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.

This is a question that many people ask. Should I take the money from my bank account and pay off my debt with it or take it and save it in my savings account earning 4-5%? My answer to this question is that it depends on the interest rate of your debt. If you carry a balance on a credit card that is getting an interest rate of 17%, you are much better off paying the balance of your credit card than you are investing the savings. It is basically like getting 17% interest on your money guaranteed. On the other hand, if you have an ultra-low interest rate of something like 3%, you are probably better off paying down the balance monthly and earning interest on your savings.

Let’s look at some numbers to get a little more in depth:

I have $10,000 in credit card debt. My credit card has an interest rate of 16%. I have $10,000 in the bank right now. Is it better to take my $10,000 and completely pay of my credit card or take that $10,000 and invest it?

If I take the $10,000 and pay off my debt, I will save myself $10,101.57 in interest payments over a ten year period.

If I take the $10,000 and put it in a savings account that earns 5% (My current savings account) and don’t touch it for ten years, I will gain $6,288.95 over that 10 years.

Clearly, it is better to pay off my credit card. I would have netted a loss of $3,812.62 over that ten year period.

Let’s start over with a 3% Interest Loan:

I have $10,000 in student loan debt. My loan has an interest rate of 3%. I have $10,000 in the bank right now. Is it better to take my $10,000 and completely pay of my student loan or take that $10,000 and invest it?

If I take the $10,000 and pay off my debt, I will save myself $1,587.29 in interest payments over a ten year period.

If I take the $10,000 and put it in that savings account that earns 5% and don’t touch it for ten years, I will gain $6,288.95 over that 10 years.

In this case, I come out ahead after 10 years by an amount of $4,701.66 by slowly paying down my student loan but investing that $10,000 in the beginning.

I really want to touch on this subject a lot more. It’s actually something that I’m just starting to learn a lot about myself. I really do hold some debt between my truck payment and my credit cards. I’m still investigating my best course of action to get them paid off and to invest my money. There are a lot more details that go in to the analysis of whether investing or paying off debt is the better solution. I’m using all these complex calculators that I’m finding on various sites and really trying to understand what they all mean. I promise I will follow up with further analysis soon. One of the great things about this blog is that it is really forcing me to learn this stuff.

Feel free to comment and/or point out flaws in my (basic) analysis.

-M

=================================================================================
The debt solution offers solution to debt problems by debt consultants with minimum amount of charges. The bad credit personal loans are not a problem any more as more and more companies are lending loans to such people with bad credit. These are payday loans without going to banks even. The consolidate debt is really helpful in reducing your debts and even getting you out of your debt faster then you estimate. The fair debt collection practices act briefs by collection dispute letters and commands to end bill collector’s illegal harassment. That means fair debt collection does not include any enforcement or assault. When debts are sent to a third party then only debt collection fees are allowed to be collected including recovery fees or expenses.
=================================================================================

As anybody who’s been around the blogosphere probably already knows, today is Blog Action Day. Thousands of websites are all coming together to write on the same topic; the environment. Since this is a site about making money, what better topic to discuss than making money while helping the environment.

Recycle. It’s environmentally responsible of you to recycle whether there’s money involved or not and if you are not in a position to make money on your recycling, you’ve still got to take that, morally responsible, high ground and recycle anyway.

What I have in mind for this post is to list off the various things that can be recycled. There is so much more that can be recycled that a lot of people probably don’t know about. Here’s a list:

The Obvious:

• Paper – Everyone knows by now that you can and should recycle paper. Paper comes from trees and, obviously, the destruction of the rain forests is a huge and growing problem. Recycle Old mail, computer printer paper, envelopes, construction paper, newspapers, etc. Find your local recycling center. Some places may pay by the pound.
• Plastic – Round up your 2 liter bottles, milk jugs or any plastic containers and take them to your local recycling center.
• Aluminum – Save all your cans and take them to your local recycling center. There can definitely be some money made here. Collecting a lot of cans can round you up quite a good chunk of change.
• Glass – Clear, green, blue or brown glass can all be recycled. If you take them to the local recycling center. Some places may pay by the pound for these too.

