So last night, James Elwood, Geezeo’s network master ninja, and I both presented at the Amazon Startup Project – Boston event.

We finally got to meet some of the great folks we’ve been working with over the past few months who’ve been helping us get our infrastructure set up with AWS. Our presentation went over the various ways that we use AWS, as well as our short term plans for AWS. Here’s what one blogger had to say:

There was also a lot of creativity leveraging EC2 to support production environment. Geezeo, located in Boston, have put everything on EC2: Front-end, app-servers, and database. Because MySQL replication and clustering is relatively easy, they could set up a small MySQL farm and then do frequent off-site backups to S3 (Amazon’s Simple Storage Service — you pay for that, but it’s not too expensive). Geezeo is sort of a mix of Quicken and Facebook. I’d been very leery of Geezeo because I don’t think I want my bank data up in the cloud. But after this presentation, I think they may have a good architecture for security; I might actually try them now. Which is saying a lot, because if you had told me their service was in EC2 before I saw their presentation, it would have actually increased my worry. They have SSL in the right places, and, apparently, private IPs running in EC2. Nice job.

The current services we use from AWS are the Elastic Compute Cloud and S3 (simple storage service), however we have plans to incorporate more AWS services to help us with various tasks we have planned, so stay tuned!

The other presenters were AideRSS, Curbside MD and WeoGeo.

Have you ever considered the “money story” of your life? In it, are you a victim? A victor? A bystander? A recipient?

Each of us has a different story; and even better, we can choose to change that story.

Just finished the book “Money, a Memoir: Women, Emotions and Cash” by Liz Perle.

The book would be appreciated most by women of all ages. Even though the woman writing the book is from a different generation (she’s a baby boomer), I can see a lot of similarities in the emotional issues she faced and those that many of my peers face. Do you choose a traditional path? A career path? How do you juggle both? [Side note: that partly explains why women are starting businesses 2 to 1 over men].

But back to what we tell ourselves about our money. For example, here are some stories I used to tell myself:

* People who care about money management are shallow, boring, or conservative.
* I am terrible at numbers — so there is no way I could ever understand enough to manage my money.
* I am a creative person and therefore I shouldn’t make money. Making money will diminish or influence my creative output.

Yet, over time I’ve changed these little self-stories:

* People who care about money management are responsible, independent, and exist across the political spectrum.
* Basic math is all I need. Managing my money significantly reduces my stress level.
* I am a creative person and I deserve to be paid because I can do what others cannot do easily or do well. Money itself has no way of diminishing or changing the root of who I am. I choose whether or not money influences my creative output.

What are yours?

Geezeo’s New Agents, Alex and Jordan!!

- Product Ambassadors -

Alex Friedman

(Picture coming soon)

University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, Graduating May ‘08

Major: Finance, Investments, and Banking

The Geezeo team is very excited to welcome Alex Friedman, one of our Geezeo Agents! Alex has a lot of experience in finance. Last summer he worked at Chicago Investment Group in New York as a Private Client Services Intern, and is an active member of the University of Wisconsin’s Finance and Investment Society. Alex spent this past semester at City University in London where he studied Marketing, International Financial Management and Entrepreneurship. In his free time, Alex enjoys skiing, movies, baseball, reading, and traveling.

Jordan Tepper

University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, Graduating May ‘08

Major: Finance, Investments, and Banking and Management and Human Resources – Entrepreneurship

The Geezeo team is also thrilled to announce Jordan Tepper as one of Geezeo’s agents! Jordan has lots of prior work experience in the finance world. He has spent the last two summers working for Alternative Investment Management and Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management. Jordan is a member of both the Financial Investment Society and Entrepreneurship Association. In his free time, Jordan is an active member of his Fraternity, Delta Upsilon as well as a member of the University of Wisconsin’s Men’s Club Lacrosse Team.

Welcome to Geezeo Alex and Jordan!

Be sure to check out the October edition of Money Magazine! Jean Chatzky (who’s written about Geezeo before) writes a fantastic article about how your peers can influence your spending habits and the impact a “social network” can have on improving or hurting your financial situation.

Jean highlights the parallels between good financial fitness and physical health, an analogy we often use when describing Geezeo. Think about weight loss programs…you set realistic goals and have a support group to help you reach your goals. The same is true with finance. This is one of the reasons why there is so much buzz around Geezeo and the social personal finance space.

Here’s an excerpt from the article

“The link makes a lot of sense, says Karen Miller-Kovach, the chief scientist at Weight Watchers. “Social networks determine social norms and social behavior,” she says. “What’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable. I expect we’ll see a lot of parallels in other fields.”

