Parchayi.com - Personal Finance Simplified

The technology industry makes better products each year that are cheaper than ever before. There is a lot the healthcare industry can do to make life easier and healthcare cheaper. I work at The Medical Automation Research Center, which is at the forefront of health monitoring technology research and several studies we conducted have shown significant decrease in healthcare costs (and caregiver burden) using not-very-complex inexpensive devices.

It seems that Intel corp (INTC), Wal-Mart corp (WMT), and British Petroleum (BP) are planning on making employee health records electronic. There are several companies out there that are capable of providing such services such as Epic and GE. However unlike some European countries, this idea has been slow to catch on in the US. For large companies that spend billions on healthcare, take the US auto industry as an example, even a small cost savings can be significant. Electronic Records are a great first step. Consider what online banking has done for banks. I haven’t stepped into a bank branch in years. Many of my accounts are opened in banks that don’t even have branches. I can easily envision the day when all minor healthcare problems can be solved by individuals without actually going to a doctor’s office or by just going to something like Minute Clinics.

The biggest spenders on healthcare are the elderly. Technologies exist which can significantly reduce the spending for the elderly but unfortunately not many in the healthcare industry are willing to accept technology into their current settings. Working in a hospital environment, I often see resistance from doctors. However I see this changing in our lifetimes. All it takes it Wal-mart requiring their healthcare providers to cut costs same as their suppliers and other big corporations following suit.

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I am currently a Blockbuster Online customer and have been a Netflix customer in the past. I have generally preferred Blockbuster because of the two free in-store rentals with the service. However I was disappointed that the stores and the online service were not integrated as well as they could be and IMHO should be. With Blockbuster’s announcement that you can exchange online rentals in stores, my wish is now granted. This will make me a loyal blockbuster customer with no reason to switch to Netflix.

Over the last few months Blockbuster has also significantly improved its mailing system (atleast where I live) and I actually get DVDs in a day. The only problems I now have with Blockbuster are minor website related issues (which are not yet solved in the new Blockbuster online). For example the Top 10 rentals are useless because I see the same ones every time. Top 10 for this week would be nice. New releases are hard to find and badly organized. So I generally use Yahoo! Movies to get recommendations.

Enough about Blockbuster inc, what is Netflix inc upto?? Netflix ofcourse has a better web interface and is working hard to come up with better recommendations, which can be seen by the Netflix Prize offer. How can Netflix compete with Blockbuster’s in-store offer? My suggestion would be Mall Kiosks, like Dell has stared in several malls.

So how are the stocks doing? As of now (Nov 7), NFLX P/E is 26 and BBI P/E is 16. Netflix has so far managed to garner far more customers per quarter than Blockbuster and has about thrice to four times as many subscribers. It would seem that Blockbuster’s new offer will attract the worst kind of customers the most - the ones like me who watch atleast three movies a week. Inspite of that I personally feel that the bold move from BBI is a great decision. Which would I invest in - Blockbuster or Netflix?? I would have to say neither even though I like to invest in companies whose products I like and use or whose stores I frequent. I’m worried the whole online rental industry might shrink if movies on demand on cable catches on. Unlike some others, I’m not a big fan of movies on demand online however. We are still not at the stage where an integrated computer/TV/Entertainment system is very common or can work for the masses. However, if I were forced to select one it would be BBI thanks to their new all access offer.

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Many fund companies make it easy for small investors to invest in Mutual Funds using automatic investment plans, especially for retirement accounts. Generally low balance fees and account maintenance fees are also waived. Automatic Investment plans also have the added benefit of creating a sustainable investment plan and building savings without too much effort.

A month or so ago, I sat and compared plans from several major fund companies and I found that T. Rowe Price has the best automatic investment plan amongst them all. The plan requires a minimum contribution of only 50$/month per fund and has no custodial or low balance fees of any kind for IRA accounts if you select any of their managed funds (non-index funds) and keep contributing until their regular fund minimums are reached.

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Here is a comparison of rates of the highest APY online savings accounts. There are several new additions to the list and ING Direct has been taken off because they no longer offer competitive rates amongst online banks. The best rates are in bold.

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Scroll down and look on the right. I have quotes from Yahoo! Finance for all the stocks I own. I’m hoping Google comes up with something similar that pays publishers or Yahoo integrates this Finance thingy into YPN.

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