Lower Las Vegas gasoline prices likely by late fall

Southern Nevada imports a lot from California. We can count on the Golden State for tourists, relocating residents, expanding businesses — and stubbornly high gasoline prices.

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Your Money Matters: Weigh positive return when renting real estate

The possibility of investing in rental real estate has been a hot topic with clients of late. Entering the world of being a landlord is a not a decision to make lightly, with many factors to consider and ins and outs of the business to understand.Calculating income or loss on rental real estate for tax purposes differs in some important ways from the cash flow realized; and both calculations are important to know. When looking at income potential for a property, the cash in or out of [...]

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Local tailor works golden years in business

Antonio Zanzonico, 80, who owns and operates Antonio Dry Cleaning & Tailoring on 5224 Milford Road/Route 209 in Marshalls Creek, believes shops like his will be history two decades from now."Ninety-eight percent of the people I have are over 50 years old," Zanzonico said recently, taking a break from trying to call the owners of clothing items that had been left with him six months ago and remained unclaimed. "Young people don't come because they don't dress up. They wear a pair [...]

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Slot machine industry changes concern investors

We're not a full year into the slot machine industry's brave new world, and some members of the investment community have doubts about the future.

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10 Bible Verses Every Entrepreneur Needs to Read

The Bible is packed with life lessons – stories of humankind’s experience with God.

There are lessons for those feeling depressed, those struggling with sin, those dealing with difficult people – you name it, it’s there.

As a Christian, one of the most important lessons the Bible teaches me is to rely on God’s grace (that requires faith) and not my own works to make myself righteous in God’s sight.

But there are other lessons that have also proved vital not only in the life to come, but in my life today.

I’m an entrepreneur who juggles a lot of responsibilities.

Thankfully, there are many Bible verses about business that teach some very valuable lessons.

Here are some of the best verses in the Bible that can help the entrepreneur in you!

1. Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. – Proverbs 10:4 (NIV)

Proverbs is filled with all kinds of fantastic observations about life. This one shows how if you slack off, you’re going to be met with poverty. This makes sense, right?

I believe in making the most of every moment of the day. I work hard, really hard. I believe that diligence that leads to financial stability.

As a result of my hard work, I built a fantastic wealth management firm and a financial website (the one you’re reading now). These companies bring in much more than the average American makes, and I’m so thankful for the opportunities I’ve had to build these businesses.

If you’re wanting to get ahead in business, be diligent. You don’t have to absolutely wear yourself out, though . . . .

2.Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. – Proverbs 23:4 (ESV)

As I mentioned, I work pretty hard. But that doesn’t mean I don’t take breaks.

There are much more important things in life than getting rich. Take family, for example. What would I do without my wife and my boys?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being rich. But there is something wrong with wearing yourself out to get rich. We’ve all heard the stories of the workaholics who make a fortune but then abandon their families.

Their marriages fall apart and their children suffer. Is wearing yourself out to become wealthy really worth those consequences? Of course not!

I’d argue that you can grow your dough without running yourself into the ground. But trust me, I know it’s not easy. I have to watch myself to make sure that I don’t go overboard.

I must at all times keep my entrepreneurial spirit in check. One of the best ways to do this is to listen to your spouse. If they’re telling you that you need to slow down, you need to slow down.

3. Sluggards do not plow in season; so at harvest time they look but find nothing. – Proverbs 20:4 (NIV)

Here’s a lesson for entrepreneurs – always be on the lookout for opportunities that lead to a harvest. This verse is probably more about the virtues of having a willingness to work, but it also talks about working in season.

With certain seasons come opportunities. If these opportunities are pushed aside, you might find yourself in need but not reaping anything because you didn’t work!

Remember that the fruit comes after the labor.

4.Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, ²⁴ knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. – Colossians 3:23-24 (ESV)

Imagine working for the perfect boss. Everything they say and do is absolutely perfect. They make the right choices every time. They speak the right words every time. They are right – you guessed it – 100% of the time.

