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Toxic People

Business, Life

You should never be in the company of anyone with whom you would not want to die.

-Duncan Idaho, from God-Emperor of Dune

Some people suck the life out of everyone they encounter.   Whether it be through lies, unreasonable demands, emotional abuse or manipulation, or just a vile personalty, the people they meet are worse off for the encounter.   The people they interact with every day are screwed.

My time is too precious to waste any of it unnecessarily on people who remove value from it.   I like being with people who enrich my life, instead.

Unfortunately, since I’m not an advocate for the use of hitmen, not every toxic person is easy to eliminate from your life.

Toxic people come in 3 basic varieties:  professional, personal, and family.   There is some overlap between the categories.

The personal category is easiest to deal with.  These people aren’t relatives or coworkers, so you won’t see them at family gatherings or at work.     I’ve dealt with these people in two ways.

First, there is the direct approach.  One former friend, who was really only a friend when it was convenient for him(a pure leech), got told that he wasn’t invited to one of our parties because I was inviting his ex-wife, instead.    That was the last time he called me.

The second option is far more passive.   I set up a contact group in my phone called “Life’s too short”.   At first, I set it up with a fairly insulting ring tone, but I later switched it to no ring at all.   I don’t know they’ve called until I check my voicemail.   It’s far less direct, but also far easier than the direct approach.

Dealing with the toxic people in your family is more complicated.   You’ll see them at holiday gatherings, or hear about them during unrelated visits.   You probably have a lot of memories growing up with them, and may feel some level of obligation–deserved or not–to maintain contact.   It’s hard to break a tie that you’ve had your entire life.

Can you fix their behavior?  It’s worth trying to have a frank discussion about how they are treating you, or the things they are doing.    If the problem is that they are constantly bringing over their methhead boyfriends, banning the drug addicts from your home, while still welcoming the relative may be an acceptable fix.  If the problem is a constant need to belittle you, demanding they stop may work.   If the problem is a lifetime of emotional abuse, it probably isn’t fixable.

Is banishment an option?   Can you put that creepy cousin on the Life’s Too Short list?  You’ll still have to deal with him at family gatherings, but you can always leave the room when he comes in, right?   Don’t engage, don’t participate in any conversation beyond a polite greeting, and don’t offer any encouragement towards regular contact.

It’s possible that it won’t be possible to fix their behavior and that you won’t want to banish the offender.   If, for example, the offender is your mother (Not you, Mom!), you may feel a sense of obligation to maintain contact, or even be a primary caregiver at times.     This is a line nobody else can draw for you.   At some point, the current bad behavior could overwhelm the past obligations.   When that happens are you prepared for it?  That can be a traumatic break.

The other option, as cold as it sounds, is to wait it out.  Nature will take its course, eventually.   Can you wait that long, while maintaining your sanity and emotional equilibrium?

Professional toxic people include customers, vendors, and coworkers, none of whom are easy to get rid of.

If you own the business, you can fire your problem customers if the hassle outweighs the benefits you get from the relationship.   You can find a new vendor, and you can fire the problem employees.

What happens if you are an employee?

If the problem is your boss, your options are to suck it up, talk to his boss, or find a new job.   If the first is intolerable, and the second is impossible, it’s time to polish your resume.

If the problem is a vendor, you’ve got some options.   Document the problems, first.  Does he make inappropriate jokes, or badmouth you to your customers?  Then, research the alternatives.   Does one of his competitors offer an equivalent product or service?  Take the documentation and research to your boss, or whoever makes that decision, and see if you can get your company to make the switch.  The other option, is to request someone new to deal with at the vendor’s company, but that may not always be possible.

Finally, we come to the problem of toxic coworkers.

Some coworkers have the same problems as a toxic boss.  Is the company vice-president the boss’s baby brother?   You’re probably not going to find a win there.   You’ll have to suck it up or move on.

