No issue is more entwined in paradox than free trade versus protectionism. Here's the first. Polling suggests that voters recognize the benefits of free trade more now than at anytime in many years, even as the presidential candidates advocate more protectionism.
Most of us love our grandparents.
But few of us have the dedication required to pay off their entire mortgage.
One notable exception? Stefun Darts, a 24-year-old San Jacinto College student in Pasadena, Texas.
On March 20, he posted a photo of himself handing his grandparents a check for $15,000 — enough to pay off their entire mortgage.
Oh, and he also gave them a pair of plane tickets to the Bahamas.
Pure aww.
Here’s how he did it — and why.
So what inspired Darts to do it? A promise he made nearly two decades ago.
“I promised God in the second grade I would pay off you guys [sic] house and help you retire,” he wrote on Facebook. “A promise I would never break.”
“Even with this, I could never repay you for what you’ve done for me… Take this check and pay your house off, and retire from work.”
“My grandparents basically raised me,” Darts told me in a phone interview.
He also lives with them now — one of the ways he was able to save $15,000 in six years.
“It’s the least I can do,” he said. “Many people don’t have their grandparents. I’d rather cherish them while they’re here than live with regret.”
In addition to being a full-time student, Darts works 40 hours per week as a material handler for Exxon Mobile, and part-time as a mortgage loan originator. He also runs a nonprofit called Caring Heart Youth.
Yes, he does all that. No, I’m not sure he’s human.
When I asked him if he slept, he replied, “not really.” He said he functions fine with three or four hours of sleep each night.
“I don’t know if it’s abnormal,” he said. “I just don’t sleep that long; I think the last time I slept eight hours I was like in seventh grade.”
But his insane work ethic wouldn’t have been enough on its own. To fulfill his promise, he also dedicated himself to frugality.
“I’ve been eating pizza, microwave pizza for all my life,” he told KHOU. “My friends will tell you I never did go out. They didn’t know, but this was the reason why.”
Some readers might assume Darts was motivated by a desire to eventually inherit the house, or get publicity for his nonprofit — but honestly, who cares?
It was a beautiful gesture that could inspire others to pay it forward.
Darts told me he hasn’t faced any local negative reactions.
“My character speaks for me,” he said. “I don’t have to deal with those problems.”
As for Internet trolls, he’s not worried about them either.
“People are gonna say stuff over the Internet, but that’s just life,” he said.
And, if you’re not moved by what he wrote on Facebook, you can just go take your skeptic soul somewhere else…
As the saying goes, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched… they must be felt with the heart.”
Your Turn: Are you moved by this story?
Susan Shain, senior writer for The Penny Hoarder, is always seeking adventure on a budget. Visit her blog at susanshain.com, or say hi on Twitter @susan_shain.
The post This Guy Just Gave His Grandparents $15K to Pay Off Their Mortgage appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
The latest invention of the sharing economy is probably the cutest so far. Especially if you love dogs.
A new app lets you “borrow” a dog — which is great for those animal lovers who can’t quite make the commitment to pet ownership.
You might work odd hours, travel too often, live in a small space or not be able to afford the financial responsibility of caring for a pet.
Bark’N’Borrow offers the solution.
The new app connects “dog owners with dog-loving borrowers” for free.
“This is the next best thing between not owning a dog and committing to one,” Bark’N’Borrow CEO and Founder Liam Berkeley told Fox 5 New York.
Dog owners create profiles for their pets and meet with potential borrowers to see if you all get along.
If all goes well, you make arrangements with owners to hang out with their pooches for a few hours. Many pet parents and borrowers stay in touch and make regular puppy dates.
So you get to enjoy the best of having a dog — without the responsibility of actual pet ownership!
In a video interview, Berkeley assures users that everyone is individually vetted. The company collects residential info, billing info, address and more to ensure the pups’ safety and give owners and borrowers peace of mind.
Free Pet Sitting
For pet owners, Bark’N’Borrow could be a smart, free alternative to a professional dog walker or pet sitter if you don’t have friends or family available nearby to walk your dog when you’re at work.
