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The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.

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13 Things to Know About Sweepstakes, Giveaways, Lotteries, and Contests

Finance

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know why, but it seems like this time of year breeds sweepstakes, drawings, and giveaways.   Maybe it’s to cash in on the people who are afraid to pay for the holidays, maybe it’s because, at the end of the year, people are realizing how much money they didn’t make this year, or maybe I’m only noticing now because I just ran a giveaway to celebrate my 1 year anniversary.   Whatever the reason, there are a lot of giveaways going on this month and, because a certain segment of the population sucks, there are a number of scam sweepstakes going on, too.

Knowing some basic facts about sweepstakes–legal and otherwise–can help you stay safe and avoid wasting your time and money.   Here are 13 things you should know:

  1. Foreign sweepstakes are always scams. You didn’t win the Spanish lottery.   I’m sorry, but it’s true.
  2. Sweepstakes winners are always chosen at random. If there’s something you can do to influence your chances, it’s not a sweepstakes.
  3. Contests involve some skill, whether it’s captioning a photo, answering a trivia question, or showing up in a bikini.   It is legal to charge a fee to enter a contest.
  4. Lotteries cost money and must be random. There are almost no cases where a lottery is legally run by a private enterprise.  The government has reserved this privilege for themselves.
  5. Since a prize, chosen at random for a consideration is the definition of a lottery, there is nothing you can do to influence the results of a legal sweepstakes, aside from not entering.   Buying a product will not help.
  6. Odds suck. You are not likely to win, unless you enter a giveaway at a small-ish blog.  Sweepstakes and lotteries are required to disclose the odds of winning, generally, 1 in a gazillion.
  7. Businesses(and blogs!) hold giveaways or sweepstakes to draw attention to themselves.  It’s marketing and advertising, every time.   Companies do not give out thousands of dollars in prizes because they like you.
  8. I give our prizes because I like you.  And I want the attention.  It’s marketing, advertising, and gratitude.
  9. If you have to pay to get a random chance to win something, it’s a lottery. If it’s not run by the government, it’s almost definitely an illegal lottery.  Sweepstakes are free.
  10. Sometimes the entry solicitations look official. They are not. The companies do that to get more people to open their envelopes.  It is illegal to misrepresent themselves as a government agency.
  11. Always read the fine print.  There are a lot of things that can be included in the fine print to make it less attractive, like the right to sell your contact information, or your soul.  Try getting that back after a long weekend.
  12. If you don’t want to receive sweepstakes garbage in the mail, write to the company soliciting you.   The Federal Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act requires them to remove you from their mailing list within 60 days.
  13. If you want to get rid of all of the junk mail, write to the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service, Post Office Box 643, Carmel, NY 10512 and they will remove you from the lists of their members for 5 years.

It is possible to make money with sweepstakes, but the odds are low. Personally, I think it’s a waste of time.  Do you invest in the sweepstakes hobby?

The Luxury of Vacation

Finance, Parenting

This was a guest post I wrote last year to answer the question posed by the Yakezie blog swap, “Name a time you splurged and were glad you did.”

There are so many things that I’ve wanted to spend my money on, and quite a few that I have.  Just this week, we went a little nuts when we found out that the owner of the game store near us was retiring and had his entire stock 40% off.  Another time, we splurged long-term and bought smartphones, more than doubling our monthly cell phone bill.

This isn’t about those extravagances.  This is about a time I splurged and was glad I did.   Sure, I enjoy using my cell phone and I will definitely get a lot of use out of our new games, but they aren’t enough to make me really happy.

The splurge that makes me happiest is the vacation we took last year.

Vacations are clearly a luxury.  Nonessential.  Unnecessary.  A splurge.

When we were just a year into our debt repayment, we realized that, not only is debt burnout a problem, but our kids’ childhoods weren’t conveniently pausing themselves while we cut every possible extra expense to get out of debt.  No matter how we begged, they insisted on continuing to grow.