Less Than Obvious

• Telephone Books – Most phone books have instructions somewhere in the book on the steps to take to recycle them.
• Ink Cartridges – There are companies out there that will pay for your old ink cartridges. They can refill them and resell them. Here is a site to recycle ink cartridges and make some money.
• Electronic Equipment – Computer parts, IPods, Stereos etc. can be recycled and the parts can be reused to make new electronic equipment.
• Old CDs – You can resell them to a local music trader or you can recycle them.
• Cell Phones – Companies will buy these off you as well. Cellphones contain an ore called Coltan. Coltan is mined in Central Africa. Miners have been intruding in wildlife reserves and it has been affecting the animal population. Recycling your cellphone cuts down on the mining of this ore, helping protect the Central African habitat.
• Oil – Oil needs to be disposed of properly. If not, it can be very hazardous to the environment. Used oil can actually be re-refined in to a usable lubricating oil. Read more about this here.
• Paint – Paint is very hazardous to the environment if not disposed of properly. You can donate the paint to a charity organization for use in their projects such as in schools, churches or community centers. If you have no place to donate it, make sure you take it to a recycling center or someone who can properly dispose of it.
• Tires – Tires are often piled in to landfills which can cause fires that are very difficult to extinguish. Tires can actually be burned to create a fuel. More information can be found here.
• Wood – As mentioned earlier, cutting down trees leads to big problems. Recycled wood, such as pallets or scraps can be ground down and used in composite woods and create, well, basically, new wood.

There is so much more than what is listed that can be recycled. I urge everyone to get more information on the subject. Anything that you are considering throwing away, “google” it and see if it can be recycled. Everyone can make a difference to help save the environment.

-M

The short answer to this question: As early as possible.

The slightly longer answer. (Well, actually it’s more like statistics.):
If you start investing about $19 per week at age 25 and earn an 8% annual return on that investment then decide to completely stop putting money into that account at age 34, you would have invested around $10,000 over that 10 year period. Without adding another cent to that account, by age 65, your funds would have grown to about $168,600. On the other hand, if you were to start investing at age 35 and put $1,000 in the account every single year until you turned 65, you would have invested $30,000 and you would be retiring with only about $125,000.

If you are reading this right now and you don’t have some sort of plan for retirement, start now. Invest in a tax sheltered account such as an IRA. Social Security is close to the point where the government will be paying out more than it’s taking in. You need to rely on your own retirement strategies and not what the government might provide in the future.

One way to look at retirement is that you are saving up to buy it. Think about it. When you want to go on a nice vacation, you save up to buy it or when you buy a home you need to save to buy that. The most expensive thing you will purchase in your lifetime is your retirement. You need to save up to buy that time, free of working. It’s getting harder and harder for people to have a comfortable retirement these days because people are living longer and the effects of inflation are lowering the value of our money. So think about retirement as putting away money every month to save to buy that freedom later on in life. Invest under a tax shelter in index funds and start as early as possible.

-M

My girlfriend, Alana, and I are going to look at dogs this weekend. She’s been talking about getting a dog for probably two years now and she’s finally decided that now is the time. I figured that, in light of this event, it would be a good time to talk about the benefits and the downsides that go along with dog ownership.

Benefits:

• You will have a buddy. A dog is always loyal and loves to see you everyday. He will become one of your best friends.
• Studies show that people who own dogs actually live longer. Dog owners, in general, have lower blood pressure. There is also a lower rate of depression in dog owners.
• A dog is a great way to learn responsibility. For people who plan to be parents one day, owning a dog shows you what it’s like to, all of the sudden, have another mouth to feed. This teaches and instills a sense of responsibility in to the pet owner’s life.
• Lower divorce rate – Believe it or not, dog owners tend to lead healthier relationships than non dog owners.

Downsides:

• The biggest downside of a dog is probably cost. You have:
  Purchase Price
  Food
  Vaccines
  Vet Bills
  Bed
  Doggie Treats
  Collars
  Leashes
  Training
  Flee Control Medicine
  Dog Shampoo
  And more that I’m probably not thinking of…
• Dog’s shed – Some dogs shed, leaving some extra cleaning to be done.
• Pet odors – Sometimes dogs have accidents which require clean up and odor remover…

Those are my pros and cons of owning a dog. I personally think that the pros far outweigh the cons. I am a dog lover and I believe that rescuing a dog and giving it a good home is worth the cost. I’ll give you an update once the deed is done and we’ve had the little guy for a while.

