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Show E4 The Salt Lake Tribune BUSINESS Small Ways to Save Big Money Y2K Fears Keep Energy Personne! on Edge For Your Financial Future Powergrid shouldn’t have problems, but sabotage threat remains SAVINGS GAME Two myths persistin personal finance despite over- whelming evidence to the contrary. Myth No. 1: Whenyou're struggling just to pay thebills, BY JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA how can you even think about saving money? Myth No. 2: Evenif you manage to save a few dollars, there’s noplace you can invest small amounts andget a good return. That's whatdozens of you told me in response to a column aboutthefact that many Americans believe the easiest way to accumulate wealth is to win the lottery,not to save andinvest. Let's demolish the myths, starting with howharditis to save. Here are justa few ideas: Do onebetter than simply renting videos insteadof going ‘THE ASSOCIATED PRESS HUMBERTO CRUZ So have weestablished that it is possible to save, say, at least $20 a week? In fact, 66 percent of working Americans say it is possible, typically by cutting down oneating out and entertainment, according to this year’s Retirement Confidence Survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and to the movies. Check outthe videos,for free, at the public library. @ Take advantage of “90 the American Savings Educa- days sameas cash” deals by putting the purchase moneyin athree-month CDandcollecting to investit for the future is to tion Council. Nowthat wehave saved the theinterest until the paymentis Gue. Draw up a menufor your family for the whole month so whenyougoto the grocery store you buyonly the things you ns Getrid of your longdistance carrier and use a prepaid phone card instead (of course, check to makesure this works for you based on how manycalls you make, for how long and when). Be ready to switch iong-distance carriers, then switchagain,taking advantage ofthe bestoffers. Wi Find anotherfamily in the neighborhood with which you can swap baby-sitters. @ Barterotherservices with friends and neighbors. Yousay only I could come up with these ideas? Wrongagain. These suggestions are not mine but camefrom the audience at a money, whatdo we dowith it? Theeasiest and painless way put money awayin a 401(k) or similar employer-sponsored retirementplan. Butit’s not the only waybyfar. During a quicksearchat the Website of the Mutual Fund Education Alliance, www.infea.com,I found 580 fundsthatlet you get started with aslittle as $100.if you could just save $20 a weekfor five weeks, you'd have enough to open an account. Wantto putoff paying taxes with a tax-deferred annuity? TIAA-CREF (800-223-1200)offers the lowest-cost annuity in the business andall you need to open oneis either $250 up front or a commitmentto put in at least $25 a month. Don’t wantto risk your moneyin a mutual fund or annuity? You can now buyU.S. savings bonds online at www.savingsbonds.gov and charge themto your credit card foras little as $25 a transaction for a Series EE bond with a $50 face value. Transactions are secure and there’s no extra “People are more creative than I am. That’s why I asked charge for theservice.If you'd rather notgo onlineto buy, you can call thetoll-free number the audience,”saidcertified financial planner Jodi Perez, whotaughtthe workshop and asked for the savings sugges- 877-811-7283 to set up automatic investments from your bank tions. Perez’ ideas (more traditional but they work too) included eating out and going Outto the movies less often, cut- account, again with a minimum of $25 Historically, savings bonds have not been very exciting investments, but today the ting down onthe grocery bill Series I or inflation-indexed whynotall five?) bondis paying a rather handsome 6.98 percentinterest rate for six months if you buy by and taking your lunch to work at least two days a week.(I say, Butlet's give Perez creditfor creativity too. Her husband, April 30. I don’t have the space to go intoall the details today part-ownerof a wholesale plumbingsupplier, has helped butwill do so next week. heaterandfix other plumbing problems “and they'll come over and do something for us,” Springs, Fla. Write him c/o Tri- neighbors install a hot water batasaid. “It worksreally wel FOLSOM,Calif. — To pierce the heart of California's $23 billion electric power grid, Y2K terrorists would have to steal Ed Riley's hands. Riley, operations director of the agency known as the California Independent System Operator (SO), has negotiated his way past a receptionist, security cameras and roving guards to reach Mis- sion Control, buried in an ‘ked building in a lookoffice park in suburban Sacramento. At the threshold ofthe grid’s commandcenter, he high-fives a fingerprint scanner. A green reads his unique pattern of fingerprint whorls and palm creases to satisfy the grid’s computer — Y2K compliant, of course — that the man standing at the door is really Ed Riley. The boss. Click. Enter. Windowless and larger than a workshopon budgeting I attended during a personalfinance seminar in Tampa last month. Sunday, December 26, 1999 Humberto Cruz lives in Coral movie theater, the room could be the set for the next James Bond thriller. Workers confer in whispers at 12 banks of computers. They are dwarfed by a mosaic map of California’s power grid and its exten- sions from British Columbia to Baja. The map extends 160 feet — so long