Having trouble organizing family activities, chores, money, allowances, and bank accounts? Oh, life is so much more complicated and busier than ever before. I have tried a few “family organizers” and management books and software, but nothing has ever captured the attention of the kids AND me. There really hasn’t been anything that consolidates all the family activities into one easy platform– UNTIL NOW. I just found doughmain.com! This site is really cool! It is loaded with all the family organizer tools you need to manage everything. It’s also a terrific way to educate the kids about finances and responsibility with the DoughMain financial responsibility game.

Basically, a parent signs up for an account. It’s free and takes about 3 minutes. From there, you create smaller accounts for family members. Each family member will log in to his or her account to see his/her schedule, finances, allowance stash, chore chart, and more. Kids can also play some cute games that teach financial responsibility (TheFunVault.com, SandDollarCity.com and IRuleMoney.com).

Highlights include the allowance tool, the family calendar (an ONLINE one that cannot be lost or eaten by the dogs!), and the chore tracker. The chore tracker is nice– the Boss (that’s me) creates a calendar of events (like vacuuming) and the child checks in each day for his/her assignments. He/She clicks the chore when done to mark it as done. It’s a great way to encourage the “work first, then play on the computer” habit. I made a little chore chart– what do you think? Is it too stuffed?!

DoughMain is a really incredible site. It can be a real blessing! Definitely check it out. By the way, you can enter to win a $500 Visa gift card if you use the word “dough” as the reference code!

This time it was the Skittles Man. How I wish I’d gotten a photo of him! He probably would have posed for one, too, after all the wheeling and dealing he had to do.

We’d been enjoying the scorching sun and fresh briny air of Battery Park, at the lowermost tip of Manhattan island. A ferry was filling with tourists in preparation for a trek across the harbor to see the Statue of Liberty.

This was the closest I’d ever been to the Statue of Liberty. Even when I lived in Manhattan as a young student, I didn’t see the landmark; in the 80s when I was here, the Statue was undergoing repairs and was closed to the public then. I considered taking my daughters to see it today, but then I read that the wait time for the ferry was approximately two or more hours! And I thought waiting in line to see the Empire State Building was agonizing….

Anyway, so we sat on solar-powered benches that had reached 1000 degrees thanks to the super-hot day and lack of trees. We watched the ferry bob precariously up and down and back and forth (can you say seasickness?) while the people continued to load the boat. We watched the dozens of helicopters buzz around the islands like dragonflies (the sightseeing helicopter rides must be very popular). And the salty smell of the sea burped out from small iron grates on the concrete piers.

After sweating off a good portion of the gallons of water we’d slaked down earlier, we decided to call it a day and head for the subway (the trains are air conditioned now! woohoo!). On the way there, the Skittles Man accosted us.

Well, he didn’t exactly ACCOST us. But pretty close, lol. He appealed to the tender hearts of “young ladies,” and grasped our hands with vigorous handshakes. He was selling Skittles candies for a school fund raiser. Four bags were *only* $20. TWENTY DOLLARS for candy. Uh huh. I told him thanks but no… was he selling bottles of water, per chance? We were nearly fainting from the heat. We started to walk on, but he followed us, shoving a paper under our nose.

I don’t remember all that he said, he seemed to go on forever. All I could think was “I’m about to perish from this heat,” lol. He said if we didn’t want any candy, he’d accept a donation, even a dollar. LOL. That made me chuckle. I looked in my wallet for a $1 (well worth the cost to get us on our way), but can you believe it, I was out of ones?!?! All I had was a $5. *sigh* I handed him the $5 and said, “Here ya go, a donation!” He profusely thanked me and handed me a bag of Skittles, saying we deserved a bag of treats. I took the bag and wished him well, and we were on our merry way to cooler ground.

He was so charming, I must admit. The perfect salesman. He would get an “A” for effort in my book. Which probably explains why I fall for these things. I mean– WHO would pay $5 for a bag of Skittles?! I never, ever would in Upstate New York. Nay, the city makes you do strange things, like dole out money to street hawkers… well, I tell you what, next time I’m coming loaded with $1 bills and a ton of water.

This is an excellent guest post by Melanie Taylor, who offers some ways to avoid overspending this holiday season. The tips are excellent! I leave it here for you to enjoy.

3 ways to avoid temptation this Christmas

Christmas is an expensive time of year for most people. All those gifts and food don’t come cheap, and making things even harder is the fact that everything just looks so nice. If you don’t keep a close eye on your spending, you could find yourself with a lot of stuff you didn’t really need, and a hole in your wallet.

However, you can make it easier for yourself. With a bit of planning you can avoid temptation and keep your finances in great shape, ready for the year ahead.

Set yourself a budget
It’s surprising how few people manage their money by a budget, yet it’s one of the most important things you can do if you’re trying to control your spending.

Before you start your Christmas shopping, set yourself an overall limit on how much you want to spend (as an example, let’s say $500). Then set yourself limits for each area: for example, $150 on food, $50 on decorations and $300 on gifts. Knowing how much you want to spend in each area will help you to make sensible decisions when you’re shopping around.

Of course, it might turn out that you spend a little more on gifts and a little less on food: that’s fine, as long as you keep to the overall budget.

Shop online
Some people may argue that the internet makes it easier to spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need, but as long as you’re careful it can be a great way of saving money and avoiding temptation.

Think about it: every time you enter a store these days you’re bombarded with advertisements and special offers, all designed to make you part with your cash. And then there are the sights and smells you experience when shopping for food, which can make it very difficult to resist.

Online shopping cuts a lot of this out. It’s much easier to log in, buy the things you need and log off again than it is to spend an hour in the store trying to ignore things you’d like but can’t really afford.

Of course, special offers can help you save money too – but don’t let them tempt you to buy things you don’t need. The only thing cheaper than ‘buy one, get one free’ is to buy none at all!

Keep borrowing to a minimum
Some of us may need to borrow a little to get through this expensive time of year, but don’t go overboard. When you’ve got a credit card with a $1,000 limit it’s easy to get excited – but don’t forget you’ve got to pay it back afterward!

The less you borrow, the easier it will be to pay back. The safest way to do things is to avoid debt altogether and save up in advance – that way you know you won’t struggle once the festive season is over.

This was a guest post by Melanie Taylor, from a financial solutions company.

But it’s one thing to LIKE online school. It’s a totally different one to PAY for online school. Money is tight for everyone, we all know. Thankfully, there is help. And guess what– it’s online! You can find scholarships online, and even apply online! The website about scholarships is like a blog, and gives information about all kinds of scholarships available, including “black scholarships” for black students, athletic scholarships for the jocks, family and state scholarships, and specialized ones such as engineering scholarships. The information is geared toward getting grants for traditional college (such as state college), but sometimes this money is available for online education, I have heard. I guess I need to read more about it! The information is free, and the site has some links you can follow for more information on available money. If getting a college education or continuing your education is on your mind, look into available scholarships to help you out. It surely can’t hurt to look!

We ALL need it. We don’t like to talk about it much, or even think about it: insurance. My Hubs was an insurance salesman for a while. What a job! It’s a lot of work for so-so pay. Some of his colleagues made a TON of money. (We did not, in case you were wondering). It’s a pretty tough job. My Hubs sold property and casualty insurance (auto, home, life), and that was hard enough. Then there’s the stuff about annuities, stocks, investing, etc etc etc. He used to have to make cold calls (soliciting people he did not know), wrangle with various rules and regulations and policies, and then hand out money to beneficiaries whose loved ones had died (that was always tough).

Despite how dull or difficult the topic of insurance seemingly is, it is definitely worth it to investigate very closely into your policy, and getting very very comprehensive quotes on your coverage. Here in New York State, insurance is mandatory for many things. Car insurance is mandatory, and so is business insurance. It’s is very important to get a well-rounded business insurance quote, no matter what state you live in. You can save (or spend) a TON of money. Yes, quotes do vary from company to company that much!

But it’s BORING to have to call up every agent in town, isn’t it? Well, you actually don’t have to– you can go online and punch in some stats, and get some very competitive quotes delivered to you! Let the insurance agents come to YOU. It’s Netquote.com. CNNMoney talked about them. It’s easy to use the site- I’ve done it already. Choose the kind of insurance you need, whether it be Alaska business insurance or home insurance or even Hawaii business insurance. Create your coverage (the website is very easy to navigate, and the questions are very simple), and submit your information. Then you wait for the agents to contact you with quotes. Netquote.com includes all the major insurance carriers: State Farm, Liberty Mutual, Allstate, and more.

Yes, insurance is boring! But it’s necessary. And you don’t want to be spending a ton of money on a policy when you could be spending much less elsewhere. Compare apples to apples and compare with Netquote.com!

Brought to you by your friends at Netquote.com.

I *only* spent the entire morning (five hours!) today hashing through reams and reams of papers. Yes, boys and girls, it’s that time of year again– TAX TIME!
And that reminds me– here’s Uncle Jay to explain Taxes and the Deficit! This is one of my favorites.

Yeah, I’m depressed now, too…

Since I am “self-employed” (a writer), I not only have the wonderful opportunity of finagling through my own income, expenses, deductions, and paper cuts, I get to pay 17% income tax on top of it! Hahahah!!!
:coffeestat:

Anyway… most of the chart-making is done. And I even had enough time to goof-off and make a cute explanatory map of my desk. I did this recently in a New York Renovator post; it was such fun, I did another. Click to enlarge if you can’t read it.

Now for the easy work: hawking all my paperwork off on my husband, who crunches the numbers and does the filing! Muahahahahahah!

