Recently I heard that a jewelry company branded their diamonds Hearts on Fire to charge a premium for the precious stones. The reason they did this is that lately diamond dealers’ profit margins have plummeted due to more educated consumers and online shops like Blue Nile where you can compare the prices on thousands of diamonds with ease. Prior to these branded stones, all diamonds have been “generic” and price was just determined by the characteristics of the gem itself. I personally think that diamonds are a scam, but charging extra for a branded diamond is even more ludicrous. The reason is that if you look at two diamonds of the same quality and size you can’t tell what the brand is at all.

I think that sometimes paying more for a brand name item makes sense. For example, I like name brand walking shoes for their quality. Compared to generic no-brand shoes, a pair of good brand name shoes just last a lot longer. It is the piece of apparel that takes the most beating and my mom found out early on that a more expensive pair of brand name shoes lasted a lot longer than the $7 generic shoes she was buying. The cheap shoes actually cost more in the long run because they broke so fast that she had to replace them. Basically, I think it makes sense to pay a premium for a brand name product if the quality is actually quite a bit higher than generics.

I also buy brand name products if the products are unique and can’t be substituted by generics. For example, many drugs under patent are irreplaceable by generics. So in the case of unique products consumers don’t really have a choice and the company that owns the monopoly on the product can charge any premium they wish. I guess that is why prescription drugs and health care in general tend to be fairly expensive.

Here’s where I think buying brand name products do not make sense. In the supermarket there are many foods that are branded. I have seen store brand butter that is half the price of a package of a frequently advertised branded butter. When the price difference between two virtually identical products is that high I think it makes no sense to buy the branded product. The premium is probably due to the marketing anyway and there is no point in supporting more advertising.

Another thing about branded merchandise I don’t like is that people often use the brand of their things as a status symbol. There is really no point in buying $300 True Religion jeans just for the brand because the same look can be achieved with much cheaper jeans. When people pay a ridiculous amount of money purely for the sake of the brand their behavior becomes brand worship instead of sensible consumerism. In that case, the marketing team of the company has done a fabulous job in brainwashing consumers and building up their brand, but it doesn’t mean that you have to fork over your money to follow a passing trend.

Finally, I hope all of you had a wonderful weekend! If you braved Black Friday I hope you got some deals to make me proud! Did you buy something for the sake of its brand? What attracts you to certain brands?

Well, it’s been two weeks since the last update and in the last fourteen days about 305 homes in San Mateo County were listed on Redfin. This time branded cialis online qualified as home sellers in trouble. This is nearly branded cialis online of all the new listings in San Mateo! Quite a few of these homes are marked as lender owned. Here are some highlights.

This week there were some great carnivals as usual. First there is the where my article about was included. Being the nerd I am I really liked

Next there is In this carnival I wrote about . A couple articles I would like to highlight is and I really love Scrabble and I love how Jim put together his experiences in a game into lessons for personal finance. Soup Parrish is a and he is trying an interesting experiment in retiring on $75,000 in San Francisco. I would like to see how he does.  I have told him that realistically he can’t retire on $75,000 here in the Bay Area, but he has a set of rules that lets him generate other income too.  Check out his blog at

Finally, there is the I like Lynnae’s blog a lot and this week my article about   has been included.  I also really liked this story about by Betsy Teutsch.  It’s pretty true that kids don’t like presents like stocks and bonds because they can’t really play with it.

That’s all for this week!

If I had a nickel for everytime I heard the phrase “if we go IPO…”, I could probably buy a nice video game. I have been working in private companies since I graduated college and everywhere I go engineers are dreaming of their companies going IPO and becoming the next Google. I am sorry to be a party pooper but the fact is that very few companies become public, and even if they do it’s very unlikely that rank and file workerbees like me would become fabulously rich. These are the lessons I have learned about stock options and I would like to list the reasons why most people don’t become rich off them.

I come from a fairly small family. Each of my parents has one sister and each family has an only child. So basically I have a total of four uncles and aunts and two first cousins and only one aunt’s family is here in the Bay Area. The holidays usually involves a dinner or two with my aunt’s family and a few other family friends. Now that I am married I suddenly gained at least two dozen or so fairly immediate family members here in the Bay Area. It is kind of interesting and fun to me, but I hear from many people with huge families that the holiday season is the most stressful time of the year. I suppose it makes sense because the more people there are in a family there is more likely to be disagreements. Also, having a big family may be a financial burden if you are supposed to throw a feast and bring everyone gifts.