Money among them. Academics and other researchers who have dipped a toe into the networking pool are finding that if you’re surrounded by people who save and invest, you’re liely to do the same. And if your pals spend like crazy, well, you’re in trouble”.

Jean continues to talk about the benefits of online resources like Geezeo…

“The MySpace/Facebook model has spawned site that promote online networking as a financial tool: User talk one another through challenges like getting out of debt, spending less than they make and building a nest egg.

Geezeo…free to users, not only aggregates your personal-finance information and allows you to easily track your spending but offers a virtual shoulder to support you”

So pick up this month’s Money Magazine (It’s also the 35th anniversary edition) and check out the article!

Since Facebook Apps are all the rage we decided we had to roll one out. We “wanted” to do it right though, so we flushed out about 3-4 different ideas, bounced the concepts by Geezeo’s World famous on-campus brand ambassadors and moved forward with a spin on Geezeo Goals. Well after a few weeks of development we’re pleased to announce the launch of iWant by Geezeo!

iWant is a fun and easy way for facebook users to create and share the “things that they want” or “goals” with their Facebook friends. As Demetri Martin so eloquently stated “I also want…the things that I want.”

Lets say you want to “go on spring break” or “pay off a credit card“, you can add these goals to your user profile for all your friends to see. Even better, your friends will be able to comment on the things you want by giving you a “Boost”. But here’s the real kicker! Your REALLY good friends will even be able to give you cash to help you get the things you want using the “Donate” button on each goal. With PayPal integrated in the iWant app, donations to friends couldn’t be easier.

Since iWant is an extension of Geezeo, the application also allows you to connect your goals to your bank accounts so you can track your progress in real time. For example, lets say you want to “Save for an iPhone” you can link this goal to your savings account so when your account reaches a certain amount you’ll have enough money saved to buy the iPhone.

iWant is a fun way to think about saving and setting goals and is a great extension of Geezeo’s “Goal” to reach college students and young adults and help them better track and manage their finance.

Silly me, I thought “DRIP” was just a setting on my beloved coffee maker.

In fact, I’ve recently learned that DRIPS could be a great investing strategy for someone like me. Are you like me? You might be, if any of the following apply:

+ You’ve got a long time horizon before retirement
+ You can only spare a little right now to invest for the long-term
+ You’d like to save yourself brokers fees and buy stocks from companies directly

What are DRIPs? Dividend Reinvestment Plans. I’m just starting to read about them and so far they sound very, very promising. You can buy stocks directly from the company (with minimal fees) in staggeringly small amounts. You agree to reinvest all dividends. This makes it possible to literally buy in tiny, tiny increments every paycheck. What a great way to supplement your other investing. Or, like me, the ability to buy and hold small blocks of stock.

I’ve been reading a book called “Eight Steps to Seven Figures: The Investment Strategies of Everyday Millionaires and How You Can Become Wealthy Too” by Charles Carlson. That title is long, but not nearly as seemingly long as the time horizon to pay off my student loans.

Yet, maybe like you, I’ve come to realize that I can’t put off investing just because I (currently) have loan debt. With time on my side it seems to make sense to start NOW. Buy-hold-buy-hold, etc.

DRIPs are very appealing because they don’t take much money to start. People profiled in the book treated these small investments as just another weekly bill. Soon, they had amassed enough that, along with the compounding effects of time, they’d accumulated a lot.

You can use Geezeo to track your expenses so that you can find those small amounts to invest. Small amounts over time equal big amounts!

Here are some links on DRIPs (sorry, no points for good design!):

http://www.fool.com/DRIPPort/WhatAreDRIPs.htm
http://www.dripinvestor.com/index.asp

Punk band, “The Drips”: http://www.myspace.com/thedrips

What purchases have you made recently in the name of “back to school”?

I’m not in school (I’m in school loan hell!). Still, this time of year triggers a desire for a little re-invention. A new and improved you. Witness all the Fall fashion magazines, for starters.

Here’s my list of probably completely unnecessary spending I’ll claim as “back to school”. What are yours? Any guilty pleasures?

+ Second-hand gold heels, $25 (and dare I say, not at all school-girl)
+ hair dye, in a completely new color — because I can, $8
+ teeth whitening strips (because dying my hair isn’t shallow enough, and clearly, I think I have money to burn), $40
+ one fashion magazine, to tell me how utterly out of style I am compared to most women, (a reminder I like about once a year), $4

Share your back-to-school secret shopping items in my group, Millionaire Artists.

