Breathe-Smile » money

The Best Spinner

breathe-smile — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:09:34 +0000

What is The Best Spinner, you ask?

No I’m not talking about the band “Spinner,” and if you’re at all interested in internet marketing then you’ve heard of the hottest article spinner out there at the moment, The Best Spinner.

Writing quality articles is a vital part of any online activity, be it for your article marketing campaign or simply to have quality content up on your sites or blogs. Not everyone can give the time for producing such content, and with multiple sites things get can quickly out of hand. That’s where article spinners come in, to save you massive truck loads of time!

But wait you say, aren’t all article spinners inherently flawed? They just replace synonyms and make a mess out of any readable article, or they take too much time in writing for proper spinnable syntax. Not so for the best spinner.

You see, the way this is different than most article spinners is that is has a nifty little one click feature that will replace your article with a community of synonyms submitted by users like you and me, thereby creating a 90% unique article in seconds flat. Of course it can do the traditional spinning stuff too, but I find this one-click spin feature to be invaluable.

Head over to thebestspinner.com and take a look at all the features for yourself. I can guarantee that you haven’t seen its like before. And on top of that it currently selling at a whopping 45% discount. Grab it while it lasts and you can rest satisfied at the thought of the best $47 spent this year for online marketing.

Click here to find out more about The Best Spinner.

3 Less Common Ways of Using the Internet to Save Money When Shopping

Costs, Part 1 – Opportunity Costs

Ash — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:29:57 +0000

Every time you travel down one path, you miss out on the path you didn’t take. It’s something we rarely think out, because missing something causes regret. We want it all.

But it’s a fact: we can’t have it all. We have limited resources, and it’s good to accept that. At any given time, there’s only so much money (or net worth) we have, but there’s an unlimited number of things we could spend that money on.

Once you can accept the “limited net worth, unlimited stuff to buy” dilemna, you can take steps to deal with it, i.e. by making good choices.
This is where the concept of “opportunity costs” comes in. An opportunity cost is the next best alternative you give up: so if you turn right at the bend, the opportunity cost is the opportunity of walking left.

If I decide to buy lunch at work, I may pop into McDonalds to pick up a cheap, convenient meal for $6. My other choices may have been a more expensive meal, chips and lollies from the vending machine, or a nutritious but time-consuming $3 home-cooked meal. Let’s assume of the remaining choices, I prefer the home-cooked meal: that’s what I’ve given up in favor of the McMeal.

What have I given up? Well, in my list of priorities, the first thing I sacrified was nutrition value. I’m desperately trying to eat healthy on a budget, and McDonald’s is the easiest way to blow both – more expensive, and more unhealthy. The second thing I sacrificed was $3. That’s not much money, but if I think of it in terms of something more tangible – maybe a coffee with a friend, a nice time spent chatting in a cosy cafe – I realize that I did give up something else of value. Finally, I gave up the inconvenience of making a home-cooked meal, which is really the only reason I’d only ever eat at McDonalds (I make a meaner burger at home ). So it really might be worthwhile to give up a cheaper, healthier home-cooked meal in favour of McDonalds if I’m going through a particularly busy time and can’t make time to cook.

That was an easy choice. A more difficult one may be, you want to buy your partner an expensive, romantic dinner. It would be a sumptuous meal and an experience that you’d both remember, and would cost $70 for two people. The next best option for spending that money would be to save towards a holiday. You could, of course, save the money for retirement, but I’m assuming you also want to live a little, strengthen your relationship and create some memories. It’s a tough choice, because both the dinner and the holiday are things you want. How you decide to ultimately spend that money is really up to your priorities. However, the important thing is identifying what you’re giving up. If you pick the dinner, you’ll have to wait a little longer before going on holiday. If you pick the holiday, that’s a special evening you’ve sacrificed.

I think that’s what the importance of opportunity costs really boils down to: acknowledging that they’re there. That you’ve given up something to get something. That your new car represents a new furniture set you didn’t buy. Accepting that opportunity costs exist means admitting that you can’t have it all, and that you’re being realistic about the fact that you need to make choices.

Costs, Part 2 – Sunk Costs is coming soon!