I hope that stupid IRS is happy…. :worship:

I, on the other hand, was not too pleased. Because what IS a credit score, anyway? Only that you have a lot of debt, right? Well, you also have to PAY it off, which attributes to the score, yes… but it’s STILL debt. So translated, what is a high credit score? “CONGRATULATIONS!! We Bankers have given you an exponentially high score so that we can loan you more money!!”
Oh, goody. :hmph:

Anyway, I’m negotiating for a better APR than I have… WHAT a onerous chore in futility. WOW. It’s a great time to be a banker, isn’t it? Cuz not only do you get billions in public “bailout” money, you get to expunge the average, over-taxed, struggling American for more and more of their money, and make you think it’s a good thing!

ANYWAY. On a more happy note, I snapped a photo of my darling kitty, Livvy. That gal SUUUUURE can relax, can’t she? Oh course she can! She didn’t have anything to do with bailing out crooked politicians and bankers! She has the easy life! ….. that, and a heating pad. ;)

Today, with our more prosperous society, a LOT more attention goes toward our pets. I have spent well over $400 of my own hard-earned money in the past three months for vet bills for my three cats and one dog. That’s a fortune to me! If you had asked me ten years ago if I would have done that, I would have said no way. But I admit that my pets are like part of our family, and it would break the kids’ hearts to see one of them wither away from disease. We know that pets die, and animals have shorter lifespans than humans, so it’s a guarantee that our pets will not outlive us.

So recently, I’ve been hearing about pet insurance. Something like that would have been completely beyond me, years ago. I remember some character on The Drew Carey Show mention it eons ago (I think Drew Carey tried to apply his own health insurance policy for his sick dog, and he was denied the coverage for the dog. The show was about how unfair that all was, and all I could think was “How stupid, health insurance for his dog!”).

Does anyone have pet health insurance? Maria Michelle says she pays $10 a month for it. I don’t know if I would do it; are vaccinations and things like that covered? And where does one get something like this? I’m going to have to dig a little deeper about it. The health care of all our pets will soon bankrupt me if I don’t manage things a little better! Please leave a comment if you have any experiences with pet insurance, or if you have any recommendations.

First off– NEVER start a blog for the sole purpose of generating money. It will be a scourge. Blogs are highly personal and/or informational. And readers are not stupid. Readers can tell when a blog is being pimped off for the filthy lucre, ykwim? Not everyone can blog, and not everyone can successfully make a living off it. It takes a certain style and a certain consistent effort– and the number one priority is to write GOOD STUFF. Right from the start.

Yeah, yeah, everyone has their “off” days or “off” weeks. We all understand that. But in general, your blog should contain content that people WANT to read. It should be entertaining or informative– you should provide a service when you blog. Some people can do this just by rattling off the day’s events– their style of telling a story is so riveting that even their supermarket exploits are Pulitzer Prize quality, lol.

But take it from me– the average blog writer is OK, too. Not every post has to be Pulitzer Prize quality. But it does have to be good. A blog filled with ads and sponsored posts is awful. No one will read it, and the advertisers will leave because no one’s reading.

So you need to assess yourself- everyone has the need to make a living, including you. But can you make a living blogging? Can you provide interesting content on a regular basis? Can you generate traffic and maintain social networking relationships to build traffic, link-sharing, and readership? Can you maintain a blog, with all its technical work, upgrades, coding, (and technical problems)? If you think you can, forge ahead. If you are not sure, try out blogging for a while to see if you like it. You can start a free blog at Blogger.com or WordPress.com and test the waters. You can opt for putting down some capital by buying your own blog, too.

Personally, I recommend that you get your own blog– that is, get your own domain name (buy from a company like GoDaddy.com or eNom.com). Domain names are usually around $10 or so. Once you buy your domain name, you can host your blog with your new domain name. A really inexpensive way to do this is get a Blogger blog, which is free. Blogger is owned by Google. You can use either their blogspot.com domain name, or use your new domain name and have it hosted by Blogger. Another alternative is to have a WordPress self-hosted blog. There are TWO kinds of WordPress blog platforms: one is WordPress.com and it’s free like Blogger is. But as with a free Blogger blog, you will have .wordpress.com at the end of your blog name (like myblogname.wordpress.com). And WordPress.com blogs are prohibited from making money. Blogger blogs are not prohibted (I monetize a few Blogger blogs), but some advertisers do not like Blogger blogs, and your options may become very limited.

