Where I live, health food stores are hard to come by, but I do know a little about their goods. So, when I came across this article called “10 Things Health Food Stores Won’t Tell You” on SmartMoney, I just had to talk a little about it.

1. Organic doesn’t mean healthy all the time. A survey recently found that consumers believe that organic foods have more nutrients in them than other non-organic foods do. This is very debatable. While organic doesn’t mean more nutritious it does mean it is a FDA monitored word that means that no synthetic or harmful (like pesticides) substances were used in growing produce and that no antibiotics or growth hormones were used in raising livestock.

2. Label standards are guaranteed to be the same today as they were yesterday. Once there were regulations on what was to be considered and labeled organic, lobbyists started hitting up senators for weakening of the regulations. It has worked on a few occasions, such as when two Alaskan senators sponsored an amendment to a wartime bill that would open the door for seafood caught in the wild to be labeled organic.

3. Our store sells overpriced prepacked goodness. Heath food doesn’t have to eat up your entire grocery budget for the month in a week. You can do things like shop at farmer’s markets or join a co-op to get healthy organic (and locally grown) produce. I find it absolutely ridiculous to pay 3 times more at the grocery store for organic beef versus regular beef.

4. There is no regulation on dietary supplements. The dosing instructions as well as the daily amounts on the bottles of dietary supplements (sometimes called vitamins if the store can get away with it) is not regulated by the FDA. Claims that the companies make on the bottles don’t have to be entirely accurate and things can end up being banned in the future. What you may be taking right now as a supplement, may, in the future, be a banned toxin (see: ephedrine).

5. Just because it’s from a health food store doesn’t mean you won’t gain weight. Recently, in my small town, a Smoothie King store has popped up in a strip mall. Everyday in class, I would see a quarter to a third of my classmates with the cups ranging from the “small” 20 oz size to the behemoth that they call a “large.” Smoothie King drinks are good, but they are FULL of sugar, and where there’s sugar, there’s calories. Many of the smoothies offered are meant to be meal replacements, but many times I would see people having a Subways sandwich with the smoothies. Now, I don’t know what they had in the cups, but I’m sure they weren’t looking at the nutrition facts when they were ordering (I always have to because too much sugar makes me really sick).

SmartMoney recently posted an article about ways to cut costs moving. The article titled “Moving on the Cheap: 6 Tips for Cutting Costs” is really helpful to anyone moving or looking to move in the future.

You can pay anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 to have your stuff moved from one place to another, so it is important to try to cut costs anywhere you can.

So first off, do some comparison shopping. Moving costs can vary greatly depending on what moving company your talking to. For that reason, it is important to get estimates from at least three companies before you decide on one. Websites like CityMove.com lets potential customers ask for bids that moving companies can respond to.

Of course, if you go back to a post on this site a few days ago, hiring a company based on price alone is a really bad idea. The moving companies are full of fraud and you really need to do your research before you hire a company to entrust all your things to. So doing a check on the background of the company you’re thinking about hiring is tip number 2.

Tip number three is to get rid of things you don’t want anymore. You will always have stuff around your house you won’t use once you’ve moved, so have a garage sale or something to get rid of it! The less stuff you have, the less it will likely cost you to move it.

Tip number four goes along with tip number three and that’s to make sure that your reduce the amount of times a mover has to go in and out of your house. I know that sounds kind of weird, but if you think about it, it really does make a lot of sense. If you reduce the amount of times a mover has to enter and exit your house, you will likely end up reducing you overall bill for the move.

Tip number five is to know what is covered by the insurance. If you’re moving and the insurance doesn’t cover something that is priceless to you, then it will be worthless in the long run. You need to make sure a dollar amount is placed on everything and that it is covered under all circumstances. In the case of moving, I don’t think that you can ever have too much insurance.

Finally, tip number six is to take advantage of a tax break being offered by the government! Right now, the IRS is allowing people who are moving to deduct the costs for a job-related move. All you have to do is move within a year of starting a new job and keeping that job for at least 39 weeks after you move. Also, the job must be at least 50 miles away from where your current job is.

