How I Will Be Rich

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I’m back and I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday. It’s not often that I get a four day weekend so I took that opportunity to get out of town for a few days. I spent my time camping in the desert and we had a blast. Unfortunately, my blog isn’t to the point where I have guest posters just lining up so my blog just basically shut down for a few days. When I opened Google feedreader this morning I had over 200 posts waiting for me. That was a little overwhelming. Luckily, about half of them were posts wishing the readers a happy thanksgiving so I managed to sift quickly. When I checked my Feedburner stats after the long weekend, I was surprised to learn that my subscribers had jumped significantly. I have no idea what or who I have to thank for that but, as of right now, I’m on track to meet my goals for this month.

I’m sure a lot of people already know this but today has been dubbed “Cyber Monday.” It’s kind of the equivalent of Black Friday but the online version. Today is a day to go to all of the online retailers and get huge discounts on products online. I guess the reason behind this is that everyone is going back to work after the Thanksgiving holiday, sitting down at their desks and are still kind of in that Christmas shopping mood. To tell you the truth, today is the day I plan on doing all of my Christmas shopping. I’ve been doing it online for years now. It beats going to the stores and fighting off soccer moms to get my hands on that tickle me elmo or that last copy of Guitar Hero 3. If the online stores are going to start offering sales on a particular day, that’s the route I’m going take. You get all the discounts of Black Friday with out all of the traffic, crowds and tug-of-war matches for that last item in stock.

I was going to take a whole bunch of time and hunt around the internet for all of the sites that were offering deals for Cyber Monday but before I got to doing that, I found a couple of blogs that have already listed some great places that are offering deals. As you’d probably expect, you can find all sorts of great deals at Amazon but other than that check out these blogs.

Generation X Finance has a list of 11 sites that are currently offering discounts through the end of the day today along with the coupon codes that may be required.

Simply Thrifty has a list of 10 places where you can find deals and coupons for Cyber Monday deals.

Apparently there is also a CyberMonday.Com that lists just tons of places to find deals.

As you can see, there really is no point in me listing all the deals you can find for this Cyber Monday when there are already resources out there that are going to be much more thorough than I can be. Check these sites out and get your Holiday shopping done early and at a discount (without ever leaving your home or office).

-M

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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.

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The Simple Dollar is probably one of my favorite personal finance websites on the internet. It is amazing how often Trent can post and consistently post absolutely great quality content. A couple days ago I was browsing around through the archives over at The Simple Dollar and I found a really cool post with a list of 30 pieces of computer software that are absolutely free. I’d never heard of most of these programs. You can basically get a replacement for almost any program you use right now but for free.

Some of the cool free software that is available is OpenOffice, which all but replaces Microsoft Office and GnuCash, which is like a MS Money or Quicken. I already use Firefox and VLC media player and highly recommend them as well. It’s a great article and an amazing site.

Check out the full article here.

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Have you ever noticed that some people just seem to have a connection for everything? No matter what they buy, they have some sort of “in” that gets them cheaper pricing. I know people like this personally. Everywhere they go and everything that they buy, they manage to get it cheaper than everyone else. Do you ever wonder why this is? A lot of times they are just well connected. They just might work in an industry where they get to know a lot of different people from a lot of different industries. If you are one of these people, leverage that advantage that you have. If you are not one of these people, there is a way to get insider pricing without being well connected. It’s called bluffing. Use terminology that gives people the impression that you are either in their industry or are well connected in their industry.

Research is the key to getting insider pricing. There are various places you can go to do the research. Do you have a friend who is connected to an industry you want to get inside? Grill them on the ins and outs of that industry. Learn all the terminology that you can use to impress the seller. Anything you can get out of these people to land a better deal is greatly appreciated.

So you don’t know someone in the industry? Another form of research is shopping around for prices. Got to your favorite vendor’s competition and attempt to bargain with them. Pay attention to all the terminology they use and the pricing points that they discuss. Drive a hard bargain with them and see how the react to various questions and comments. Ultimately, you are going to turn down this deal because at this phase it is strictly research. Get as much information out of these people as you can. It will all be worth it when you save thousands of dollars on that new car, that luxury hotel suite or that diamond ring.

The other place to do the research is the most obvious. Get on the internet. Search for the product you are looking for and read the websites. The most important thing to study is the key words that they use. The thing that impresses the vendors is the terminology. If you come straight to them and use the terminology that they use, they will assume that you know what you are talking about. They are not going to give the run around to someone who obviously knows the industry. Learn the keys areas of a sell that the vendor makes their profit from and use those areas to bargain down the price.