WordPress.org is where you can get the free hosting software. You use this software with a web hosting company. Web hosting companies are Hostgator, Bluehost, etc. I use three hosting companies (because I have eight blogs!): Bluehost, Blogger, and Whip An Orbit (recently bought out by WizzerdWerks). There are pros and cons with all of them. My blogger blogs are totally free, but I don’t make a ton of money from them because advertisers prefer blogs that are owned by the bloggers (and not the “free” blogs). Bluehost is very inexpensive but they have their periods of downtime. Their tech support is incredible, which is why I recommend them to people new to all this web hosting stuff, and they have good security. Whip An Orbit/WizzerdWerks is a small company out of Florida, and they are rarely out of service. But their tech support is NOT. I think they JUST got a toll free number last month! And they are a little pricey, pricier than Bluehost, anyway. But their servers are extremely reliable, much more than Bluehost. If you do decide to check out these companies, know that if you click on the links for them here and wind up placing an order, I will earn a little money on the side for recommending them. It’s called an “affilate” link. I don’t do them very often, but every dollar counts! So perhaps you’d consider clicking the link here if you choose to order from one of these companies; I’d definitely appreciate the support, as well as the cash. :D Here’s a great deal at GoDaddy.com, too.

Clicking this banner and ordering at GoDaddy will get you 10% off your order.

The nice thing about buying and maintaining your OWN web hosting is that you have 100% control. You can get free hosting with Blogger, but you do not maintain control over it– Google does. And as far as I know, there is no easy way to backup Blogger blogs right now.

Self-hosted WordPress blogs on a web hosting site that you paid for is more liberating, and advertisers like these more. You can add all sorts of nice doo-dads and features, and backing up your blog is easy. But it’s much more complicated than just clicking a few buttons, like at Blogger. You have to learn how to use an FTP program (Filezilla is a very good free FTP program). An FTP program allows you to communicate and transmit data to your blog’s server and back. Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy but it does take some patience and learning.

Finally, once you have decided that blogging is for you and you’ve got your blog up and running, it’s time to let the world know you exist. Start posting really good content. Get a good theme/template that is attractive and not too full of graphics. Heavy graphics take a long time to load (especially for people on dial-up internet) and you may drive people away with it.

Also important is joining some social networks. Sites like MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Entrecard, and forums (like the Izea Forums, which are very good) are made for building relationships. Do some research by surfing the Marketing and Design topics in forums; you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t work. But be sure that you have good content at your blog, waiting for the visitors.

And be sure to visit other blogs, preferrably in your own “niche.” For example, if you run a cat blog, spend a lot of time visiting other cat blogs. I will be first to say “diversify, diversify, diversify,” though. DON’T just stick to your niche and that alone. There’s a whole world of bloggers in other niches who may just fall in love with your blog.

OK, so let’s quickly recap Part 1: Preparing For Your Future:

• Don’t come into this with the attitude of pimping your blog for money.
• Assess yourself and count the costs of maintaining a blog. Do you have the time and patience to devote to it? Can you express yourself adequately so that people will want to read your blog?
• It’s recommended that you buy your own domain name.
• It’s recommended that you buy your own blog hosting from a web-hosting company.
• There are three components to a blog: domain name, blog platform software, and web hosting.
• The domain name can be a free one (but it will always have the company’s name tagged at the end, like myblogname.blogspot.com) or one you purchase (like myblogname.com or myblogname.net).
• The blog platform software is the special software that allows you to write posts, allow people to comment, give your blog a “pretty GUI face” (the theme or template), and more. Blogger’s and the WordPress.com’s platform software come free with their free web hosting service. Because it is free, it is also limited as to how much you can customize it. The WordPress.org blogging platform is free, too- but you must have it hosted somewhere because the WordPress dudes don’t have space at their place to hold it for you. And free blog service comes with very little tech help.
• The web hosting company is the place where you park your blog. They put your data on their “servers” (think of it like your computer’s hard drive holding all your PC’s data). The web hosting company charges a fee for this service. And most times, you don’t have to install WordPress’ platform software here– the web hosting company already has the way for you to activate it and get your blog going.
• Get a nice theme/template and starting writing good posts.
• Join social networks and acquire some readers. Generate traffic. Visit forums and do some reading. Visit other blogs and leave comments. Establish friendships and contacts.

Making money from a blog is a side-dish venture, in my opinion. Your first goal is to create a great blog. Your second goal is to build a readership. Your last goal is to make money from it. If you have worked hard on the first two points, the last point– making the money– comes much, much easier and is more delgihtful for you and your readers.

I hope this helps! In the next section on this topic, I’ll tell you what advertising companies I have joined, and give some tips about writing sponsored posts.

This is my favorite. It’s a little gift box. You can put something truly valuable in it, like a gold nugget or gold coin (IF the Federal Reserve will let you, that is). You can read about how to make this here.

There are loads more ideas. This would be a cute way to entertain the kids who visit for the holidays, don’t you think? Or would be nice as an art/craft project for homeschool. You can make a shirt:

Boots to go with the shirt:

And all these nifty origami pieces:

There’s a nice site with origami instructions here and nice designs here. Photos courtesy of those same sites.