Free light bulbs, easy money in medical experiments, and a stock at 1X earnings

FREE LIGHT BULBS FROM DUKE ENERGY: Duke Energy is giving away free CFL light bulbs for some reason. I signed up yesterday and the website informed me that a shipment of 15 light bulbs is headed my way. Duke Energy also has an online store where they sell CFLs and LEDs at a discount, and they actually have some good deals. The offer is only valid for Duke Energy customers, and yes, they verify this before they let you in on the deal.

TRUE TALES FROM A HUMAN GUINEA PIG: Budgets Are Sexy has a “side hustle” series wherein folks tell about their efforts earning money on the side. The most recent installment: volunteering for medical research. Emily from Evolving Personal Finance gives an account of her experience. In a nutshell:

Benefits

1. You get paid well to do non-taxing activities.
2. You may find out useful medical information, as a direct or indirect result of participating.
3. It can be entertaining, interesting, fun, or educational.

Drawbacks

1. You generally can’t complete studies on your own time or at home, so you need to be at the institution for your appointment during or near normal work hours.
2. There is a fairly direct relationship between pay rate and invasive-ness/inconvenience of the study; therefore, if you are unwilling to be administered drugs or poked and prodded, your hourly rate may not make it worthwhile.
3. Being a guinea pig doesn’t exactly build your resume!
4. You won’t be eligible for every study so your pool may be quite small. Not all studies need healthy volunteers, and some specify age ranges, sex, or certain medical histories.

If you want to find studies near you, go here or here.

A STOCK AVAILABLE AT 1X EARNINGS?: Oddball stocks has turned up another interesting company:

First off Anacomp (ANCPA) is not a Chinese company, a reverse merger or anything shady as far as I can tell.  For curious readers the company’s RFP’s are available online, I was able to find some contracts in a government database as well.  The company is simply small and forgotten, trading far on the fringes of the market.

Anacomp is a document management company that’s been in existence for 40 years.  The company’s business is fairly simple, they scan in documents for customers and provide indexing and online document management services.  This is especially important for customers that are paper heavy, such as the government (who happens to be their largest customer.)  The company provides a valuable service in centralizing document digitalization, storage, and retrieval.  Clients can continue to be paper heavy but offer digital copies if necessary.  The company has two locations, one in Washington DC, the other in Southern California.

Find out why Nate’s long on Anacomp here.

INFLATION PREDICTIONS FROM 1982: One of the Smithsonian blogs has unearthed some 30-year-old inflation predictions from the Omni Future Almanac. As always, predictions from long ago are amusing, which is why you should never try to predict anything. Apparently, inflation back then was so high people thought that professional baseball players would be someday be paid several hundred thousand dollars per year. Have a look: