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Building Stronger Finances with Expense Tracking, Budgeting, and Saving
Now that the National Bureau of Economic Research has confirmed what we’ve all known for months — the American economy is in a recession — consumers are reacting at a gut level. According to figures compiled by MasterCard, the sale of electronics and appliances dropped 25.2 percent in November with luxury goods down 24.4 percent, and specialty retail items (a category including clothing) off by 20.2 percent.
The only thing that drew shoppers out on Black Friday and CyberMonday were discounts so deep they probably did little to help the retailers’ positions. What we need to do now, however, is to take a deep breath and make a plan that addresses spending today and saving for tomorrow. In an economy shifting so rapidly from long-term reliance on credit to a cash basis, the major three areas demanding attention for everyone are: expense tracking, budgeting, and retirement planning.
Economizing and deprivation, however, don’t have to be synonymous, nor does all retail activity have to cease during a recession. No consumer will ever get a handle on their personal monetary situation without taking a month to track and to categorize every single dime they spend. The good news is that in the act of observing your spending, you’re already changing it. This exercise will also allow you to gain a clear idea of the expenses that absolutely must be made each month, obligations that form the backbone of a personal budget. (Think mortgage, rent, utilities, insurance, and so on.)
Armed with a baseline of expenditures and a developing budget, you can intelligently started reducing the numbers and allocating your funds responsibly. In the process you can evaluate the price you are paying for major items. Is it time to get auto insurance quotes and find a better rate? It is time to buckle down and re-negotiate your mortgage? Can you shave some money off the homeowners’ policy by insulating the attic or getting a local alarm system?
And finally, by getting control of and reducing your spending, you can decide how much money you can save each month toward the future. Now is not the time to invest in stocks, but rather to look at long-term savings or investment venues like money market accounts or CDs. The best strategy initially is to set up an automatic withdrawal from your checking account into the highest yield savings account you can find and to treat the withdrawal as just another monthly expense. (Make sure this account is FDIC insured!) Every three to six months, evaluate the amount you are setting aside and if possible, increase it.
Granted, these are short term measures, but Americans are not used to living within their means. Start slowly by understanding how you use money, by learning to economize rationally while still living a life you can enjoy, and by setting money aside safely so that in a year to 18 months you have an amount that can be transferred into a more sophisticated long-term investment venue. (Use that period to get educated on the core basics of retirement savings strategies.) Remember a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. We all have a lot to learn about ways to save money in a changed world and the time to start is now.
Tags: insuranc
Great Article:What is Wrong With Social Media?
Social Media websites like Digg started off as a good idea. Kevin Rose was capable of finding better news than major media outlets, so he built Digg. The concept was that users could find and then collectively vote on which news, blogs or articles became the front page of Digg.
That’s how social media websites started. Then they started to grow and gain attention. More and more submissions came in. Internet marketers started paying attention, and now many marketers claim social media is a way to market websites. Based on this advice bloggers submit even more posts. Social media websites are bombarded with submissions. So many that it’s hard to keep up. It’s not the spam, it’s the volume.
In the beginning you were able to peruse all the submissions, and voting for the top stories was a fairly democratic process. The current volume makes it impossible for any users to view all the submissions. That has lead to a breakdown of the democratic system of voting.
Rather than read through volumes of submissions, users congeal into social networks. These are cliques within the social media websites where users have developed virtual relationships. The top users on the social media websites filter the submission volume by means of the virtual relationships. They read and vote for submissions from within the clique. This makes them top poster simply by the fact that the virtual relationship is quid pro quo. The members of the clique vote up the posts from the clique, knowing their submissions will reap similar rewards.
This is a well publicized strategy on social media websites. You are encouraged to build relationships, and then twitter your clique when you want them to vote for your new post.
Members of these social media cliques tend to professional marketers. These are people whose job is to spend on day on Digg, Sphinn or StumbleUpon. Live bloggers flourish on social media websites because their job is blog instantly from conferences. How does the average user with a day job compete with the professionals?
This is what causes some submissions to reach the top pages of social media websites. It’s no longer the best content. More often than not, mediocre or poor content reaches the top. Meanwhile, some of the best content is lost in shuffle, just as it used be to before the social media websites.
There are already problems arising with social media websites. Marketers have started offering votes on these websites for cash. One in particular paid users to vote for certain submissions, and simultaneously collected fees from the author. Social media websites reacted by locating the offending users and terminating their memberships. But the real question is if the social networks are less damaging? Instead of accepting cash for votes, the quid pro quo nature of the clique is trading services for services. Votes are the currency of choice, and I’ll vote for you if you vote for me. Is it hypocritical to support this trading of votes, but then terminate votes for cash?
Does the clique need to defend its status as the top posters? If every post suddenly got 50 diggs, sphinns or stumbles, wouldn’t the top posters also be lost in the volume? Are the top posters likely to be dismissive any new authors achieving success? I read discussions where the top posters take it upon themselves to report spam. Do they judge everything as spam, either consciously or subconsciously to protect their turf. If so what chance does new and unique content stand.
Is this the fault of social media websites? No, it’s more a result of being released to the masses. Should the social relationships be disbanded by the social media websites? I don’t think so because it is a means to filter the volume of submissions. What can be done? I don’t know, but I think social media is at its pinnacle. The next method that recognizes the quality content, no matter who the author is, will eventually replace it.
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Making Money by Making Games!
It is very possible to make computer games and make huge income by selling them! Fot those who want to know how much money can be made in this business: from few hundred dollars to a few million! You don’t even need to have a huge development team working on the game. Games like World Of Warcraft required millions of dollars of investment and hundreds of programmers, designers, marketing experts etc…
There are also indie (independent) games which are made by just a few people, and are sold over the web for just a few bucks! These games also sell like crazy!!! They are interesting, provide a lot of fun and they are cheap. On the other side, their makers invested only a few hundred dollars and a few months in development. Some indie games sell in millions of copies! What if you could develop a game and sell a million copies at $10 per copy? I will try it, so I made a plan:
I have a few years of internet marketing experience. I am also starting my education for a marketing manager - I am sure I will get a lot of marketing knowledge in this school.
I also have a few years of programming experience. I don’t know much about programming games but I will learn it. I just bought a book called “Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days”…I think I will actually need more time to really learn C++. There are also free game programming engines that integrate in Microsoft Visual C++, so I will use these to make my games. My plan is to start making my first game by the end of next year. Wish me luck!
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