Today at TILE we talked about identity. How do you identify yourself – or others? Is identity what is on the surface (i.e., are you a preppie or a skinny-jeans-and-ironic-glasses-wearing hipster)? Or does it run deeper? We talked about all of these things, and specifically about how they relate to a concept we really believe in at TILE – financial identity.
What is financial identity? In the past, financial identity might have been, “I am what I have in the bank” or “the number I need to be happy.” The dollar signs drove how people looked at themselves. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this really, but in today’s world it seems outdated. How can you identify yourself with a just number without understanding a lot of other things about yourself first?
At TILE, we believe there are many things that make up your identity – it’s what you do, what you care about, and how you act every day. And in the real world, these passions and actions are played out in the way you use your money. Combining self-awareness with an understanding of how money works – and how it can work for you – is what makes up your true financial identity.
Identity is particularly important to us this week because we are launching TILE’s Financial Identity Profile at the FinovateSpring conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. (We’ll be tweeting about it, so feel free to tune in @spendgrowgive). It’s a major innovation to our product and we’re very proud of it. It does show numbers – but numbers are only part of the story. The Identity Profile is all about you. This new page – which you’ll see immediately upon logging in – helps you understand your identity from a financial perspective. It helps you express your passions, state your mission, and learn about money (and your relationship with it) so that you can use it wisely – the way YOU want to.
What does this mean for the TILE community? Well, it’s a pretty big addition to your current SPEND.GROW.GIVE experience. As more young people start using TILE and spending more time there (TILE members spend an average of 10 minutes per visit now), we want to make your experience with us as positive as possible. Sure we want you to grow your assets, grow your earning power, and grow your knowledge – but we really want you to grow into a strong person with a clear sense of what makes you tick. Knowing that – combined with a real knowledge and understanding of money – will make you a very powerful and fantastic person. So get in there!
We’re always prattling on about the importance of diversification around here. You know, the “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” philosophy, applied to your investment portfolio.
Well the same principle can apply to all areas of life – baskets of eggs, for example, or Internet empires like Google’s. They’ve been branching out from their humble search engine roots for years (email, document sharing, voicemail), but now they’re taking it to the streets. With robot cars.
Robot cars, as you might imagine, are currently illegal on U.S. roads. But if Google does a good job lobbying the Nevada legislature, then Sin City may become the first market for automated overlords. Er, vehicles.
Hey, if the Internet implodes some day, at least they’ll have something to fall back on.
Freaked out about your career? Amanda Pouchot and Kathryn Minshew from prettyyoungprofessional.com have been there, and they have some sage words of advice for you:
Check out Amanda and Kathryn’s other TILE appearances here.
>> TILE brings you exclusive opinions, explanations, and interviews from experts in every industry. Have a burning question or an expert you’d like to see interviewed? Just Ask TILE!
Freaked out about your career? Amanda Pouchot and Kathryn Minshew from prettyyoungprofessional.com have been there, and they have some sage words of advice for you:
Check out Amanda and Kathryn’s other TILE appearances here.
>> TILE brings you exclusive opinions, explanations, and interviews from experts in every industry. Have a burning question or an expert you’d like to see interviewed? Just Ask TILE!
Today at TILE we asked ourselves… why do we do what we do? Why are we so passionate about next generation financial services? What is our raison d’etre – or reason for existence – in the first place?
TILE is very much about encouraging our members to do the same thing – step back and really take a look at their lives. If you know why you do what you do and what you care about, you can make better personal decisions about how you spend, grow and give your money. And that makes you a stronger person.
We decided to do this for ourselves as a company this week. It’s an important time for us – we’re launching a major new innovation on the site in just two weeks. The whole team is pulling so hard to make it happen, energy is high in the office, and the feedback we’re getting from our partners and users is just incredible.
Guess what? Retailers are getting smarter and smarter when it comes to separating you and your cash (or credit card info, to be more precise).
First there was members-only designer discount site Gilt Groupe, with time limits for checking out with your items. Then we saw the daily deals companies like Groupon and LivingSocial. There’s Rent the Runway, where you can rent a hot little piece of couture for an event for under $200.
And now, for a mere $30 monthly subscription fee, online shops like JewelMint will get to know your tastes and offer up pieces it’s sure you’ll like. All based on an algorithm. This is in some ways even cooler than the computer from Star Trek: The Next Generation that made Captain Picard all those cups of tea with a simple voice command.
The online shopping world will surely continue to evolve, getting cooler, more convenient, and quite a bit more manipulative in the process. So don’t forget to bring your brain when you go on your next online shopping spree!
