A&B Fuel customers told 'check is in the mail'

The check is in the mail.That's what A&B Fuel customers heard Monday after a seven-year-long quest to get back their money.The state Attorney's General Office told more than 40 customers of the bankrupt oil company, owned by Arthur and Beverly Baio, that they would be receiving 91 percent of the money they lost when the company went under in December 2008.The announcement came in [...]

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/1SMc0CX

Ready to Start Investing? Here’s the Best Online Brokers for Beginners

I can remember the first time I made my first stock trade.

I was an intern at the investment firm that eventually hired me.

It was right around when the tech bubble burst, and tech stocks were trading at extreme discounts.

I didn’t have a lot of money, actually I had really almost no money, yet I felt compelled that I needed to buy one of these tech stocks.

The stock that I had in my sight was Lucent.

Lucent was a telecommunication company that once was trading in the $60 to $80 range but had significantly dropped well below $10.

If I recall correctly, I bought it within the $6 to $8 range.  I remember thinking that I landed a good buy.  Ha!

I opened my account, deposited my money, and made my first trade.

Reflecting back, I was such a beginner, it wasn’t funny.

If I had known any better,

1.   I wouldn’t have bought Lucent, and
2.  I definitely wouldn’t have bought it through a full-service brokerage firm.

I paid $42 for a commission just to buy the stock. If I had sold it, I would have had to pay an additional $42.

My other issue is that I was a beginner involved in stock picking. Putting your investable assets into one thing that could completely implode is a good way to lose money. While you do have to deal with stock market drops when you invest in mutual funds and ETFs, you have a better chance of recovery when the whole market rises later. With individual stocks, you run the risk of being left behind.

Had I know better, I would have gone with an online brokerage and paid next to nothing to make the exact same trade. Better yet, I as a beginner, I would have looked into index mutual funds and saved the individual stock picking until I had more knowledge and experience.

If you are a novice investor or a small investor looking to make your first stock trade, let me introduce you to some other best online brokers for beginners.

Best Online Brokerage Firms for Beginner Investors

When deciding which online brokerage firm to choose, you need to consider what will work best for you. In some cases, a slightly higher fee is worth it, if the brokerage meets your needs and helps you reach your goals.

Of all the online firms listed below have accounts that are easy to set up, offer cheap investing opportunities, and many have awesome customer service that makes you feel as if you’re meeting with somebody in real life.

We also highlight online discount brokers that encourage investor education by offering deep knowledge bases, webinars, or even online courses for their investors.

Betterment – Help Design Your Portfolio

If the alphabet soup of investing — Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, SEP IRA, 401k, Roth 401k, and so on — baffles you, Betterment is a great place to start.

Betterment’s philosophy is this: investing is so complicated that many people get analysis paralysis. Instead of making any decision, they freeze and make no decision. Betterment is designed to make investing incredibly simple.

How simple?

You have very few choices to make:

• how much money to invest (there is a minimum requirement of $100 per month or a lump sum deposit of $10,000)
• how often you want to invest it (one time or automatically invest on a schedule)
• what asset allocation you want between stock and bond investments

That’s it. Betterment takes care of the rest. No having to look through a bunch of mutual fund tables to decide which funds to go with. The firm automatically invests in a basket of ETFs in two categories: stocks and bonds. You answer simple questions that help Betterment determine your risk profile. If you go with the most risk (100% stock allocation), all of your money goes into the stock ETF basket. If you want to split it down the middle, 50% goes to the stock basket and 50% to the Treasury bond basket. Other allocations are available, based on your risk profile. You can also tweak your allocation to reflect your preferences.

As another bonus, as your account balance grows, your fee decreases. Many traditional accounts charge 1% or more in annual fees. With Betterment, you start by paying 0.35% annually, and that reduces to 0.25% and then to 0.15% as you reach different milestones. There are no hidden fees associated with a Betterment account.

It’s dead simple, which is why it is a great place for beginners to start. Building the habit of investing regularly is critically important and Betterment helps you do this without overwhelming you with complicated investment decisions.

Open a free account with Betterment Today.

Scottrade – Best Customer Service

Scottrade is similar to E*TRADE in that it is offers a multitude of investment choices for investors. Betterment and Trade King have a place in the world — they are great at helping you get started and building up investments automatically — but discount brokerages like Scottrade give you more options once you know a little bit more about what you’re doing.

Scottrade also offers some of the least expensive trades available, starting just $7 per trade for stocks and ETFs. They have a no-fee IRA, providing you access to 3,100+ no-transaction fee mutual funds, and 14,500+ other (load and no-load) mutual funds. As expected you can trade stocks, ETFs, and options as well.

You can open an account with as little as $500. Scottrade will also pay up to $100 of your account transfer fees if you’re coming from another broker, but you have to transfer $10,000 or more to qualify for that. Another bonus is that it’s possible to set up an interest-bearing checking account through Scottrade.

While a little more expensive some of the other options, Scottrade is one of our best picks for investors who want to be able to invest in individual stocks and enjoy an online discount experience that is close to what you’d see with a full-service broker.

Open an account with Scottrade today.

Tradeking – Cheapest Trades

Trade King is an online discount brokerage firm with some of the least expensive trade fees available. $4.95 for stock and ETF trades is crazy talk. Plus no-load mutual funds are reasonable at $9.95 per trade. If you want to get funky with your investing you can trade options with TradeKing for just $0.65 per contract (plus the $4.95 base). TradeKing also offers Forex services for the truly adventurous.

TradeKing also offers a number of free tools, including market and company snapshots, research, quotes, screeners, and more.

Give a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Open an account with Trade King today.

TD Ameritrade – Well Known

If you’re looking for a solid industry leader that makes investing easy for new investors, TD Ameritrade is a great option. The company has been serving new online investors for years.

Unlike Betterment and Capital One ShareBuilder, TD Ameritrade isn’t designed solely for new investors. You get a set of robust tools whether you are new to investing or have been investing for decades. Like Scottrade, it’s an opportunity to access something approaching full-service without the full-service price.

As a leader in the industry, TD Ameritrade offers a vast array of investments that are suitable for new and experienced investors alike:

• 100+ Commission-free ETFs
• 13,000+ mutual funds
• Fixed income products like bonds and CDs
• Trade stocks, options, forex and futures
• Multitude of account options: Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP IRA, Simple IRA, 401k rollovers, normal taxable investment accounts

One of our favorite things about TD Ameritrade is how they offer exclusive webinars and investing classes to help new investors get up to speed.

Trades cost just $9.99 to start, and if you choose some of the fee-free funds, you can avoid transaction fees (although you will still have to pay the expense ratios associated with funds).

Trades cost just $9.99 and if you open an account today you can trade free for 60 days plus get up to $600.

E*TRADE – Long-Time Player

If you’re looking for an industry leader in the online trading space that can help you learn more about investing, E*TRADE is a great option. The company has more than 20 years of experience in online trading, affordable trades, and a robust investor education center.

Unlike Betterment and Capital One Investing, E*TRADE isn’t designed solely for new investors. You have access to robust tools including research, screeners, and more.

As a leader in the industry, E*TRADE offers one of the largest inventories of potential investments available:

• Every ETF sold
• 8,000+ mutual funds
• 30,000+ bonds
• Trade stocks, options, and forex
• Multitude of account options: Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, 401k rollovers, normal taxable investment accounts

Some other firms have limited mobile or tablet options. I’m sure you’ve seen E*TRADE’s commercials, but the trading tools for mobile devices ranging from iPhone to Android to Blackberry and iPad is quite robust.