Short selling isn’t bad. It’s a good way to recover losses or gain an opportunity in the market. Short sellers have a bad reputation. Short selling can be likened to betting against the team you think will lose the World Series. Short sellers sometimes do better than those who only long stocks.

Short sellers’ bad reputation keeps some investors from shorting the stocks, and many find that bull markets are more the long term norm. There are fewer short sellers than those who buy a stock long because shorting can be risky and volatile when compared to buying stocks. Also, there aren’t as many short sellers because the investor can lose infinitely when it comes to the price of the stock going up, it makes it very expensive to buy shares to “cover a short position and create losses far in excess of the original investment.”

When done intelligently, shorting can be enormously lucrative. Just consider the trading record of Short Alert, a small North Carolina-based research firm that has been producing reports recommending stocks to short since 1998. In the 10½ years ended June 30 of this year, about 75% of the 86 recommendations it made would have turned a profit, even if they were judged based on the conservative criteria used by Barron’s in examining Short Alert’s record. In other words, the firm offers an excellent window on how to pick stocks to sell short.

Barron’s found that the firm, led by managing partners Nat Guild and the ironically named Michael Long, produced annual returns averaging 18.3% from 1999 through 2008. If the period studied is stretched through the end of June, the annual returns jump to 20.3%. But beware: Short selling isn’t always a route to easy money: 2004 would have produced a terrible loss of 37%, followed by three years in a row of 13% losses.

In judging Short Alert, Barron’s tracked the short positions for a year after they were implemented. Thus, the most recent of the 86 reports we reviewed is dated June 19, 2008.

Here are 5 recommendations from SmartMoney to short:

JCOM
MIDD
CMP
K12
PTV

Source

It’s looking more and more that if you have discipline and want to save for the future, going to college may be a bad investment. A four year college degree costs too much and proves too little. It has become increasingly unlikely to be able to make up the cost of a college degree, even with the fact that college grads get paid more.

In an example for the New York Post as written by SmartMoney associate editor Jack Hough, if you look at two people from similar backgrounds each of whom save $16,594 for college. One decides to not go to college and invests his savings in a mutual fund that tracks the broad stock market. He ends up making an average pay that peaks at $32,538. He adds to his savings 5% of his after-tax income and it returns 8% a year.

His friend goes to college. He goes to public school and transfers to a private school. He ends up spending $48,286 in tuition and fees. These fees do not include room and board. He ends up spending $34,044 after grants. When he finishes school he owes $17,450 at 5% in student loans. He starts making just over $23,000 a year after taxes and peaks at almost $57K. Like his friend, he sets aside 5%. It will take him 12 years to pay off his loans. When he finally escapes from the debt at age 34, he starts investing in the same fund as his friend. He is able to make bigger monthly contributions. However, when they reach 65, the friend who didn’t go to college will have saved almost $1.3 million while the one with the degree will have less than a third of what his friend saved.

I believe that this all comes back to the fact that many people don’t think about saving rather they want to have a comfortable lifestyle while they can enjoy it. I’m not saying that you can’t enjoy things when you’re 65, but you can enjoy travel and have more ability to do so when you’re younger.

There are many shady moving companies out there (this is probably one reason when I moved, my family never hired someone). You really have to watch who you hire to move your things and that you’re protected in any contract you sign.

Here are nine things that a moving company won’t tell you:

1) They might end up with your things…on purpose.

From SmartMoney:

Just ask Spyro Malaspinas, a victim of a botched move. He says that Nation Van Lines, which he hired to move his belongings from Austin, Tex., to Chicago in January 2003, hiked his bill from an estimate of $1,050 to nearly $4,300. The movers, according to Malaspinas, said his goods measured 500 cubic feet more than anticipated. When Malaspinas threatened to call the police, the drivers made off with his possessions, which he estimates were worth $47,000. Despite an FBI investigation and the March arrest of Nation owner Eli Peretz by the FBI for alleged crimes with another moving company, Malaspinas wasn’t thrilled with the final results: He only got back around $25,000-and never saw his belongings again. The experience was “paralyzing,” he says. “It’s not like somebody stealing your wallet; they have stolen everything you’ve got.” (Peretz’s lawyer did not return our calls; Nation Van Lines has since gone out of business.)