Is the problem person working in an unrelated department doing unrelated tasks?   It may be possible to start taking breaks at different times and leave him where he belongs: in the past.

Is the difficult individual sharing an office with you, demanding everything be done his way, and throwing daily tantrums?   This is the one that has to be dealt with.  He’s the one sucking the life out of you every single day.

First, start making use of a voice recorder.  If you’ve got a smartphone, you’ve probably already got one.  Otherwise, drop the $20 to buy one.   This lets you document the evil.   When his behavior goes hinky, record it.

Second, stand up for yourself.  If he’s making unreasonable demands, tell him it’s inappropriate.   He’s a bully, and bullies tend to back down when they are confronted.

Third, make sure the boss knows about the behavior.  Yes, this is tattling.  Get over it.  If he wasn’t acting like he was a spoiled 4 year old, you wouldn’t have to tell the boss that he was.   If the boss doesn’t know there’s a problem, he can’t deal with it.

Fourth, for any problem that isn’t directly aimed at you, ignore it.   If he makes a habit of throwing a tantrum because somebody emptied the coffee pot, or because the company switched health plans, let him.   Only get in the way if it’s directed at you.  Over time, the tantrums will get more noticeable and out of hand, forcing the boss to deal with it, preferably by handing him a pink slip.

Your goal is documentation, awareness, and avoidance.  Make the worst of it go elsewhere so you can be as productive as possible, document what you can, and let the boss become aware of the situation and how bad it has become.   And be patient. This isn’t an overnight fix.

How do you deal with the toxic people in your life?

Selling Your Car

Finance

English: Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Pa...

English: Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Park in Hidden Valley Campground (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When it’s time to replace your car, most people focus on the new car, instead of the old, but that is ignoring real money.  Your old car–unless it has disintegrated–still has value.  Sometimes, it’s just time to ask yourself, “When should I sell my car?”

When you’re looking to sell your car (like with We Will Buy Your Car), you generally have several options:

  1. Tow & crush. If your car has been wrecked, doesn’t run, or is just old and beat up, you may be stuck with calling a junkyard and accepting $50 for them to pick up your car and crush it for scrap.
  2. Trade it in. This is probably the least hassle, but–other than #1–doesn’t pay well.  Dealerships are willing to pay something under what they will get at a wholesale auction, which is quite a bit less than the blue book value.
  3. Sell it yourself. Now you’re thinking, “He’s going to buy my car! Oh, bother.”  It can be a pain, but it’s also the best way to get a decent price for your wheels.

When you sell your car, there are a few things to keep in mind, much like when you sell something on Craigslist.

  • Don’t be alone. There are bad people in the world, but they don’t like witnesses.  Bad things are much less likely to happen if you have company.
  • Know your price. Specifically, know three price: your dream price, the price that would make you happy, and the absolute lowest price you are willing to accept.  Make sure you figure these numbers out ahead of time.  Know what you are comfortable with before it comes time to close the deal.
  • Check IDs. The buyer is going to want to test-drive your car.  That’s fine, but you want to make sure you know who is driving off in your car.  “Officer, Sumdood took my car.  He was wearing jeans.”  That won’t get your car back.
  • Clean it up. Get the car detailed before you show it to a potential buyer.   A sparkling-clean car will almost always bring in a few hundred extra dollars.  It’s well worth the expense.

Following this plan should make the sale go as smoothly as possible and bring you the most possible money.

Readers, what have you done to dispose of an old car?

This is a sponsored post written to provide some insight into the world of used car retail.

 

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Build a Bunker: How to make a vault without breaking the bank

Life

The door to the walk-in vault in the Winona Sa...
Image via Wikipedia

In your home, you should be safe.  When the crappy things happen and somebody decides they want what you have, how easy will it be for them to get it?   Is your home a convenience store, or is it more trouble than it’s worth?

Some people will avoid making themselves safer because they think that will make them a “paranoid nut”.  In reality, they are just making themselves easy victims.  The sad fact is that evil exists and it does not care how you feel about it.