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3 Less Common Ways of Using the Internet to Save Money When Shopping

Ash — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:19:42 +0000

There are so many ways that the internet can help you save money when shopping. There are online shops that are cheaper than brick-and-mortar ones, there are comparison sites, and there are coupon sites. Here are three less ordinary ways I use the internet to save money when I go shopping:

1. Online catalogues
I don’t get some of the catalogues that shops send out, and you may be in the same position, especially if you live a bit further away. Most major stores upload their recent catalogues onto their websites, so you can browse through them before you go shopping.

2. Online stores as a comparison tool
I tend to buy my groceries in store, because the postage is usually quite expensive. However, the three major groceries in Australia (Safeway/Woolworths, Coles and Aldi) all have online stores where you can see the prices of products, and this may be the case for your local grocery as well. This is a neat comparison tool – you can usually rank the product you’re looking to buy in order of unit cost, so you can decide in advance which brand you want to buy. It saves the hassle of trying to do the math in your head at the store. This is especially useful if there are sales on certain items and you’re wondering if the branded item will be cheaper than the generic one.
In addition, you’ll know whether the store actually carries the item you’re looking for, instead of having to wander around the store or trying to track down a sales assistant to ask.

3. Price matching
You can see the price that Store X is offering on their website or their online catalogue, but it’s too far away for you. If you’ve got internet on your mobile phone, walk into your nearest retailer, and show them the price that their competitor is offering. Most of them offer price matching (check the website beforehand to be sure) and they’ll give you a discount. Easy peasy.

Does anyone have any other unusual ways of using the internet to save money when shopping?

How to Follow Your Passion

Ash — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:40:17 +0000

“Work is love made visible.” – Kahlil Gibrail

When you do something you love, you wake up excited, work intensely and happily, and go to bed looking forward to another day of work. It’s not work you force yourself to do for the money, it’s work you love to do, and would do for free or very little pay.

Most of my life, I thought this was an impractical dream. When I was much younger, my writing was much better and my dream was to be a fiction writer. I threw that dream aside because I thought, novelists starve and are poor, I’d rather be a rich banker.

Now that I’m older, I’ve realized that I don’t want to waste my life in a meaningless job, I’d rather earn relatively less, live frugally, and spend my time happily applying myself to something that I love.

Why should you bother to try to find work that you love and find fulfilling?

It makes your days so much brighter, it’s like living in the shade and then suddenly moving into the sunlight. I didn’t really believe how big a difference doing something you love could make, until I started this blog and my other business. Now I think about the blog almost all the time, and what to write and do and so forth and I love it! Doing something you’re passionate about makes your life amazing.
You make the world a better place. You might trivialize your skills or what you love doing, but even if your great love is banking and you become a good banker, you’ll have maybe created new banking products that will really help customers. On the other hand, if you love scrapbooking, and choose to teach others this hobby, you’ll have made their lives more enjoyable. What you love to do doesn’t have to appear to be a great task, like building houses for the homeless, it just has to be something you enjoy. Regardless of what it is, it’ll help other people.

So now maybe you’re convinced that you do want to follow you passions and work on something you love, but how exactly do you go about it?

Believe that it’s possible
This is the first thing you have to do, and something that no-one else seems to talk about. Most people are skeptical about their ability to turn dreams into reality, or to make money doing something they love. You need to believe it’s possible. It’s possible that you can do whatever you want, no matter how crazy it sounds to others. If you try work hard enough, it’s possible to do anything. And if you do something you love, it’ll seem like fun and you’ll work harder than you ever have, without even breaking a sweat.
Believe that you can do anything you want to do, and you will.
Find your passion
You have to look for it, it doesn’t look for you. Try different things, and see what you like. Think about what you already love doing – reading, cooking, tinkering with cars. Some of these may translate into work directly, some may not be things you’d like to do every day.
Convert that passion into work
There are many ways to turn a passion into work. For instance, maybe you love dogs, but you don’t see yourself shampooing them all day in a dog saloon, or looking after them in a kennel. But you might like the idea of becoming a certified dog trainer, and becoming a trainer. On the other hand, you might like writing as well as dogs – hello new dog blog!
Think about how you’ll turn what you love into a job. You could start a business around it, maybe providing supplies, or start a blog, or go to work for someone else in that line of business.
Dip a toe in the water
If you think you’ve found your passion, don’t quit your job to chase your dream. Chances are, it may not be what you ultimately wind up doing, and even if it is, it may be a while till you make money from it.
A good way to dip your toe is to take classes on the side, start a small business on the side, or volunteer to work for someone after work or on the weekends.
Don’t despair if it’s not smooth sailing
It may take a couple of attempts. Maybe the first go, you have too many existing work commitments and can’t study enough. Reduce your work load over time and study up.
Maybe you like design, and decide to be an interior designer. You offer to help out an established designer for free after work and on weekends, so you sit with him while he designs, and go with him shopping and to clients’ houses. You find that, while you like shopping and designing, you don’t really like interacting with high-end customers, over-charging them and acting snooty
So take a step back and identify what went wrong. In this case, it would be the client interaction. So is there any way you can still do design work but not overcharge and deal with high-end customers? Maybe you can start a design magazine – there are many designers who’d love you to showcase their work, and you enjoy talking with them. You can reach a mass market who can then apply those design concepts to their own homes without spending a fortune.
When you identify what you don’t like, you don’t have to incorporate that into your daily life. You may find it tolerable, and worth the opportunity to focus on what you love. Or you may try to redesign your work away from those elements, and switch back to Step 3, converting your passion to work.
Alternatively, you may find that you’re not really that passionate about it and can’t conceive of doing it every day. So you switch back to Step 2, and look for what else you love.
Don’t stress about money
If you do something you love, the money will follow. However, it may be a bit late in following.
Don’t stress about it. This is the advantage of following your passion. You’re not really in it for the money, you may even be just doing it on the side for a while. Sure, it would be nice to get paid to do it, but you’re happy to do it for very little in the beginning, because one or two or three years down the line, you’ll get paid lots for it. Because you love doing it, you’ll work much harder and smarter than other people doing the same thing, who don’t really love it. So the work, projects, clients and responsibility will flow to you, and you’ll be happy to deal with them. Leading to a pay rise or more business.
The key here is persistence. Don’t give up when the going is tough, and pretty soon it’ll be a much smoother journey.
Enjoy

How to Integrate Your Dreams and Your Life

The Two-Step Program to Building a High Net Worth

Ash — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:30:00 +0000

You can inherit wealth, marry for money, or win the jackpot.

Other than that, there are only two possible ways to increase your net worth. Net worth is just the difference between how much you’ve earned and how much you’ve spent.

So you can either save more by being frugal, or you can try to earn more. If you want to become richer, you have to increase that earnings to savings gap. Earning more alone won’t help – how many famous bankruptcies have you heard of? If every pay rise and windfall is spent on new yachts, you’ll still be broke at the end of the day. On the other hand, even if you don’t earn that much but you live well within your means, your net worth will be increasing.

However, while saving is important, there is a limit to how much you can save. You can never spend less than $0, and in reality, there’s a minimum spend that you have to make each month for absolute essentials, as well as some little splurges. Frugality will help, but frugality alone won’t help. That’s why you also need to focus on the other side of the equation. Saving potential is capped, but income can theoretically be unlimited.

Here’s a quick summary of all the ways you can earn more money:

Perform better in your existing career.
Most of us already have existing careers, and while it may be sexy to dream of quitting the job and sailing out into the sunset, what we’ve already got is usually the most realistic way to make more money. You’ve already got existing skills for this job, and clearly people are willing to pay someone with those skills. An easy, low-risk and cheap way to profit from that existing skill and job base is to get better at what you’re already doing. Do your job better, get promoted or move to a new company, earn more money.
This was always the traditional way of thinking. These days we have a more modern spin on it, we network more, change jobs more frequently, and upgrade our skills more often. At the core, however, we’re just getting better at out existing career – whether it’s flipping burgers more efficiently and becoming kitchen-hand at a better-paying restaurant, or building a better software and getting a promotion.
Of course, doing this alone won’t help. But while it’s not glamorous, it is a good place to start.
Invest well
Over the long run, investments will make you “passive income”. This term has been misused a bit, but essentially, you should be putting your money to work for you – getting interest, dividends, or appreciating through maybe share or housing price increases. Personally, I believe in a slightly more hands-on style of investing, and educating yourself about what you’re getting into: the recent crash has made us all aware of the need for awareness. This is an incredibly diverse topic and there are lots of resources available on the web for interested investors.
Do additional work
Can you fit more work into your day? If you can, you can probably earn more money. The scientific term for this activity is “the side hustle”.
Examples of side hustles include part-time work at another employer (assuming there are no conflicts of interest), and small businesses like baby-sitting, pet-walking, pool installation, crafts, and so forth.
Seek a new career
This is the most glamorous of all possible solutions, and the one that attracts most attention.This is also the riskiest of all the possible paths, which is why very few people choose to go down this.
A new career means a great amount of education is required, which is almost always time consuming and expensive. If you’re seeking a job, it means a whole new round of paying your dues. If you’re starting a business, it exposes you to business risk.
However, this is often the most fulfilling of options. Many people choose a new career for the work that they’ll be doing, not the money. This has the effect of enabling them to work longer hours and more intensely – often leading to greater wealth!

