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Text File | 1991-08-29 | 22KB | 401 lines

ALMANAC 1992, by Jeff Napier & Another Company MATTERS OF MONEY _____________________________________________________________ One out of 2 credit reports has an inaccuracy. One out of every 5 has an inaccuracy bad enough to spoil a person's credit. _____________________________________________________________ The average American can go for only 2 months between losing a job and having to move out of home due to inability to pay the rent or mortgage. _____________________________________________________________ In 1931 a brand new Chevrolet cost $623. _____________________________________________________________ In six years, the average income in America doubled. In 1940, the average worker was paid under $600. In 1946 the same worker got $1200. _____________________________________________________________ Real human skeletons are selling for around $2000, but you can get a good plastic replica for around $300. _____________________________________________________________ New Jersey may pass a law to tune up its street lights. By using sodium vapor lights and installing reflectors to aim the light where it is needed, the state will save about $35 million per year. _____________________________________________________________ Arnold Schwarzenegger was paid $21,500.00 for every word he spoke in his latest movie, Terminator II. _____________________________________________________________ In America, the average woman earns 64% of the wages a man gets. _____________________________________________________________ About 10% of the average American's budget is spent on clothing. _____________________________________________________________ The chain store F. W. Woolworth has 6,309 stores. There are 1633 Holiday Inns. _____________________________________________________________ The most exclusive real estate is a part of Tokyo where land has traded hands at over $784 million per acre. That's $127 per square inch. Almost as expensive as California real estate. If you can't afford to buy, you can always rent in Tokyo, where rent can be higher than $120 per square foot, or $72,000 per month for a small apartment or $120,000 per month for a small store. If you do set up a store there, each square inch of your store's displays and merchandise must bring in at least $2 per month to cover your basic expenses. _____________________________________________________________ Approximately one out of every 100 Americans is employed by the US military. _____________________________________________________________ What a way to make a living! Chris Burden tried to have a photograph taken of himself as his arm was being grazed by a bullet, but the guy who shot him missed a little bit, causing a wound that required hospitalization. The pictures came out alright and he sold them to an art dealer for $1750. _____________________________________________________________ All the information in this database is reliably calculated from or based on what others have written. However, you may wish to conduct your own research to make absolutely sure of the facts. _____________________________________________________________ What is a dinosaur worth? You can buy a large skeleton from a professional dinosaur hunter for about $300,000. _____________________________________________________________ Shirley Temple made $1 million by age 10. _____________________________________________________________ It's kind of fun looking at the numbers generated by the US Census, right? The U.S. census taken in 1970 cost U.S. taxpayers about $1.22 per head. If you had the choice, would you have paid $1.22 to see those numbers? _____________________________________________________________ When you tip a cab driver or waitress, what are you doing? The word "tip" is an acronym which means "To Insure Promptness." _____________________________________________________________ Bill Cosby has something you probably can't afford. He has a $20 million Gulfstream executive jet. _____________________________________________________________ Take a guess: How much would $1 million in $20 bills weigh? One million dollars in $20 bills weighs approximately the same as a big lawnmower, 100 pounds. _____________________________________________________________ Of the things sent by the US Postal Service, only 6% are ordinary letters. 83% is business correspondence. 50% is advertising. _____________________________________________________________ The biggest solid gold nugget every found weighed as much as a man and was about the size of a small typewriter. _____________________________________________________________ The most valuable solid gold item is the inner coffin (of three) of King Tut. It weighs more than a small pickup truck (2447 pounds) and is worth over 14 million dollars. _____________________________________________________________ The diamond cutter who had the honor of splitting the world's largest diamond, about 5 inches long, was Jacob Asscher. On the afternoon of February 10, 1908, he cut a groove with another diamond (since only diamonds can cut diamonds) in just the right place, as carefully as he could calculate, then he laid a blade in the groove and tapped on it. The diamond broke, and Jacob immediately fainted. When he recovered, he discovered that the diamond had broken just right, exactly as he had hoped. _____________________________________________________________ CARAT - in diamonds, there are 142 carats per ounce - or 1/5 gram. _____________________________________________________________ A boy in South Africa discovered a nice diamond. He traded it for what he wanted most: 500 sheep, some oxen and a horse. _____________________________________________________________ The total amount of diamonds mined in the world is about 5 tons per