You may not have heard yet, but there’s been some interesting drama in the house of the country’s most-worshipped investor – the Oracle of Omaha, Mr. Warren Buffet. One of the top execs at his company (Berkshire Hathaway) seems to have, well, cheated at the game. David Sokol looked like he was next in line to replace Buffet when he eventually retires. But then he pulled a little thing called insider trading.
He bought a bunch of shares in a company, and then convinced Buffet that Berkshire Hathaway should buy that company, which raised the price of the shares and made Sokol a tidy profit. Unfortunately for everyone, that’s illegal. (For the record, Sokol so far denies doing anything wrong.)
There are many ways the company could have handled it – they could have tried to cover it up, or denied the whole thing and given Sokol a big bonus. But to his credit, Berkshire’s famous leader just fessed up. At the company’s annual meeting, where company executives meet with investors, explain their decisions, and take feedback, Buffet basically said that his top aide had done a terrible thing. He also heaped some blame on himself, saying that he wasn’t skeptical enough when Sokol came to him with the proposal.
Now Sokol is out of a job and the company is moving forward. Easy as that. The truth is, bad things happen all the time. But in business as in the rest of life, all it really takes to make things right again is to take responsibility for what happened, fix what you can fix, and move on.
Guess what? Retailers are getting smarter and smarter when it comes to separating you and your cash (or credit card info, to be more precise).
First there was members-only designer discount site Gilt Groupe, with time limits for checking out with your items. Then we saw the daily deals companies like Groupon and LivingSocial. There’s Rent the Runway, where you can rent a hot little piece of couture for an event for under $200.
And now, for a mere $30 monthly subscription fee, online shops like JewelMint will get to know your tastes and offer up pieces it’s sure you’ll like. All based on an algorithm. This is in some ways even cooler than the computer from Star Trek: The Next Generation that made Captain Picard all those cups of tea with a simple voice command.
The online shopping world will surely continue to evolve, getting cooler, more convenient, and quite a bit more manipulative in the process. So don’t forget to bring your brain when you go on your next online shopping spree.
You may not have heard yet, but there’s been some interesting drama in the house of the country’s most-worshipped investor – the Oracle of Omaha, Mr. Warren Buffet. One of the top execs at his company (Berkshire Hathaway) seems to have, well, cheated at the game. David Sokol looked like he was next in line to replace Buffet when he eventually retires. But then he pulled a little thing called insider trading.
He bought a bunch of shares in a company, and then convinced Buffet that Berkshire Hathaway should buy that company, which raised the price of the shares and made Sokol a tidy profit. Unfortunately for everyone, that’s illegal. (For the record, Sokol so far denies doing anything wrong.)
There are many ways the company could have handled it – they could have tried to cover it up, or denied the whole thing and given Sokol a big bonus. But to his credit, Berkshire’s famous leader just fessed up. At the company’s annual meeting, where company executives meet with investors, explain their decisions, and take feedback, Buffet basically said that his top aide had done a terrible thing. He also heaped some blame on himself, saying that he wasn’t skeptical enough when Sokol came to him with the proposal.
Now Sokol is out of a job and the company is moving forward. Easy as that. The truth is, bad things happen all the time. But in business as in the rest of life, all it really takes to make things right again is to take responsibility for what happened, fix what you can fix, and move on.
“People like to read the books,” says Daniel Borochoff, president and founder of the American Institute of Philanthropy in Chicago. “But the expense statement tells a story, too. Not as entertaining, but perhaps just as revealing.”
This seems like an appropriate follow-up to yesterday’s post about operational costs… A prominent organization dedicated to building schools and increasing access to education in Afghanistan – the Central Asia Institute – has recently gotten some bad press about its alleged money mismanagement.
Well, not money mismanagement exactly… more like financial nondisclosure. State auditors, donors, and charity ratings organizations have been surprised to find that more than half the CAI’s annual budget was spent in the U.S. instead of being sent overseas to pay for bricks and pencils.
Now, no one’s being accused of embezzlement – but it does seem like, at the very least, the organization’s finances were pretty incompetently handled. This is a great example of why it’s so important to do your homework before you give. Most charities are required to make their financial statements public, and you can use sites like GuideStar.org to help you get a better picture of where a nonprofit’s money is really being spent.
It’s also a pretty good example of how important it is to be on top of your finances. Even if you’re a great person (or organization), someday you’re going to be held responsible for the money coming in and going out of your account.