Trades cost start at $9.99, but you can get a discount ($7.99 per trade) for frequent trading. However, frequent trading can be one way to lose money, and it’s not recommended for beginner investors.

Trades cost just $9.95 and if you open an account today you can trade free for 60 days plus get up to $600.

Capital One ShareBuilder

One of the most difficult parts of investing is getting out of your own way and setting up a habit of investing regularly. We all get inspiration to invest occasionally (usually when we get an emotional high from seeing the stock charts going up), but that isn’t an investing strategy that will pay off in the long run. You are much better off setting up an automatic savings plan that allows your brokerage firm to automatically take money from your bank account and put it into designated investments on a set schedule.

That concept is the main methodology behind Capital One ShareBuilder.

How does Capital One ShareBuilder help you do this?

1. Simply pick your automatic investment schedule
2. Pick the individual stocks or ETFs you want to invest in (ETFs recommended for diversification reasons)
3. Ignore until you’re a millionaire

The cost per trade for Capital One Investing starts at $6.95 per trade. However, if you use the automatic investing plan (which is still branded as ShareBuilder, even though Capital One changed the name of the investing division a few years ago), your cost starts at $3.95 per trade.

There are also options trading opportunities with Capital One Investing, but the strength of this account is in its automatic investment plan that gives you more control than what you receive with Betterment.

Get started investing and build up shares over time by opening an account with Capital One ShareBuilder.

Acorns – Invest with Pocket Change

One of the newest players in the online trading game is Acorns. With Acorns, you can set up an investing account that allows you to round up your transaction amounts and invest your pocket change. There is no account minimum, and you can start with as little as $5.

Your investment goes into a diversified portfolio with a monthly fee of $1 per month for accounts of less than $5,000. Once your account balance grows to $5,000, you pay a flat annual fee of 0.25%. If you feel like you don’t have enough money to get started, this can be a great solution. Once you have built up your account, you can move your account to another brokerage that might have lower fees or provide different options.

Lending Club – Easy Investing Alternative

If you are a beginning investor looking for an easy investing alternative to stocks, Lending Club can be a good choice. With lending club, you don’t invest by purchasing stocks. Instead, you help your peers finance various items. You’re investing in debt and hoping to see a return.

With as little as $25 you can start investing in notes that can provide you with potentially higher returns than stocks. However, you do run the risk that a borrower will default. Be aware of this before you start. It’s easy to get started, and Lending Club also offers managed note portfolios for relatively small fees if you have a high enough account balance. But getting started is free to you, and there are no transaction fees; borrowers pay fees for their loans, reducing your costs.

The Rise of Online Trading

Online discount brokers existed back when I made my first stock trade, but they were few and far between. Today, though, beginning investors have many more options than I had. There are several online discount brokers to choose from, many of them offering great deals and opportunities for beginners looking to start investing.

With all of the tools available today, it’s possible for you to screen stocks and funds, and trade for a fraction of the cost a full-service broker will charge. Not only that, but you can set up an automatic investment plan that regularly moves money from your checking account into an investment account, and buys what you want each month. This is known as dollar cost averaging, and it’s one of the best ways to start investing when you don’t have a lot of money.

Low-cost investments like exchange-traded funds (ETFs) allow you to get the benefit of a large swath of the market without the need for stock picking. If you regularly invest, you can save money on transaction costs and fees, and even invest with as little as $50 per month, depending on the brokerage and type of account you have. Online trading makes it easier than ever to create an appropriately diversified, with a little less risk, and without the need for a large amount of capital.

With an automatic investment plan using index mutual funds or ETFs, you can save on commissions, reduce your overall fees, and build your portfolio for the long term with the help of dollar cost averaging while you learn the ins and outs of investing.

Start Online Investing Today

With any of the above online discount brokers, you can start online investing almost immediately. All it takes is a little money and the will to make a change.

However, you do need to be careful as you start investing. I often discourage young investors to start off by buying individual stocks. Remember my Lucent stock? I never made a dime off of it and ended up selling at a loss.

As you begin your investing journey, start with a mutual fund or an ETF that tracks a larger index – think the S&P 500. Some of the online brokers, like Betterment, will help you automatically reinvest your dividends, providing you with an additional way to build your portfolio at a faster rate. An index mutual fund or index ETF that pays dividends provides you with a little extra to reinvest on a regular basis, and can super-charge your efforts.

Starting with funds and ETFs builds your foundation before you start taking unnecessary risk trading individual stocks. Trading individual stocks adds to your risk. Indexing provides some protection because it represents instant diversification. Even if the market drops this year, the reality is that the market as a whole hasn’t ever lost in any given 25-year period. If you’re investing for the long-term you are likely to come out ahead of you index because you don’t have to worry about one bad pick destroying your portfolio.

Beginning investing online is more about starting a good habit while you learn more about investing. You can start with as little as $5 and start growing your portfolio. As you build your investment account through dollar cost averaging and automatic investing plans, you can create a solid foundation for financial freedom. As you learn more, you can begin branching out.

But none of it will matter if you don’t start investing today.

Source Good Financial Cents http://ift.tt/1JHrYnd

10 CEOs Shared Their Toughest Interview Questions. Could YOU Answer Them?

I don’t know about you, but I always spend evenings before interviews going over my resume and reciting some well-rehearsed answers to myself.

“In five years, I plan to be…”

“My greatest weakness? Well, I’m a perfectionist, so sometimes my work takes a little longer — but it always turns out really well for the same reason.”

That’s right, turn the weakness into a strength. I am so good at interviews, you guys.

Hard Interview Questions — Like, Really Hard

Even though I’m the best at interviews, after reading an article at Quartz about some of the hardcore questions CEOs pose during high-level interviews, I’m pretty stoked not to be on the job hunt right now.

And it’s not just because I adore my job.

These questions are hard.

I have no idea how I’d answer them. Having only (barely) survived one panel interview, I’m pretty sure if someone asked me to sing for a bunch of people, I’d literally turn inside out.

Outsourcing provider Tech Mahindra’s President and CTO Atul Kunwar asked one (lucky?) interviewee to sing for the panel of senior execs who’d been questioning him.

To be fair, the candidate had mentioned he was a keen singer early in the interview. Make sure the “Hobbies and Skills” section of your CV isn’t just for show!

Other noteworthy questions include a Machiavellian “Would you rather be respected or feared?” and “What is your favorite Monopoly property, and why?”

Tupperware CEO Rick Goings circumvents the interview entirely by asking other people the questions — like, “How were you treated?” to the candidate’s driver.

Granted, these impossible questions are coming from extremely high-level executives — even company owners — who are interviewing candidates for important leadership positions….

But come on.

Making someone choose a bottle of wine from a fancy restaurant’s list as a high-pressure psych experiment? That’s just sadistic.

Your Turn: What’s the worst interview question you were ever asked? How did you handle it?

Jamie Cattanach (@jamiecattanach) is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes other stuff, like wine reviews and poems. She definitely, definitely has a five-year plan.

The post 10 CEOs Shared Their Toughest Interview Questions. Could YOU Answer Them? appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

source The Penny Hoarder http://ift.tt/1o79rOj

50 Last-Minute Valentine’s Day Gifts That’ll Cost You Less Than $5

Still scrambling for that perfect Valentine’s Day gift? Wondering how you’re going to get your special someone something truly special — without spending a lot of money in the process?

Even if you’ve only got five bucks in your pocket, you can still make this Valentine’s Day memorable. To add to the list of affordable ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day, here are 50 last-minute gifts that all cost less than $5.

1. Mixtape

The cassette mixtape has been a tried-and-true gift for decades. Best Buy and Amazon both sell single cassettes for under $5, so get yourself 90 minutes of blank cassette tape and fill it up with the best love songs you know.