Other people think that it will be too expensive to fix up their home.  While you can spend as much as you want on a security system, it’s possible to get started for little-to-no money and still be more effective than 95% of everyone else.

There are a few simple things you can do to make your house less attractive to thieves, and to protect what you have if they do decide to make your home a target.

  1. Lock your doors. This costs nothing, but gives you a first line of defense that can’t be beat.  If someone is going to break into your house, make them work for it and force them to be noisy about getting in.  Keep the door locked, even if you are awake and alert.  It’s a simple thing that can make a huge difference.  Most exterior doorknobs have a setting to stay locked at all times, so there’s nothing for you to remember.
  2. Reinforce your door. If you’ve ever installed a doorknob, you’ve seen the little screws they give you to attach the strike-plate.   Those screws aren’t long enough to make it through the decorative trim.   One swift kick and those screws will pop right out and let your door swing open.  The $2 fix? Replace those cute little baby screws with 3 inch screws that can reach the studs in your wall.  Do that where the hinges attach, too.  Tada!  You’ve made your house a bit more of a pain in the butt for a thief.  Don’t forget to treat the door to an attached garage the same way.
  3. Install a motion-activated security light. When a thief is thinking about getting into your house, they don’t want the lights on, so install a light for them.  If possibly, put it too high for someone to reach.
  4. Lock your screen door. If someone comes to your door, and you open your door, you are removing any protection a door would normally offer.  If you have a screen door, and it’s locked, you are gaining precious seconds to shut and lock your main door if the person on the other side doesn’t have your best interests at heart.
  5. Lock your car in your driveway. If you have an attached garage, keep a garage door opener in your car, and don’t lock your car, you are giving every crook who passes by a free pass into your home.  Lock your car and at least make life difficult for the little thug.
  6. Consider getting an alarm system. You can get an unmonitored wireless alarm system for about $100.  It won’t call the cops, but it will let you know if someone comes into your house and it’s a snap to install.
  7. Put your cell-phone charger in your bedroom. If you need to call 911, you don’t want to have to run to the kitchen to get your phone.  Keep it where you will be if and when you’ll need it.

There, seven tips that will cost you less than $150 to implement, but will go a long way towards keeping yourself safe.

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Decluttering the House – April 30 Day Project Update

Life

My 30 Day Project for April is to declutter my entire house.   That’s every room, every dresser, every drawer. We’ve got 12 years of jointly accumulated clutter.

Our progress so far has been wonderful.   The main level of our house is almost done.

In our daughters’ room, we put in bunk beds and pulled out a dresser.   With the crib, changing table, and toddler bed removed, they actually have room to play on the floor.  Their closet has been emptied and repurposed as scrapbooking and blanket storage.  Cost: $140 for the bunk beds.

Our son’s room has had a dresser, a desk, and a bed replaced with a loft bed.   Even with the 6 foot tall monstrosity of a bed, his room looks so much bigger.    We still have to clean out his closet, which is mostly artifacts of a business we no longer have, leftovers from when his bedroom was our office.  Cost: $260 for the loft bed.

Our room was depressing. Never dirty, but oh-so-full.   The closet was jam-packed.  The top shelf was full of towels and sheets.   The closet rod couldn’t fit another shirt.   There was a modular shelving system on the floor of the closet–full.  We had three full dressers.   The headboard has 5 foot tall cabinets, half of which were full of makeup and jewelry, the other half with books.   Now, there is 1 empty dresser.   It belonged to my great-grandmother, so it’s going to the shop to be refinished, instead of the garage sale to be sold.   Another dresser has spare room in it.   There’s no need to rearrange the cabinets to get to anything.    The closet is less than half full and there is almost nothing on the floor of the closet.   Gear for my side-line business is stored out of sight and out of the way.  This is so much more relaxing.

