Our club is a member of Better Investing. I believe we pay
$40 a year.

I think membership used to provide a lower price for CA
and/or CA support. We've switched to bivio. (Yay!) The price
for AccountSync appears to be the same whether our club is a
BI member or not.

The only other benefit that I'm aware of, to a club being a
BI member, is that members of the club could obtain a BI
membership for $25, instead of $40. But the BI site now
offers an individual membership for $25. Details at:
http://www.betterinvesting.org/Members/Store/Membership/Individual/IndividualRenewDetail.htm

In short, I don't see that our club gets anything for its
$40 (oh, maybe Barron's & some S&P reports in unreadably
small print). Am I overlooking anything?

Mike Carroll
VistosoVIP

I see the link in the above post only works if I'm already
logged in to the BI web site. If I log out, it asks me to
log in. The "individual standard membership" rate of $25 is
only available to BI members who renew, apparently. If
you're not already a member, you have to pay $79/year to
join.

So maybe a club can get new members in at the $25/year
price. That's not clear from anything at the web site.

I'm pretty much fed up with BI, myself.

Mike Carroll

Hi Mike,

Regarding BI, you are overlooking the bond for the treasurer. It's extra,
but you have the opportunity (privilege?) to pay for it. So in other words,
No. You are not missing anything.

My club left BI 3 years ago after the club dues were raised to the point
where the $40 didn't garner any discounts. Plus, management promised us
stuff for the price hike and never followed through. We simply couldn't
justify the $40 anymore.

Now, since the StockCentral data files have come out of beta testing, we saw
no reason to keep our individual memberships, either. Everyone is a member
of StockCentral at $39/year. They give us online tools, messageboards,
including an IClub technical support board, onine education presentations
and data files for that price. About 2/3 of our members are also members of
Manifest Investing. More education! More support. The BI Forum on
CompuServe is still very active and provides even more support.

We do still require our members to own Toolkit, and we use the Pert Reports
for our meetings. But even then, as IClub improves its online tool
offerings over the next couple years...we may quit requiring that, too.

One thing I will scream from the rooftops is that Bivio is the best offering
in the accounting arena. Rob and crew are very talented and they are very
attentive. We will always call Bivio home.

Lynn Ostrem, VP
garbagecop@earthlink.net
Crow River Investment Club
www.bivio.com/crowriver

> The "individual standard membership" rate of $25 is
> only available to BI members who renew, apparently. If
> you're not already a member, you have to pay $79/year to
> join.

Mike, I believe the renewal rate only gets you the magazine. You won't get
data files or access to the "premium" portions of the BI website...which is
a substantial portion of the BI website! Where they will get you is the
increase in the cost of the data files. Gene Rooks will probably chime in
here with better information.

> So maybe a club can get new members in at the $25/year
> price. That's not clear from anything at the web site.

Not a chance, baby!! <G>

> I'm pretty much fed up with BI, myself.

Welcome to the club.

Lynn Ostrem, VP
garbagecop@earthlink.net
Crow River Investment Club
www.bivio.com/crowriver

Lynn Ostrem wrote:

> My club left BI 3 years ago...

I'm going to recommend that we do that too.

> Now, since the StockCentral data files have come out of
> beta testing, we saw no reason to keep our individual
> memberships, either.

Yes, that's what I'm going to do.

> One thing I will scream from the rooftops is that Bivio is the > best offering in the accounting arena.

May I scream along with you?

Thanks for your comments.

Mike

> Now, since the StockCentral data files
> have come out of beta testing ...

What makes you think the StockCentral data (or anything else
at StockCentral) is out of beta testing?

The logo at the top left of every web page at
www.stockcentral.com says "beta".

-Jim Thomas

> So maybe a club can get new
> members in at the $25/year price.

It's my understanding that new members can join clubs formed
before 2/1/2007 for $25/year. Of course, as before, such
members don't get access to any electronic data or the
on-line tools at that price.

Such members can add the S&P Stock Data Service for an
additional $25/year. The S&P Mutual Fund Data Service and
Online Analysis Tools can be added for $35/year more. Or,
instead, all optional BI tools/data can be added for
$59/year.

This information is in the BI "Membership Matrix" on the BI
website in the Volunteer area under "Headquarters". I don't
know how (or if) people who are not chapter volunteers are
supposed to access this information.

-Jim Thomas

Jim,

I was told that the data files came out of beta when they started charging
for them, but the website is still in beta. If you question that, go to Joe
Craig.

Lynn

> > Now, since the StockCentral data files
> > have come out of beta testing ...
 
We tend to think of "beta" more in the Google sense -- my gmail account is "beta" four years later ...
 
I don't believe that anyone involved in StockCentral has said that anything has "come out of beta" but we do believe that everything is fairly mature.
 
We're still tweaking the data files, and expect to have something to say definitively and compartively about them "soon" ... hopefully a matter of weeks. In spite of that, we believe that the data is worthy of use by everyone.
 
And ... we're still adding features.
 
I think that the best place to discuss StockCentral, data quality, tools, etc. really is a tthe StockCentral site. So ... drop over to StockCentral.com ...