Make your gift extra special by hand-decorating the cassette cover.

2. Spotify Playlist

Want to bring the mixtape into the 21st century? Make your special someone a Spotify playlist.

You don’t even need Spotify Premium; just get the free version of Spotify for your desktop, build the perfect list, and share it with your Valentine.

3. Lloyd Dobler Serenade

Take the iconic image of Say Anything’s Lloyd Dobler holding a boombox over his head as your model and get ready to tell your Valentine that “In your eyes… I am complete.”

Use an actual boombox if you have one, or pull out your iPhone and crank up the volume. This one works best if your Valentine is a fan of classic ‘80s movies.

4. Favorite Jelly Belly Flavor

Nearly everybody has a secret, favorite Jelly Belly flavor. (Mine’s popcorn.)

Figure out your bae’s favorite bean, then use the Jelly Belly store locator to find a store near you that sells Jelly Bellys in bulk.

Get $5 of whichever jelly is their jam, and show your Valentine that you pay attention to the little things.

5. Bulk Candy

Maybe your special someone doesn’t like jelly beans, but does like chocolate-covered almonds. The bulk candy aisle offers plenty of opportunities to put together a $5 gift that tastes better — and is much more personalized — than a cheap box of waxy Valentine’s candy.

Remember, if you’re giving jelly beans or bulk candy, the presentation is also what makes the present: Put it in an attractive bag or box, tie it up with a ribbon, and make your gift as special as the recipient.

6. Handmade Card

While we’re on the subject of crafts and presentation: a handmade card can often be one of the best and most treasured Valentine’s Day presents.

Anyone can go to the grocery store and get a 99-cent card with a pre-printed message. Only you can make a one-of-a-kind card with your own heartfelt statement of love.

7. Handmade Jewelry

Believe it or not, there are a lot of quick, easy, low-cost jewelry projects that you can put together in a few hours.

Start with this list of recycled jewelry ideas for inspiration, and consider making something like a paint chip petals necklace or a set of popsicle stick pencil earrings.

The most expensive part of this project is buying the chains and clasps that hold your jewelry together, so go to a hobby store and look for chains and fixtures under $5.

8. Art

Do your talents lie more in painting or sketching than they do in jewelry? Make your special someone a piece of original art. It’s hard to go wrong with a flattering portrait or a sketch of the place where the two of you shared your first kiss.

Your cost investment depends on how many art supplies you currently have around, but a hobby store often sells individual sheets of art paper for under $5, and even an ink drawing on a piece of good paper can look beautiful.

9. Art For Two

First, make your own fingerpaint from one of the many recipes available. Then, buy the biggest sheet of posterboard you can get for under $5 and invite your Valentine to make art together.

The tactile, messy fingerpaint is a lot of fun, and if you choose an edible fingerpaint recipe, you’ll have one more way to remember the evening.

10. Poem

Write your Valentine a love poem. It worked for Shakespeare, and it’ll work for you.

Choose one of the classic poetry formats, such as the sonnet or the villanelle, or create your own.

11. Song

Take your poem one step further by setting it to music. How many people get a song written just for them?

Perform it for your special someone on Valentine’s Day, and you’ll learn that the best gifts don’t have to cost a thing.

12. Band Performance

Got a friend who can play bass and a buddy who knows the drums?

Teach them the song you just wrote, or ask if they’ll be willing to help you cover a song that has a special meaning for you and your Valentine. Then give your Valentine a never-to-be-forgotten concert.

13. Song Request

Sometimes the simplest gifts are the best. If your local radio station takes requests, make a request for that special song. Text your Valentine when it’s time for your song to play, or listen to it together.

14. Stargazing

This is an old classic, but it’s classic for a reason. If the night is clear and it’s not too cold, take your date out stargazing. You’ll start out looking at the stars and end up looking at each other.

15. Long Walk

The long walk is often part of the stargazing date, but it can also stand on its own.

Find somewhere beautiful in your neighborhood, like the park or the pier, and take your date out walking. A long walk filled with meaningful conversation can be a beautiful way to make memories and share an evening together.

16. Picnic

If you’ve got a well-stocked pantry, you can do a great picnic for under $5. Take some bread, cheese, boiled eggs, fruit and chocolate out to your favorite park and watch the sun go down.

The good thing about a picnic is that you can make it as extravagant or as simple as you can afford — if you’ve got fancy cheese, great; if not, you can cut up store-brand cheddar into cubes and add your own toothpicks. Either way works perfectly for a lovely picnic date.

17. Fancy Fast Food

Your date probably has at least one fast food restaurant that is a guilty pleasure. This year, get yourselves all dressed up and go on a fancy fast food date.

Taco Bell is a great choice, both because you’ll be able to eat for under $5 and because you can give your date hot sauce packets stamped with words like “You’re my soulmate.”

Another good option? See if you can Pay With Lovin’ at McDonald’s.

18. Old Shirt

Give your special someone an old T-shirt. Chances are, they’ll sleep in it, because it smells like you.

(As with most of the gifts on this list, presentation is everything; handing your sweetheart an old shirt is gross, but wrapping it up and writing a heartfelt message is lovely.)

19. Old Shirt Turned into a Pillow

Take the T-shirt idea to the next level by turning an old T-shirt into a pillow. Use this Instructables guide to get started.

You’ll need to get something to stuff the pillow with, which you can generally get at a craft store (or somewhere like Walmart) for under $5.

20. Old Stuffed Animal

Nothing says “I’m in this for the long term” like “This was my old stuffed bear, and I hope you’ll love it as much as I do.”

Giving the gift of an old stuffed animal shows your special someone that you love and trust them enough to share one of your most treasured possessions. Plus, they’ll probably sleep with it, because it smells like you.

21. Book From Your Bookshelf

Have a favorite book that you think your Valentine will love just as much? Take it off your bookshelf, write an inscription, and turn it into a gift.

It’s just as intimate as giving a stuffed animal or an old T-shirt, and you can talk about the book together afterwards.

22. Used Book

Don’t want to give away your only copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Find it in a used bookstore. You can often get used books for under $5, and they make excellent presents.

23. Homecooked Meal

As with the picnic idea, whether you’ll be able to keep this one under $5 depends on what you already have in the pantry.

Remember, even a simple meal of spaghetti and garlic bread can be memorable and remarkable if you present it correctly: table settings, candles and mood music all help make the evening.

This is also a great way to bring in that group of friends who have agreed to cover your Valentine’s favorite song!

24. Homemade Cookies

While everyone else is getting expensive bouquets delivered to their Valentines’ workplaces, why not give your date a plate of delicious homemade cookies?

You can also take these cookies with you for a picnicking or stargazing adventure.

25. “I Love You” Cake

Even if you don’t think of yourself as much of a cake decorator, you can still bake a cake from a box, add frosting, and then use decorator icing to spell out “I Love You.” (You might want to practice a few times on a plate to get the knack of making legible letters.)

Here’s the real question: Can you make this cake for under $5?

Your grocery store prices may vary, but Target is currently selling a box of Pillsbury Funfetti cake mix for $1.06, the matching Funfetti frosting for $1.41 and a tube of Wilton sparkle gel for $2.99 — which brings you to $5.46 (pre-tax) before you add in additional ingredients like eggs.

So, like many of the food items on this list, keeping your costs under $5 depends on what you already have in your kitchen, and how many Target hacks you use to save on your purchases.

26. Binge-watch a Favorite Show

We’ve talked about watching a movie together, but why limit yourself to a movie? Why not spend Valentine’s Day binge-watching a favorite show?

