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Three Alternatives to a Budget

Finance

the envelope system: day one
Image by J. McPherskesen via Flickr

Budgets aren’t for everyone.  For some people, the very idea of trying to track where their money going is painful.  And that’s just the idea of tracking the money.  It gets far worse when you’ve got $10 budgeted for coffee, $12 for fast food, $66.50 for gas, and $0.75 for entertainment.  It’s can be hard to follow a strict budget for long.

If you know you need to track your money, and you also know that a strict, zero-based budget won’t work for you, what can you do?  Luckily, there are alternatives.

1. Hope and Pray. This is otherwise known as the “Call my bank everyday and see how close I am to over-drafting” system.  To fully embrace this system, you need to not only abandon a written–or even organized–budget, but you should also throw your checkbook register in the garbage.   Make sure you’ve got a good overdraft protection account attached to your checking account and let your money take care of itself.  This is the ultimate zen of personal finance.  Don’t stress or worry, just hope for the best.   This system works best if you make more money than Oprah and have modest tastes.  For those of us who have to watch our money a bit to make sure the month outlasts our money, this probably isn’t a great plan.

2. The Envelope System. To implement this system, you do need to create a basic budget so know what you are obligated to pay.  Once you have that done, take a stack of envelopes and label them for each item you have to pay.   Add another envelope for food, another for entertainment, and another for miscellaneous because there is always a miscellaneous.   Divide the money among the envelopes.   Now for the magic. When you have to spend something, take the money out of the appropriate envelope and spend it.  That’s it.  If, however, there isn’t enough money in the right envelope, but you still need to spend the money, you have to take it out of a different envelope and spend less on the category that lost money.

3.  Percentages. This is the simplest of the non-budget budgets.   Take 50% of your money and spend it on necessities, like the mortgage, food,  and utilities.   The next 30% goes to savings and retirement.  The last 20% is for fun or any other thing you want to spend it on.  This naturally works best if you are out of debt, but if not, just make sure most of the 20% fun money goes to repaying debt.   This system works best if your bills are automated and you will need to set up a basic budget first, so you can make sure your necessities come in under 50% of your income.

Not every budget plan will work for everyone, but there are always alternatives that can still help you manage your money.

How do you track your money?

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Bonding Relationships

Life, Relationships, Reviews

People can’t be happy in a vacuum.  We are social creatures.  Even the most anti-social among us needs some human contact.  How can you make that contact happen in a meaningful way?  How can you connect with other people beyond some superficial meaningless chatter?

According to Keith Ferrazzi in his book, Who’s got your back, there are four mindsets necessary to build lifelong relationships.

1.  Generosity. This is your promise to help others succeed.  If have a skill that can help someone you know, why not give them a hand?  when you help others, you are building social capital, which is a currency that cannot be bought.  Since our lives are not ledger books, you can’t do favors with repayment in mind, but it is reasonable to assume that the people ou help will want to help you some day.

An often overlooked generosity strategy is to give away 90% of everything.  I’m not suggesting you give away 90% of your wealth or possessions.  I’m suggesting you give away 90% of your personal product.   Plan to give away 9 times more than your receive.  This will not only keep your from being disappointed, but it will also leave you feeling very fulfilled.

2.  Vulnerability. It is important to let down your guard and let the world see your humanity.  It’s almost impossible to truly connect with someone who’s shields are always up: the guy who seems to be invulnerable and unapproachable.  The people you spend time with know your flaw anyway.  If you pretend they don’t exist, you are only fooling yourself.  I have a lot of problem with this one.   Letting down my guard is incredibly difficult, in almost every circumstance.  It is far easier to be strong than to let myself be vulnerable.

3.  Candor. Total honesty is vital to establishing–and maintaining– lifelong relationships.  Even the white lies can destroy your connections.  If you can lie about the little things, you are planting doubts on everything else you do and say.  Who can trust you then?  Lying is inappropriate in almost all conceivable cases.  I was raised that a man’s word is his bond.   Almost everything you have can be taken away from you, but not your honor.  That can only be destroyed by you.  Without it, what do you really have?

4. Accountability. You need to follow through on your promises.  Be Mr. Reliable(or Mrs!).  If you say you will do something, do it!  Nothing builds resentment faster than disappointing the people who are counting on you.   If you can’t meet a commitment, let the soon-to-be-let-down know as early as possible, so other plans can be made.  If you have a hard time keeping promises, then make fewer of them.

If you embrace these principles, you will be well on your way to building–and keeping–strong, satisfying relationships that benefit everyone.

How do you build your relationships?

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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Make Extra Money, Part 6: Setting Up a Site

Business, Finance

In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to show you how to set up a WordPress site.   I’m going to show you exactly what settings, plugins, and themes I use.   I’m not going to get into writing posts today.  That will be next time.

