Family Summer Fun

To continue our coverage of the 8 simple ways to revamp your home budget and save money in 2010, this post will cover savings on your Travel, Vacation and Entertainment category. If you have missed our previous posts about saving money in 2010 please read our previous entry (part 2) here.

Spring is here and summer will come around the corner in no time. Most American families will soon start planning for their yearly summer vacation and I think this post will really be helpful with this planning as far as saving some money. So without further delay here are some of the most important and effective ways to save money on your next summer vacation.

How to save money on your Vacation:

1. Vacations are a necessary part of a balanced and sane life but they can be expensive. You can cut the cost of a vacation significantly by planning and booking ahead of time. Bookmark travel sites for finding inexpensive airfare, hotels, rentals and so on.  If you know your schedule try to book months in advance to save money.
2. Look online for sales and discounts before making a purchase. For example, use travel deal sites like Priceline, Expedia, Travelocity, and Hotels.com before booking so that you can make some comparisons.
3. One unique way to save money on travel is to stay in hostels instead of hotels, they offer much cheaper rooms and a more lively experience.  This is a great solution for younger people, families with children should check ahead to see if private rooms are available.

If you enjoyed this list of ways to save money please share it with others and I know that saving money is a vast topic with tons of info so feel free to add any of your own additional methods in the comments below.

How to Save Money On Your Entertainment:

1. This is another situation where the entertainment book is crucial to your savings.  The closest theater to my house is a Regal Cinemas which charges a whopping $10.00 per adult ticket, the entertainment book contains 12 coupons which let you purchase 2 adult tickets at $7.00 a piece.  That’s a 30% savings and comes out to $6 saved per movie trip.  If you and a friend see just 3 movies this year these savings alone will cover the cost of the book.
   
2. The other option is to see movies in matinee show times, which around here will save you $2 of the ticket price.  This is a good strategy but difficult to pull off on date nights and weekends.

Online Businesses for Moms

“Finding your legitimate online business is becoming one of the best ways to earn an extra income. Many moms are turning to this popular alternative in order to bring in a paycheck and spend more time with their children.” – is the introductory line of this website owned and managed by former radio personality Kelly Land.

Sounds awesome but with the rampant growth of “make money at home” scams is this site viable or just another one of those fly by night, leave your morals at the doors and hand me your credit card website?

I looked more deeply into it and I can say with full honesty that it is hard to call Kelly Land another scam. Is the website going to provide you with a paycheck each week? Hardly!

Moneymakingmommy.com is really just a review site. Mrs Land goes out and explores various make money at home opportunities and recommends some over others. To fully understand those jobs you have to keep in mind that Mrs Land gets paid a commission for each website visitor that ends up signing up for a recommended business oportunity. She is an affiliate and there is nothing wrong with that. Many people do it and for some is a very profitable business.

Most of the time this affiliate model is what she recommends anyhow so again it is hardly something one would call a scam. However it is not really the most balanced and unbiased review of its kind due to Mrs. Land financial gain off of some of the recommended opportunities. However she is really good about filtering out the obvious scams and when one of her recommended businesses turn out to be a horror story she makes sure to remove it from the site and protect future visitors.

And if the affiliate market is what you are looking for check out mega sites like commissionjunction.com or clickbank.com and save yourself commission and entry fees. The above mentioned websites are free to sign up and offer you millions of products you can market to others for a cut of the sales.

So I guess word to the wise is go check out the offerings at moneymakingmommy.com and see if any or which fit your skills and your taste. If the opportunities there sound more and more like you needing to sell some products for a cut, remember that sites like commissionjunction and clickbank (and those are just the major ones other are all over the net) charge no membership fee or start up cost for the same deal.

Oh yeah and the final though is that an online business is different than a job – it’s a business. By that understand that an online business is much of how YOU do it and what YOU do and the results are directly YOURS. Don’t expect to get a paycheck the first week or make money in the first month doing nothing. If you are looking for a steady paycheck than you are looking for a JOB not an online business.

eBay Certification

I try to provide as much experience and focused commentary on this blog as possible. While I know a lot about the Internet and business I am not the Jack of all trades. As such I always look to partner up with creative minds, experienced individuals and experts in their field. It is my pleasure to announce that Trance Henry, an education specialist for eBay will be our resident writer for all things eBay and online sales.