This year, Valentine’s Day is a Saturday, which means you have all night to watch Parks and Rec from the beginning or catch up on the last season of Mad Men.

27. Ebooks

If your special someone owns a Kindle, a Nook or another ereader, there are gobs of books available for under $5. Look for the 99-cent listings so you can give multiple books and make your gift look extra-special.

28. ISBN

Here’s a gift that I gave someone in college: I made a card and then, next to the thoughtful message, wrote down an ISBN, or International Standard Book Number.

The gift recipient then took the ISBN to the library, looked it up and checked out the book that I had selected for him. It was a fun way for me to “give” him a book that I couldn’t afford to buy.

29. Puzzle Hunt

Here’s another free gift that I have given people: Create a puzzle hunt for your Valentine.

It can be something as simple as a card with a coded message inside, or something as complex as a scavenger hunt where one puzzle leads to another.

If you aren’t familiar with codes and ciphers, you’ll find plenty online, or you can always use the simple A=1, B=2, etc.

30. Dollar Store Gift

Every dollar store has a few surprising treasures, whether it’s a hilarious toy or a collection of silly stickers.

If your Valentine appreciates a humorous gift, find something fun at the dollar store and make your Valentine smile.

31. Thrift Store Gift

Like dollar stores, thrift stores offer a range of humorous items, but they also often have true diamonds hidden among the rough.

Look for jewelry boxes, figurines, collectibles and other items that you can find for $5 and make good presents.

32. Love Thoughts in a Jar

All you’ll need for this one is a jar and a few pieces of paper. Tear or cut the paper into strips and write something special on each strip. Then, fold the strips in half and put them into the jar.

When your Valentine wants a little extra love, all he or she has to do is take a strip out of the jar and read one of your messages.

33. Book of Memories

Buy an inexpensive sketchbook or notebook. Then, fill each page with a memory — the place you first met, the first time you held hands, the concert the two of you attended last spring.

Draw, write, glue in ticket stubs, do whatever you want to make this book a true book of memories. Chances are it will be an unforgettable gift.

34. Coupon Book

The coupon book is another classic gift that has almost crossed over into cliche. The secret to making it work is to put together coupons that your Valentine actually wants.

Does your Valentine like picking the movie you watch together? Does your Valentine like not having to do the dishes? Choosing the right coupons is what makes this gift special.

35. Massage Night

Get some massage oil, put out some towels over freshly-washed sheets, and give your special someone the massage he or she has always wanted.

Try the Ask Men massage guide if you’ve never given a massage before, or look for more resources online.

36. Private Dance Party

Load up your smartphone with slow dance music and find the perfect location for a private dance party — maybe it’s your living room, or maybe it’s in the park under a streetlight.

Then take your Valentine out dancing.

37. Kitten or Puppy

If your Valentine has been thinking about getting a cat or dog, look in your local newspaper or on Craigslist for people who are giving away kittens or puppies. It’s best if the animals already have their shots and are litter- or house-trained.

Be careful before giving live animals — make sure your Valentine actually wants a pet and has a living situation that can handle one before you hand over a wriggling bundle of cuteness.

38. Shared Journal

Get an inexpensive notebook, write a journal entry, and give it to your Valentine with the instructions to read what’s inside, write a new journal entry, and give the notebook back.

Keep this pattern going until the notebook is full. A shared journal is a lovely way to write about hopes, dreams and plans for the future.

39. Love Letters

Have you read the book The Wednesday Letters? It’s the story of a man who writes his wife a new love letter each Wednesday.

Why not make this Valentine’s Day the start of a Wednesday Letter tradition of your own? Give the gift of a love letter, and tell your Valentine that it is the first of many to come.

40. Local Events

If you are looking for free Valentine’s Day entertainment, check out your local paper. There might be a band playing in the park or another fun, free event.

What’s happening in your city?

41. Fancy Game Night

Get dressed up, open a $5 bottle of wine and play games all night long.

You and your Valentine can face off on Mario Kart, finally finish a game of Monopoly, or challenge each other to an evening of Magic: The Gathering.

42. Clean All The Things

Want a gift that your Valentine will really love? Try a perfectly cleaned home.

Find an excuse for your special someone to be out of the house or apartment on Valentine’s Day morning and then scrub, wash, sweep and fold. Top it off with a few flowers in a vase or a plate of homemade cookies on the table.

43. The 36 Questions

If you read the New York Times’ Modern Love column, you might have seen the piece about The 36 Questions That Lead to Love.

These questions, which include “What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?” and “When did you last cry in front of another person?” are designed to build intimacy and bring people closer together.

Spend an evening asking your Valentine those questions — and answering them yourself — and it becomes an evening you are unlikely to forget.

44. Truth or Dare

Don’t want to do the full list of 36 questions? Try a good old-fashioned game of Truth or Dare instead.

You can ask your Valentine thoughtful questions, and then dare your Valentine to kiss you. Everybody wins.

45. Museum Date

Check out the museums in your area to see if any of them are offering free or reduced-price tickets.

Then get dressed up and spend an evening appreciating art, textiles, historical documents or whatever your city or hometown has on display.

46. One Rose

If you can’t afford a bouquet of roses, see if your local flower shop is selling single roses. A single red rose often says more than a whole dozen.

47. Grocery Store Flowers

Even the most humble of grocery store bouquets can become beautiful with a little help.

Take the flowers out of the plastic, trim them and put them into a vase — or, if you don’t have a vase on hand, get a glass jar out of the recycling bin, rinse it out and put the flowers in.

48. Conversation

Sometimes the gift of conversation is all that is necessary. Find a park bench, sit down with your Valentine, and just talk. How often do you get hours of time to talk with someone you love?

This year, give your Valentine the gift of uninterrupted conversation and undivided attention.

49. Proposal

A proposal transforms Valentine’s Day into a truly special event.

You can even do the proposal for under $5 — Neil Gaiman drew a Sharpie ring on Amanda Palmer’s hand in lieu of an engagement ring, and if it’s good enough for Neil Gaiman, it’s good enough for anyone.

50. Ask Your Date

Want a low-cost Valentine’s Day but are still stumped for ideas even after reading this list of 50 suggestions?

Ask your date what he or she would like to do. Two heads are better than one, after all, and you’ll probably come up with something amazing that even I didn’t think of.

Your Turn: What is the best low-cost Valentine’s Day gift you ever received? What made that gift special?

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. By checking out this featured content, you help us bring you more ways to save!

This post originally appeared in February 2015, but since we can always use a little more inspiration for affordable, romantic Valentine’s Day gifts, we brought it back.

Nicole Dieker is a freelance writer focusing on personal finance and personal stories. Her work has appeared in The Billfold, The Toast, Yearbook Office, The Write Life and Boing Boing.

The post 50 Last-Minute Valentine’s Day Gifts That’ll Cost You Less Than $5 appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

source The Penny Hoarder http://ift.tt/1L2EgKC

Save Time and Double Your ROI: A Guide to Applying the 80/20 Rule to Your Marketing

Marketing is rarely your only job…

…even if you’re a marketer.

Whether your job title is “marketer” or you own your own business and need to market it, marketing is only a part of your job.

You probably also help out with sales, product development, customer service, and any other tasks that need your attention.

This is why people often say that marketers wear many hats.

Can I tell you something that most people never learn?

It doesn’t have to be like this. The reason why marketers are forced to do so many things is because there’s too much to do.

Let me put it in other terms: most businesses want to do many things that barely help them grow.

They’re wasting time on non-productive work (also called “busy work”).

So, what’s the alternative?