That sounds pretty intimidating, doesn’t it?

Wouldn’t you step up your game if you were working for the perfect boss? Wouldn’t you be careful with how you handled their money, their time, and their other resources? Of course you would! After all, perfection sees all.

When we are working for human masters, we know in the back of our minds that there might be room to slack off. But when we’re working for God, there’s no room to cut corners.

Not only will God be pleased with you when he notices the fit and finish you put into your product or service, but most likely your human masters will notice too. Just make sure you care more about what God thinks than what your human masters think. Do that, and your human masters will probably be pleased as well if they are godly people.

5. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat– for he grants sleep to those he loves. – Psalm 127:2 (NIV)

At first glance, this verse seems to be making a general statement that it’s good to get your sleep instead of waking up early and going to bed late. While there’s certainly value in getting sleep, perhaps it’s saying something more.

Here’s the first verse of the chapter:

Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. – Psalm 127:1 (NIV)

It’s always good to look at the context of a verse. Here, the verse is talking about how the Lord’s hand must be in something for it to work properly.

Could it also be that rising early and staying up late does no good unless the Lord’s hand is in it? Perhaps it’s a possibility. In any case, it’s important to remember that we should rely on the Lord. We shouldn’t trust in our own abilities alone – the Lord must be at the heart of everything we do.

6. So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. – Matthew 7:12 (ESV)

Business that God approves of requires a firm understanding and grasp of ethics. Thankfully, Jesus simplified much of the whole topic of ethics in just a few words commonly known as the Golden Rule.

When we, as entrepreneurs, put ourselves into other people’s shoes, we’re more likely to treat those people as we’d like to be treated. Here are a few business questions you can use to do the best thing for your customers:

• If I was the customer, would I be happy with the speed of service of my business?
• If I was the customer, would I appreciate how my business communicates with me?
• If I was the customer, would I continue doing business with my business?

These questions can help you improve customer satisfaction.

One of the ways I help my clients at Alliance Wealth Management is to provide custom-fit solutions. I recognize that every one of my clients is different. While there may be some overlap in their needs, each person is unique. Some of my clients want to set-it-and-forget-it, and others want detailed explanations and someone who will work closely with them to make tweaks and adjustments to their retirement plan.

Think about your business. How can you customize your products and services to your customers? How can you make every customer feel like the most valued customer? It starts with doing to others what you would have them do to you.

7.The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight. – Proverbs 4:7 (ESV)

I continually educate myself about all things financial. I attend presentations and do a lot of research. Understanding is of great value in my business, and I’ve be willing to guess it is in yours, too.

Wisdom not only includes having knowledge and experience, but it also includes being able to use that knowledge and experience in a sound way – it involves proper judgment.

Notice the value of understanding: “Though it cost all you have, get understanding.” That’s right, understanding is worth everything you own. Now, you probably don’t have to go and sell everything you own to take a course that costs thousands and thousands of dollars, but this verse certainly highlights the value of understanding.

Make a sincere effort to always be a learner. Value education. Learn how to apply your knowledge in business and life. It’s worth a lot, friends.

8. In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. – Proverbs 14:23 (ESV)

Back when I began my career with A.G. Edwards & Sons in 2002, I was in a training class including about 55 people. After the training a year later, our class was reduced to less than about 27 people. At my fifth anniversary mark only five of us were left.

The reason why so many people didn’t make it was because they weren’t really willing to put in the hard work required. They were all talk, no action.

You’ve probably heard that “actions speak louder than words.” True. But many people think that means you must act and speak.

What if you just did the right thing without announcing it to the world? One might argue that that could result in less accountability, but if you actually follow through on your goals without speaking, it will show a sense of humility coupled with a dedication to working hard.

Work hard, and you can overcome many business challenges.

9. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? – Mark 8:36 (ESV)

I have quite a bit of money in the bank and investments. You might call me wealthy if you look at my net worth. I know others who are quite wealthy, too. But let me tell you, the numbers don’t mean a thing compared to the gift that my Lord Jesus gave to me on the cross.