Mr. Henry is an accomplished eBay specialist and a successful business owner. He is also an instructor at John A. Logan Community College in Carterville Illinois and the number 2 eBay specialist in the state of Illinois.

Terance has begun his journey with eBay back in the early 2000 and since has accomplished milestones only few other eBay specialists have. He has sold and brokered anything from Salvador Dali paintings to boats and homes. His experience is truly one of a kind and anyone that wants to start or better their online business has something to learn from his experience.

Mr. Henry is also an active member of his community, the President of Marion Main Street, a consultant on IT matters for the City of Marion Illinois, City of Harrisburg Illinois and numerous million dollar businesses in the area. He is also the marketing mind behind SI Small Business Solutions, an internet promotion, design and marketing company servicing clients worldwide.

Please come to Tenaweek.org frequently and read up on his posts and I will assure you that his words, ideas and inside information will be tremendously helpful to your future endeavors, online or elsewhere.

Make Money on eBay

For the last 9 years I’ve been ask how to sell successfully on eBay.  Ebay is the place where today, for example, 1.3 million people in the world make a living on the internet. VMEUXA3996NB

eBay continues to attract people who would like to make a portion of their living selling online. Of course, there’s a big difference be­tween making a buck and making a living, between a sometime-thing and a steady gig. I’ve been paid a few times to play the guitar—it doesn’t make me a professional musician.  There’s a lot that goes into making a living on eBay that some people need to think about first before becoming a seller. First you will need to determine just how serious you are about becoming an eBay seller, it takes a lot of time and research.  You will spend a lot of time taken pictures, answering emails & phone calls, as well as determining just how much your product is worth. 

Many eBay members who have never sold a thing on eBay have more than a passing interest in selling but don’t quite know how to get started. Sometimes the most difficult part of selling is simply knowing what to sell—especially if you don’t own your own business or have other obvious caches of products in your life just waiting to be shifted to buyers.

The most typical bit of advice given to members in this situation is “just look around you—you’ll find things to sell,” but it isn’t always easy to think in sellers’ terms when you’re not used to selling via online auctions, especially if you don’t have “eBay business” aspirations.

If this sounds like you, here are five simple ideas for types of things to sell in your first eBay auction. They’re common, present around most households, easy to ship, and not so high in value that you need to worry about serious transactional problems.

It’s a pretty simple list, but it’s also a pretty simple prospect: for your first sale on eBay, find something that has value, isn’t so common that people would rather just buy it at the local store, is functional and in good condition, is easy to ship, and isn’t worth so much either monetarily or sentimentally that it’s an overwhelming task for your first sale.

Remember that photos always help, detailed descriptions (with any needed caveats) are absolutely essential, shipment, carefully packed, follows soon after the auction ends, and of course remember also that buyers are people, too—people that may want to buy whatever you have around to sell.

Most of all, don’t wait any longer—just do it. Identify an item that could stand to go and list it. If the auction closes with bidder(s), you’ve made your first eBay sale. If it doesn’t draw any bids, not to worry—nothing ventured, nothing gained. It’s not a popularity contest. Find something else and try again.

Once you start listing, it’s only a matter of time until your first sale (which almost always occurs on a seller’s first try). Once your first sale is complete, your second one won’t be far behind.

I would love to hear your comments.

Courtesy Associated Press

With all the buzz in our daily lives, one begs the question, “who has times to clip coupons and for what – save a dollar on cat food or some off brand detergent?“. Well guys, The Wall Street Journal published a great article  with in depth statistics and numbers on the matter of coupons. According to the article, surprisingly a lot of families! More and more Americans are going back to the coupon – mostly due to the American depression we are in. Last year alone the american people have used 3.3 billion coupons a staggering 27% rise since 2008, while online coupon redemption have rose by more than 360 %.