We’ve tackled the kitchen, except for 1 cabinet, which is mostly cookbooks and booze.   That will be fun to clean out.

Our front closet was worthless.   It was so full we put hooks on the outside of the door to hang our coats.   We pulled out a dozen coats we never wear.   At least 20 pairs of shoes, some belonging to roommates gone 1o years.   We can actually use the closet now. The shoes and boots all have homes.  Our coats all fit…inside.

We have 1 closet and 1 cabinet left to address on the main level.   There are also 3 small rooms in the basement that need to be gutted–the laundry room, the family room, and a room that has been designated for storage and the litter box.    The last one will be the hardest.    It’s full of remnants of hobbies past and failed ventures.   I’m expecting some fights, flowing every possible direction.

In the process, we’ve filled our dining room with stuff for our garage sale…twice.   It’s all getting priced and boxed as we go through it.   We thrown away anything we won’t be able to sell.   We’ve done all of this with the mutual understanding that nothing is coming back in the house.  After the sale, it will be donated or sold on Craigslist, but it won’t become a part of our lives again.   We are successfully purging so much.    The “skinny clothes” are gone.   When the time comes, they’ll be replaced.  In the meantime, they can be put to better use on someone else.   Hobbies that never took, games that are never played, it’s all going.    We are getting down to the things that are actually used and useful.

It’s interesting to note that the process is getting easier as the month goes by.     My Mother-in-Law is a hoarder.    Those habits get passed down, but what was originally a source of stress has turned into a pleasant chore.

The most wonderful discovery of all?  It turns out we don’t need a better storage system, we just need less stuff.

Update:  This post has been included in the Money Hacks Carnival.

Failure! 30 Day Project Summary – March

Life

My 30 Day Project for the month of March has been to do 100 sit-ups in a single set.   Based on February’s results, I had a plan.

I will be doing 5 sets, morning and night, as follows:

Set 1:  Half of my maximum amount.

Sets 2-4: 3/4 of my max.

Set 5: Do sit-ups until my abs start to cramp, thus setting my max for the next session.

I failed miserably.

It started off perfectly.   My base amount was 20 sit-ups.   I had a plan.  I’d proven, at least to myself, that I was able to follow an intense workout plan, even through pain.    I was encouraged by February’s results, so I dove in.

The first 3 or 4 days went well.   I had some muscle strain, but that was expected.   I hadn’t done sit-ups for years.   I discovered muscles I actually hadn’t known existed, just from how they hurt.   This was the good pain, the pain that shows progress.  After doing the push-ups in February, this pain wasn’t as bad as I had expected.   Push-ups are an excellent ab workout.

Maybe I became complacent.  Either my form slipped, or I was going too fast and “bounced” through the sit-ups, but I pulled a muscle in my back.   This was the bad pain, the pain that warns of fundamental problems.   My form, my size, my history of back problems, who knows?   One or more of those possible problems reared up to turn an excellent idea into a disaster.   March’s plan got sidelined for a few days.

When my back was better, I started again.   Again, everything was fine for 3 or 4 days.  Then my back betrayed me, again.   Another break, another try, another strain and I gave up.    I made it to 50, then just stopped.   Too much more, and I wouldn’t be able to tolerate sitting at my desk.   Or maybe I just wimped out, afraid to hurt my back again.

I’m disappointed.   I haven’t done a single sit-up in the last week.

To make matters worse, without the sit-ups to do in the morning, I’ve been letting myself snooze my alarm clock instead of getting up at 5.   March has been such a slacker month.

Lesson learned:  Always listen to your body.   Don’t get tied into a specific routine–even one you created for yourself–if your body is demanding to stop.   Watch your form and make sure you aren’t putting undue strain on anything that can cause long-term damage.

Lesson learned, part II:  Push-ups are more fun and less painful than sit-ups.   They will be getting incorporated into my ongoing routine.

Ending the sit-ups did leave me enough energy to get an early start on April’s 30 Day Project.   The goal for next month is to declutter every room in the house:   Every closet, every dresser, every drawer.

