How I Will Be Rich

Archive for November, 2007

I’m going to be out of town for a four day weekend and to tell you the truth, my brain is already out in the desert waiting for me. This is one of those times where I have to admit that if I try to get going on a good post my mind will be elsewhere. I don’t want to give a half effort to a post that everyone is going to skip over in their feed reader so instead I’ll post my round up for the week. I’m trying this new thing called diigo that Brip Blap recommend so let’s see how it goes.

22 Money Maximizing Moves You Can Do Today | Moolanomy

• Here’s a great list of things that you can do to have more money. Sounds good to me.
  

ETFs vs. Mutual Funds – Stock Trading To Go

• The debate continues between what’s better, ETFs or Mutual Funds. I currently own some ETFs but I’m thinking about switching them to Mutual Funds. This is a great read if you are curious about the differences.
  

Millionaire Mommy Next Door: How Do I Select My Investments? Why Are They Performing So Well?

• This is a great site that I just recently found out about. In this post she describes why her investments are doing so well and how she picks them. A really great read! I recommend the whole site.
  

How To Safely Borrow For A House Purchase

• I’ve been looking in to purchasing a house for a long time now. There is some great advice here on borrowing money.
  

How to Get 1,050 Subscribers in 3 Months

• This is a great post about how to gain more readers to your blog. I want to thank Brip Blap for turning me on to this site. It is just packed full of really great content for bloggers.
  

saving money on books — life, simply improved

• I read a ton of books and there’s nothing better than getting some for free. Here’s Brip Blap’s advice on getting books.

Unfortunately, I blew it and missed the deadlines for the carnivals I wanted to participate in so I’m in none for this week.

I hope everyone has a great thanksgiving and I’ll be back to posting on Monday.

Enjoy,

-M

I’m skipping my Top 10 Tuesday today. Believe it or not, those actually take quite a while to do. I’m not skipping it because it takes too long though. I’d just rather do my round up on Friday this week. I’m going out of town tomorrow night and by setting my roundup to post on Friday, I’m getting myself off the hook for a post that day.

I’ve recently started reading Your Money or Your Life. It’s been recommended by so many other personal finance sites and The Simple Dollar even devoted several weeks to this book alone. Joe actually got his hands on a copy of this book and passed it on to me. I’m just barely getting started with it but so far it’s already really starting to grab my interest. A lot of people have told me that they had a hard time because it starts off sort of slow. Somehow, I seem to really be relating to the first part of this book. I don’t want to write a review on it or anything, I just wanted to make note that I have begun reading it and over the next couple weeks I will probably refer to it quite a bit.

The first chapter really focuses on what people consider “making a living”. We go to work, put in forty or more hours, go home, eat, watch t.v. and then go to bed. We then look forward to the weekends because we are going to do something meaningful but when the weekend comes around, what happens? You do housework, make sure the laundry is taken care of, do all the shopping you need to get done and, when all is said and done, have gotten really nothing of real value done.

Why is it that we work so hard for money just so we can go home and do the same old boring routine things that we seem to do day in and day out. Don’t get me wrong, I know that there is the occasional excitement when you go on your vacation for one or two weeks out of the year. Once you get home from your vacation, it’s right back to the daily grind. The vacation just served as tease to let you know that there is fun out there, you only get to see it for one or two weeks out of the year, but it is out there.

Like I said, I’ve barely began to get in to this book. I’m just thinking that if I’m only this far in to the book and it’s already starting to hit home, I’m really going to enjoy this book.

Has anyone else read it that wants to share any thoughts? I’ll be posting plenty of my thoughts on it as I go…

Lately I’ve been going through this phase of writer’s block. I sit down at my work station at the end of my work day, close my door and make sure that I won’t be interrupted. I open up Google Docs to start laying out my thoughts and I just go blank. I can’t explain why I go through phases like this but it seems to hit me for about one week every month. Most of the time stuff just comes to me but every once in a while I find myself staring blankly at my computer screen wondering what I can write about that people will actually want to read. On weekends I tend to link to interesting articles that I find and I think my readers would enjoy. That’s just not my style for the mid-week posts.

Today has been one of those days. I keep setting aside time and nothing comes to me. I think my mind is already getting excited about my upcoming four day weekend. Anyway, I’ve come up with a little remedy to this problem that usually works pretty well and gets me thinking. So, today, instead of writing something related to personal finance, I’m writing about how I get over writer’s block. I’m beginning to realizing that a lot of the people that read my blog are actually fellow bloggers themselves. So, with that being said, I am hoping nobody minds that I’m taking an even larger step away from my normal writing topic to explain, on a day the I have writer’s block, how I get over writer’s block.

What I have started doing recently is something that has really helped me a lot. First, I go around to the other blogs that I really enjoy and that have become pretty popular. Blogs like Get Rich Slowly, The Simple Dollar, I Will Teach You To Be Rich and Consumerism Commentary all come to mind. Then I go back to the very first post that they ever did. From that point on I just start reading forward. I really like to see what various bloggers wrote about when they first started. I love the writing style at the beginning and watching it progress as you follow through all the posts. You’ll notice that they become much better at getting their points across and they really start to find their voice. You can also really start to get an idea, based on the comments, about what topics worked for them and what stances they took on the topic. If you really want to become successful as a blogger, it’s a good idea to use these popular blogs as a blueprint. If you model your blog after the ones that have managed to become successful, your chances are that much better of making something of yourself.

