Archive for May, 2008

Want to Help A Beauty Pageant Winner Run a Charity Date Auction? This is Not a Joke…

Friday, May 30th, 2008

This is certainly one for the law of unintended consequences. I mentioned the idea of auctioning myself for a charity in my article on revenue equivalence to make the narration interesting. Well, lo and behold, this article has turned out to be interesting in a completely different way. The article ...

Why We’re Not Designed to Follow Budgets–There’s More to Life

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

image source: Rubyran via flickr In many ways, following a budget is like adhering to a portion controlled diet. In both cases, you create elaborate plans to limit unhealthy consumption. If you mess up, as you are likely to do, you can compensate the next day or week by ...

How to Deal with Bad Service—Be Reasonably Unreasonable

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

Every Tuesday is a Game Theory article at Mind Your Decisions Being reasonable doesn’t work “And how will you be paying today?” the pizza cashier asked me. I hesitated before I answered. I was being asked to pay full price, even though the store caused a 30 minute delay by ...

Fast and Frugal Late Night Snacks

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

The consulting grind encouraged my night owl tendencies. When I retired to my quarters, I found myself snacking on delicious and fattening restaurant leftovers. I was new to the job, but I quickly understood the saying “fat consultant.” While I still work late at night, I’ve drastically improved my ...

The Basics of Managing Inflation Risk

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

What is inflation? Inflation refers to an increase in the average price level in the economy. One way economists measure inflation is by tracking the price of an “average basket” of goods in the economy. The most common inflation index is the Consumer Price Index. It’s important to remember that ...