Nothing we will do will ever bring back their childhoods once they grow up or—more importantly—their childhood memories.  They’ll only be children for eighteen years.  That sounds like a long time, but that time flies by so quickly.

We decided it was necessary to reduce our debt repayment and start saving for family vacations.

Last summer, we spent a week in a city a few hours away.  This was a week with no internet access, no playdates, no work, and no chores.  We hit a number of museums, which went surprisingly well for our small children.  Our kids got to climb high over a waterfall and hike miles through the forest.  We spent time every day teaching them to swim and play games.   Six months later, my two year old still talks about the scenic train ride and my eleven year old still plays poker with us.

We spent a week together, with no distractions and nothing to do but enjoy each other’s company.  And we did.   The week cost us several extra months of remaining in debt, but it was worth every cent.   Memories like we made can’t be bought or faked and can, in fact, be treasured forever.

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Ignore Your Budget

Finance

IMG_1144
Image by Boz Bros via Flickr

For the first year of our journey out of debt, we had a strict budget, with all of our discretionary money spent out of an envelope system.  We had an envelope for groceries, one for discretionary spending, one for clothes and one for baby crap.   At the beginning of the month, we’d divide the money into the envelopes according to our budget spreadsheet.  If we used a card for anything, we’d take a matching about of money out of the appropriate envelope and put it in a box to get reconciled the next month.

Ugh. Almost 2 years later, it has turned into too much work and too much nagging about everything either of us put on a card.

We decided to simplify the system a few months ago.   Now, we still have a budget.  It’s even a zero-based budget, but we ignore it.  We only look at it if something changes for the worse.  If something changes for the better, the extra money just gets automatically rolled into our debt snowball, so there’s no need to worry about updating the spreadsheet.

Instead of envelopes, we kind of eyeball it.   We budget $450 per month for groceries, so we aim to spend $100 on our weekly grocery run.  That leaves some room for losing track of how much we are putting in the cart, or a last minute addition to the list.  It also leaves room for our secondary grocery trip to buy bread and milk later in the week.  We do go through a lot of milk at my house.  We budget $55 per month for diapers, but the deal we are currently getting with Amazon Mom is only costing us $30.79 for 6 weeks of diapers.  We ignore the difference.

This—and our heavily automated bill pay and savings—lets us keep our finances on track, without stressing over every dollar or fighting over every little thing that comes home unplanned.   I used to fire up Quicken and balance the checkbook every week.  Now, that happens at the beginning of the month, usually.  If I forget, it doesn’t matter.  At the beginning of February, I balanced the checkbook for the first time in almost two months and we never came close to exercising our overdraft protection account.  In fact, we had some extra, so that got sent directly to our debt.

Overall, it’s been good to test out a new system.  We have almost no financial stress and managing our money takes about a couple of hours per month instead of per week.  It’s all win.

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My Financial Plan – How I Improve on Ramsey

Finance

In April, my wife and I decided that debt was done. We have hopefully closed that chapter in our lives. I borrowed, then purchased, The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. <a href=budget” width=”300″ height=”213″ />We are almost following his baby steps. Our credit has always been spectacular, but we used it a lot. Our financial plan is Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover, with some adjustments.

Step 1. Budget:

The budget was painful, and for the first couple of months, impossible.  We had no idea what bills were coming due. There were quarterly payments for the garbage bill and annual payments for the auto club.  It was all a surprise.  Surprises are setbacks in a budget.

When something came up, we’d start budgeting for it, but stuff kept coming up. We’re not on top of all of it, yet, but we are so much closer. We’ve got a virtual envelope system for groceries, auto maintenance, baby needs(we have two in diapers) and some discretionary money. We set aside money for everything that isn’t a monthly expense, and have a line item for everything that is. My wife is eligible for overtime and monthly bonuses. That money does not get budgeted. It’s all extra and goes straight on to debt, or to play catch-up with the bills we had previously missed.  I figure it will take a full year to get all of the non-monthly expenses in the budget and caught up.