Loft Bed

To start, we replaced our son’s dresser, bed, and desk with a loft-bed that combines the three.   While transferring items from the desk and dresser to the new bed, everything was sorted to make sure it still fit and was used and useful.  If it didn’t meet those criteria, it was either tossed or priced and boxed for a garage sale.

In the girls’ room, we removed a dresser, the changing table, a toddler bed, a convertible crib/toddler bed.  It all got replaced with a set of bunk beds and the dresser we took from our son.   Everything got the same garage-sale check before it was put away.

Both of these changes easily tripled the usable floor space in each room and all of the kids love their new beds.   Using the magic of Craigslist, I think we got the new furniture for 10-15% of retail, and have old furniture to add to our sale, which will further defray the cost.

This leaves the master bedroom, the bathroom, the front closet, the kitchen and our entire basement to go.   Shoes and jackets that have never been worn.   Books that will never be reread.  Bye-bye.   Some of it will be painful, but we all realize it’s necessary.  We’ve already filled more than 2 dozen boxes of stuff to sell.   None of it is coming back in the house.  If it doesn’t sell, we’re donating it.

More to come as we progress through the mountains of crap.

Making Extra Money Part 3: Product Selection

Finance

When you’re setting up a niche site, you need to monetize it.  You need to have a way to make money, or it’s a waste of time.

There are two main ways to do that:  AdSense or product promotion.   To set up an AdSense site, you write a bunch of articles, post them on a website with some Google ads, and wait for the money to roll in.

I don’t do that.

I don’t own a single AdSense site and have never set one up.  This article is not about setting up an Adsense site.

My niches site are all product-promotion sites.  I pick a product–generally an e-book or video course–and set up a site dedicated to it.

Naturally, picking a good product is an important part of the equation.

The most important part of product selection is that the product has an affiliate program. Without that, there’s no money to be made.     There are a lot of places to find affiliate programs.     Here are a few:

  • Amazon.   If you don’t live in one of the states that Amazon has dropped in retaliation for passing laws that attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling on collecting sales tax, you can sign up as an associate and collect a commission on every referral you send that turns into a purchase.   That means you have a lot of product to choose from.   Unfortunately, your commission is small, so you need to promote fairly expensive products to get a decent return.   On the other hand, people trust Amazon, so that’s one less hurdle to making a sale.
  • Commission Junction.   These are the people managing affiliate programs for a large number of credit cards and banks.  If you’ve opened an account with INGDirect through one of my links, I got a commission for the referral. (Thank you!)   They have a lot of other products, too.
  • e-Junkie.  This one is a popular distribution system for bloggers.   It’s likely that, if you’ve bought an ebook from a blogger, e-Junkie handled the fulfillment process.   A lot of the products available there have an affiliate program, but that is up to the owner of the product.
  • ClickBank.  My favorite.   This is one of the largest affiliate networks specializing in electronic products, whether that’s membership sites, ebooks, or video courses.   Commissions are good, often 50-75%.   They also offer a 60 day guarantee of every product sold through their site, which helps soothe the wary customer.  This is the site I’ll be using for this series.

The first thing you need to do is sign up for whichever program you intend to use.

If you’re not going with Clickbank, feel free to skip ahead to the section on keyword research.

Once you are signed up and logged in, click on the “Marketplace” link at the top of the screen.

Clickbank

From here, it’s just a matter of finding a good product to sell.   Here are the niches we’re going to be looking for:

  • Back pain
  • Bankruptcy
  • Conflict resolution at work
  • Detox diets
  • Fat kids
  • Foreclosure avoidance
  • Job hunting
  • Weddings
  • Writing sales copy

I’m going to look for one or two good products in each niche.  When that’s done we’ll narrow it down by consumer demand.

For now, go to advanced search.