Geezeo team at Tech Cocktail Boston!

Along with some other awesome sponsors (Compete.com, North Bridge Venture Partners, ZoomInfo) Geezeo had the opportunity to sponsor and help organize the first Tech Cocktail event in Boston. The event was a huge success! Local entrepreneurs, bloggers, writers, and investors came together in a fun and laid back atmosphere for an amazing time.

In addition to support from Eric Olson and Frank Grubber the Co-Founders of Tech Cocktail, we were able to put this thing together with two of our best buds here in Boston, Jay Meattle and Brian Balfour. Great working with you guys!

Along with good tunes and free drinks, Compete and ZoomInfo were giving away and sporting Wiis on the big screens and Geezeo had money tanks! People jumped in to grab some “G’s” and a chance to win a trip to Martha’s Vineyard. Congrats to Erik Sebesta who walked away with the MV trip.

Tech Cocktail Boston is all about supporting innovation and the local startups. Some great companies showing off the “the next big thing” included Party Resume, Veveo and Fafarazzi.

Check out the Tech Cocktail Blog for a full run down of the event. You can also see some great pics on Flickr.

Looking forward to the next one!

Oh, how I love the Style section of the New York Times. Today they have a very relevant article you might like:

What Do Young Jobseekers Want?

It’s about our generation (Gen X/Y) choosing to live in areas that are clean, cultured, and safe. Or at least more diverse and creative — but tidy and attractive work, too:

Sixty-five percent of 1,000 respondents aged 24 to 35 who were asked by the Segmentation Company, a division of the marketing consultant Yankelovich, said they preferred to “look for a job in the place that I would like to live,� rather than “look for the best job I can find, the place where it is located is secondary.�

Urban leaders are increasingly courting young workers, because as baby boomers retire, Gen Y will have to fill the gap. Across the country, cities are scrambling to become the place that recent grads want to be.

This article hits home. My boyfriend and I are perfect examples. We both left the states where we attended college to move to more urban environments. As did our siblings and friends. In fact, the Midwestern state that I left is finally waking up to its so-called “Brain Drain”. But is it doing anything to stop the exodus of educated young people? Making their cities more livable or green? No. And that’s partly why we left.

Culture and creative opportunities should not be sequestered to college towns or urban areas. I think the really smart cities are those who see the economic potential of attracting us. Collectively, we should seize upon our youthful (economic) attractiveness and demand that the places we live develop into more livable and green communities. Sidewalks! Public Transportation! Diversity in job opportunities and cultures! Arts!

Here is a city that I think is doing it right and isn’t mentioned in this New York Times article: Chattanooga, Tennessee.

First, I have to admit I’ve never been to Chattanooga. But therein lives the proof that they are doing something right: putting their city in front of our demographic. And what are they selling? A livable city with an emphasis on culture, cleanliness, and the environment. An earlier NYT article called the city “a gem”.

Chattanooga is actively recruiting artists of every description, too. They know that creative folks help energize a city. Get this: Chattanooga is offering incentives for artists to buy homes in some of the neediest areas to spark economic growth. Would you say no to $15,000 applied to your mortgage?

I wouldn’t! Which is why Chattanooga is now on my radar… and a true contender if we decide to leave Manhattan.

Financially speaking, how do you plan for emergencies?

Last week I attended an unexpected funeral. It was for one of my best friends from high school. She was a victim of domestic abuse, a topic I briefly discuss from a financial perspective today at my blog.

When something so tragic and unexpected happens, you have to be financially prepared to respond. In this case, I felt it was critical to travel to attend her funeral as a sign of support and respect to the family. That was funded by my credit card.

The time necessary to travel there (not to mention deal with my own grief) “cost” me in terms of wages, too. I didn’t work last week. Like many of you, my income is based on hours worked — and I didn’t work at all. This isn’t meant as a callous statement. Rather, it is an observation that when people don’t attend funerals “because they can’t afford it”… that can be honest truth. Yet, I couldn’t bear the idea of not going — no matter the cost.

If this happened to your friend, could you afford to attend the funeral? Do you have room on your credit card? Savings to cover the unexpected expense?

I dramatically realize the need to improve my financial “emergency buffer” to compensate for lost wages and to pay off the credit card.

Of course, none of these thoughts were the first to come to my mind. I loved my friend and can’t believe she is gone.

Still, I hadn’t considered how money could impact my ability to grieve. Had I not been able to put the expense of the flight on my credit card I would have missed the funeral. Not attending her funeral would have been a much greater emotional cost.