It may or may not be obvious to you. You have to cut out unproductive activities.

And the best way I know how to do that is to use the 80/20 rule.

It applies to just about every aspect of life, including marketing. I’m going to show you six different ways you can apply the 80/20 rule to your marketing to not only save time but also get better results from your efforts.

If you haven’t used this rule before, this article could be one of the most important things you ever read.

How the 80/20 rule could change your life

The 80/20 rule came from an observation made by Vilfredo Pareto.

He found that when he plotted the frequency of an activity, 20% of the activities resulted in 80% of the cumulative results.

He saw that this applied to almost every part of life, including business.

The chart above clearly highlights the three biggest problems a company could have.

Wouldn’t it make sense to spend your effort on those three and not worry about the really small problems?

Of course, it would.

The 80/20 rule doesn’t just apply to specific problems; it also applies to effort (activities).

It’s really simple:

20% of your effort produces 80% of the results. This also means that 80% of your effort produces only 20% of your results.

If it’s not 100% clear how it’s going to help you as a marketer right now, don’t worry.

Throughout this post, I’ll go into several specific situations that will make the application of the Pareto principle in your marketing crystal clear.

1. Find the marketing channel that works for you and double-down

There are thousands of marketing channels out there.

Most likely, you focus on 5-10 of them (maybe more if you have a big team).

The truth is that you’re probably using too many marketing channels.

Applying the 80/20 rule to the situation, we can say that about 20% of your marketing channels produce 80% of your marketing results (likely sales).

Identifying your most effective marketing channels: I don’t want you to just take my word for it; I want you to apply the Pareto principle to your marketing yourself.

It’s not difficult, and I’ll walk you through the process.

Start by identifying all the marketing channels you use on a regular basis.

Record them in a spreadsheet in a column.

Next, start by figuring out how much time you’ve spent on each channel. The time period doesn’t matter as long as you know how much you’ve produced during that time.

For example, you could say that you spent 20 hours on producing five blog posts last month. As long as you’re tracking the results from those specific posts, you’ll get an accurate assessment.

Then, assign a value to your time because it sure isn’t free.

Finally, add a column for any additional money you spent on creating or promoting content.

When you’re done, your table should look something like this (a hypothetical example):

Next, add up those costs (your time plus money spent) in a new column.

Then, create a new column beside that one, and record the number of sales you made from each channel in the specific time period you tracked.

Here’s our updated chart:

We’re almost done; there are just two more columns left.

In the next column, we have to account for the fact that we put a different amount of time into each channel.

This column will be for the profit you made for each channel divided by the time spent on it.

For example, the profit from Facebook advertising in the above example is $3,000 – $1,000 = $2,000.

Dividing that by the 5 hours spent yields $500 of profit per hour.

Do that for all your channels. Now that they all use the same unit of measure, we can add them up to get a total (meaningless other than for the final step).

Finally, we need to calculate for how much of that total each marketing channel accounts.

In your final column, divide the “profit per hour” number by the “total sales” number, and multiply it by 100 to get a percentage.

Here’s the full chart.

If you’d like to create a Pareto chart of your own, it’s pretty easy to do.

Copy the channel column along with that final percentage of total column next to each other somewhere else in your sheet.

Then, sort the percentages from high to low.

Finally, add a column for the “cumulative total.” The first value is simply the same as the percentage of total value. From here, just add the previous cumulative total to the “percentage of total” value for the current channel.

Here’s what it looks like:

Do you see that the cumulative total for Facebook Advertising is 43.15 + 27.25?

Finally, let’s plot the channels against the cumulative total. You could make it fancier, but it should look something like this (I added an additional red line at 80%):

The graph makes it really clear that right about 80% of the sales come from the three marketing channels.

You could also see this by simply looking at the numbers beforehand, but if you’re trying to justify some of the things in this article to a boss, a Pareto chart always looks nice.

Three out of eight channels isn’t exactly 20% of your input, but it’s close. You likely won’t hit a perfect 80/20 ratio, but you’ll see that a minority of channels produce most of your results.

It’s important that you understand this process because we’ll be repeating it throughout this post (I won’t go into quite as much detail then).

How to take advantage of the 80/20 rule in this situation: Why did we do all of that?

For fun? Not quite.

Let me ask you a question:

What would happen if you just stopped using those marketing channels that produced less than 20% of your overall results but took up about 80% of your time?

Well, it’d be logical to say that your sales (or whatever metric you’re using) would decline by about 20%.

A serious amount, but not devastating.

But one other thing would happen: you’d free up about 80% of your time!

Do you see where I’m going with this? With all that free time, you can redirect it to the marketing channels that produce the most bang for your buck.

In our hypothetical example, we could spend more time on:

• affiliates
• Facebook advertising
• blogging

A note about scale: You will find that some channels scale better than others.

For example, the time associated with “affiliates” is really spent on just managing them and sending them resources from time to time. You can’t spend more time doing that because the results won’t change.

You could, however, spend more time recruiting affiliates. This may or may not produce a good return, so you’d have to test it.

But some channels scale really well, e.g., advertising channels.

There are very few reasons, besides exhausting your entire target audience, why you couldn’t spend more time creating and running Facebook campaigns. The sales may not scale up perfectly, but you’ll get most of the results.

In my example, there were 151 hours in total.

By cutting those low performing channels, we could free up 112 of your hours (74% of time spent).

If we spent those 112 hours on advertising, even getting 50% of the results, our overall profits would increase from $15,700 to $30,300.

That’s an incredible difference.

Most likely, you’d be able to get more than 50% of the results from your extra advertising because it scales well. You could also spend some of this time trying out some other advertising channels.

Blogging falls in the middle of these two other channels when it comes to scaling. Yes, you can create more posts and get more results, but there’s a limit.

If you’re producing so much content that not even your die-hard fans can keep up with you, you’re not going to see much of a benefit.

With any channel, you want to find out whether spending extra time on it is effective. Invest your newly recovered free time in the channels that produce the most results.

A million user case study: The 80/20 rule isn’t new, and there are many case studies that demonstrate its successful application.

One of my favorite examples is Noah Kagan’s marketing strategy when he headed marketing at Mint.

He had one single focus: get more users.

And when he analyzed his results, he found that email marketing was the best way of getting new users.

So, all of his effort was focused on getting more emails.

He primarily used advertising and guest posting to achieve this because he determined that they were by far the most effective channels for getting subscribers.

How did he do?

Well, after a year, Mint had crushed its initial goal of getting 100,000 users when the company amassed over 1,000,000 users.

2. Not all customers are equal – find your best ones (and your worst)

I bet you’ve noticed that some of your customers are great and some are terrible.

But you might not know how to utilize this information in a productive way.

That’s where the 80/20 rule comes in.

When it comes to your customers, you can apply the Pareto principle in two ways.

Way #1 – 20% of customers drive 80% of revenue: Assuming you have a developed product line, you’ll find that 20% of your customers are responsible for 80% of your revenue.

These are the customers who buy in bulk, buy tons of your different products, or just buy consistently, time after time.

They are easy to find as well.

You can make another chart, just like we did before.

In this chart, you’ll want to include five parameters (one column for each):

1. A list of all your customers.
2. How much revenue they’ve produced.
3. How long they’ve been a customer (could do months or years).
4. The revenue divided by that time period so that you can compare it fairly. Add it up to get a total.
5. The percentage of total revenue (during that time period) that each customer produced (divide their revenue per month by the total, e.g., 100 / 2,790 x 100).

I put together a hypothetical table as an example:

Likely, you’ll have more than 10 customers, which should make your numbers work even better.