So why is the “Great American Coupon” so popular again?
To answer that question one would have to first find out why have they ever fell out of style. Answer is really common sense – you have to collect a bunch of fliers from your mailbox, read every single one and find items you usually buy, remember to bring those coupons with you at the store when you go shopping and remember to also use them at the cash register. I for one have done all except for remembering to use them at the cash register and only realizing it when I get home and empty my pockets . Well not much of what I wrote about has changed nor will it ever change, so then again why did we as a nation increase the use of coupons so dramatically?
Let’s deal with this in the old fashioned way – simple math.
According to Inmar Inc, the largest coupon processing agent in U.S., the average savings per coupon is $1.44.
Now we can argue all day how to calculate the time it takes to clip a coupon but for the sake or this article I will round it up to 1 minute per coupon.
That tells me that if I can save $1.44 per minute that equal to an hourly wage of $86.40.

For majority of Americans lucky enough to have a job nowadays, the daily grind at work only brings them an average of $18.70/hour according to the Department of Labor.

In case that didn’t sink in yet let me say it again – that is $86.40 a hour for a job you can do in your house, on your couch in front of your TV. Better yet, unlike the income you receive for your hard day at work, this one is TAX FREE!

An average American family can easily save $20 a week in groceries using coupons. While that is not a huge amount, it also means $80 a month or $960 a year. Over a lifetime this will add well over $100,000 – even if you account for inflation.

So why are then 90% of coupons thrown away unused? Well is because as humans we fail to threat small amount just like big amounts. If you could save $140 per coupon instead of the average $1.44 then I am positive that there will be no coupon ever thrown away, more over, people will be robbing your mailbox to get your coupon books. But since it is only a matter of cents, we brush it off as not worth it, failing to look at the big picture and how much small amounts add up to.
Click Here for a great book on how organize and make the most out of your grocery coupons and maybe you won’t be like me – returning home with them in my pocket :0!

Lesson to take home – start using coupons, is like making $86.40 an hour and is money that is given to you FREE courtesy of your grocery stores. Realize that the simple rules of mathematics tell you that small amounts when many add up to a large sum.

As an owner of a small business is not as important what your 1040 says but what you really take out of your business. There are so many ways you can get paid as an owner of a small business  without being charged tax on. All you have to do is keep a good – and I mean great – record of your books and understand the tax laws and how you can play on them.

What if I tell you that you can have your mortgage paid for by your business without ever paying a dime of tax on it?  Better yet what if I tell you that you can have cars and boats all paid for by the company you own? Is not a pipe dream is a reality and is all legal.. .. Look I sound like a telemarketer… but I’ll explain…

Corporation Loop Holes

So you got a company and you are incorporated… awesome. You obviously picked this form of business for a reason – or many for that matter! Let’s skip how awesome you are for separating your personal assets from corporate liabilities – for more on that you should read post on GoodFinacialCents.com ran by my good friend Jeff Rose CFP. Let’s focus on how you can get paid – legally – tax free.

Do you do any work at home? Guess what you can deduct your square footage mortgage each and every month. Lets say you have a 2000 sqft house and your home office that you work out of is 500 sqft. That adds up to a 1/4 of your home square footage. Guess what you can get paid – deduct – 1/4 of your mortgage expense each and every month without having to pay taxes on it. How about that phone line and internet connection – yes they do qualify each.

Expense Accounts!

You’re big shot now!. You own your own company, you have a top shelf position in your own organization and as such every top dog must have an expense account. You can use that as you wish, whether it is to buy expensive artwork off of Ebay or party with super stars. Bottom line is that is a tax free account for you and a contractual liability for your company. I have many friends that don’t even get a paycheck – well none you can speak of, but they drive Maserati’s – and they are very well off just living off the expense accounts their own company allows them. So you know what give yourself one and use that cash to pay your bills and groceries cause no one care how you use it. But on the other hand if you pay yourself a paycheck you will end up having to pay  tons of taxes on it.

Mileage, Mileage, Mileage….

Got a car… Well that is a deduction and more over a tax loop hole. Every time you drive for business or else you can deduct up to $0.51 a mile as long as the car is registered on your companies name. So make sure that next time you purchase a car you register it under your company name and you just set yourself up for another loop hole – you got yout insurance, gas and wear and tear deducted from your corporate income tax.

There are tons of other ways to save money on taxes and still take home the bacon from your own small business. Come back soon and read my other post on taxation and small business ownership.

