Anthem Protests

First, my intention with this site was stay close to facts and things that can be easily measured and therefore not get too “controversial”.  However, I am opinionated and the eventual direction of this site was to expand into all areas of everything, so here we go.

As a kid, we would go to about a couple baseball games a year.  The anthem signified that the game was about the start.  It wasn’t important to be in your seats by then, but it meant that if you hadn’t made it to your seat, you were going to miss something.  I also loved the Olympics.  That is where the anthem meant something.  I would give anything to be standing on the podium and having The Star Spangled Banner ringing throughout the venue.

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Lotteries

Now that I have saved some money on your light bulb expenses, you may want to “invest” that money into the lottery.  They claim that lotteries are a tax who are bad at math.  When a football team is down by 14 with 5 minutes left to go, the fans lose hope.  When a baseball team is down by 5 going into the 9th inning, the masses change the channel.  When the state offers a prize of an absurd amount of money to correctly guess 5 numbers between 1 and 100, the people line up with fist full of cash ready to accept that challenge.  You be the judge about which of above events is least likely to happen.

Most states offer a large jackpot lottery game along with numerous smaller prize games with different way to play.  I am going to look at 4 of the larger multiple state money generators and the different variations associated with them.  Each game offers 2 drawings a week.  I am going to play each variation 100 times a year for 20 years.  I am playing $150 on each drawing and seeing what happens.

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Light Bulbs

What better way to kick off an idea website than with the light bulb.  A 60 watt incandescent bulb from way back when (maybe 10 years now) will be used as the normal reference point.  Watts mean the amount of power or energy the bulb uses.  The electric bill totals the amount of kilowatt (1,000 watts) hours or kWh you use each month.  A 60 watt bulb left on for 1 hour calculates to .06 kWh.  Lumens are basically how bright is the bulb.  The normal bulb is 800 lumens.  Generally, if you need a brighter bulb, increase the wattage and the lumens will increase.  Kelvin measures the color temperature and thus determines the color of the light.  The basic yellowish light bulb, or classified as a soft warm light, is around 3,000 Kelvin.  Bright or Cool White is around 4,000 Kelvin and Daylight is 5,000 Kelvin and above.  Voltage measures the current.  Most house fixtures use 120 Volts.  Always double check the Voltage needed.  20 year cost will factor in the cost of the bulb and the cost of energy usage at 12 cents per kWh.  Average usage for a main bulb will be about 3 hours a day for 365 days or conveniently 1,000 hours per year or 20,000 total hours for 20 years.

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Welcome!

Welcome to WhatIzBetter.com.  This site is designed to present some new ideas to address some of the billions of decisions people make each and everyday.  This is an attempt to exam some common occurrences and present some better solutions to save money or time.  Is it Better to buy in bulk and store the extras or buy what you need?  Is it Better to spend a little more at the time of purchase for energy efficient items or down payments on big ticket items or spend as little up front but incur higher costs as you consume the product?

This is not a site to inform you that Coke is better than Pepsi (You should already know that!).  Nor is this a generic review site.  However, could review sites be Better?  A consumer wants to buy a TV, and checks out that the average rating is 4 out 5 stars.  That doesn’t seem bad, but what is the context?  How many of the reviewers are ranking more than one TV?  Are the reviewers taking the context of price and features into their ratings?  Are consumers more likely to review products when they are outraged by the product vs completely satisfied?

I am a person that is constant search for the perfect answer.  There is no one size fits all solution for everyone, but there exists Better solutions for each individual situations.  I look forward to adding articles on a regular basis, and hopefully you will find some of them informative and beneficial.  I look forward to all comments or ideas for future articles.  I also look forward to others contributing to the site to possibly grow this site into something more.  For some of these social networking sites worth millions of dollars, is it Better to share the wealth with the loyal users who grew the site or continue the Wall Street investor route?  I will try to avoid political discussions on this site, but an opportunity to run for office?  Crazier things have happened.

Chris – WhatIzBetter.com