the wall must bend to accommodate it. Byitself, the California grid is thefifth largest in the world. Yet, it is but one corner of the nation’s electrical system power — an omnipresent but poorly understood web of generating plants, transmission lines and transformers that combine to American cities and towns twinkle like stars in a y. Now, Y2Kfears have bestowed anotherdescription on the power grid: Vulnerable. “The grid is only as strong as its weakest member,” said Rick Cowles, a New Jersey-based utili- ties consultant whotestified at Senate Y2K hearings. “The first end-to-end test we'll have is durx the actual transition to Januie can’t worry about the entire nation. His job is to keep the most populous state from plunging into a blackout at the dawn ofthe new millennium. Every four seconds, he receives a status report on the constant torrent of electrons as they are generated at 700 power plants and race down transmission lines bune Media Services, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1400, Chi- ProTel, Inc. lion of the world’s most energyinsatiable consumers. Every light bulb. Every coffee maker. Every computer. Every curling iron. About600 billion billion (that’s right: 600 billion billion) electrons a second must flow through the filamentof a 100-watt bulb so you and your child can read about Harry Potter's latest adventures at the Wizard School. Until the Y2K should be an ordinary winter’s night for power consumption and reliability, they say, and they warn people not to jumpto conclusions if their lights should go out. After all, house- holds already spend up to 72 hours a year on average without electricity because of system hiccups and weather-related power interruptions, said John Koskinen, President Clinton’s top Y2K expert. They recommend taking rou- lights flicker, few people think tine precautions: food, water, batteries and blankets sufficient for a few days. Utility operators in California and nationwide hope to keep it that way. They are confident that Y2K will pass without a cata- “Theelectrical utility industry is ready for the millennium roll- about whatit takes to keep them on. strophic poweroutage,or at least one oftheir own mak: The industry has spent as much as $4.5 billion to replace or reprogram computers that might have otherwise convulsed at the stroke of 2000. Some individual utilities required $70 million in repairs. e portions of the national grid, including California’s system, passed a Y2K simulation on September 9. Since then,the U.S. Department of Energy and other agencies have certified that the grid — including nuclearstations — poses nosignificant worries. ities over,” declared Michael Gent, president of the North American Electric Reliability Council, the grid’s overseer. Yet Y2K remains Riley’s torment. “T worry about crackpots,” he said. “Mybiggest fear is that some nuts will try to blow up a trans- mission tower.” Paranoid? Consider recent events. bomb a 24million-gallon liquid propanefacility in Elk Grove, about 30 minutes from the California ISO. It’s here, in the ee ISO's commandcenter, that would try to contain the “ten from an attack by trying to reroute power to other lines secol “The FBI is chasing down every lead related to Y2K,” Riley said. “We've heightened security at all of our facilities, It’s a huge task that extends to every cornerof the United States, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico. The national grid consists of more than 3,000 power plants — fueled by coal, oil, gas, nuclear fission, water and wind. Combined they generate 824,569 mega- watts at the peak ofthe summer. There's no battery big enough to store such vast amounts of energy. So the system operates 365 days a year. It's at this stage of the grid — where electricity is made — that hundreds of thousands of comput- to smuggle a carload of bomb- ers and software programs, as well as embedded microchips, automatically operate and moni- ‘ing materials aboard a ferry into Washingtonstate. On Dec. 4, federal agents arrested two men for plotting to See next page On Dec. 18, an Algerian man was charged with allegedly trying tor key components. Ina conventional power plant, iapeate es Gearee aeranae SSissieenaeesese: is INTER-T=EL HCruz5040@aol.com. monaaeiior www. MILLS, spanning 124,000 square miles. His system crackles with 46,000 megawatts of juice serving 27 mil- Utah's oldest and largest cago, IL 60611. Send e-mail to CRUSHERS, ‘Rich Pedroncelli/The Associated Press Ed Riley,director of grid operations for the Califomia Independent System Operator,sits in the control centerin Folsom, Calif., where the powergrid stretching from Canada to Mexico is monitored. a CYCLONES, The Utah Industrial Depotfits the needs of every new tenant, from protective tarp AGITATORS, MOBILE EQUIPMENT. ing to i justrial mining equip t. It’s i how much ATLAS MINE & MILL WILL HELP priced industrial / commercial space we haveto offer: 1,700 acres, 700 acres ofindustrial YOUR COMPANY FIND THE land, 3 million square feet of building space for sale or lease. 258 buildings, MOST RELIABLE USED MINING twelve 90,000 square foot warehouses, all with easy rail, air and freeway access EQUIPMENT IN THE WORLD. PICK and a considerable work force close at hand. We mine the way to expansion ATLAS TO ASSIST YOU WITH ANY and profit. Our commercial / industrial space is available immediately. MINER DETAIL. 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