iPhone 3G will MAKE YOU MONEY.

So as has been pointed out by a commenter’s (”the vis”) on a previous video, the iPhone 3G will actually cost more over 2 years than the original iPhone’s. The math goes like this, $399 for the original 8GB iPhone +$20/mo for the data plan (on top of your voice plan)= $879. The new iPhone 3G (8GB version) will retail for $199 (half the price) but will cost $30/mo for the data plan= $919 (I won’t tell you that to get 500 text messages a month it will be an additional $5/month as that will go against my argument.. wait I just wrote that, whoops).

So we’re looking at the new iPhone 3G costing $40 more than the current iPhone and much more than a baseline cell phone. So the question posed by “the vis” was, is there a way the new iPhone can pay for itself over the two years of your contract? I don’t think you can have the iPhone “pay for itself over two years, but I do think that there will be some great ways of saving money over the two years you have your new iPhone 3G, and let’s just see how much money we could potentially save with the new iPhone.

Free GPS
I feel that I know the city of Seattle fairly well, and that at most I may need to go onto google maps to figure out where something is located in Seattle. However, if last Christmas proved anything, people love in car GPS units (along with digital picture frames, which I guess you could use your iPhone for as well). When you’re in an unfamiliar city, is there anything better than having someone guide you, turn by turn, through directions. Well the new iPhone should be able to do that with it’s GPS. The savings right there is apx $150 if you were to buy a new one on sale, and $10/day for each day you may rent a car on vacation. Let’s call this a savings of $200 over two years.

Location Based To-Do Lists
Omnidrive will be offering location based to-do lists on the new iPhone, and so as “the vis” suggested, this will dramitically cut down on the ammount of gas you use running your errands. One of the main ways people are suggesting saving money with today’s high gas prices is to make all your errands in one run. Rather than taking many short runs, making one big loop will save you much more time, mileage, and money. Omnidrive’s location based to-do list will help guide these errands, and make sure that you remember what to do, and also show you the closest place to take care of each task. Very cool and if you figure it can save you even 10 miles a week, that is 1000 miles over 2 years, at $4/gal. and to make it easy on the math let’s say you get 25mi./gal that adds up to $160 over two years.

GPS traffic maps
Google offers traffic maps for their mobile maps, and although you can access these maps on other phones, the iPhone will make these maps much more accessible and much more widely distributed (at least I hope that they will). As Minneapolis has shown us, idling your car for even three minutes will kill the earth, and also cost you money. Something like half a gallon of gas per hour. With these mobile traffic maps you’ll be able to see what roads are backed up with traffic and avoid many hours of being stuck in traffic. So, if you’re able to avoid even 11 minutes of traffic a week, you’re looking at saving 1200 minutes over two years, which would be another $40 in savings.

Scanned Membership Cards
Lifehacker layed out a great idea for how to carry many store membership and reward cards with you by scanning them, saving them as a picture on your iPhone, and then presenting them to get your savings at your local store. Rather than having to worry about holding onto all of these cards, and packing them all in your wallet for every trip out of the house, just take your iPhone and present your scanned card. I recently went on a trip to California, and was able to signup for a Ralph’s card to save $15 in a single shopping trip. I have no idea where this card is, and won’t use it again, unless I were to signup for yet another card to save $10 or more on my next trip to California. If you didn’t want to take the time to signup for the card more than once, you’d be able to save say $50 a year on club cards that you don’t normally carry with you per year. Over two years that’s another $100 in savings.

Coupons and Special offers from Location Based ads
Through Loopt, Whrrl, Brightkite, as I talked about in a recent video, I expect that we will start recieiving special offers for restaurants and stores that will be of more interest to us. Based on our location and our friends recommendations and behavior we will get much more targeted offers that will bring more value than today’s google adwords ads. If you get an offer for a free appetizer or drink and use the offer every other week, that could be $ every other week, would be about $400 in savings over two years!