Yeah here is another one, but unlike what you may think you gonna find here – namely a sleazy pitch to buy my book or my “method” – please spend the 10 minutes and read this blog as it will help you prevent falling victim to the countless online business scams out there. Give me your ten minutes and save about $500 bucks or more that you will end up paying on some useless, good for nothing so called “methods” out there.

Before you take my word on anything I will write in this blog let me tell you why I write it and also why I know what I am talking about. You know that guy at 3AM on some random cable station telling you how he made a fortune on this one very well kept secret? Know the guy sitting by the pool sipping his Margarita and lecturing you on how you can do this too? Well that could be me. I own a very successful online marketing business and on any given day I could sit there and lecture you how to buy my product and make a fortune. Why I am not doing it – its f-ing immoral and is down right A LIE!

The Truth About Online Business & Make Money at Home Scams!

In a nutshell those programs are all the same. They will sell you a dream and make sure you pay dearly for it. They do not sell you a product – show me one page where they actually tell you how it works before you buy – they sell you the dream, or as I call it, “the pipe dream”. All those websites devote ample time giving you so called real life examples of their followers making tons of money and doing nothing. The all so familiar single mother that needed some extra income, the laid off father that needed money to support his kids and family, the stay at home mom that needed a little more money to supplement the family income. All those sites have the same story to the T. Why? Cause it works!. Yes it does, after reading 8 pages of how successful all this guy’s customers are and looking at his $49.99 price you figure, heck what is 50 bucks lets try it and I too could sit by the pool in the keys sipping pina coladas.

So the truth is that you are buying the story behind the product not the product itself, as the product itself is not even described or presented to you. Rather it is vaguely mentioned as the vehicle for attaining the dream. The other truth is, those products are usually a list of information that you could have otherwise obtained for free just doing a few simple searches on Google – how do you think those guys got it to begin with?

How to spot the scams!

I guess telling you those so called programs and opportunities are a scam is not really gonna save you money and anguish, but telling you how to spot them will actually do that. So let me break down the basics of how those things work and if you spot those items hopefully you’ll run away and look for something else.

1. Your are doing nothing and the program makes money for you. Really is that even believable? I guess after reading from all sort of clowns telling you how they make 20K a month off of this program it may sound doable but let me tell you it is not. What in the world actually works continuously without taking any kind of maintenance and work? Nothing is physically impossible. You need energy to power anything. In this scenario work put into a business will be the energy to power that business. But how sell-able would it sound ” Hey work a lot and make a lot of money?” Not so easy to sell that dream huh… we all heard of it in kindergarten.
2. I have found this secret that made me money and now I am sharing it with you. Wow you just found the popes website. No really you did not… what would posses one business man to give away his/her secrets? Companies and legit businesses go through great expenses to protect this very single secret of how they do their business and make money why would this guy just sell it to you for a low low price…:).
3. The site is actually just one very long page with a lot of BUY NOW links and lot more testimonials. For some reason this has proven to be the most effective way of getting people to fall for scams like this – a long page with nothing but pipe dreams and stories of past customers who are now filthy rich. From time to time – almost after every testimonial – there will be a link on how you can buy now or enroll now. If you spot a site that seams to never end no matter how much you scroll down, its written in a big font so that you can see it from the other room – well use some caution because most likely is a scam site.
4. Cliche Hook Lines. “Supplement your income from home” or “Online Money for Single Mothers” or “Get Rich from Home” or “Best Kept Secret to make money from home” and the million other variation of those lines. Pretty much as soon as you read those lines you will visualize some sleazy used car salesman and his crooked smile. Follow you instinct and trust them just as much as you trust that used car sales person trying to put you in this awesome, perfect condition Ford Pinto for only $10K.

All in all if you are weary of the sites you are on and you are able to pick up little tell-tell signs like the ones above you will do pretty good at staying out of trouble. Look for very legitimate offers such as the ones backed up for some sort of a governmental organization – no “The Office of Make Money at Home” is not a government agency – or the small business administration (SBA). Check the merchants Better Business Bureau file and most importantly do a search for the guy/ business name on Google. Chances are if he is a scam-er someone has wrote a complaint about him and Google will have it.