In my example case, 30% of the customers produced 75% of the revenue.

What can we do with this information?

This is really where the fun stuff begins, and you have to be prepared to put in a bit of work.

Your job now is to research your customers and find out in what way your top customers differ from your other customers.

What should you look for? Some things to start with might be:

• reason for purchase (e.g., personal use, family event, business event, etc.)
• size of business (if B2B sales)
• demographics (e.g., age, location, income level, gender, etc.)
• referral source (i.e., how did they first hear about your business?)

You’ll find that your average top customer is very different from your other customers in a few important ways.

For example, you might find that all your top customers are businesses who order on a regular basis in large volumes.

Do you know what you need to do with this information now?

Unlike in previous examples, you don’t need to drop those 80% of low revenue producing customers.

However, you don’t want to waste your time trying to get more of them.

Instead, now that you know the key aspects of your top customers, find more like them.

You need to revamp your marketing and sales strategy so that you’re going after those new customers who will produce big gains for your revenue. It’s as simple as that.

Way #2 – 20% of customers produce 80% of complaints: Complaints are a tricky part of business because they can mean a couple of different things:

1. The customer isn’t good - some people just love to complain no matter what. They waste your customer service time and resources.
2. There is an issue - complaints also often give you an opportunity to improve your product and marketing.

What you want to do is get a list of all your customer complaints as well as who made them.

Remove the ones that represent an actual issue with your product that needs to be fixed. You want to hear those complaints.

Then, you’re left with complaints that come from picky customers.

Take a minute to check whether those customers fall into the top 20% that you just identified above. If so, they’re probably worth the hassle, so remove them from this list.

From this remaining list, you should find that around 80% of the complaints come from just 20% of your customers.

If you’re spending serious customer service resources on these low value customers, it’s not worth it.

Not only does it kill your profit margins, but it’s also just a stream of consistent headaches to deal with.

If at all possible, drop these 20% of customers who have nothing better to do than to find issues where they don’t exist.

It sounds harsh, but your work will become much more pleasant and easier because of it.

The money you’ll save from not having to deal with these issues will usually cover the small loss of revenue from these complainers.

You’ll also probably find that the biggest complainers are from the smallest purchasers, which is the case for almost every business.

3. How to cut your content creation time with the 80/20 rule

In the life of a marketer, fewer things take up as much time as content creation does.

If you can outsource it, that will help but cost you a lot.

What most marketers don’t realize is that they’re creating a lot more content than they need to.

We’re going to find out if you’re one of those marketers, using something called the 80/20 rule. Have you heard of it?

Can you guess how it applies to your content production?

Here’s my take:

20% of your posts will produce 80% of your traffic or email subscribers.

The approach we want to take here is exactly the same as the one I just showed you in the previous section.

By studying those top 20% of posts, we can discover what it is about them that produces more traffic than all the others.

Applying the 80/20 rule: This is a very easy area to apply the rule to because you likely have all the data prepared for you already in Google Analytics.

Go to “Behavior > Site Content > All Pages” in Google Analytics to see all of your posts along with the number of pageviews they’ve had.

I’d select a time period of 6-12 months.

Export your data into a spreadsheet, and get a total amount of traffic by adding up all the pageviews.

Finally, create another column where you can calculate the percentage of your total traffic that each page has had.

As expected, a small portion of your pages will produce most of the traffic.

Now it’s time to analyze: Knowing which pages produce the most traffic alone doesn’t help you. You need to analyze it.

To do so, create a column for each of the following characteristics of your content, and fill them out for all of your posts:

• topic – write down a category that each post falls into
• length - how long is your content (the word count)? 
• form of content – is it a blog post, infographic, video, etc.?
• type of content – is it a tutorial, an opinion piece, a Q&A article, etc.?

Compare all the top articles to the bottom ones to spot trends.

Ideally, you’ll see that certain topics usually produce top articles. Or maybe really long content produces more views, or videos…and so on.

Once you know the reason why certain posts are more likely to perform well, stop employing the tactics that you find in the bottom 80% of your content.

At the same time, shift your content production strategy to produce more of the content you find in the top 20%.

If you’ve really been struggling to produce enough content, consider scaling back on your production. Just by focusing on more effective types of content, you’ll be growing your traffic much faster than before.

4. Content promotion is the 80% when it comes to content

This application of the 80/20 rule is a bit different.

Because you don’t have to do any analysis of your own, I’m just going to tell you the answers.

What you could do is analyze both your content creation time and content promotion time and compare them in terms of your results (traffic, email subscribers, or whatever you measure).

What you would find is that unless you already have a large readership, the promotion work is what produces real results.

The more time is put into promotion, the better your results will be.

In this sense, we’re going to apply the 80/20 rule backwards: Your goal should be to use approximately 80% of your time towards content promotion and 20% towards content creation.

So, if you’re currently spending 5 hours creating a post, spend about 20 promoting it.

If you go all out and create a guide that takes you 20 hours to create, spend about 80 promoting it.

When I tell marketers to do this, most reply with: “How am I supposed to promote something for that long? I’ll run out of stuff to do.”

This may require you to learn new promotional tactics or to dive deeper than you ever have before.

Many marketers find a few hundred email contacts to send their content to. Try finding thousands. It’s not easy at first, but the more you practice, the better you get.

It’s the same when it comes to all promotional tactics: create more ads, post more on forums and groups, and so on.

5. Stop wasting your time on outdated promotional tactics

It’s time to clear something up from the previous section.

Just because you should spend more time on content promotion (even if that means cutting back on content creation) doesn’t mean you should waste that time.

It means that you should spend that time on the promotional tactics that produce the best results for your time.

Applying the 80/20 rule yields something like:

20% of your promotional effort will produce 80% of your results.

In this case, results might be traffic, subscribers, sales, or backlinks.

Time to track and analyze: This process is similar to the other examples we’ve looked at so far, so I won’t go into quite as much detail.

This time, you’ll want the following 5 columns in your table:

• promotional activity – what you did to promote your content
• time spent – how many hours you spent doing it
• traffic as a result – it could be a different metric such as backlinks or subscribers
• traffic per hour - the traffic in the previous column divided by the time spent; add up the total at the bottom
• percentage of result – divide the traffic per hour value by the total value for each activity (e.g., 300/1,466 for email outreach).

Here are some completely hypothetical results:

The results are pretty clear.

In terms of productivity (results for the time spent), email outreach and emailing subscribers produce almost all of the results.

They take up 5.5 out of 11.5 total hours, yet produce 88% of the results.

Now what? Let’s take a second to think about your options.

I’d suggest starting by cutting those low performing activities. In this example, you’d save 5.5 out of 11.5 hours and only lose 12% of your traffic.

Like we saw before, when it comes to marketing channels, not all promotional tactics are scalable.

You can’t spend any extra time emailing your subscribers.

But you could spend that extra time trying to get more subscribers.

Or you can spend that time on tactics that do scale.

Email outreach scales incredibly well if you’re willing to dig past the first few pages of Google results and get creative.

Consider our example situation if we invested those 5.5 hours into email outreach. Total traffic would increase by 40% from 2,500 to 3,500.

That’s a big increase when you consider that you’re spending the same amount of time on your promotion as you did before.

On top of that, remember that in the previous section, I recommended that you spend more time on promotion.

It becomes even more important to use effective promotional tactics when you’re spending more time on them.

Making these two key changes (spending more time and focusing on the most effective 20%) will have a huge impact on the results of your content marketing.

6. The Pareto principle applies to individual marketing channels too

Finally, the Pareto principle can be applied to individual channels, particularly SEO.