I use WordPress because it makes it easy to develop good-looking sites quickly.   You don’t have to know html or any programming.   I will be walking through the exact process using Hostgator, but most hosting plans use CPanel, so the instructions will be close.  If not, just follow WordPress’s 5 minute installation guide.

Installing WordPress

Assuming you can follow along with me, log in to your hosting account and find the section of your control panel labeled “Software/Service”.  Click “Fantastico De Luxe”.

Fantastico

On the Fantastico screen, click WordPress, then “New Installation”.

Install WordPress

On the next screen, select your domain name, then enter all of the details: admin username, password, site name, and site description.  If you’ll remember, I bought the domain  http://www.masterweddingplanning.net.   I chose the site name of “Master Wedding Planning” and a description of “Everything You Need to Know to Plan Your Wedding”.

Click “install”, then “finish installation”.   The final screen will contain a link to the admin page, in this case, masterweddingplanning.net/wp-admin.  Go there and log in.

Configuring WordPress

After you log in, if there is a message at the top of the screen telling you to update, do so.   Keeping your site updated is the best way to avoid getting hacked.  Click “Please update now” then “Update automatically”.  Don’t worry about backing up, yet.  We haven’t done anything worth saving.

Next, click “Settings” on the left.  Under General Settings, put the www in the WordPress and site URLs.  Click save, then log back in.

Click Posts, then Categories.  Under “Add New Category”, create one called “Misc” and click save.

Click Appearance.  This brings you to the themes page.   Click “Install Themes” and search for one you like.   I normally use Headway, but before I bought that, I used SimpleX almost exclusively.   Your goal is to have a simple theme that’s easy to maintain and easy to read.  Bells and whistles are a distraction.

Install a theme

Click “Install”, “Install now”, and “Activate”.  You now have a very basic WordPress site.

Plugins

A plugin is an independent piece of software to make independent bits of WordPress magic happen.   To install the perfect set of plugins, click Plugins on the left.    Delete “Hello Dolly”, then click “Add new”.

In the search box, enter “plugin central” and click “Search plugins”.    Plugin Central should be the first plugin in the list, so click “install”, then “ok”, then “activate plugin”.  Congratulations, you’ve just installed your first plugin.

Now, on the left, you’ll see “Plugin Central” under Plugins.  Click it.  In the Easy Plugin Installation box, copy and paste the following:

 All in One SEO Pack
 Contact Form 7
 WordPress Database Backup
 SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2
 WP Super Cache
 Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress
 date exclusion seo
 WP Policies
 Pretty Link Lite
 google xml sitemaps
 Jetpack by WordPress.com


Click “install”.


On the left, click “Installed Plugins”.   On the next screen, click the box next to “Plugins”, then select “Activate” from the dropdown and click apply.


Activate plugins


Still under Plugins, click “Akismet Configuration”.  Enter your  API key and hit “update options”.  You probably don’t have one, so click “get your key”.


Tools


The only tool I worry about is the backup.   It’s super-easy to set up.   Click “Tools”, then “Backup”.  Backup


Scroll down to “Schedule Backups”, select weekly, make sure it’s set to a good email address and click “Schedule Backup”.   I only save weekly because we won’t be adding daily content.  Weekly is safe enough, without filling up your email inbox.


Settings


There are a lot of settings we’re going to set.   This is going to make the site more usable and help the search engines find your site.  We’re going to go right down the list.   If you see a section that I don’t mention, it’s because the defaults are good enough.


Writing


Set the Default Post Category to “Misc”.


Visit this page and copy the entire list into “Update Service” box.   This will make the site ping a few dozen services every time you publish a post.   It’s a fast way to get each post indexed by Google.


Click “Save Changes”.


Discussion


Uncheck everything under “Email me whenever…” and hit save.   This lets people submit comments, without actually posting the comments or emailing me when they do so.  Every once in a while, I go manually approve the comments, but I don’t make it a priority.


Permalinks


Select “Custom structure” and enter this: /%postname%/


Click save.


All in One SEO


Set the status to “Enabled”, then fill out the site title and description.  Keep the description to about 160 characters.  This is what builds the blurb that shows up by the link when you site shows up in Google’s results.


Check the boxes for “Use categories for META keywords” and “Use noindex for tag archives”.


Click “Update Options”.


Date Exlusion SEO


Check the boxes to remove each of the dates and set the alt text to “purpose” or something.   This will suppress the date so your posts won’t look obsolete.


Hide Dates


SEO Search Terms 2


This plugin reinforces the searches that bring people to your site.   It’s kind of neat.  Skip the registration, accept the defaults and hit save.