Having the same phone for 2 years
Most people get a new cell phone every 18 months. Since the iPhone is so revolutionary, it will be a much easier phone to hold onto for the extra 6 months than your run of the mil Motorola phone. Yes , there will be a new iPhone out before the two year contract is up, but it still won’t be a necessity to buy as, the 3rd generation iPhone will probably only add a better camera, video conferencing, and maybe some new colors. Holding onto a phone for 6 months will save you the equivalent of $20 in that amount of time.

Add up all of those costs and you have saved $920 over two years! Actually giving you an extra $1 over the course of two years! Yes, the iPhone will pay for itself through the amount of money it saves you. It’s just like Steve Jobs is paying you $1 to use the iPhone!

Yes, I know these are stretches, but it was a fun list to put together and it does show that the iPhone will actually be able to help you save money over the life of it’s contract, even if it’s not THIS much.

So everyone, does this math make you want to get to your nearest Apple Store or ATT store come July 11th? I’ll see you all there.

I hang the majority of my shirts, and one of my least favorite houehold tasks to do is laundry, particularly the folding and hanging of clothes after they’re out of the dryer.  Check out what I learned to do today and how I will be folding the rest of my shirts from here on out.  It’s kind of like 7 minute abs, but if someone comes out with 6 minute abs I will switch to the new shirt folding method.

Enjoy. 

VideoJug: How To Fold A T-Shirt In 2 Seconds - Explained

Are you hooked?

Nordstrom has such a personal connection with most of its shoppers that the customers will trust their person shoppers recommendations.  In contrast to Starbucks selling top sellers, this book will be exclusive for Nordstrom, which will also make it special for those Nordstrom moms that spend their days trying to find something to buy.  On top of this, the stores will also be using characters from the book to help decorate this holiday season, bringing even more recognition to the book. 

I know it’s just one book, and I don’t think it can grow much from that, but I think ONE, and only one, book is a great idea for Nordstrom to sell during the holiday season.  Now it comes down to execution. 

[Nordstrom adds story to Christmas canon]

My friend Lach sells (?) a few shirts through Spreadshirt while I’m on the subject.  I’m a big fan of the the Forks shirt he’s selling.

I wish that I had my book "Pour Your Heart Into It" which talks about how Starbucks became the empire it is today (or in ‘99 at least) and gives alot of background on both Howard Schultz and the company itself.  One part in the book that struck a chord with me was when Starbucks wanted to introduce non-fat milk as an option.  Howard would not budge on even offering non-fat as an option until he went in and observed a store and how many people asked for non-fat milk while wearing workout clothes.  He still said that they would not change the default milk from whole because whole milk is what lattes are supposed to be made from (through his experiences in Italy).  Probably 10 years (I can’t fact check without my book) after they introduced non-fat, 1%, 2%, and even breve as options they are now changing their default drink to be 2% rather than whole.

Isn’t this changing the latte from what is supposed to be?  Isn’t this changing the entire coffee and Starbucks experience?  For something that took Howard so long to budge on (to even have an option) it is dissapointing to see them change their core offering.  What I really want to know is why?

Is it because they are trying to stop people from gaining weight?  They fased out all of the trans-fats in their pastry case and offer many more "reduced fat" options in the case now.  Could this be due to the fact that McDonalds was recently sued for the weight problem we have in America?  I would hate this to be the case as it’s not Starbucks, or McDonalds fault for people gaining weight.

Or is it this…the stock hitting an 18 month low.  It has rallied some in the past month, but on June 22 it hit $25.54 and had been on the decline for about a year and a half.  I have a feeling that this is the reason for the change and it is sad to see.  I know the pressures of being a public company and especially of a company that has performed so well are high, but it should not change who you are as a company.  Something that Howard thought was so key to the company was maintaining the consistent coffee and latte experience that he had in Italy.  2% milk is cheaper than whole milk so this will help with the profit margin signficantly.  This paired with the increase in prices starting next week (the second increase in a year) should result in some good numbers next quarter and next year. 

Now as much as I wish they weren’t changing for principal reasons, I think I’m going to buy some Starbucks stock tomorrow after I just wrote this post.