-M

Wealthy

1. Andy Beard -Search Engine Performance, Wordpress, Niche Marketing and Affiliate Marketing Tips
2. Blogging Away Debt – A great site about making money and reducing debt
3. Blue Hat SEO – Tips for marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
4. Blueprint for Financial Prosperity – Earn More, Save More, Live More
5. Boston Girl’s Open Wallet – A single 30-something Bostonian who is seeking enlightenment and control of her Net Worth.
6. Calvin Warr – Fun marketing ideas
7. Clever Dude – Personal finance advice.
8. Consumerism Commentary – More personal finance advice.
9. Copyblogger – Copywriting tips for online marketing success
10. Daily Blog Tips – Another great site that will help you make money blogging.
11. DoshDosh – Helping You Make Money Online
12. Entrepreneurs Journey – Another great site about building wealth through blogging.
13. Finance is Personal – Finance advice posting about 3 times a day. Always fresh material.
14. FiveCentNickel – More personal finance advice.
15. FreeMoneyFinance – Another great site for personal finance advice.
16. Frugal For Life – A site about frugality and spending wisely.
17. Get Rich Slowly – Some more great business and finance advice from a fellow business owner.
18. Hannes Johnson Dot Com – Make money online marketing on the internet.
19. Home Based Business – Online home based business opportunities. Free home business ideas.
20. I Will Teach You To Be Rich – Follow his advice and he may make you rich. (The first finance blog I started reading)
21. It’s Your Money – A Site about wealth building and personal finance.
22. John Chow – This guy wants to teach you how monetize your blog (By any means necessary).
23. Kyle’s Cove – Technology, blogging, WordPress, SEO, and making money online
24. Lazy Man and Money – Another great site for more personal finance advice.
25. Make Money Online The Quick and Easy Way – Watch the journey of one women going from stay at home mom to internet millionaire.
26. Matt Cuts – Great SEO information
27. Mighty Bargain Hunter – A site about being frugal.
28. Money, Matters and More Musings – Another great site about wealth building and personal finance.
29. MsDanielle – Internet Marketing, PPC, and Online Social Networking
30. My Affiliate Journey – Affiliate marketing
31. My Money Blog – A great site about wealth building and personal finance.
32. My Personal Finance Journey – Another really good site about wealth building and personal finance.
33. My Two Dollars – A place to discuss money for the rest of us.
34. North x East – A site with a lot of blogging tips.
35. Not Made of Money -A Site about saving money and frugality.
36. One Man’s Goal – Watch one man make the journey to become a full time blogger.
37. Online Marketing Blog – A blog about online marketing.
38. Personal Finance Advice – The name says it all.
39. ProBlogger – Want to make money blogging? This site can teach you how.
40. Pronet Advertising – Read about one man’s experiences in online marketing.
41. QuickSprout – Tips for marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
42. Search Engine Land – Learn about Search Engines.
43. ShoeMoney – Another site with ideas on making money on the internet.
44. Simply Thrifty – A site about being frugal.
45. StockTradingToGo – A great resources for investing tips.
46. The Digerati Life – Personal finance advice from a great writer.
47. The Simple Dollar – All sorts of personal finance advice.
48. Young and Broke – More personal finance advice.

Healthy

49. DietHack – A great site for health related articles.
50. FatBlokeThin – Losing weight the Buddhist way.
51. HealthMad – More tips to live healthy by many authors.
52. Healthy, Fast and Cheap – A site about cooking foods that are healthy, fast and cheap.
53. Her Active Life – A great site about eating healthy and excersize (great tips for men and women).
54. He’s Fit – A great site about eating healthy and excersize (great tips for men and women).
55. Live Live… Organics & Your Health – A great site with tips on healthy living.
56. Nurture Your Life – Another great site with tips on healthy living
57. Raising a Healthy Family – The name says it all.
58. Ririan Project – Tons of great tips to live a healthier lifestyle.
59. Sexual Health Buzz – A site about staying healthy while being sexually active.
60. Spine-Health – For those people who suffer from neck and back pain (Like I often do).
61. The Diet Pulpit – Eat healthy.
62. The Final Sprint – A great health site with a major focus on running.
63. Total Wellbeing – Healthy living for the body and mind.