WP Policies


Scroll to the bottom and click import.  We’ll come back to this.


WP Super Cache


Select “Caching On” and hit save.


JetPack


Across the top of the screen should be a giant banner telling you to connect to WordPress.com and set up Jetpack.  You’ll need an account on WordPress.com, so go there and set one up.   After authorizing the site, you’ll be brought back to the Jetpack configuration screen.   Click “Configure” under “WordPress.com Stats”.  Take the defaults and hit save.


Contact


On the contact configuration page, copy the code in the top section.  You’ll need this in a moment.


Contact form code


Pages


Now, we going to create a couple of static pages.   On the left, click “Pages”, then “Add new”.


Name the first page “Contact” and put the contact form code in the body of the page.  Hit publish.


Menus


Under Appearance, click “Menu”.   Enter a menu name and hit save.


Then, under “Pages”, click the box next to “Contact”, “Disclaimer”, and any other policies you’d like to display.  Hit save.


Widgets


Also under Appearance, click “Widgets”.   This is where you’ll select what will display in the sidebar.   All you have to do is drag the boxes you want from the middle of the page to the widget bar on the right.   I recommend Text, Search, Recent Posts, Popular Search Terms and Tag Cloud.  In the text box, just put some placeholder text in it, like “Product will go here”.   We’ll address this next time.


Posts


We’re not going to worry about getting posts in place, yet.    That will be the next installment.  However, the steps in the next installment could take 2 weeks to implement, and we want Google to start paying attention now.  To make that happen, we need to get a little bit of content in place.   This won’t be permanent content.  It’s only there so Google has something to see when it comes crawling.


To get this temporary, yet legal content, I use eZineArticles.  Just go search for something in your niche that doesn’t look too spammy.


Then, click “Posts”, then delete the “Hello World” post.  Click “Add new”.   Copy the eZine article, being sure to include the author box at the bottom, and hit publish.


To see your changes, you may have to go to Settings, then WP Cache and delete the cache so your site will refresh.


Congratulations!  You now have a niche blog with content.   It’s not ready to make you any money, yet, but it is ready for Google to start paying attention.    In the next installment, I’ll show you how I get real unique content and set it up so Google keeps coming back to show me the love.


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Mastermind – The Best Personality Type


Life


fancy logo/writing for use in MBTI articles
Image via Wikipedia




A few of the best personal finance blogs have decided to post on a theme.  It’s a personality type blog carnival.


After taking the Jung Typology Test, I discovered that I am an INTJ; a Rational Mastermind.  Specifically I am I(78%) N(12%) T(75%) J(44%).


What does that mean, you ask?


It means that I am rare.  Fewer than 3% of the population has my personality type, which is Introvert iNtuition Thinking Judgement, but the intuition is close to Sensing, making me almost an ISTJ, or a Guardian Inspector.


From Wikipedia:


    

  • I – Introversion preferred to extraversion: INTJs tend to be quiet and reserved. They generally prefer interacting with a few close friends rather than a wide circle of acquaintances, and they expend energy in social situations (whereas extraverts gain energy).
    • 

  • N – Intuition preferred to sensing: INTJs tend to be more abstract than concrete. They focus their attention on the big picture rather than the details and on future possibilities rather than immediate realities.
    • 

  • T – Thinking preferred to feeling: INTJs tend to value objective criteria above personal preference. When making decisions they generally give more weight to logic than to social considerations.
    • 

  • J – Judgment preferred to perception: INTJs tend to plan their activities and make decisions early. They derive a sense of control through predictability, which to perceptive types may seem limiting.
    • 

  • S – Sensing preferred to intuition: ISTJs tend to be more concrete than abstract. They focus their attention on the details rather than the big picture, and on immediate realities rather than future possibilities.
    • 



To summarize the personality of a mastermind:  We are big-picture planners.   We see patterns other people miss and use that to solve complex puzzles and problems.   It’s not possible to follow a thought through the head of a mastermind, because thinking comes with a ton of free association.   We may be watching an episode of Spongebob, and something Patrick does will trigger a domino-effect of seemingly unrelated thoughts that will lead a conclusion, out of nowhere.  Often, we aren’t aware of the process.


We don’t do crowds, at least, not often.   Good conversation with good friends is better than a party full of people we barely know.  Crowds are draining.   A quiet night at home is a good night, but that’s not saying we-re shy.   We just don’t enjoy keeping up with small talk and polite chatter.  Get us on a topic we’re passionate about and you won’t shut us up.  Get us in a group of people we care about, and we can be the life of the party.


As a group, we are ambitious and deliberate.  We are capable of making firm decisions, confidently.  Confidence is one of the hallmarks of a mastermind, but one I don’t have to the normal extreme.


