- @ScottATaylor Thanks for following me. in reply to ScottATaylor #
- RT @ChristianPF: 5 Tips For Dealing With Your Medical Debt http://su.pr/2cxS1e #
- Dining Out vs Cooking In: http://su.pr/3JsGoG #
- RT: @BudgetsAreSexy: Be Proud of Your Emergency Fund! http://tinyurl.com/yhjo88l ($1,000 is better than $0.00) #
- [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-12
Carnival Roundup: Sick
Last Friday, my youngest daughter woke me up at 3AM by puking in my bed. Saturday, my son came down with a fever that we discovered on Wednesday was part of a nasty sinus infection. Sunday, my wife appeared to catch the flu that she was kind enough to share with me on Tuesday. Thursday, my youngest caught a horrible cold that’s had her coughing hard enough to feel nauseous. Only my six-year-old has escaped unscathed.
Live Real, Now was included in the following carnivals recently:
Lifestyle Carnival hosted by Money Master Mom
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Family Money Values
Carnival of Retirement #59 hosted by Midlife Finances
Yakezie Carnival hosted by My University Money
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by The Happy Homeowner
Carnival of Retirement #61 hosted by Free at 33
Yakezie Carnival hosted by Debt Black Hole
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #71 hosted by Debt Round Up
Carnival of Retirement #60 hosted by Master the Art of Saving
Yakezie Carnival hosted by NZ Muse
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Money Reasons
Lifestyle Carnival hosted by Vanessa’s Money
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #69 hosted by Savvy Scot
Yakezie Carnival hosted by The Frugal Toad
Lifestyle Carnival hosted by Savvy Scot
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Drop That Debt
Carnival of Retirement #56 hosted by Making Sense of Cents
Y & T’s Weekend Ramblings hosted by Young & Thrifty
Yakezie Carnival hosted by The Amateur Financier
Lifestyle Carnival hosted by Free at 33
Yakezie Carnival hosted by KNS Financial
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by The Ultimate Juggle
Lifestyle Carnival hosted by Blue Collar Workman
Y & T’s Weekend Ramblings hosted by Young & Thrifty
Finance Carnival for Young Adults hosted by 20s Finances
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Cash Net USA
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #66 hosted by Vanessa’s Money
Carnival of Retirement #53 hosted by Good Financial Cents
Thanks for including my posts.
Get More Out of Live Real, Now
There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.
You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.
You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.
You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.
You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.
You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.
Have a great weekend!
Carnival Roundup
As of today, my mother-in-law’s house is just about ready. We’ve got some stuff in a couple of the bedrooms to clean out, then it’s time to scrub it all down, paint, and clean the floors. It’s been a long, horrible, emotional summer getting this property ready, but we are definitely at the “light at the end of the tunnel” stage.
This weekend, the renters are going to come over and help wipe it all down. That will be nice.
Live Real, Now was included in the following carnivals recently:
Yakezie Carnival: List of Awesome Finance Articles hosted by Learn Financial Education
Carnival of Retirement hosted by Club Thrifty
Yakezie Carnival: The Less than Graceful Edition hosted by Earth and Money
The Wealth Artisan FinCarn hosted by Wealth Artisan
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Master the Art of Savings
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #49 hosted by My University Money
Carnival of Personal Finance #381 hosted by Tie the Money Knot
Yakezie Carnival hosted by I Am 1 Percent
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Young and Thrifty
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #50 hosted by Wealthy Turtle
Yakezie Carnival hosted by I Heart Budgets
The Wealth Artisan FinCarn hosted by Wealth Artisan
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Vanessa’s Money
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #51 hosted by My University Money
Carnival of Retirement #40 hosted by Term Life Insurance, Inc.
Thanks for including my posts.
Get More Out of Live Real, Now
There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.
You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.
You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.
You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.
You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.
You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.
Have a great weekend!
3 Ways to Keep Your Finances Organized
I have 16 personal savings accounts, 3 personal checking accounts, 2 business checking accounts, and 2 business savings accounts. That’s 23 traditional bank accounts, spread across 3 banks. Just talking about that gives my wife a headache.
Every account has a reason. Three of the savings accounts exist just to make the matching checking accounts free. One of the checking accounts handles all of my regular spending that isn’t put on my rewards card. 14 of the savings accounts are CapitalOne 360 accounts that have specific goals attached. A couple of the accounts were opened to boost the sales numbers for a friend who is a banker. Really, it’s almost too much to keep track of. One credit card, 5 checking accounts, 18 savings account, all on 4 websites.
Sometimes, when you extend your bank accounts this far, it gets easy to let it all slip away and lose track of where your money is going. How do I keep track of it all?
1. Simplify
Whoa, you say? Simplify? I don’t simplify the number of accounts I have, I simplify the tracking, or specifically, the need to track.
Twice a month, I have an automated transfer that moves a chunk of money from my main checking account to C1360. I have a series of transfers set up there that move that money around to each of my savings goals. I move $100 to the vacation account, $75 to the braces account, and $10 to the college fund, among all of the other transfers. Doing that eliminates any need to keep track of the transfers, since it is all automated.