Happy

64. 43 Folders – Personal productivity and ways to make your life better.
65. Brip Blap – A blog about life, family, career, personal finance, career, productivity, health and the environment.
66. Dumb Little Man – A group blog of people giving tips for anything and everything.
67. Genius Types – Creative Life and Money.
68. LifeHack – Another Site about pretty litterally, everything.
69. LifeHacker – Literally, A site about everything.
70. Pick the Brain – A great site about self improvement.
71. Scott H. Young – Another great site about self improvement.
72. Steve Pavlina – Personal development for smart people.
73. The Blog of Author Tim Ferris – A great site with tons of advice about everything.
74. The Consumerist – A Site about everything to make life better.
75. The Happiness Project – The name says it all.
76. The Positivity Blog – Be happy and be positive. Great Advice.
77. The Thinking Blog – Expand Your Mind.
78. ZenHabits – A site about organizing your life and becoming a happier person.

That’s my long, comprehensive reading list. As you can see, I read a lot of blogs. Feel free to comment on who else deserves to be on the list and what not. Check out these blogs and enjoy!

-M

There is so much to say about being frugal and so many tips that I could give. Being frugal basically means to spend wisely. Don’t waste money on things that you don’t need but don’t be cheap and skimp on the things that you do need. Being frugal means that when you do have to go out and buy things, you don’t really need the best of the best most expensive things. When you are grocery shopping, buy the generic equivalent of what you want. When buying cars, buy used and hold on to it for as long as you can. There are so many tips I can give that have already been given. Instead of making a comprehensive list of all the frugal ways of doing things, I will make a list of great sites and great posts by others about their frugality. Give these links a try:

• Top Ten Frugal Cars from Young and Broke
• 25 Gadgets That Actually Save Money from The Simple Dollar
• Borrow, Barter, Buy Used: Espousing the Frugal Lifestyle from The Digerati Life
• Simply Thrifty has tons of great posts. I can’t give just one. Visit the entire site.
• Cheap Vs. Frugal at I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• 15 Ways to Eat Healthy While Keeping it Cheap from Get Rich Slowly
• How to live on $600 a month from Finance is Personal
• How to get money for your old clothes and buy quality clothing at a fraction of retail from Generation X Finance
• Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for a Discount from FiveCentNickel
• Thrifty Vs. Frugal Vs. Cheap from Ask Dong
• Frugal Lunch from Clever Dude

Check Out some of those posts to get a real feel for what frugality means. This site is called “How I Will Be Rich” not “How I am Rich”. I still have a long way to go on this step. I’m trying harder every day. I stopped buying DVDs and Music CDs on a weekly basis. This is a step to no only live more frugal but too also de-clutter my life a little. About 6 months ago, I even took a step that is against what I now preach. I bought a new truck. In retrospect, I probably should have bought used but now that I have it, my goal is to get it paid off as quickly as humanly possible and hold on to it as long as possible.

The next post will be Step 5: Start a blog and take steps to monetize.

-M

Generation X Finance discusses shorting ETFs. The market has not been doing to well lately. If you are interested in gaining off of a falling market check out this post. It slightly safer than shorting individual stocks and may be an option for a diversified portfolio.

Finance is Personal describes a method for obtaining a mortgage without a credit score.

The Digerati Life has an article that helps people shrug off a stock market slide.

Stock Trading to Go posted a hilarious video of Jim Cramer in an interview by Steven Colbert on the Colbert Report.

Lazy Man and Money posted an excellent guest post about DRIPs (Dividend Reinvestment Plans). It is a great way to get started in the stock market with very little funds. Highly Recommended!

DailyApps has a very informative post for all you bloggers about Optimizing Wordpress for Best Performance.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich has an interesting post about how much people spend for their own weddings but declare that everyone else is crazy for spending that much.

One Man’s Goal discusses how he generated over 3,000 backlinks and how you can do it too.

ProBlogger, the one site that most people all ready read and know about, has a great post about Analyzing your blog’s “Competition.”

Young And Broke has some great tips on being Frugal. Check them out.