year. You could carry them all in 5 or 10 pickup trucks. Most of these are quite small and are used for industrial grinding operations on hard metals. Another common use is for dental drills. _____________________________________________________________ For every degree you lower your thermostat, in a typical home, you'll save 2.5% of your heating bill. _____________________________________________________________ Daniel Smith-Rowsey wrote a letter to the public through a major magazine in which he contends the previous generation has spoiled the economy and social structure for present-day college-age people. Of the stupidity of his generation, he stated, "We can name more beers than presidents." _____________________________________________________________ Ron Foxcroft, a basketball referee, designed a whistle that is more shrill than the average sports whistle. The whistle sells for $5.95. He is making a million dollars a year from his invention. _____________________________________________________________ Let's say you have been given payment in the form of a check? Think it's going to bounce? 90% of intentionally bad checks are numbered from #101 to #150. Maybe its a forgery. Does it have one perforated edge, indicating it came from a check sheet or a checkbook? No perforation means it was cut after copying. _____________________________________________________________ Think you are being given a false address? Repeat a part of the address back to someone, but make a mistake. For instance, "Your zip code is 97540?" The legitimate person will usually say, "No, 97530." _____________________________________________________________ Visa and MasterCard, are they the same? Yes and no. These two names are of two clearing agencies that license big banks to use their systems. Often, smaller banks put their name on the credit cards, but they are acting as agents for larger banks. The actual rules governing your credit cards are determined by the issuing bank, not by the clearing agency. Debit cards, now offered by several large banks, look like credit cards, but are different. A credit card represents a loan to you. The debit card must technically be backed by money already in your account. With a credit card, interest is charged you until the loan is repaid. With the debit card, you can accumulate interest on the money in your account until you spend it. In most cases with debit cards, you actually continue to collect interest on your money for several days after you have spent it, because it takes that long for the transaction to appear on your account. However, this amount of time is unpredictable. Many new users of debit cards have found that the accounting is more difficult than with check writing. When making purchases on the phone, for instance, ask for the total amount that will be charged to your account. An answer such as, "The exact amount is not known until it is packed and charged for postage by the shipping department" will leave a ? in your checkbook for a month or more, until you see your bank statement, or invoice packed with the shipment. _____________________________________________________________ If your adjusted gross income reported to the IRS was under $10,000 and if you took the standard deduction, your chance of being audited is 0.67%. If you itemized your deductions, the chance of an audit goes up to 2.9%. If you made over $50.000 then you have a 1 in 10 (10.4%) chance of being audited. _____________________________________________________________ Easy money: Become an informant for the IRS. They will give you up to $7500 if $75,000 is collected due to a recovery based on your information, and they can pay as much as $50,000 if you help them with a big case. _____________________________________________________________ You have probably heard that tall men and women get better jobs and more pay than shorter folks. Another study has determined that heavy people also earn slightly more than their slim counterparts. _____________________________________________________________ Hint: Before phoning a business establishment, phone 1-800-555-1212 and see if the place you are calling has a toll-free 800 number. Many businesses have 800 numbers that are not generally advertised. This keeps their phone cost down but they can use the 800 number during promotions, etc. _____________________________________________________________ Need an expert? Perhaps a scientific computer programmer? Professors in the Soviet Union are chronically underpaid, and many will offer their services to Americans as consultants for around $3 per hour. _____________________________________________________________ Three out of every four businessmen who have achieved success but don't feel they earned it properly have taken up excessive drinking. _____________________________________________________________ The mood set by music can change the way people operate. In a scientific study, when subjects were asked to solve math equations, they could solve less equations when slow, calming music was playing in the background than when there was no music. When rock 'n' roll was played, they solved more equations than when in silence. A retailer made long tapes containing a variety of music arranged so that a fast, upbeat piece played approximately every 15 minutes. During these fast songs, salesmen closed more sales, and there was a rush at the cash register. _____________________________________________________________ When you see a movie with a long segment filmed in a McDonalds restaurant, or you see the lead actor drink Coca-Cola, or the camera shows a close-up of the hood ornament as the actors climbs into his shiny new car, you may have been duped. A new practice in movies is for big companies to pay to have their products used or displayed within movies. This form of advertising is very effective, partially