If you’re not a Christian, I ask you to look into the life of Christ.

Listen, we’ve all messed up. We’ve all fallen short of the perfection of God. We’re sinners!

But God loves us so much that he came down to this planet to rescue us from the spiritual consequences of our actions. His name is Jesus.

If you’re an entrepreneur – or anyone else – who doesn’t yet have a relationship with Christ, seek first God’s kingdom. Wealth is deceitful, and it doesn’t mean a thing compared to the glorious riches in Christ.

10.The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. – Proverbs 21:5 (ESV)

Diligence means showing care – many times over the long haul. Are you showing diligence?

Businesses must be carefully built. Don’t be hasty. Remember that it can take years to see some success. If you go for a quick win, you might find yourself with a quick failure.

There are so many Bible verses about business and entrpreneurship. I encourage you to leave your favorites in the comments below. Now go make some money, but put God first!

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The Click: Fostering the Moment When You’re Truly Ready for Financial Change

It was a beautiful spring day in April 2006 when I finally realized that I was ready to make some financial changes in my life. Prior to that, I had become mildly concerned about my finances, but I kept buying into the idea that my money problems were something that my “future self” would solve.

That beautiful spring day changed all of that.

When I arrived home at my apartment, I checked the mail as I always did. The mail contained several bills, so I went inside and sat down at the computer to pay them. I popped onto my bank’s website and looked at my checking account status.

I had almost nothing in there.

Ordinarily, that wouldn’t upset me too much, but I also knew that I wouldn’t be getting paid again for a while. My next paycheck was easily a week and a half away, and by then I’d have many more bills that had piled up.

Even scarier than that was the realization that I was also very near the credit limit on my three credit cards. I barely had enough breathing room on those cards to buy a meal or two, let alone a week’s worth of groceries.

I kind of descended into a daze at that point. My wife was due home in an hour or two with our infant son in tow, so I spent that hour or two just walking around with my mind racing through the details of the situation.

No matter how I spelled it out, it was painful.

Finally, she arrived home with our son and we had a fairly normal evening. By about nine o’clock, it was time to put him to bed, so I took him into his bedroom and rocked with him in a rocking chair.

The light in there was dim, but it was still bright enough that I could see the reflection in his little eyes as he looked up at me. That look was one of complete trust. That baby had no doubt at all that he was safe with me, that I would take care of him and make sure that he had food to eat and that his childhood would be taken care of.

I held him close and I cried. I then spent several hours in there, just rocking him. I told my wife that he was having a bit of trouble sleeping and that she should just go on to bed, and I stayed in there holding him throughout the night. I dozed a bit, but I mostly just reflected on my life.

It was during that long night that I began to realize that all of my poor day-to-day choices had put me in this situation, that those choices had left me with pretty poor options going forward, and that, even worse, those poor choices had negatively altered this little baby’s future, too.

That was the moment when it all clicked into place.

Sure, I didn’t yet really understand how to manage my finances. That came in the following days and weeks and months, as I dug into personal finance books, sold off a lot of my extra possessions, and knocked off one of my credit card debts in its entirety. It took a while to build a new routine, one that wouldn’t result in spending more than I earned. It wasn’t easy and it had a lot of growing pains.

It was certainly a wobbly bicycle ride at the start, but it was a ride in the right direction, which was the big difference.

It was that moment, late at night with my son in my arms, when things clicked into place, when I made the choice to head in a different direction and start spending less than I earned.

That leaves us with a very powerful question: how can a person foster that kind of fundamental change in their own life? What exactly makes a major change like that click into place?

It’s a question I’ve considered many times since then. There have been changes I’ve wanted to make in my life over the ensuing years. Sometimes I’ve found success with those changes; other times, not so much.

What was the difference? What makes things “click” in my life?

I think it really comes down to five factors, three of which you can control and two of which you largely cannot. Underlying all of those factors is the fact that people are naturally resistant to change.