Another tip that I recommend when that dreaded writer’s block hits is that you look at bigger blog’s popular posts. Most blogs tend to have some section that lists off their most popular posts. They do this because they want to provide a place so that first time visitors know where to start. Scan through all the popular posts that they’ve written. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking that topic and making it your own. I don’t condone stealing their idea and their point of view and rewording it but I see no harm in taking the topic and elaborating off of it. If you use your own unique blogging voice and put your own spin and opinions on the topic, you are basically elaborating off the original writer’s ideas. In fact, link back to the site that you received the idea from in your post and not only will the original poster have no problem with you using their topic, they will probably even appreciate it.

Hopefully these little suggestions help others that find themselves in the position that I constantly find myself in. Writer’s block is frustrating but there are a lot of blogs out there that have been doing this for years and years now. Somehow they always managed to keep their blog going. I am hoping that, one day, my blog is one of those that people are going back through the archives of because they want to gain the amount of success that I’ve gained.

-M

Do you want to make more money in the job that you are in currently? My recommendation is that you increase your value. Coming from that standpoint of someone who basically runs a business, I have to deal with employee issues every single day. This includes people coming to me on almost a daily basis asking for more money. My stock question to them is always, “What have you done to make yourself worth this increase?” After asking this question, the employee almost always leaps in to listing off all of the things that they do for the company. And more often than not, every single item that they list is exactly what we agreed upon in hiring this person. I want to know what this person has done to go above and beyond their job position. We sat down with this person before we hired them, we discussed what their responsibilities would be and how much we would pay them for following through with these responsibilities. Six months later, when an employee comes and asks for more money, this is what I hear; “I’m doing the job that you asked me to do and making the agreed upon amount of money for doing it, can I have more?”

I’m not quite sure how many people are probably taking the whole idea behind this post. People probably think that we are a bunch of Scrooges or something. That’s not the case at all. We hand out plenty of raises. We do it all of the time. I’m not a believer in giving someone a raise just because they’ve been here for a certain amount of time. I’m a fan of giving out raises when someone does something that increases their value to me. I currently have an office employee who wants more money. The only problem with this person is that they have the attitude that they will not take on any more responsibilities until they make more money. Well my viewpoint is the opposite. Show me that you are willing to add more value to this company and I will reward you with more money. We have sort of a catch 22 here. This person won’t work harder unless they get more money and I won’t give them more money until they start working harder. I tried to train this employee in a new area today. I wanted to add one new task that would consume about five minutes to their daily agenda. This person basically gave me the attitude that they weren’t going to learn it because they don’t make enough. In this particular case, I taught someone else. Little does that person know that if they would have taken the time to learn this small task it would have increased their value to me.

Look at your employment as your employee being your customer. You are providing them with a service and you want to do your absolute best to make sure your customer is happy. The more you do for your customer, the more value your customer is going to see in your service. Go above and beyond what your typical day to day tasks are and your employer will appreciate it. Be eager to learn new things and take on more responsibility. Employers notice this and value it. I said in a previous post that even if I was the guy who cleaned the toilets at McDonalds I’d be the best at it. I would do whatever I had to in order to get noticed and make sure I was recognized for my efforts. The same goes for any position you could put me in. My upbringing and my morals lead me to the mindset that I’m going to be the absolute best at what I do. I do it not only for my employer but for my own pride.

Raise your value to your employer and your employer will see you as more valuable. It just makes sense.

-M

With Christmas coming up, things can start to get really tight on our wallets. Over at MSN Money there is a great article called 10 Ways To Pay Cash For Christmas. It has some great ideas on how to save money or how to come up with some extra cash for those gifts. One idea that I think is particularly smart is that you can cash in your airline miles or reward points from your credit cards and use them towards gifts for the loved ones. I actually have a card that earns airline miles and I’m really considering cashing them in for some reward points. I’m not quite sure what the exchange rate is on them but it’s sure to get me something. Another thing that the list suggests is to cash in your coins. Go to a local Coinstar and trade all your change for cash. I do this pretty much once a year and usually walk away with at least a hundred bucks. The cool thing is, if you cash in your coins for an Amazon gift card, Coinstar doesn’t take their $0.08 per $1.00 cut. That’s great for Christmas because I can pretty much do all my gift shopping on Amazon.

Here’s a quick rundown of the list:
1. Adjust your income tax withholding.
2. Use your airline miles and trade them in for merchandise.
3. Use your credit card reward points for cool gifts.
4. Cash in your coins.
5. Get another job. Tons of places are hiring for seasonal positions.
6. Sell some stuff.
7. Sell other people’s stuff.
8. Cancel some subscriptions.
9. Call in your I.O.U.s.
10. Buy nothing else for a month.

Of course the article goes in to much more detail on each of these points. If you fear struggling through the holidays this year, this is a great place to start.

Read The Full Article Here.