aruba
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Cyberspace Communications finances for September 2001
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Oct 1 02:01 UTC 2001 |
Here is the treasurer's report on Cyberspace Communications, Inc. finances
through September 30th, 2001.
Beginning Balance $4,547.52
Credits $672.00 Member contributions
$104.00 Proceeds from the 6th Grex Auction
$1,024.00 Donations to the Infrastructure Fund
$28.00 Miscellaneous donations
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$1,828.00
Debits $72.93 Pumpkin Rent for October
$45.97 Electricity for September
$175.66 Phone Bill
$135.00 DSL September 15 through October 15
$2.04 Paypal fees (income = $65)
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$431.60
Ending Balance $5,943.92
Our current balance breaks down as follows:
$4,718.06 General Fund
$141.86 Silly Hat Fund
$60.00 Spare Parts Fund
$1,024.00 Infrastructure Fund
The money is distributed like this:
$5,443.92 Checking account
$500.00 8-month 3.00% CD which comes due 5/28/2002
There was no activity in the Grex store this month, so the balances remain at:
Cash Stock
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$149.40 $162.10
We had two new members (gelinas and bhoward) in September. We are currently
at 91 members, 87 of whom are paid through at least October 15th. (The
others expire today or expired recently and are in a grace period.)
Notes:
- Grex received a check for $1,024 "to be used towards improving Grex's
hardware and sowtware infrastructure, but not towards recurring costs such
as rent & electricity unless absolutely necessary". The donor would like
to remain anonymous, but can receive our thanks nonetheless. Thanks! We've
never received a check that big before.
- I *finally* got around to doing something about earning some interest with
our money. On September 10th, I went to TCF (our bank) and asked about CDs.
They allow people to buy CDs for any number of months, but certain time
periods are "specials" which get much higher interest than all the others.
5 months was one of the "special" intervals, and had been for some time,
according to Tina, the woman who explained it to me.
Tina was getting help from Katherine, who seems to have been at the bank a
long time and to know what's going on better than anyone else around.
Katherine suggested that rather than open one big CD we might want to split
the money among several, and stagger them. Which is to say, open one this
month, one next month, etc. That way, there will always be one due soon.
So the plan I formed was to open one five-month CD each month for 5 months.
But then September 11th happened, and naturally everything changed. The
board members at the September meeting had agreed to the above plan, but
when I got to the bank to try to implement it, I found that 5 months was no
longer a "special" time period. The shortest special time was 8 months, and
the interest rate was down to 3.00%.
So I went ahead and put $500 (the mimimum) into an 8-month CD. That will
net us a whopping $10 when it comes due on May 28th.
When a CD comes due, we have one week to remove the money, else it
automatically renews for the same period at whatever the current rate for
that period is. So if, come May 28th, 8 months is no longer a "special"
period, we will get stuck with a lousy rate for the next 8 months. So the
current plan will require the treasurer to be very on the ball at the times
when CDs come due. This is kind of a pain.
So I'm re-thinking whether this is a good plan, and maybe we should find a
money market after all. I sure don't want to open this subject up again
(I'm thoroughly sick of it), but maybe we need to.
Thanks to everyone who contributed in September:
arthurp, aruba, bhoward, bruin, dantana, devnull, dpc, gelinas, glenda, krj,
mary's coworker Scott Arnold, mooncat, robh, steve, tomaso, and one person
who wished to remain anonymous.
Thanks everyone!
If you or your institution would like to become a member of Grex, it only
costs $6/month or $60/year. Send money to:
Cyberspace Communications
P. O. Box 4432
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-4432
If you pay by cash or money order, please include a photocopy of some form of
ID. I can't add you to the rolls without ID. (If you pay with a personal
check that has your name pre-printed on it, we consider that a good enough
ID.) Type !support or see http://www.cyberspace.org/member.html for more
info.
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aruba
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response 10 of 12:
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Oct 2 16:05 UTC 2001 |
Yes, the stock number is the total cost (to us) of all the items we have
remaining to sell. The cash number started out negative, with absolute
value equal to the amount we paid to buy the initial batch of T-shirts.
That included the cost of each shirt and also the "screen fee" (or whatever
they called it) - the overhead for setting up the printing process.
As we've sold items, I've added the amount we received for them to the cash
number, and just last April it finally turned positive, indicating that the
Grex store has made a profit.
The reason those numbers are on the report is that some people (I remember
Mary Remmers in particular) were dubious about the idea of having a "Grex
Store", and wanted to make sure we kept track of what went into and out of
it, so we didn't mislead ourselves about whether it was making us money or
not.
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mdw
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response 11 of 12:
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Oct 2 21:29 UTC 2001 |
Musical instruments -- well, like violins and stuff. They're relatively
expensive, compact, and even in hard times, tend to appreciate in value,
if carefully chosen. One of the advantages in investing in musical
instruments is there really aren't a whole lot of short cuts to be made.
Fiberglass just isn't as good as good as wood for violins, and there is
still a lot that is done by hand, especially for the better ones. It's
kinda like investing in gold, except in the last 3 decades, musical
instruments have done much better than gold, and at times have
outperformed the stock market. Gold, in comparison, has done only
slightly better than stuffing the money under the mattress.
On grex, of course, we invest in computer hardware, which does worse
than any of the above categories.
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