Go to Google Analytics, navigate to “Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels,” and click on the “organic search” link that comes up.

Finally, click on “landing page” as your primary dimension.

You’ll see a list of your posts, organized by the volume of search traffic they’ve gotten. Change the time period to at least 4-6 months.

Upon analysis, we’ll see that:

80% of your search traffic comes from 20% of your content.

Export those results from Google Analytics into a spreadsheet, and then add columns for percentage and cumulative percentage to it:

To get the percentage value, divide the number of visits to a page by the total number of visits overall.

Then, calculate the cumulative percentage like we did earlier. Make sure the list is sorted by most traffic to least traffic, and then add the percentage to the previous cumulative percentage value (for example: on the chart below – 35.647% = 16.404% + 19.243%).

These top 20% of posts or so are the ones you need to focus on.

They are the pages that not only have the most search authority but clearly already contain things that people are searching for.

It makes sense then to focus on improving the search authority of these pages.

They likely rank near the top 10 for all sorts of terms. It’s much easier to move those to the top 3 results than to start with content that ranks on page 2+ for most terms.

Next steps: If you want to know which keywords those pages rank well for (but not top 3), you can head to Google Webmasters Tools/Search Console (or GA if you have GWT integrated).

Go to the “Search traffic” option in the left menu and then to the queries sub-option. Finally, click on the “pages” radio button on the screen that comes up:

Here’s what the pages button looks like:

Then you can click on each page and see what keywords it ranks for.

Finally, adjust your link building efforts to focus on only these top pages. Just changing your focus will bring substantial gains in your search traffic within a relatively short time.

Conclusion

As a marketer, you’ll always feel like you have more work to do.

Instead of burning yourself out, look for ways to do things more efficiently.

The 80/20 rule is one of those ways. I’ve shown you six different applications of the rule that you can use to improve your marketing and possibly business as a whole.

If you actually apply some of them, you will be able to get the same results in half the time.

And now, you know how to use the extra time to get even better results out of it.

If you have any questions about the 80/20 rule or have any experience applying it in your life or business, leave your thoughts in a comment below—I’d love to hear from you.

Source Quick Sprout http://ift.tt/1KfElOS

Five Reasons Why People Fear Frugality – and Why Those Reasons Are Wrong

When Sarah and I first moved into our new house in 2007, the inaugural electric bill was shocking to us. It was way higher than what we were used to from the days of our tiny apartment. Our old energy bill was around $80 a month – this was over $300!

Right then and there, I was on a mission to get that bill lowered. I added caulk to windows. I installed a programmable thermostat and set it to basically turn off both heating and cooling during the day when most of us weren’t home. Over time, I swapped out every light bulb in the house and replaced it with an LED bulb. The actual list of things that I did went on and on and on.

Several years later, I open up an energy bill at the peak of the winter heating season in Iowa and, lo and behold, the bill is about $125, which is about our annual average these days.

From the records I have, our annual average energy bill has dropped by about 50% from our first year in the house. We’ve done many, many little things to save energy over the years, and those efforts have culminated in a savings of about $100 a month overall.

In my eyes, that $100 a month saved due to our frugal nature is no different than earning $100 a month extra after taxes on our take home pay. That’s helpful in making ends meet around here, as I’m sure it would be in your own family. Who couldn’t use another $100 a month in their checking account?

That’s frugality. We looked at our lives, made some changes to cut back on our spending on things relatively unimportant to us (like paying for warm or cold air that then escapes our house), and reaped the rewards from those changes.

The thing is, when people survey their lives and think about frugality, that’s usually not what they see. Instead, they see radical, painful, unwanted changes that don’t add up to much savings at all. They see endless effort dumped into a bottomless pit that merely saves them pennies. Who wants to bother with that?

However, those fears are entirely misplaced. Here are five fears that many people have when they hear the word “frugality” that leads them to reject a powerful personal finance tool outright.

Fear #1 – I Will Have to Give Up All of This Stuff I Like!

I like to think of myself as a frugal person. However, at the same time, I have a few hobbies that I care deeply about and I still spend money on those hobbies – probably too much. If being frugal meant completely giving up on things that I cared deeply about, I wouldn’t want to be frugal, either.

If you’re giving up stuff that you truly care about, then you’re not being frugal. You’re being cheap.

Frugality is about getting maximum value for your dollar. It’s not about self-deprivation, at least not regarding anything that holds true value in your life.

It is about cutting out the things that aren’t actually important to you. It is about seeking out less expensive ways to have the things that are important to you.

I think that many people get this impression of frugality because of the examples of frugality that they hear about. They hear about someone cutting some particular thing – say, a morning latte – and they immediately get uncomfortable because that thing that is getting cut is something that they really value. It’s a really joyful part of their day and cutting it seems miserable.

The thing is, you shouldn’t be cutting those things that really bring you joy. You should, however, always ask yourself what things actually are bringing you joy.

Another reason that people tend to have this fear about frugality is that, when you start talking about cutting things, people immediately reflect on the things they care about. The things that come to mind are the things you care about most, and cutting those things seems awfully miserable. People don’t usually think about things like setting their thermostat or airing up their car tires when they think about frugality. They think about the things in their life that bring them joy and how joy would leave if they had to cut those things.

Again, if things bring you true joy, you shouldn’t cut them.

Fear #2 – It’s a Lot of Extra Work!

Many people have this impression that frugality is all about hand-washing Ziploc bags or spending hours cutting out coupons from the newspaper. They’re right – tactics like that are pretty labor intensive. They’re also tactics that I don’t bother with the vast majority of the time.

The best frugal tactics are the ones that don’t add extra work to your life and, surprisingly, there are thousands of such tactics.

For example, one thing I often do is make meals in advance for my family and freeze them. Let’s say we’re making chili in the slow cooker. Instead of just making one pot, we’ll buy four times as much – enabling us to buy some ingredients in bulk, saving money – and make three extra batches, with the extra batches going in freezable containers. Those go in the freezer and then, later on, when we need a quick meal, we can just take out that freezer container, put the contents in the slow cooker, turn it on low, and have about the easiest possible home-cooked meal there can be. That requires maybe a few minutes of extra effort while grocery shopping and a few minutes more while assembling the containers, but you get that time back and more each time you pull out a frozen meal from the freezer.

I can go on and on with examples like this. The next time you replace a light bulb, replace it with a long-lasting energy efficient one. When you go to the grocery store, make a quick meal plan and list first so that you don’t waste time (and money) wandering the aisles and buying stuff you don’t need just because you didn’t plan for it. Stick a weather strip on the bottom of a door where there’s a draft, which takes fifteen minutes once and trims your electric bill for the rest of the time you live there.

Yes, there are frugal tactics that gobble time like there’s no tomorrow, but, honestly, those usually aren’t very good frugal tactics. The best ones are just replacements for things you’re already doing or one-time projects that save money thereafter by trimming your bills.

Fear #3 – You Don’t Save Much Money Anyway!

I like to make a powdered laundry soap out of a cup of borax, a cup of washing soda, and a grated bar of soap. I just get a grater, grate up the bar of soap while watching a television show, and mix the soap powder with the borax and soda (you can even buy soap flakes if you don’t mind spending a little more). It takes about five minutes to grate the soap and about a minute to mix together the powders, stick a spoon in the jar, and sit it in the laundry room. This mix ends up saving about $0.20 per load, and that jar ends up lasting for about 50 loads or so.

Many people would fixate on that $0.20 figure. Twenty cents? That’s not worth doing this! I’ll just buy a jug of Tide.