because you don't know it is paid advertising material you are seeing. _____________________________________________________________ ************************************************************ SOME WAYS YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN MONEY! At Another Company we've learned a thing or two about money. We know a few good ways almost anyone can make money at home with very little investment. Like all such techniques, nothing is guaranteed except that you need to put in a lot of work, and have much patience to succeed. And, like all good money-making techniques, either lots of other people already know and are using these, or they soon will find out, meaning you'll have lots of competition. But still, we think these are good approaches to starting a business of your own, where you and only you are the boss, and your potential for a large income is better than working at a fast-food restaurant. A good point of these techniques is that the start-up cost is practically $0, and your risk is therefore quite small. Chances are that even if you don't make tons of money, you'll make some extra spending cash in your spare time and have fun too! Here are some disks we have for you: ************************************************************ GARAGE SALES FOR FUN & PROFIT If you have $10 to invest, where would you put it? Into a money market account? There, after a year you would have a profit of about $2. Or, you could go to a garage sale, buy something like a camera or a drill press, and consign it to a second-hand store. Typically, within 2 weeks, the store would sell your $10 camera or drill press for $40, but keep $10 commission, leaving you with only $30! Instead of 20% profit in a year, you'd have 200% in two weeks. This disk is a tutorial that tells you all about buying and selling second-hand merchandise. It covers garage sales as a buyer and a seller, it covers consignment, flea market selling, psychology of "wheeling and dealing" and more. It gives you charts of current values of second-hand merchandise. For those interested in the additional profits of detailing and repairing, there is yet more information. GARAGE SALES FOR FUN & PROFIT, the ultimate tool for the small investor. Price: $9.95 (not available as shareware) Works in any IBM-compatible computer. ************************************************************ SUCCESS WITH SHAREWARE! If you can write programs in Basic, Pascal, C, Clipper, anything at all, even if you can only write text with a word processor, you can make money! You won't have to work in an office doing programming for someone else. You can write exactly the kind of programs you want to write, and make money at home! The 'secret' is shareware. Does it work? You bet! You can have a small success, making some extra spending money each month, or with practice, you can have a bigger success, and make a fine living! There are some millionaires who make their ever-growing fortune entirely through shareware. ANOTHER COMPANY shows you everything. Besides our own shareware successes, including ALMANAC 1991, BICYCLE TUNE-UP AND REPAIR, and BETTER EYESIGHT, we have researched the shareware market, we have interviewed other shareware authors and have learned about all sides of the rapidly expanding shareware business. We show you how to write programs that capture the public's interest, how to make sure your customers 'register', and how to get money by other means through your shareware. We show you more. We show you frequency charts indicating which types of programs sell best, we offer suggestions for programs as yet unwritten, we talk about your on-disk instruction manuals, we even show you how to write user-friendliness into your programs. This is a great tutorial for those who want to write shareware with Writer's Dream or Blackboard. Can you succeed without SUCCESS WITH SHAREWARE? Yes! But why do it the hard way? We have learned all the super-professional approaches, the pitfalls and the shortcuts. We'll tell you all about it, and then instead of stumbling around for the first couple of years, you'll be able to start like an old pro! Price: $19.95 (not available as shareware) ***************************************************************** THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE HOME-OPERATED BICYCLE BUSINESS For those of you interested bicycles, we offer a special disk that teaches all about how to set up a very profitable business starting from your own home. Starting with as little as $10, you can do it if you live in a small apartment, if you know nothing about repairing, even if you have little time or money. This tutorial details everything you will ever need to know about buying and selling bicycles. It contains such information as how to get parts wholesale, used bike price charts, and how to close sales. It discusses partnerships, the instant way to gain access to work space, tools, sales or repair enthusiasms, whatever you don't have. And for those who are interested in taking this business to higher levels, how to expand into an official glass-front retail bike store. THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE HOME-OPERATED BICYCLE BUSINESS works in any IBM-compatible computer. Price: $9.95 (not available as shareware) ************************************************************ To order your programs available only from ANOTHER COMPANY: Send check, or money order to: ANOTHER COMPANY P.O. Box 298 Applegate, OR 97530 Please specify whether you prefer 5.25" or 3.5" disks. Please include $3.00 per order for postage & packing. (Outside USA, send US funds only.) ************************************************************ _____________________________________________________________ chapter end. Although copyrighted, ALMANAC 1992 is freeware. Feel free to copy and distribute as long as all files remain intact & unchanged.