Carsonified

I found an amazing tool that will help you determine if you can achieve your lifetime financial goals. It’s called Retirement Savings Planner 2006, and at $89, it’s a fricken steal.

Do you have financial goals?

I’m a big believer in the idea that it’s important to know what you’re working towards financially.

If you don’t sit down and decide how much money is enough, you’ll just work yourself to death always believing that financial freedom (and happiness, to some extent) is just around the corner.

Instead of aiming for a salary of $200K per year (or some other meaningless number), it’s important to figure out what you want to buy or own. I know it sounds pretty materialistic, but it’s really important.

For instance, Gill (my wife) and I really want to be able to afford our dream home in five years time. I know how much that is going to cost so I’ve set that as one of my financial goals. We also want to own a vacation home in the USA, so I’ve set that as another financial goal. Some other goals we have include putting our (future) kids through a good college, retiring at 55, starting a charity, and a few other fun things.

Ignorance is not bliss

Setting exciting financial goals can be fun, but it needs to be firmly rooted in reality. This is where that software comes into play.

Here’s basically how it works:

1. Enter in your basic details: retirement age, amount you can invest per year, current savings/investments, expected rate of return (we always use 5% to be safe) and a few other bits and bobs
2. Enter in expected cash lump sums: sale of company, sale of house, etc
3. (This is the important part) Enter in “Special Expenses”: Down payment on your dream house, college fund, etc

Then you get a wonderful (or depressing) graph about whether or not you can achieve these financial goals before you die.

This is the most important financial exercise you will do all year. Now that I’ve done this, I have a real clarity about what we want to achieve and when it will happen.

I encourage you to do the same - you won’t regret it.

If you find yourself typing the same thing over and over again when answering emails, I’ve got a real time-saving tip for you.

I’ve found an amazing tool called Text Expander and it absolutely rocks. Watch the video below to see how it can save you time on when answering emails.

This is especially great for those of you who do tech support for your web app and get asked the same fricken questions again and again.

RSS readers, view the video here.

The other day my wife Gill and I were out shopping over lunch. The town center was packed and it was starting to get a little hectic.

I’m a pretty chilled out guy and I rarely get angry at folks. However, a fellow shopper did something to annoy me (I can’t remember exactly what) and I felt myself getting agitated and annoyed.

Then it hit me - how much of my life would I waste if I let stupid things piss me off? By getting frustrated or annoyed at something small, I’ve just lost five minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. They’re gone. And was it worth it? Nope.

So whenever I’m tempted to get annoyed at something stupid and meaningless, I just force myself to smile and think of something I’m thankful for. This always seems to work and I’m transformed from being grumpy, to thankful and cheerful.

If I make a concerted effort to do this my whole life, I’ll change years worth of being annoyed and agitated, to being cheerful and thankful. What a deal!

(By the way, that freaky photo of me is when Gill and I went to Boston during Holloween. If you’ve never been there, try to go at some point. It’s amazing.)

We’ve just launched a brand new event!

THE FUTURE OF WEB DESIGN

The aim of the event is really put the ‘design’ back into web design, and get people creatively fired up, as well as talking about all sorts of contemporary issues for web designers.

When: April 18th 2007
Where: Kensington Conference Centre, London
Price: £59 limited early bird offer! £85 full price

Speakers:

• Ryan Singer (37Signals)
• Josh Davis (JoshDavis.com) tbc
• Joshua Hirsch (Big Spaceship)
• George Oates (Flickr)
• Andy Clarke (Stuff and Nonsense)
• Rei Inamoto (AKQA)
• Florian Schmitt (Hi-ReS)
• Denise Wilton (Moo)
• Jason Arber (Pixelsurgeon)
• Dan Saffer (Adaptive Path)
• Jeff Croft (WorldOnline)
• Mark Tutssel (Leo Burnett)
• Simon Collison (CollyLogic)

Register at futureofwebdesign.com

I’m going to be writing a five-part series for TechCrunch called “Web Apps 101″.

I’ve got lots to share, based on our experience building DropSend and Amigo. However, I’d be a fool if I thought I knew it all.

This is an invitation!

If you’ve built (or are in the process of building) a web app, I’d like to hear from you. Please answer the following questions (by commenting on this post):

1. How much did it cost to build your app?
2. What percentage was spent on each area (Development, Design, Marketing, Legal, etc)?
3. Did you bootstrap or raise funding?
4. Are you glad you funded it the way you did, or would you do it differently next time? Why?
5. What are some lessons you’ve learned that you would like to share?
6. Are you profitable? If so, how many months did it take to get there?
7. How many hours per week do you spend on tech support? Who takes care of it?

I look forward to hearing from you!

Please remember that anything you write here might end up on TechCrunch, so please double-check your comment before submitting it :)

As many of you probably know, we’re running a large Web 2.0 event in London called The Future of Web Apps.

There is an exciting opportunity for web app startups to get on stage for a full 10 minutes in front of the entire audience. It’s called the Startup Spotlight and it’s an amazing PR opportunity.

There are only three spots left, so if you’re interested, please email our VP of Sales, Andrew Calvo on andrew at carsonsystems dot com. The cost is £5K.

Hope to see you there!

We just bought a Dyson vacuum.

For those of you who don’t know, Dyson makes the world’s best vacuum cleaners (or “hoovers” as my British wife would say :D).

Why did we choose Dyson? Because we knew that their vacuums never lose their suction. So we ordered one and to my delight, it arrived today (sad, I know).

I was already sold on how great their vacuums are so I certainly didn’t need any more convincing when the box arrived. But here’s how Dyson has converted me into an excited and devoted customer: they kept telling me how great their product was after I paid for it.

The box is literally covered with pictures, diagrams and words proving how great the product is! Here’s are a couple examples:

This one demonstrates how easy it is to use on stairs and also shows how you can easily attach the tools (so they don’t get lost).

The image below shows how you can carry it up the stairs without tripping over the cords and hoses. It also shows how easy it is to store.

The photo below shows three great advantages to the vacuum (helps allergy sufferers, costs less to run and, guaranteed for two years).

The photo below reminds you that not having to buy filters (a key benefit to the vacuum) will save you money.

I’m hooked

I was already convinced that Dyson made a great vacuum, but after the purchase is when Dyson converted me into a fanatical customer.

I think this lesson can be applied to almost any business. Take time to remind your customers why your service or product kicks ass after they buy it. It will turn your loyal customers into die-hard fantatics.