The process of accumulating wealth, when broken down, is simplicity in itself. Success is 99% perspiration, and though the path seems simple, sticking to it is quite difficult.

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5 Ways to Practice Extreme Frugality

Ash — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:55:03 +0000

There are two types of frugal people.

There’s the person who’s living quite comfortably, and doesn’t really need to worry about money for basic needs like food or medicine. He/she chooses to live this lifestyle in order to enjoy the benefits of frugal living, and is more concerned with saving for retirement or enjoying life. The other person does need to worry about money: because for some reason or the other, they don’t have as much money as they think they need. It may be that they’ve lost a job recently, or had some kind of emergency. This is forced belt-tightening.

Many of us may have been in the second category at some point in our lives (or may still be there). It’s that stage where you ask, “what else can I do?”

Having lived through the second stage, I’ve found that my approach to money was very different when I had to pinch every penny. This situation is basically all about going minimal.

Even if you don’t have to go so extreme, here’s how I approached extreme frugality:

Buy nothing.
If you have no extra money, there’s no way you can spend on extras. Don’t buy things on credit either. Of course, the caveat is, you’ll have to buy it if it’s an essential (food, medicine, etc). But never buy something that’s not absolutely necessary, and try to pare down the essentials. I don’t consider alchohol an essential – the good stuff is insanely expensive, and the bad stuff makes you ill.
I’ve found that this approach has worked best for me when I physically restrict myself from entering a shop unless I have a shopping list, and of course, if I block ebay on my browser. It’s an unpopular piece of advice, but this is the one way I’ve saved the most money.
I am actually an impulse clothing buyer. I’m ashamed to say that I used to buy cheap clothing on sale… and then never wear them. I also used to buy random things from the Dollar Stores, in the belief that they’d come to use someday. Obviously, they hardly ever did.
I realized I was being wasteful and cluttering up my house, but somehow I just couldn’t stop. However, now that I just don’t allow myself to even enter a store (especially not clothing or Dollar stores) I haven’t managed to buy random, unusable items recently.
Do everything yourself.
Stores charge more for the services they add, so if you’re looking to save money, you should ideally try to provide those services yourself.
How so? Well, I’ve found that eating out is always a more expensive event than cooking at home. Processed vegetables are more expensive than those you have to wash and cut. Plumbers are expensive. And so forth.
So basically, if you have the time, try to do things from scratch by yourself. Since we need to eat everyday, cooking at home from scratch would definitely be on the list. There are other services that you can do yourself too. Learn sewing and fix up or even make your own clothes. Learn haircutting and cut your own hair. If you’re a girlie girl (I am, at times) learn how to give yourself a home facial and pedicure.
However, don’t mess with things that, if botched up, will be expensive to fix. For me, this includes things like plumbing: I could never fix my own toilet. At the same time, it may be worthwhile to build up such skills, especially home repair skills if you own your own house.
Get used items.
If you need something that’s a reusable item (furniture, clothes) try to get it used. Ask you friends and neighbours if they’ve got something to give away, join freecycle, try to get by with borrowing (especially in the case of books), or buy second-hand. It’s really worthwhile to learn to fix things so that you can use something old with confidence – this applies heavily in the case of clothes and furniture.
Don’t stock up with cheap or free items, though. Instead…
Do with less
Use less house and pay lower rent/mortgage/utilities. Use solar power, or at least try to use less electricity and water. Use a smaller car, or take public transport. Living in Melbourne, I don’t love peak hour trains, but I’m saving almost $900/month by not buying a car.
Similarly, buy less stuff for yourself and your house. This will help prevent waste, and will help you to…
Maintain things.
This is actually one of those things that’s expensive in the short-run, but cheaper in the long run, so we’ve got to do a bit of a balancing act. Which is one of the reasons I like minimal living – if it’s not something you really need, give it away because it’ll need maintaining.
For me, maintaining things means keeping them usuable. Do things like run a virus check on your PC, mend your clothes (before they rip even more), clean your house (before it becomes pest-infected and you need to spend even more on pest control).