2) The FBI has some interest in many moving companies. Due to shady business practices like the one mentioned above, the FBI has looked into many different moving companies. Companies have been known to participate in fraud, money laundering, and extortion just to name a few things.

3) Due to the fact that some moving companies’ shady practices are seen as civil matters, local police will likely  never touch an issue you may have with the company…making the company nearly untouchable. The FBI is interested in getting scammers to stop, not necessarily getting your stuff back.

4) Someone other than those you hired may be delivering your things. In the summer months, when moving companies do the majority of their business, they may end up contracting out work to other companies that are shady or who you weren’t expecting.

5) Many movers are extremely inexperienced. Moving companies have been known to get day laborers to deliver and ship your things. They also contract independent truck drivers.

6) Get an in-house estimate or you’re likely going to get messed over. Don’t get an online estimate when it comes to moving your things. You may end up with all your things on the truck and unable to pay the “real” price (what they want to charge you).

7) You will likely be charged extra fees.

8) Moving during peak times could mean you move without furniture or any of the rest of your stuff. Like when airlines have busy seasons, moving companies tend to overbook past capacity, so when it comes time to move, whatever date you had planned on may not be realized.

9) Get extra insurance. See the picture at the head of the article, that’s what can happen when a moving company doesn’t pay attention to clearance levels on bridges and all your stuff gets ruined.

Not all companies are bad, you just have to be an informed consumer and do the research before you hire a company. Ripoffreport.com and BBB.org are just two websites where you can find information out about a company before you hire them.

So, how does this all affect the average American? Sure, if you?re completely invested in one of the failing companies it is easy to see, but for someone who isn’t in the market but perhaps has a 401 (k) they may be worried about their financial future.

Because banks are playing defensively, they are doing whatever they can to protect their assets. This causes them to not want to produce any new loans, creating sub-prime loans and mortgages is what got most of these banks into this dire situation to begin with. Even student loans will be harder to receive, which could in itself become a disaster, because college tuition will not be going down any time soon (or ever). If a potential borrower does not have great or perfect credit, loans are and will be very hard to acquire.

When the crunch is over, though, many banks will be able to lend again to those with good credit, and those with great and perfect credit will be able to get their loans at better rates. The hardest part is waiting. It is hard to wait for a loan when you need a mode of transportation and can’t get a car loan though, as not everyone lives where there is a method of public transportation or a place close enough to anything to ride a bike.

If you’ve been working and deducting some of your paycheck into a 401 (k) for any length of time, the financial crisis is something to take a serious look at. According to financial adviser Jill Schlesinger in a CBS interview, you should not stop payroll deductions into your 401 (k) just because of a sudden drop in the market, rather now is the time to be putting more money into the fund. Russell Pearlman from SmartMoney magazine also says that investors shouldn’t pull all of their money out of the market and to not panic. She states, ?As bad as things look today, they are just going to be a blip on the radar 10, 20 years from now.? As hard as it is to watch the stocks fall more every day, advisers and market analysts are saying to stick with it and that what is happening now could be the worst of it.

Not all news is doom and gloom however. Some of the brighter side of it is oil has fallen from $147 a barrel to under $70 in 3 months. When things start to shake up Wall Street, it appears that investors will begin looking for something more stable than what they are currently invested in (which probably lead to yesterday?s record jump in the price of an ounce of gold). The fall in oil definitely eases some of the financial burden facing the average consumer in the U.S. The lower oil prices will help ease inflation on all the goods that we buy.

Hopefully Russell Pearlman is right and we will all look back on what is going on now and say it is a blip. We can also hope that the worst of it is over. However you look at what is happening on Wall Street, the biggest thing to do is wait.