An interesting article showed up in last week’s BusinessWeek about a company who’s philosophy strays from the norm.

What if you were paid for performance and had more of a stake in the success of your company than you do at a typical job?  What if your salary was the lowest in the industry, yet you bring home more money than any comparable employee in your industry?

Nucor (NUE)is a steel manufacturer and has plants all over the United States.  They are featured in “The Art Of Motivation“, a BusinessWeek article from last week (you might need a subscription, but it’s worth it!).  Interestingly enough, workers at Nucor are paid based on how well the company performs, and this includes the CEO.

I noticed in the listing for Property #2 that the cooling for the house is listed as “Central Gas”.

I’ve never heard of central gas for cooling purposes, only for heating.  I sent the agent an email to confirm whether or not the house actually has central air, as I did not see an air conditioning unit outside the house when I walked through it the first time.

I just found out that the owner of property number two that I’m scoping out has dropped the list price by $4,000. They now have it listed for $74,900, which is still above what I’d buy it for. Considering the amount of work it needs, I’d buy the property for $66,000. The fact that they are willing to lower the price by $4-5,000 every month is a good sign that they might be willing to deal…

I’ll go meet with my banker next week to see if I can swing this deal.

I just finished the last few pages of Freakonomics last night, and if you’re looking for an easy read to get your mind thinking in a different direction, this book’s for you. It’s not overly long, and it’s dumbed down so you don’t need a degree in economics to comprehend the details.

Steven Levitt is more of a rogue economist and you can see why he doesn’t fit into the typical ‘economite’ crowd.  Levitt looks for what is not present in a set of data instead of taking the data at face value.

Want to know why the crime rate actually fell in the 90’s when major economic experts convinced President Clinton that crime would rage out of control and throw our country into a tail spin?  You need to only look a decade or two earlier in history to figure it out, and it has nothing to do with gun control or law enforcement.

This morning I read a post by Dave from the “In Acton” blog had an offer accepted on a house just outside of Acton.  Dave has been looking for a house for a while, and has had a few offers shot down recently and had turned a bit disheartened for lack of progress.

However, now the real negotiating begins.

Once you get an offer accepted, you’ve got a lot of details to sort out in terms of the loan.  A lender will try to stick you for every last penny they can get, and they hide the details somewhere in paragraph 6 on page 72 of your 150 page loan document.

No one likes to pay more at the pump. But the economic principles dictate that if you don’t like paying more at the pump, don’t go to the pump.

The high gas prices in my area are taking the desired effect; consumption is going down, and the number of people riding the bus has gone up 7% as compared to this month last year.

President Bush recently decided that he’d forgo additions to the stretegic oil reserve until the fall, due to pressure from his peers to do something about high gas prices. In addition, he is asking the …

I decided to delay my purchase for a washer and dryer for my rental unit until I get the tenants to sign the addendum to the original lease, holding them responsible for an additional $30 per month in rent.

After running throuh a “what-if” scenario, I realized that if I don’t get this in writting, I could be stuck with a washer and dryer that I don’t need if they change their minds on our deal.

When you own a business, there are steps you need to take to make sure you maintain that “corporate veil.”  One of those steps is to hold an annual meeting, and as a record of that meeting, generate meeting minutes, or notes of what was discussed at that meeting.

So after a year in existence for my little oil holdings company, I NEED MINUTES!  Being the single member of my LLC, what kind of topics do I discuss in my meeting with…. myself?

According to an article I found at Inc.com, your minutes need to contain details of the following activities:

Electing corporate officers and directors
Setting salaries and bonuses
Declaring dividends
Electing S corporation status
Approving transactions between the corporation and its shareholders, such as loans to shareholders or leasing property to/from them
Adopting employee benefit plans, such as a qualified retirement plan, an adoption assistance plan, an education assistance program or a medical reimbursement plan. Annual contributions to the retirement plan should also be approved by the board and recorded in the minutes.

It seems that the new TD Ameritrade is very worried about identity.  Not their identity, your identity.  As part of their “Security” services, they are pushing a third party service called Identity Track.

Essentially, Identity Track is an online service that watches your credit file, keeps track of your credit card information, and provides you with instant access to your credit score.  A perfect service for that paranoid individual who loses sleep at night over details in their credit report.

One of the nice features of the service …

I came across the Realtor Magazine Online website yesterday, and found a short article about remodeling projects and how much each project affects the resale value.

It turns out that next to upgraded exterior siding, a bathroom remodeling project returns the most money on the investment (in fact, it actually returns a little more than you put into it).