DAY 146

UPDATE: Friday, 21-Oct-2005 9:57 AM

Just getting my day started after some reading. The stock market has "stalled" in the past few months, and I have taken the time to get badly needed projects updated.

Mot of my time is spent working on the database for the Global Discount Card™, the Maxsimo Card™. Yes, working on the database.

One of the major changes working on the Internet for the past few years is the advancement of GUI (graphic user interfaces) have advanced greatly, even in the database field. I can now manage a database and even build it using the best programs out there.

Several of the programs that manage MySQL databases are from freeware vendors and are part of the open source community. However, these programs are still very geek type of programs that take a lot of time to learn. Then there are programs like dbQwikSite (http://www.dbqwiksite.com) and Navicat (http://www.navicat.com) that allow someone like myself who's "code challenged" to get the basic work done.

My plan is to setup the database and operations and then hand it off to a local company to manage the security, back up procedures, optimizing and scaling. These are tasks that needs experience and foresight that I don't have when it comes to databases. It's then time to call in the *experts*...

However, with the setup and experimentation, I can get the job done.

Ok, speaking of "job" and work, I've got to do just that. Wait, wait a second...

I need to comment about the article below that got my day started.

It seems that the Germans are not so credit risk averse. However, what the article forgets to mention is that 80% of the Germans rent their homes. This was a fact that when I heard it from a German scientist, I asked twice IF he was sure of that fact. He said that is true. I think I asked again, and he was in the market to buy his first home and some outrageous price and he said that is correct: 80% of the Germans don't own their own homes.

This goes to my next question: Then who own's these homes? The question most often is that communities, insurance companies and real-estate management companies own the homes.

The reason I go thru this test is to point out that some Americans are heavily in debt, but they also manage to own their own homes, which by far is the best asset that one can invest in. However, over the past 2 years, the types of borrowing have gone "fuzzy" (especially the qualifications for such loans) and that is "not a good thing".

So, as long as one is cautious, the American (USA) model of borrowing, owning a home and then making investments as we have grown up and continued to do is "fine". However, in my opinion, the German model of first paying the "State" and then depending on the state to provide when sick and old may work for a decade or two, but will "fall apart" over the long run.

Anyway, the reason I wanted to bring up the article below is the *last paragraph* of it, where it informs the reader that the largest age group that is declaring bankruptcy in the USA is between 35 to 44 and the next largest is between 25 and 34.

The question is what are these groups of people doing to get into this type of problems? I think much of that answer will be below and that poor management of funds and credit.

Credit-card companies woo few Germans By Isabelle de Pommereau, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Thu Oct 20, 4:00 AM ET

FRANKFURT - For a few fleeting months last year, Richard Klein binged on furniture and a fancy stereo - thanks to his newly acquired credit card.

"But then the bill came and the money was gone," says Mr. Klein, who tossed out the plastic card after his bout with debt. "It's better to keep track of what I've bought," concludes the retired salesman.

Despite record-low interest rates and a credit spree sweeping across Europe, Germans are shunning the lure of credit cards - the result, many say, of a German pragmatism made more acute by uncertainties about the country's generous social model.

"The Germans have a different consumption mentality: They don't get into debt," says Hubertus Pellengahr of the German Retail Association in Berlin.

Throughout Europe, credit cards have changed people's habits over the past decade. England, dubbed the "plastic nation," has the most developed credit-card market in the world after the United States, which has more credit cards than inhabitants. There and in France, people are used to dipping into the red to pay their bills. Credit cards have also been making great strides in Hungary since their introduction in 1999.

Not so in Germany. The German Retail Association estimates that credit cards are responsible for only 5 percent of goods purchased here annually, compared with 13 percent around the globe. It's not that Germans don't like plastic cards. But Germans use them mainly to substitute cash, not for long-term borrowing.

"When I want something I pay for it myself," says David Hausen, a senior in high school. "It's a question of honor."

At heart, the unpopularity of credit cards is rooted in pragmatism. Unlike debit cards, which are free, credit cards are viewed as expensive - both for shopkeepers and customers.

"The German are sort of spoiled: They're used to relatively low cost for money transactions," explains Kerstin Aldendorf of the German Association of Banks in Hamburg. "They don't want to pay for services they don't need."

The only retail stores to make a profit in Germany - Aldi and Lidl - accept only cash or debit cards. The discount stores have kept ahead thanks to a strategy based on speed and low costs, say experts.

"At Aldi, everything has to go fast," says Ms. Aldendorf. Credit cards would postpone the arrival of money into Aldi's coffers, thereby lessening its competitive advantages.

This reluctance to borrow is also rooted in history. The great inflation of the 1920s, when prices doubled in a day and the middle class saw their savings wiped out, instilled in many Germans deep caution toward borrowing money.

Decades later, the deutsche mark stood as a concrete proof of a reunited Germany after the turmoil created by the Berlin Wall, making paper money especially dear to many. "For a long time, the Germans held the deutsche mark as a proof of normality, something that held them together," says Mr. Pellengahr of the German Retail Association.

"I have to feel paper money in my hand," says Mathilde Kuara who, at close to 60, still doesn't own a credit card. "Not everything that's new is good."

Some banks, such as Citibank, see Germany as a great potential market for credit cards, says Citibank's Ruediger Stahlschmidt.

But such efforts come at a time of rising uncertainty over the future of the country's generous welfare state. "People are aware that they have a major problem with their retirement pensions [and] health insurance - they know that they're going to have to contribute more," says Pellengahr. "That makes them insecure."

A sluggish economy has pushed the number of families and companies in the red up just as credit institutions have become more careful in granting credit, says Paul Schmidt, an economics professor at the Frankfurt bank academy.

For the first time this year, more individuals than companies filed bankruptcy, a sign to Mr. Schmidt that more low-income families are being left with no option but to use credit. But Schmidt also sees it as a sign that more consumers, lured by attractive credit offers, underestimate the costs of paying back their credit-card bills, with interest.

Experts caution that it's all the more crucial to help people better manage their money so that Germany doesn't repeat the experience of the US, where recent studies show that people ages 25 to 34 account for the second-fastest growing percentage of
bankruptcy filers, just after those ages 35 to 44.

------------------END of ARTICLE

Well, yet another weekend is here. I got a lot done, and yet there is a lot of work to do. I will finally get http://www.maxsimo.com off the ground and I cannot wait to work on the sales aspect of it.

I love to work on sales --especially when the product is fantastic!

Ok, got to go. Sam out. Hope you have a great weekend.

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