill, instead of the other job I was considering.  I was at a point where I had two jobs to choose from, and both had pros and cons.

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Maybe you keep track of your credit score.  Maybe you don’t.  Either way, look out kids, there’s a new score it town!

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On the heels of writing my second Contractor Rule, I found an interesting article in the Washington Post on life in the age of the global ecomony.  The author, Harold Myerson focuses on a recent article by economist Alan Blinder.

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Whenever Google does something, the world takes notice. So when they opened a finance site, I just had to take a look.

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