What are purple cows? How can they improve my finances?

Okay, in some crowds I’m the last to read the book “The Purple Cow” by Seth Godin. But until recently those crowds didn’t include me, as I (foolishly!) didn’t identify myself as a “business type”… despite, you know…. being in business.

A “purple cow” by his definition is a service or product that is so distinctive and unique that it has unfair advantage. Why? Because people want to talk about it. People pay attention to purple cows.

But it gets better. Creating/being a purple cow isn’t really optional anymore. People don’t pay attention because there is too much competing for attention. If you want to stand out and succeed, you — and your creative output — have to be visibly different, unique, and advantageous.

Have a cow, man.

This got me thinking about my own product/service offerings as a designer. If you’re a similar creative sort, ask yourself: What sets me apart? I used to think, well, my work! That’s enough! But is it? Could I be doing a better job of delivering it, or a better job of marketing myself to only a certain set of people? Or limiting myself to producing only certain creative widgets… but not have that influence their creation too much? How powerfully could that impact my finances for good?

Even as an employee, one has to distinguish oneself as a purple cow. If not, how will anyone really notice your contributions? Different IS better!

Finally, it got me thinking about what attracted me to Geezeo. (Brace yourself, this is going to sound like some a**-kissing.) What I liked about Geezeo when I found it was that it was the first financial product service that laid things out for me in a visually pleasing way. Being a bit of a snob in this department, I liked this. Moreover, they had a distinctively different attitude. IMHO, Geezeo has a purple cow: a great look and attitude….something long overdue when it comes to discussing and learning about personal finance.

So, as they say in business: the “take away” — (and I always thought this meant food):

Different is best. Your moo-ney depends on it. And I’d add, life in general is enhanced by “different”, too.

Want to know where all your money is going?

~Do you spend too much money going out to eat?

~Want to know how much money you really spending on gas?

If you’re like us you use your debit cards and credit cards to buy everything from a cup of coffee at Dunkin Donuts to putting gas in your car. These purchases make up hundreds of transactions each month making it almost impossible to keep track of where you spend your money.

So here’s how Geezeo makes it easy to get your arms around all this information…

In this release, when you add or update a bank account Geezeo will automagically pull in your most recent transactions and auto-tag (gas, food, clothes) them for you! So even before you tag your own transactions you’ll have a pretty good idea of how you’re spending your money.

Don’t think about your spending the same way we do? No problem, you can add your own categories (tags). You can add single tags that represent one transaction, or repeat tags that will immediately be added to all other transactions (now and in the future) with the same name.

But wait, there’s more!

You can search your transactions based on a number of different criteria, and if you like the results of your search, you can choose to save that search as a smart folder. This will allow you to see similar results simply by clicking on your smart folder instead of building your search from scratch again!

What else is new?

* Simple analytics with graphs for credit card accounts
* More internal security checks and balances
* Track your net worth and available cash
* We’ve added Safari support
* OFX data uploads to get your historical transactions

Big THANKS to all our early users that have helped us shape this early product release! We’ll be rolling out more functionality regularly so keep the ideas coming. If you have a feature request, remember to post your ideas in the Geezeo Feature Request Group.

Bloggers don’t like to pay credit card interest – Compete.com With some help from Umbria, Compete just lit up a great blog post about the types of credit cards bloggers like. Over 40% seem to prefer low or no interest credit cards.

If your job ended today, are you ready? How do you view “employment”? Can you move with today’s markets?

My boyfriends works for a small architectural firm. On July 3rd, right before the day’s end, the boss took him aside.

“Listen,” the Boss said. “They’ve pulled the plug on the big project. I can’t meet payroll for the whole summer. Friday I’m going to announce layoffs.”

Dead. Man. Walking.

My boyfriend spent the 4th in a daze of disbelief. Frankly, a little selfishly, I felt this ruined his first real day off. He’s spent the last six weeks or so putting in a tremendous amount of time at work on the “big project”. Now, he couldn’t even relax over beer and watch some fireworks.

Ask yourself, what stability do you assume exists in your own job situation? I’d bet it isn’t as stable as you’d think. We’re in a period where the fluctuating market is becoming the norm. It is cheaper and easier for companies to employ temporary or contract help. Work as our parents knew it is over. Face it and embrace it.

Over time anyone involved in the creative arts learns a simple truth: to embrace job fluctuation as part of doing business. (Of course, this isn’t limited to the creative fields. We’ve just been practicing longer.) It’s like playing an extended game of cards where you must evaluate what you’ve got in hand and play your strategy accordingly. This is why I am currently re-evaluating my commercial art business: this isn’t a hobby, and I need to move with (and react to) industry trends in order to remain profitable. Anyone with this outlook is at an advantage, in my opinion.

My boyfriend’s view of the work world is generally a little more stable than mine. He expects a job to last until he says its over. In my opinion this opens him up for the greater shock when the unexpected happens. Change can happen without notice, and not because of a fluctuation in the market.

Example: Three years ago my boyfriend’s young boss died unexpectedly. In a matter of months the whole company came to a grinding, unexpected halt.

That incident shook him up. This current job looked more “stable” after that situation. But now here we are again, two semi-employed creative types living in Manhattan. You might say, “well, my situation is a lot more stable!” And I ask, “is it?”

Moreover… are you prepared?