Factor #1 – A Significant Life Change That Alters Your Daily Routine

Here’s the simple truth: in order to change the broad direction of your life, you have to significantly change what you do every day. You cannot continue with the same routines and patterns or else nothing will ever change.

The easiest way to foster major change in your day-to-day life is to have a significant life change that alters what your daily responsibilities are. Changing your daily responsibilities usually changes where you are and what you’re doing throughout the day, radically changing the landscape of your daily life.

It is at that moment, when major change is occurring and your daily routines are unsettled, that you can build up better patterns in your everyday life. It is much, much harder to change your routines once they’ve become established. A major life change provides a great opportunity for altering many routines, much like turning the earth gives you a great opportunity to plant new crops.

For me, this significant change came in the form of having a child. It altered many of my daily routines and thus forced me to start re-evaluating how I was spending my time and energy and, yes, money. I was no longer going out after work very often with my usual gang, as I was more interested in heading home and taking care of my child. Our evenings no longer involved going out. Our daily patterns were changed.

There are many life events that can alter your daily routine. A change in jobs can do it, whether it’s simply moving from job to job, moving into unemployment, or moving from unemployment to a job. Perhaps it can be a marriage, or the dissolution of a marriage or a longstanding relationship. It might be moving from a house to an apartment, or from an apartment to a house. Or, like me, it might come in the form of the arrival of a child.

When those moments happen, you have a perfect opportunity to bring about real change in almost any aspect of your life. You are given the chance to establish lots of new routines, so make the effort to establish good ones.

Factor #2 – A Realization That Your Current Daily Life Choices Lead to a Place You Don’t Want to Go

What exactly happens in your life if you keep repeating the routine that you have most days? Where will you be in five years? Ten years?

Where will you be if you keep spending like you do, especially on the unimportant things? Where will you be if you keep eating at the same calorie level? Where will you be if you keep exercising at the same level? Where will you be if you read that much – or that little – each day?

Are those places that you want to be?

Yeah, it’s tempting to think that your “future self” will do better somehow, but the truth is that you’ll most likely keep repeating the same choices every day for a very long time, until something abrupt happens to change it. We are creatures of habit and routine, after all.

For me, it was that tying of daily choices to my long-term future that awoke me mentally and made me primed for change. I had already started thinking along these lines before things “clicked” completely on that long night with my son. For me, this type of thinking “set the table,” meaning that it prepared me mentally to be open to the other kinds of changes going on in my life.

For you, the best step you can take is to start asking yourself what your life will be like in the future with your current routines and habits. Will you honestly be happy with yourself in five years? Ten years? If not, then that’s a pretty powerful motivation to make some changes.

Factor #3 – An Elimination (or Reduction) of the Things That Enable Your Mistakes

What enables you to make less than stellar choices when it comes to your life? The answer to that question often isn’t all that obvious, but the truth is that there are a lot of things in your life that enable you to make the day-to-day decisions you make, for better or for worse.

For example, when you choose to carry cash in your pocket, you suddenly make it easier to make little impulse purchases throughout your day. When you have a lot of convenience food in your cupboard (like potato chips) and in your freezer (like frozen snacks), then it becomes easier to gobble unhealthy foods. When you have a credit card stored in an online website, it’s easier to just click a button and spend money.

Those types of things are enablers of poor habits. Credit cards stored in online sites. Credit cards and cash in your pocket when you’re not planning to spend. Potato chips and cookies in your cupboard. Hot Pockets in your freezer. Even things like cable television can be an enabler of poor habits.

If you want to stop those poor habits, stop having those things with you. Stop carrying cash and credit cards. Wipe your credit card numbers off of the online sites that you use. Cancel your cable television. Stop buying junk food and soda.

One very strong element that often convinces people to make poor choices is their social circle. If your friends consistently overspend, or they eat a lot of junk food, or they spend their time in unfulfilling or unproductive ways, or they spend their time abusing alcohol or drugs, it’s very easy for you to fall into those patterns as well. Make an effort to cut back on those friendships, even if it means being alone a little bit more for a while.