These are the things that have worked for me, and the kind of things that make people believe that frugal people are boring and have no life. However, this is not how most frugal people spend most of their lives, it’s more like an emergency plan. For someone who’s really worried about money, “having a life” is generally not on their list of priorities.

If you’re not in an emergency belt-tightening situation, these actions can still help you, because they form the basis of most forms of frugal living. You can just look at the extreme money-saving options, and then try to modify them so that you can have some more fun, a bit more time, and less stress. For instance, you may like to incorporate and modify the rule about doing it all yourself, so that you almost always cook at home, but use some pre-prepared time saving items, and occasionally splurge out on fancy dishes.When you’re not in an emergency belt-tightening situation, you also have more leeway and can afford to buy good quality items that will last longer, and make you happier.

Hopefully, some of my future posts about frugal living will be less extreme, and I can talk about how I incorporate frugality into my life without feeling like I have no life, as well as how I spend money to be happier.

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How Does Money Affect Your Life?

Ash — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:59:12 +0000

Studies show that money makes you happier.

If you’re really poor, you don’t doubt that. Even if you’re quite well-off, you still don’t doubt that, but now you want a yatch and a BMW, not just a functioning car. So we all want more money.

But apart from its uses, where does money fit into your life? Well, you can either inherit it, marry it or win it. However, chances are you’re not a Rockefeller, you’d rather marry for love, and your chance of winning the lottery is less than your chance of getting struck by lightening. So you’ve got to earn it.

Most of our adult lives are spent trying to make money. However, every moment spent at a job is a moment lost.

In reality, most of us could live on very little. But there comes a point when we want time more than we want money – time to enjoy life, and to spend with our families. But – d’oh! – we don’t have that time because we’re at work.

As adults, most of us have to do a delicate balancing act between work and play. Unless your work is your play, which makes life easier, but even then you need to carve out time for yourself and your family.

This is why frugality is important to me – it’s not so much a way of saving money, but a way of life. Being frugal gives you the ability to quit the high-paying, high-stress job and do that lower-paying job you love. It gives you money to spend on the important things in life. Being frugal can buy you freedom.

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5 Ways to Buy Happiness

Ash — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:24:30 +0000

Buying happiness and being frugal are not necessarily contradictory. Buying happiness means spending money on things that will actually make you happier, not things you’ll forget. Here are some things you can spend on that really will make you happier:

Time: We all want more time, and money can buy this. You could hire someone to do chores that you don’t want to do. Alternatively, you could sacrifice money by working less.
Relationships: Spend on your significant other, or on your friends. Spend money to socialize. We’re social creatures, and sometimes you need to pay a bit (dinner, drinks, birthday presents, etc) to maintain a healthy social lie.
Experiences: Spend money traveling, doing things and challenging yourself. You’ll appreciate the things you did more than that flat screen tv you bought.
Health: This may seem like no fun at all, but spending money on being healthy increases your happiness over time. Eating better food and exercising more also give you shorter-term gratification in the form of greater energy. Personally, I bought a home cardio machine a few months ago (to save time going to the gym – plus, it was cheaper than membership) and I’ll admit that it’s been worth it.
Your Interests: You may love skiing, or swimming or dancing. Spend money on the activities that you love doing, not the things (wine tasting, golfing) that you think you should be doing but don’t really care about.

I’ll add a caveat: the concept of buying happiness presumes a level of wealth that covers basic necessities. You shouldn’t have to go into debt to buy a night out with your friends or partner. If a bit of fun spending would dampen your finances, you should spend time fixing your finances first.

Have I left anything off the list?

In Pursuit of Happiness