When I switched over to Netflix, I chose the three-at-a-time plan because my wife and I love to watch movies and catch up on TV series we have missed. We were already saving over our Blockbuster plan, and with the addition of Netflix's Watch Instantly feature, it seemed like the best choice.

After a few months, I decided to check out my renting habits using Feedflix.com, which calculated my cost per rental and other statistics about my Netflix subscription.

I knew I had been lax about watching and returning DVDs but I didn't realize that my cost per rental is an astonishing $8.49! More than double what I would pay at any local rental store. Thankfully my per-rental price drops to a more reasonable $2.55 after you take into account my new-found obsession with the Watch Instantly feature.

While I could cut back my subscription like my colleague Tom Barlow did, I am going to try to maximize my value using the alerts that FeedFlix provides. Now, I'll get an email every Tuesday if I have kept a movie more than five days. This will help me stay on top of rentals and make sure that I have something good for the weekend. If my cost per rental is still too high next month, I'll drop my subscription plan down a notch until I find a good balance.

FeedFlix is free and easy to try out, making it an excellent tool for any Netflix subscriber. Taking a closer look at one of my subscriptions has only reinforced the notion that we often overestimate the value of our subscription plans. I wish I could get a similar tool for my Gamefly subscription, since I have a tendency to keep games too long as well.



Via Lifehacker

As a young adult, I had my wisdom teeth removed by an oral surgeon. When I received the bill, I was shocked at the cost; over $400 per tooth. When I returned for the follow-up visit the next week, I mentioned the bill to the surgeon.

"It seems like a lot of money," I exclaimed. "Why it only took you about 10 minutes per tooth."

The dentist smiled and said, "That is exactly what you are paying for. If you want me to take an hour or more to remove each tooth, I can do that. In fact, most anyone can do that. But there is value in a 10 minute extraction."

Good point. I never forgot it.

True value is never based on time or even effort. It is based on intellectual property, ability, and the value of the service to the customer. Each item needs to be carefully evaluated when you are pricing your products, services, or time in the marketplace.

• Evaluate your intellectual property. This is the sum total of education, experience and expertise in your field. Most of us severely underestimate this value mistakenly believing that "everyone" knows this or "anyone" could do that. The accumulated knowledge after years in a discipline has tremendous value and establishes you as an expert. List your areas of expertise and include them in your resume, marketing and sales pitch. Make sure you differentiate yourself in a crowded marketplace.
• Appraise your ability. Are you among some of the best at what you do? Can you accomplish quickly what it may take someone else extra time? One of the consultants I work with can evaluate the efficiency of corporate operations very quickly and make recommendations for money and time saving improvements. Organizations are willing to pay a lot of money for her time because she can accomplish in short order what it would take a team of consultants months to do. People that have high ability make what they do look easy (think of Tiger Woods). But that does not mean that it is. Make sure that you have an accurate appraisal of your abilities for pricing.

People love to express their gratitude for a favorite tool or gadget by claiming that it's worth its weight in gold, a reference which is lost on most of us who don't know how much a pound of gold is actually worth. Thankfully Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has cooked up a handy reference guide to help you measure the monetary density of things. This graphical comparison covers the weight value of U.S. currency, human blood, commodities, illicit drugs and pretty much everything else in between.

I'm still trying to take all this information in and it cracks me up how much a pound of many of these items are worth. Still, I noticed that a few items are noticeably absent from this lineup so I took the liberty of translating these into units to further expand your weight to value ratios.

• Gasoline - $1.79 / lb locally, a gallon of gas weighs 6.15 pounds.
  
• Crude oil - 39 cents / lb as of today, a gallon of crude is ~7 lbs, a barrel of oil contains 42 gallons at $118.35
  
• Quarter Pounder with cheese - $18 / lb, assuming 1/4 lb weight of burger and bun post cooking.
• With gold trading around $830 per ounce, and 16 ounces in a pound, a pound of gold is worth $13,280.

With energy prices coming across that low in pounds I wouldn't be too shocked to see pumps switching over to per pound pricing in the near future! In a more practical sense, I'm sure list will prove to be worth its weight in quarters when you turn a quick profit this weekend, betting some poor chump that a pound of peacock feathers is worth more than a pound of Uranium!