In other words, make active, conscious choices in advance so that you’re not open to making really poor choices in the moment. Consciously leave your credit cards at home when you go out. Consciously choose to leave the junk food and the soda on the shelves at the store. Consciously choose to cancel your cable television or your World of Warcraft subscription. Consciously choose to delete those phone numbers for food delivery from your phone.

Choices like that, made in advance, alter your choices at a later point. They make it so that you have to make better choices because the bad choices aren’t easy any more.

Factor #4 – A Set of Tools and Items at Hand That Enable Better Habits

Eliminating things that make bad choices easy is just one half of the equation. Creating things that make good choices easy is the other part of the equation.

For example, one thing you can do if you’re striving to lose weight is to identify low-calorie snacks that you do enjoy and stock your pantry with them rather than high-calorie snacks. This enables you to make better choices in the moment. If you’re trying to exercise more, find exercises that you enjoy doing and then make the equipment you need for those exercises as easily available as you can. I do this by leaving my walking/jogging/running shoes right by the door so I can easily put them on I often even leave clean socks right on top of them.

How can you do this in terms of financial recovery? Start buying stuff in bulk so that you begin to rely on having things on hand for meals in your house rather than needing to go out to eat. Prepare meals in advance and freeze them so that you know you have healthy meals on hand when you need a meal in a pinch.

You can even voluntarily choose to take on chores that will create a lasting savings around your house, such as air-sealing your home to keep drafts out, installing ceiling fans, installing LED light bulbs everywhere, and so on. Those kinds of moves make it easy to save because it reduces the cost of the normal everyday choices that you make. For example, if you start installing LED bulbs, the normal decision of turning on a light is now less expensive than it was before.

For me, looking for these kinds of opportunities has become a normal part of financial health. I am constantly looking for things I can do to make smart financial decisions easier in my life and, when I have the opportunity to put something like that in place, I try to do it as soon as possible. Those kinds of things make their way onto my daily to-do list with great urgency.

Factor #5 – A Group of People Around You That Are Actively Supportive of Your Change

When discussing the third factor, I mentioned the idea that friends can provide a very negative impact on your own desire for change. They make it easy to make really poor decisions, and those poor decisions along with those relationships continue to reinforce a very negative trajectory.

Of course, the opposite of that is true. If you surround yourself with friends who embody the things you want to achieve and consistently make positive choices in that regard, those attributes are going to influence you.

Your conversations about the things that you’re doing will reflect making positive life choices. Your close friends will be inspirational and will make you want to be more like them. Your friends will share good ideas with you for how you can do things better. The social events that you choose to do together will inherently reflect better choices.

My own life is a perfect example.

My primary social circle prior to my financial reboot was one that went out for drinks every night after work. They went golfing a lot. They always wore nice clothes and had nice gadgets and talked a lot about the hottest restaurants and vacation destinations and lots and lots of consumer products.

My primary social circle nowadays gets together at each other’s homes on a regular basis for potluck dinners. We talk about politics and about doing stuff outdoors and the books we’ve read and the projects we’re each working on. We dress really casually, perfect for hanging out around the house or maybe wandering around in the yard or playing a sport at the park together.

The earlier crowd constantly encouraged me to spend money by their very nature. Every interaction with them was an encouragement to spend money – on clothes, on gadgets, on drinks, on golfing, on cars, on expensive restaurants, and so on.

With my current social group, there’s very little encouragement to spend. Most of our conversation is far away from things you can spend money on, and even our conversations about books usually result from getting books from the library or lending books to each other. Even our meals are simple affairs.

My current social group does a great job of naturally encouraging me to be financially responsible. They even do a good job (to an extent) of encouraging other good behaviors, such as exercising and eating healthier.

Are they more “fun” than my other group? It’s hard to compare, but I enjoy social events with my current group. However, they are undoubtedly more joyful and fulfilling than the other group.