Step 2. The initial emergency fund:

Ramsey recommends $1000, adjusted for your situation. I decided $1000 wasn’t enough. That isn’t even a month’s worth of expenses. We settled on $1800, plus $25/month. It’s still not enough, but it’s better. Hopefully, we’ll be able to ignore it long enough that the $25/month accrues to something worthwhile.

Step 3. The Debt Snowball:

This is the controversial bad math. Pay off the lowest balance accounts first, then take those payments and apply them to the higher balance accounts. Emotionally, it’s been wonderful. We paid off the first credit card in a couple of weeks, followed 6 weeks later by my student loan. Since April, we’ve dropped nearly $10,000 and we haven’t made huge cuts to our standard of living.    At least monthly, we re-examine our expenses to see what else can be cut.

Step 4. Three to six months of expenses in savings:

We aren’t on this step yet. In step 2, we are consistently depositing more, making us more secure every month.

Step 5. Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement:

I have not stopped my auto-deposited contribution. It’s stupid to pass up an employer match. My wife’s company does not match, so she is currently not contributing.

Step 6. College funding for children:

We have started a $10 College fund.

Step 7. Pay off home early:

I don’t see the point in handling this one separately. Our mortgage is  debt, and when the other debts are paid, we will be less than a year from owning our house, free and clear. This is rolled in with step three. All debt is going away, immediately.

Step 8. Build wealth and give!

We have cut off most of our charitable giving. Every other year, it has been a significant percent of our income, and in a few more years, will be so again. The only exception to this is children knocking on the door for fundraisers. I have no problems with saying no to a parent fundraising for their kid, but when the kids is doing the work, door-to-door, especially in the winter, I buy something. My son’s school, on the other hand, gets fundraisers ignored. When they come home, I send a check to the school, ignoring the program. I bypass the overhead and make a direct donation.

Make Extra Money, Part 6.5: Why I Do It The Way I Do It

Business, Finance

This is a follow-up to part 6 of the niche site walkthrough, Setting Up a Niche Site.  If you haven’t read that post, this one won’t mean much.  Go ahead.  Read it.  I’ll wait.

Several people have asked me to explain why I use the plugins and settings I use.   In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to explain every choice I recommended last time.

WordPress

WordPress is a site development dream.  With the right themes and plugins, you can literally make a WordPress site look, feel, and behave in any way you wish.   Even without digging too deep into plugins and premium themes like Headway, you can put together a niche site blog in very little time and know that it’s happening on a robust platform that is actively being improved.

Configuring WordPress

Updates

Keeping your site updated is the single most important thing you can do to avoid getting hacked.   Since I haven’t yet figured out how to make hacking a terminal disease, I do the best I can to avoid letting them cause problems.   Keeping your site updated is the condom of WordPress.

WWW

This is entirely a personal preference, but, after 20 years of reinforcing habits, most people type “www” by default.  WordPress will automatically forward visitors correctly, so this isn’t actually a necessity.

The “Misc” Category

I don’t spend much time worrying about categories when I post, and sometimes I experiment with using external software to post from pools of articles, so I set up a default category.   “Misc” is much nicer to see than “Uncategorized”, even if they mean the same thing.

Theme Selection

I like SimpleX because it is uncluttered and easy to navigate.  It’s hardly the most powerful theme out there, but it doesn’t pretend to be.  If I want more, I use Headway.

Plugins

Plugin Central

Plugin Central is just a plugin installer that lets you install and activate many plugins at once.  Even knowing exactly what plugins you want, this easily saves half an hour of setup time.

All in One SEO Pack

SEO is important.  In fact, it’s what I base my niche site traffic on.   All in One SEO makes it easy to manage the SEO titles that search engines see and the meta descriptions that search engine’s display to visitors when they see your site after a search.   Some themes do this themselves, but I still use this plugin.