The thing is, you repeat that $0.20 over and over and over for no additional effort. You repeat it fifty times and that’s $10. I made $10 – post tax, mind you – for maybe six minutes of effort, five of which I can do while watching television. If I buy soap flakes, the savings probably goes down to $6 or $7, but then the effort goes down to just a minute – mixing the powders, sticking a spoon in the jar, and putting it in the laundry room.

If you’d give me $6 for spending a minute doing something in my kitchen, I’d do it constantly.

Some frugal tactics don’t save you much money – that’s true. However, many tactics save you a lot of money, especially for the work involved. This is especially true of things that repeat over time, like an energy improvement whose benefit is essentially repeated every month when you get an energy bill or a batch of homemade laundry soap that gets used fifty times.

Fear #4 – I Don’t Want to Live Like a Weirdo!

When people hear “frugality,” they often jump to visions of extreme frugality in the form of things that you’ll see on reality shows. The TV show Extreme Cheapskates is a perfect example – it depicts people taking frugality to an absolute extreme.

Again, what those people are doing isn’t really frugality. They’re being cheap, and those are two different things.

Frugality is about maximizing the value of your dollar. It doesn’t mean that you just buy the least expensive thing. It doesn’t mean that you turn away friends and guests with your super cheapness. It doesn’t mean that you abandon basic courtesy for others or basic sanitation or health.

If you find a behavior “weird” or socially uncomfortable, you shouldn’t be doing it. It is always useful to reflect on yourself and ask yourself why you think it’s weird, but that’s a different subject entirely. You shouldn’t do something self-damaging or societally disruptive in order to save a buck. That’s not frugal and it’s not healthy.

Fear #5 – The Store Brand Is Terrible, Period!

Many people assume that the name brand item is going to be better than the store brand item by default. They look at the two items, see the one they recognize (due to lots of marketing effort), and assume that it must be the good one because they’ve never heard of the store brand. This often builds into a sense that the store brand must actually not be very good at all.

That’s not true. Quite often, the store brand is exactly the same as the name brand version of the product. Many other times, the store brand is functionally identical to the name brand version of the product. Every once in a while, you will notice a difference, but it’s not too often.

Today, for instance, my children had a bowl of store brand “Golden Grahams” for breakfast – they get to have a breakfast of their choice on Fridays and they usually request that we get specific cereals from the store. That store brand cereal has an identical ingredient list as “Golden Grahams,” at least through the first dozen or so ingredients, and I honestly can’t tell any difference. The cereal tastes like sweetened graham crackers, as does the name brand.

There is one difference, though. The store brand box is actually larger than the Golden Grahams box and the store brand is $1.50 cheaper, too.

Try store brands. Give them all a fair shake. You’ll find that the vast majority is actually perfect for your needs.

The Biggest Fear Is Simply Fear of Change

Most of the immediate fears of frugality are silly ones. They’re drawn from reality television, name brand product marketing, and fear of losing the most important things rather than the least important.

But why do we have these fears? It’s because, as humans, we’re creatures of habit. We fear change. We tend to amplify the reasons not to change our habits and minimize the reasons for changing our habits.

Don’t let that fear rule you. Start making changes, a step at a time. Stick with the smart ones, the ones that will clearly offer more benefits than drawbacks, and soon you’ll start really feeling the benefits of frugality in the form of more and more breathing room in your monthly budget.

Good luck!

The post Five Reasons Why People Fear Frugality – and Why Those Reasons Are Wrong appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Source The Simple Dollar The Simple Dollar http://ift.tt/1PRhJVd

This Week, My Opinions Helped Me Get $136 Worth of Free Stuff. Here’s How

I recently reached the coveted Top Amazon Reviewer status. Within the next year, I should have everything I possibly need to be a “real adult” — whenever that happens — for free.

A lot of people have asked me, “How do I become a Top Amazon Reviewer?”

I started out writing book reviews to help some of my favorite self-published authors. In the process, I learned about the marketing power of reviews.

After over a year of slowly improving my reviewer ranking to one of the top 10,000 spots, I now receive hundreds of dollars of free and deeply discounted products each month.

This week, I received two different blouses that normally retail for $20 each, a vegan face lotion ($26), a tooth whitening kit ($45) and a set of baby bibs ($20). I could accept more, but I choose to only review products I can truly use, or ones I can give away to my friends and family.

It’s completely free to get started, so what are you waiting for?

How to Become a Top Amazon Reviewer

Ready to start trading your honest thoughts about a product for free stuff? Here’s what to do.

1. Sign up for an Amazon account

Make sure it’s linked to an email you frequently check and include some information about yourself in your account profile.

It’s good to list the types of products you’re interested in reviewing. You do NOT need to use your full name, or a real picture of yourself.

2. Download the Amazon App

Get the app for your smartphone.

It comes with a barcode scanner, which makes it super easy to look up products you already own.

If you really want to buy something to review, companies always match new product releases with sales and coupon deals. It should always be cheap and easy to find something to review.

3. Start Writing Reviews

Write honest, unbiased reviews of products you’ve already tried.

What products do you buy over and over again — and why? Which products did you hate so much you’ll never buy them again?

Remember to check your grammar and spelling!

4. Consider Product Questions

If you’re at a loss for words, think about the questions you’d have if you were a customer buying an item on Amazon.

“Is it worth my money? Does it really work? Are there better brands out there?”

Genuinely try to help the customer decide whether this is the right product for them.

5. Check the Number of Reviews

If an item has too many existing reviews, it’s unlikely anyone will read yours.

If an item has few or no reviews, you have a greater chance of being noticed.

Your ranking only improves when you get “Helpful Votes” from customers who felt you helped them make a decision about their purchase.

6. Review the Types of Items You Want to Get for Free

When I started reviewing a lot of health products, I got inquiries from supplement companies before I was even a Top Reviewer.

If you consistently review the same things repeatedly, you’ll become an “expert” in the field.

7. Pay Attention to Product Release Dates

Many companies release new products at least two weeks before they’re for sale on Amazon. The faster you post your review, the more likely it is someone will give you a “Helpful Vote.”

8. Update Your Account Often

…but be sure not to flood it with reviews.

If you have more “Helpful Votes” than reviews, your ranking goes up.

If you write too many reviews before you get any “Helpful Votes,” you’ll actually make it harder for yourself to improve your ranking.

9. Create Review-Focused Social Media Accounts

Start social media accounts devoted to your Amazon reviews.

Companies target reviewers based on age, gender and social media following.

Once you become a Top Reviewer, companies sometimes request you give them shout-outs on multiple social media accounts. The more expensive the product, the more advertising the companies will want from you in order to get items for free.

10. Be Honest

You MUST disclose if you got a product for free. It’s one of the Federal Trade Commission’s rules, and Amazon will enforce it.

It even has an algorithm that automatically blocks certain reviews from going up, as well as employees who investigate people who may be breaking this rule.

Will You Become a Top Reviewer?

It may seem like a long process, but if you take on the challenge, the fruits of your labor will be well worth the struggle.

Being a Top Amazon Reviewer may not pay any bills, but it can help save you and your family thousands of dollars, since you’ll get free stuff you would otherwise have paid for.

Your Turn: Have you ever written reviews for Amazon? Will you try to become a Top Reviewer?

Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. We’re letting you know because it’s what Honest Abe would do. After all, he is on our favorite coin.

Shannon Quinn is a writer, entrepreneur, and legal student living in and around both the Greater Philadelphia and New York areas. She spends a great deal of her time discovering creative ways to save money so that she can live comfortably on a small budget.

The post This Week, My Opinions Helped Me Get $136 Worth of Free Stuff. Here’s How appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

source The Penny Hoarder http://ift.tt/1V9ic5i