That’s all I have for today. These are all the blogs that I have been reading a lot lately. Check out some of their other posts. They all write great content.

-M

With that said, we should all now have a basic idea of how a Roth IRA works and a few simple reasons why they are not as scary as once thought. Holding off on starting a Roth IRA until you “think” you have enough money to afford to invest is simply being in the wrong mindset. From the beginning of your working career at that first job, by saving about $500 would have been enough to start putting money away for the future. At such a young age (teens-20s), time is on your side and the magic of compound interest should be your very best friend. Play around with this snazzy little calculator if you don’t believe me.

I have heard many of my friends say their school loans, car payments, and the monthly rent sucks up all of their salary. As many of us pay these on-going expenses, there is a simple solution to continue our desire to invest for the future: automatic money transfers. This innovation is a wonder that online banking has allowed all of us to utilize. If it wasn’t for the internet, many of us would continue to pay the typical bills and occasionally throw some extra cash into our very low interest paying savings accounts, but only if we’re feeling really loaded! The power of automatic money transfers to a Roth IRA account makes investing and saving absolutely painless. By starting with a measly $20 transfer each week, you’ll never know that money was ever in your checking account. Setting up this automatic flow of money is the most essential step in the beginning to fund your new Roth IRA, especially while feeling a financial pinch from the bills. Sooner than you know it, you’ll want to bump up that weekly amount to $50 or more while noticing you’re inching closer to maxing out your yearly limit; it’s a good thing!

Now the option is to figure out where to sign up for this Roth IRA. There are many online brokerage sites that all offer fairly the same options and perks. The key here is to never get overwhelmed; you’ll always be able to transfer money from one brokerage to another, and you’ll always be able to shift how you want your money invested within your Roth IRA. Compare companies like Vanguard, Fidelity, and T. Rowe Price. Look closely at the amount they require to begin investing, yearly fees, and the required monthly transfer amounts. I would say a good initial investment is $500, hopefully finding a plan with no yearly fee, and $50 or less monthly transfer requirements.

Once that’s figured out, you need to decide how you will invest your money within your Roth IRA. If you are in your 20s, investing the money in the stock market is the way to go. Finding a well diversified mutual fund is much better in this case than diversifying through various stocks. Try to find a no-load mutual fund with a broad-based market index. The key here is to pay the least in fees as you can and diversify enough to cover all bases to ride the market as it shifts up and down. Check out Morningstar’s mutual fund screener to easily evaluate which funds would best suit you.

There’s not much of anything left to do now that you’ve completed all of this. Figuring out where you want to open the account is the most difficult step, but it’s no more challenging than deciding which credit cards you want to sign up with. Now just let that automatic money transfer let it do its thing, and sit back and enjoy watching that Roth IRA balance grow!

I just recently set up my Roth IRA because I did not really know much about them until lately… Some common misconceptions, questions and concerns that I had:

1. What if I need to take some of that money out for some reason? Isn’t there a huge penalty?
   You are actually allowed to take any of that principle investment out whenever you want. You only get penalized for drawing the gains on your investments. I wouldn’t recommend it, however, because you want to get that full benefit of that magic word called compound interest.
2. If I want to buy a house in the near future, all my money will be tied up in my Roth IRA. I could have put money in a discretionary investment account, earned interest and used some of that towards a new home…
   You can draw up $10,000 of the gains you have made from capital investments towards the purchase of a new primary residents, not to mention you still can draw that principle the you have been investing.
3. Will I get taxed on the money when I go to draw it once I retire?
   Nope that’s the magic of a Roth IRA. With a traditional IRA pretax dollars are invested in the account and you will have to pay taxes when you go to draw that money at retirement age. With a Roth IRA, you are investing with money that has already been taxed and you won’t have to pay capital gains taxes. It is one of the few loopholes the government gives on paying taxes on earned money.

Another benefit I have learned is that you can use some of your gains towards educational expenses as well.

There are some people that may not be eligible, mainly people in the six figure salary range. But if you are up there, I would probably personally rather be investing in things like real estate and small businesses (But that’s just me).

If anyone can think of more great benefits or any real huge disadvantages of contributing to a Roth IRA, please explain in the comments. From where I stand, I don’t see why everyone doesn’t have one…

-M