How can you cultivate a more positive social group? Look for places in your community where such people might congregate. Try volunteering or attending free community events where there’s a real opportunity to meet people face to face and see if anything clicks.

Final Thoughts

It was the simultaneous occurrence of all of these factors that really convinced me to make a financial turnaround.

First, we had a child, which altered our routines of everyday life. We couldn’t simply follow the patterns we had been following for the previous few years.

Second, I began to realize that my daily choices was really negatively affecting the path I was heading down. I didn’t like where we were going to wind up in five or ten years.

Third, I started to gravitate away from things that caused me to make poor financial choices. For example, I started spending less time with my big-spending social circle. We ate fewer meals at restaurants.

Fourth, I started to gravitate toward things that encouraged good financial choices. For example, we ate more meals at home that we prepared ourselves. I started driving a different commute to work that kept me away from places where I could spend money.

Finally, we started spending more time with friends who encouraged good financial behavior. The friends that really emerged in our life after the birth of our first child were much more on the ball when it came to finances, and our friendship was oriented around things that didn’t involve spending money.

Those things all came together at roughly the same time and they naturally led to that moment when I really realized what was at stake and that I needed to change things. It wasn’t an immediate transformation by any means – I didn’t suddenly become a financial wizard – but it did mean that we were making better and better choices almost on a daily basis.

The end result? Today, we own our own home. We have no debts – not even a mortgage. We have savings and investments. We have very little stress when it comes to money.

I owe all of that to the moment when everything clicked into place.

Good luck finding your own “click.”

The post The Click: Fostering the Moment When You’re Truly Ready for Financial Change appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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How to Get Paid to Watch Your Favorite Cooking Shows

I might be a tiny bit addicted to cooking shows, which is ironic since the take-out local Chinese restaurant knows me by name.

I don’t actually use any of the cooking tricks I see on TV, but there’s something relaxing about watching someone else do the cooking, even if it includes Gordon Ramsay yelling in the background.

That’s why I was pretty stoked to find this new hack: Swagbucks is offering users the chance to earn giftcards for your favorite retailers, simply by watching cooking shows through their video channel.

Ummm… Get PAID to watch cooking shows? I can’t think of a better way to spend a lazy day!

Here’s what you need to know if you want to spend your weekend watching cooking shows and getting paid:

Watch Cooking Shows, Earn Swagbucks

Swagbucks’ video channel lets you earn Swagbucks for watching a variety of shows — including cooking shows.

(Never used Swagbucks before? Here’s our guide for beginners.)

Just log in, watch the short videos and claim your bucks.

You need to watch all of the shows in a specific playlist to earn your bucks, so be prepared. Swagbucks lets you know how long the playlist runs before you start watching, and playlists range from a few minutes to about a half hour.

What kind of shows are available? You can learn about anything from sushi to Indian food to eating organically.

One of the videos teaches you how to make sandwich kebabs by stacking your favorite sandwich ingredients, like cheese cubes, salami and cherry tomatoes, on a kebab stick. Now that’s the kind of cooking I can get behind!

How You Get Paid

Once you’ve earned your Swagbucks, take them to the Swagbucks Rewards Store to exchange your bucks for gift cards. Swagbucks offers gift cards for Amazon, Target and Visa as well as Nintendo, Shutterfly, Old Navy and more. You can even get giftcards that deposit cash right into your PayPal account.

Spend your weekend watching cooking shows and learning new cooking hacks — I got a kick out of their instructions for using pancake batter to draw cool shapes, like flowers or Disney characters.

And earn extra cash at the same time! You’ll be so inspired to cook that you won’t even think about ordering Chinese take-out. (Eh, maybe.)

Your Turn: Have you ever used Swagbucks to make extra cash? Would you watch a few cooking shows to earn gift cards and cash?

Disclosure: We appreciate you letting us include affiliate links in this post. It helps keep the beer fridge stocked in the Penny Hoarder break room.

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