We are obsessive focused.    When we get set on a problem, we focus in a way that leaves other people stupefied.  Time goes away.  The rest of the world fades.  You may have to shout to get our attention.  Sometimes, our minds will drift in the middle of a conversation, and we’ll lose track of who’s saying what.  It’s rude, but that doesn’t change the way we are wired.


We don’t do emotion.  We are rational and get frustrated with people who make decisions based on emotion.  This makes it hard to connect with others, but that’s okay, because it’s better to have a few extremely close friends than a crowd of mere acquaintances.   Unfortunately, this can make relationships difficult, too.  The benefit to dating or marrying an INTJ is that we carry our focus into relationships.   We take our relationships seriously.


We are inwardly-focused, so we spend quite a bit of time examining ourselves.  This can lead to a long series of self-improvement projects, but none get taken on as a mere fad.  They are planned and dissected before even being mentioned to others, let alone undertaken.


We take criticism well, but if you can’t back up the critique with facts and reasoning, don’t bother.  Rational, remember?


We are driven by a need to understand. Once we understand, a given project or line of thought may be abandoned.  Until we understand, very little can shake our focus.


Self-promotion is difficult, since we don’t get into the heads of others well.  They should be able to see the obvious benefits without being told, right?


Now, to cross a bit of the ISTJ into the mix.


An Inspector is duty bound and loyal, to an extreme.  They are dependable workhorses.   Under stress, they can get stuck on the things that could go wrong, which would explain why I miss out on the confidence brought by being a mastermind.


To summarize me:


    

  • I am a planner.
    • 

  • I am extremely focused, to the point of obsession.
    • 

  • I am driven to learn new things, constantly.  Few of those things are incorporated into my life, long-term.
    • 

  • I don’t cheat.  Taxes, games, relationships, etc.
    • 

  • I am intensely loyal, but to very few people or causes.  I don’t end relationships quickly or easily.   That said, when it’s time for them to be over, I can break it off with little regret.
    • 



Security, improvement, planning, learning, thinking, loyalty, honesty, integrity.


That sounds about right.


 


Now you know a bit about how I tick.  What’s your personality type?


 


 


 


 


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Deathbed Relationships


Life, Parenting, Relationships
My great-uncle has been depressed lately.


He lives in the same apartment building and my grandmother, his sister.   They are just down the hall from each other.


Over the holidays, he’s seen a steady stream of people visiting my grandma, bringing cards and pictures, or taking her out to eat.   Over Christmas weekend, she spent far more time away from home, celebrating with her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids than she did at home.


He’s never met his great-grandchildren.    He’s in his 70s, living in a retirement home attached to the nursing home he will most likely die in, and he’d like to see his descendants.


It’s too late.


He didn’t lose his relationship with his kids and grandkids in a fight.   Instead, he spent his entire life doing his best to avoid all forms of responsibility.   He spent 50 years avoiding supporting his family.  He wasn’t there for them.


Of course they won’t be there for him.


There is a simple way to get your kids and your grandkids to dote on you in your old age:  You spend your entire life being there when you’re needed.


Simple.


Building a relationship that can survive–or even thrive–in the times when you’ve got very little left to give takes a lifetime of commitment.


It starts the day your children are born, when you hold that precious little high-maintenance paperweight and swear that nothing bad will ever be allowed to happen to them.   Then you teach them to walk, and teach them to talk, and kiss their booboos when they fall.   And they will.


Day in, day out, you be there.   You feed them, clothe them, punish them when necessary, and love them unconditionally even when they make it hard to like them.   Every blessed day.


You soothe their pains, manage their fears, help them grow and turn into useful adults.  Every flipping year.


When they are adults, you lend an ear, you lend a hand, you help with their babies, you offer advice, you listen and talk and you are there.   Decade after decade.


Then, when you are old and broke and broken down, you’ve got people who love you, who cherish their memories with you.  These are the people who will drive an hour out of their way to pick you up for dinner.   They’ll carry you up the stairs you have trouble with.  They’ll sit at your feet and listen to you tell stories.  They’ll be there for you because you’ve always been there for them.


That’s how you get your kids and grandkids to visit you in the nursing home.  Simple, not easy.


If you’ve missed their childhood–for whatever reason–it’s still possible to build that relationship, but it’s so much harder.   You start by taking time out of your life to do spend time and be there.  Help when you can with what you can.  Be there.


If you wait until you are old and broke and broken down to start your relationship, it’s too late.   Your kids will know that it’s just another example of your selfishness.   If you’ve never made an effort to give, you’ve got know business expecting to get.  You’ll be lucky to get an occasional phone call and a greeting card for the holidays.


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