CBSearch

Enter your keyword, pick the category and set the advanced search stats.     Gravity is the number of affiliates who have made sales in the last month.  I don’t like super-high numbers, but I also want to make sure that the item is sellable.  Over 10 and under 50 or so seems to be a good balance.

The average sale just ensures that I’ll make a decent amount of money when someone buys the product.   I usually aim for $25 or more in commissions per sale.  Also, further down, check the affiliate tools box.    That means the seller will have some resources for you to use.

This combination will give us 36 products to check out for back pain, unfortunately, none of the results are for back pain products.    After unchecking the affiliate tools and setting the gravity to greater than 1,  I’ve got 211 results.    Sorting by keyword relevance, I see three products, two of which look like something I’d be interested in promoting.   One has a 45% commission, the other is 55%.  The X-Pain Method has an initial commission of $34 and claims a 5% refund rate.   Back Pain, Sciatica, and Bulging Disc Relief pays $16, which will make it a potentially easier sale.  I’ll add both to the list for further research.

I’m not going to detail the search for the rest of the niches.  That would be repetitive.  You can see my selections here:

Now we’re going to go through a few steps for each of these products.

The Sales Page

We need to make sure the sales page doesn’t suck.    If the site doesn’t work, is hard to read or navigate, has a hard-to-find order button, or just doesn’t look professional, it’s getting cut.

  • Raw Foods is eliminated.  The sales video is horrible and the order link is at the bottom of several screens worth of nothing.  It’s a crap site.
  • The 7 day foreclosure-avoidance product is out.  Site’s down today.  I want reliability.
  • Management Training By The Book is out.  I don’t like typos on the sales page, especially in the page title.

The Email List

If it has an email subscription form, we’ll need to subscribe, then double-check to make sure our affiliate information isn’t getting dropped in the emails.   If it is, the seller is effectively stealing commissions.  In the interest of time and laziness, I’m going to eliminate anyone pushing for an email subscription.  It’s harder–and time-consuming–to monitor that.  On of my niche site had a seller completely drop their product.  Instead, they pushed for email subscriptions so they could promote other products as an affiliate.  Absolutely unethical.

  • Wedding speeches is eliminated for  throwing a mandatory email entry into the order process.  There’s no guarantee they are up to anything shady, but I’m taking the simple route.

Checkout and Credit

Finally, we’re going to visit the checkout page.  You need to do this from every links in the newsletter and the links on the sales page, just to make sure you’ll get your money.

The way to tell who’s being credited is to look at the bottom of the order page, under the payment information.   It should say [affiliate = xxx] where xxxis your ClickBank ID.   Anything else, and the product gets cut from the list.

When you are checking these, don’t click on every possible link at once.  That confuses the cookies. Do one at a time.  I tried to do it in one batch for this post and lost half of the cookies.  If it weren’t for the fact that I already own one of the products and bought it through my own link and got credited, I would have been talking undeserved trash about thieving companies.

Other Factors

Sometimes, when you’re examining a product, it just doesn’t feel right.  When that happens, drop it.  There are millions of other products you can promote.   In this case, I’m dropping the anger management program because, in my experience, angry people don’t think they are the problem.  Here’s a life tip:  If everyone else is a jerk, the problem probably isn’t everyone else.

  • Another important factor is the sales page itself.  If it doesn’t make you want to buy the product, why would anyone else?
  • Amazing Cover Letters is eliminated because it’s too easy to overlook the buy link.  If I have to hunt for it, it’s losing customers.
  • Amazing Wedding Planning is getting eliminated because I don’t like the sales page.  The buy link is easy to overlook, and it doesn’t compel me to buy.

Now we’re down to 10 products in 6 niches.    At this point, we’re comfortable with the sales pages and we know that they are crediting commissions.   As it stands right now, all of the products are worth promoting.

We’ll make the final determination after doing some heavy keyword research in the next installment.   That’s where we’ll find out how hard it is to compete.

Any questions?

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