Using the same rules, I make every possible payment happen automatically, so I don’t have to worry about paying the gas bill or sending a check to the insurance company.
Simple.
2. Complicate
As you saw in the opening sentence of this post, I also complicate the hell out of my accounts. On the surface, it would seem like that would make it harder to keep track, but in reality, the opposite is true. I have 14 savings accounts at C1360, each for a specific savings goal, like paying my property taxes or going to the to Financial Blogger Conference in October. I can log in to my account and tell at a glance exactly how much money I have for each of my goals. In the account nickname, I include how much each goal is for, so I can easily see if I am on track.
3. Quicken
Everything I do gets set up in Quicken. This makes it easy to track how much actual money I have available. Since I’ve moved my daily expenses to a credit card, I only have about a dozen entries to worry about when I balance my checkbook at the end of the month. At that time, any excess funds get dropped into my debt snowball.
This may all leave me with a needlessly complicated system, but it’s a system that grew slowly to meet my needs and it is working well for me. I spend about 2 hours a month tracking my finances, and can–at any time–tell at a glance exactly how my finances look.
How do you keep your finance organized? Have you tried any unique savings strategies?
The Unfrugal Meal
I spend a lot of time talking about how to save money here. It’s kind of what I do.
Not today.
Today, I’m going to talk about the best way I’ve wasted money during my vacation this week.
First, so my feelings are completely understood: A vacation is about experiences and memories. I could spend all day at the park with my kids, or I could spend a memorable meal with them. Which will they remember longer?
It ain’t the park. They are there almost every day.
Of course, if the restaurant is McDonald’s they wouldn’t remember for long, either.
Tuesday, after a long day of hands-on, interactive museum-going, we took the kids to a Japanese steakhouse. Teppanyaki, where they cook the food at the table, complete with fire, spatula spinning, and airborne food.
I’m the only one in my family who has seen that before. Honestly, watching the art, the skill, the banter, and the giant fireball leaves me as wide-eyed as my kids.
They loved it.
Watching the chef throw a bowl full of rice across the table made my son’s jaw drop.
Seeing the chef carry fire from one side of the grill to the other on his fingers made my youngest squeal and beg for more fire tricks.
Getting squirted by the chef when he was putting out a flare-up made the middle brat giggle, possibly because the squirt gun was a little kid, dressed up as a fireman, with his pants down. She got “peed” on and loved it.
Aside from cooking-as-a-show, the service was fantastic. There was always a waiter nearby to keep our water glasses full or to provide “little kid” chopsticks, which are modified with rubber band to remove the need for skill to eat. They had the courses perfectly timed. The minute the salad was cleared, the soup was delivered. When that was done, the chef rolled up to start on the rice. My two-year-old was eating white rice without complaint for the first time.
Giggles and squeals. Three days later, they are still talking about it. My 11-year-old, who’s trying so hard to be an unimpressible teenager, says it was the coolest restaurant he’s ever seen.
Frugal, it wasn’t, but the memories were worth the money.
Make Extra Money Part 1: Introduction
Today, I’m re-launching a new series on how I make extra money online. This series fell off my radar for a while. I intend to finish it now.
Right now, I have 7 sites promoting specific products, or “niche” sites. When those products are bought through my sites, I get a commission, ranging from 40-75%. Of those sites, 5 make money, 1 is newly finished, and 1 is not quite complete. I’m not going to pretend I’m making retirement-level money on these sites, but I am making enough money to make it worthwhile.
Over the course of the series, I’m going to show you how to take advantage of multi-million dollar market research to choose a niche, at no cost to you. You’ll see how I choose a domain name, where to find products to sell, and how to promote your new site.
As I write the series, you’ll get to see exactly what is working, as it’s happening. I’ll be choosing the niche as I write the post on choosing a niche. As of this writing, I don’t know what niche I’ll be promoting, what product I’ll be using, or what keywords I’ll be targeting. This will be a live, totally transparent case study of how I make extra money.
Before we get started, I need you to understand a few things.
First, this is not overnight money. My first niche site took 6 months before it made me a penny. That was partially because my product selection research was faulty, but also because these things do take time. I’ll show you how to pick a niche and product that won’t take that long, but you can’t expect to quit your job tomorrow.
Second, this is work. Once everything is established and optimized, it won’t be a lot of work, but it will take time to do. There is no such thing as “set it and forget it” internet marketing. Anybody who tells you otherwise is selling you something you won’t be satisfied with.
Third, this isn’t free. I’m not going to charge you anything, but some parts of this will cost money to do effectively. I’m not a fan of throwing money away, so I won’t be suggesting anything outrageous. If I do recommend something that costs money, I will try to recommend a free or very cheap alternative, but that won’t always be possible. I started out slow and cheap, but now, when I launch a site, I spend some money to do it quickly and effectively. I am a fan of paying others to do the things I dislike doing.
That’s the plan. I’m going to tell you how I make extra money online, and I’m going to let you look over my shoulder while I set up my next site, start to finish.
Any questions?
Any comments on how you make extra money online?