Here are some suggestions for various things I’ve found:

• Purchasing a New Car: (From Car Buying 101)
  -Learn the Invoice Price (The price the dealer bought the car from the manufacturer for)
  -Learn the Edmunds True Market Value (What others typically purchase the car for)
  -Learn the Dealer Holdback (The markup the manufacturer charges the dealer but may pay back to the dealer later)
  -Learn all the incentives and rebates that may be available on the vehicle.Knowing these things will allow you to call the dealers bluff when they claim that they can’t go any lower on the vehicle. Another thing that is good to negotiate that a lot of people don’t give much thought to is the price of your trade in. This price is always negotiable as well and can save you a ton of money on the new car.

• Negotiating a Paint Job: (From Book: How To Talk To Anyone)
  I started reading this book recently and it’s actually where the idea for this post came from. It gives a few insights on various industries. Here are some key terms to learn when you need the interior of your house painted. The book claims that by using a few of these terms you will save hundreds of dollars.
  -Tell the painter that it’s a clean job. The walls need very little prepping. No scrapping or spackling necessary. Apparently this is the most cost and labor intensive part of a job. By eliminating this step alone you can save a ton of money.
  -If there is no cutting in, you can save some money too. This means that there will not be two different colors meeting up anywhere on a flat wall.
  -Tell them not to leave any holidays. This will ensure you won’t get any thin spots in the paint and you will get a much more quality paint job.

• Purchasing a Diamond: (Also From Book: How To Talk To Anyone)
  -Call them Stones as opposed to diamonds.
  -The top of the stone is called the Table.
  -The widest part of the stone is the Girdle.
  -The bottom of the stone is the Cutlet.
  -If a stone looks yellow, they call it Cape.
  -If you see imperfections, call them Inclusions or Gletz.
  -If you want to see a better stone, ask to see a Finer stone.

Please post in the comments if you have any more examples of where this might come in handy. If you have insider terminology that could land you a better deal, let me know. I’ll make a follow up post with some more suggestions that I receive.

-M

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There is one investment out there that you absolutely must make. I’ve never heard of a single financial adviser or investment guru that will tell you any different. In fact, I even have a personal story that just solidifies this statement. Health Insurance is the one investment that everyone needs to have. There is no arguing with this statement.

I have this uncle who makes great money, has a great job and has very little expenses. He’s not married and lives in a two bedroom apartment. He was doing just fine. In fact, he was probably living a much higher standard of living than most people, seeing as he had low expenses and such a high paying job. He was in a great place in his life. He’s somewhat of a tightwad, however. That’s just how he was brought up. Unfortunately, he didn’t really know the difference between being frugal and being cheap. He wanted to save money wherever possible. The biggest mistake he’s made in his entire life was deciding to skip out on paying for health insurance.

One day, while out at a clients house, my uncle’s partner called my mom. He told us that he just wasn’t acting right. My uncle kept forgetting where he was and asking the same questions multiple times. Something really strange was going on with him. We really didn’t think much of it that day. The following day we received a call claiming that my uncle had not yet arrived at work. He was already an hour late. My mom made a call to my uncle to discover that he was sitting in the parking lot of his previous employer. Now we knew that something was definitely wrong. We told him to come over to our shop, which was less than a mile down the road, and he agreed to head this way. About an hour had passed and he still had not arrived. Once again, we called him on his cell phone to learn that he was completely lost. We told him to pull over on the side of the road, tell us what street he was on, and we would come pick him up. Luckily for us, he was in sound enough mind to do this.

We rushed him to the emergency room to get checked out and on the entire drive he kept asking where he was and what was going on. It was really strange and scary. After arriving at the hospital, they rushed him to get a cat scan. He had a brain tumor. We were told that if he had gone one more day with this, he may not have woken up. Luckily, the tumor was not malignant. They were able to place a shunt and, to this day, he’s been back to normal. That is to say, he’s been back to normal mentally. Financially… That’s a different story.

This uncle opted out of health insurance. Once all was said and done, he owed the hospital about $100,000. He was living well but he definitely didn’t have that kind of money. His family tried to help out as much as possible but to this day, he’s still paying for it. I can understand that it may be hard to justify paying for something when you’re not seeing the benefits but when that day comes that you really need it, it can completely wipe you out. My uncle could be paying for this for the rest of his life. The really unfortunate part is, now that he’s had preexisting problems, he’s having a hard time getting health insurance. He still, to this day, does not have any.

Don’t make the same mistake as my uncle. Invest in some good health insurance. If that day ever comes along where you really need it, you will be so thankful that you had.

-M

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