Meta keywords are all but useless, but not entirely.   Google and Bing don’t care, but some networking and sharing sites do.

I “noindex” the tag archives because I don’t want the search engines finding each page twice.  Identical pages with different addresses will register as two pages with Google.  How does it know which one I consider most important?  It doesn’t, so I don’t give it the option of indexing my tag archives.

Contact Form 7

This is just a free and easy contact form.  I haven’t found anything better for the price.

WordPress Database Backup

Backups are important.  Always back up your data.  Do you want to spend 3 weeks building a site, just to have your server crash, killing everything?  5 minutes now will save hours or days of headache later.

SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2

When someone comes to your site from a search engine, this plugin takes the term they searched for and appends it in a list at the end of the post the visitor found.  This reinforces your site as a good result for that search term.  It also provides a handy list of the most popular search terms people use to find your site.

Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress

I hate spam.  If Akismet finds a spam comment being posted, this plugin will give the user a change to enter a CAPTCHA code to post the comment. Even if I turn off comments on a site, I keep this installed in case I ever change my mind.   Real comments are good for SEO, so I occasionally test allowing the comments.  I won’t waste the time moderating comments on a niche site, so this is a good compromise.

Date Exclusion SEO

If someone comes to a site and sees the last post was two years ago, they’ll leave. I don’t want a post to look like it’s outdated, so I suppress the dates.

Pretty Link Lite

This plugin lets me mask a link and set it to nofollow.  Nofollow tells the search engines to discount the value of the link, which removes a spam-site indicator from their algorithms.   Masking the link turns a messy affiliate link into a link that looks internal, making it easier for a visitor to click and allowing you to see how often a link is clicked.

Google XML Sitemaps

Making it easy for Google to find your entire site is a good thing.  This plugin helps with that.

WP Policies

This plugin provides a long list of site policies, formatted for a WordPress page.  The most important one is the disclaimer announcing the fact that your are making money on your site.

WP Super Cache

Super Cache creates a pre-generated copy of your page so the site doesn’t have to hit the database to rebuild it dynamically every time someone visits.  It’s all about speed, which affects your search rank.

JetPack

I like using the WordPress.com stats instead of Google Analytics for most of my niche site.  I don’t see a need to announce to Google that these 12 sites are owned by me, so I don’t.   WordPress.com included their stats plugin in JetPack, then discontinued the standalone plugin, so I use JetPack.

Backup

If I subscribe to my own feed, I get every post in Google Reader.  That means I don’t need to make a daily backup of any of my sites.   For the amount of changes I make to my niche sites, weekly might still be overkill, but that’s what I do.   I get the backups by email so I have a copy somewhere other than the host.  I don’t believe in letting anyone control my money but me.

Settings

Discussion

Most comments to niche sites are spam comments, so I hide them without actually turning them off.   Sometimes I test letting the comments through, because some niches might have great people that want to post good comments.  I haven’t had a lot of luck with that, on my niche sites.

Permalinks

The default permalink structure is absolutely not recommended for search engine purposes.  It’s also harder for someone to mention.   I don’t put dates in the link for the same reason I hide dates in the posts: I don’t want anything to look outdated.

Menus

I keep the navigation menu simple.  It has three purposes:

  1. Link to the page that’s designed to make money.
  2. Link to the pages that show Google and readers it is an active site.
  3. Link to the disclaimer that keeps my butt away from federal fines.

Anything else is wasted space.

Widgets

On my niche sites, I use widgets to help with navigation and to point people to the pages that will make the most money.     I haven’t addressed how I do the second part yet, because I haven’t created those pages yet.

Posts

Right now, http://www.masterweddingplanning.net/ has exactly one post, and it’s a duplicated post from eZineArticles.   It has served its purpose.  This site is fully indexed by Google.

When I get the rest of the content written, I’ll delete that post.

There you have it, the reasons behind every choice I make during site creation.  Did I miss anything?  Do you have any other questions?

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