Or maybe you’re new to a city and want to connect with other pet owners or dog lovers.
While the app does offer a way to find professional services, the free “social” connections set it apart. Find people who want to hang out with your dog simply because they love dogs!
And, if you’re a dog lover in search of some extra income, this could help you kickstart a canine-centric side hustle.
“I originally downloaded this app to ‘borrow’ dogs to get my puppy fix,” said one reviewer, “as I can’t adopt one of my own at the moment, and it ended up helping me launch a little dog-walking side business!”
The app is free to download and free to use… for now.
Starting next month, it will introduce a paid subscription service, starting at $4.99 a month to borrow dogs, according to Fox 5 New York.
The downside to a lot of sharing economy apps is a lack of availability outside of major cities, but this one is growing fast everywhere.
While the largest contingent — 20% — of users is in the New York Area, Bark’N’Borrow is available nationwide, with 50,000 users and growing. So you should be able to find fellow dog lovers near you!
Your Turn: Would you use an app to borrow a dog for the day?
Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more, attempting humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).
The post Love Dogs, But Can’t Afford One? This App Lets You Borrow a Dog for Free appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
I have tried — and failed — to garden. Multiple times.
The restorative power of getting dirt under my nails and the allure of fresh veggies were hard to resist.
But I just don’t have a green thumb, I guess: Even “easy” plants wither under my touch.
Well, except weeds. I grew lots and lots of those. And pulling them was probably the least enjoyable part of my gardening experiments.
But I’ve just learned I might’ve been missing out on a free meal… or five!
As it turns out, some of those “pest” plants are actually palatable. Even tasty.
And since they’re weeds, you don’t even have to have your own garden to find them — they grow wild in American backyards all over the place!
Heck, if you’re really adventurous, you could even go foraging for them.
And while some are weeds you probably think of as weeds (who knew you could eat kudzu?), you’ll find many of them in grocery stores — where you might pay as much as a dollar per ounce to get them.
As long as you make sure you’re properly identifying these plants to stay safe, you can avoid that cost altogether — and maybe even get some exercise and sunshine while you’re at it!
Here are a few edible wild weeds you might find near you… and what you could expect to pay in-store.
Named the number one “powerhouse food” by the CDC in 2014, you have every reason to throw it into your mixed greens this evening.
You also have every reason to avoid buying it in-store — if you can even find it. Although it’s increasing in popularity, it’s still not on every grocer’s shelf.
And when you do find some at your local health food store, you could pay a lot for it: This blogger bought her 4-ounce package for $3.79. That’s almost a buck an ounce!
Luckily, watercress grows near streams throughout the U.S. You can even grow it in a shady spot in your backyard — just water it as often as its name implies it likes!
Dandelions aren’t just ethereal, wish-making flowers.
Their greens are packed with vitamins A and C, and they can be used in tons of delicious recipes.
You could buy them in-store — again, if your grocer carries them. Or you could order the less-tasty-and-nutritious, cut-and-dried bulk bag.
Or, next time you blow dandelion seeds into the wind, make your wish for a healthier life come true by grabbing some greens while you’re at it!
Sliced bamboo shoots are a popular and healthy addition to stir fries, and they’re common enough that you can buy them canned at your local Walmart.
But if you find some young bamboo near your home, you might consider harvesting it — it’s the only way you’re going to get fresh bamboo shoots short of a trip to Tokyo! Or, OK, maybe a vacuum-packed version at your local Asian market.
Try to find young bamboo (under a foot tall), but keep in mind you need to prepare and cook it before eating it.
If the idea of pulling random weeds from the roadside to toss in your salad freaks you out a little bit, it might just be a cultural bias.
Susan Shain, our resident budget traveller extraordinaire, mentioned a friend of hers in Korea regularly asked if she wanted to go and pick “wild vegetables.”
The weeds they found by the highway or near the schoolyard made delicious additions to their dinners!
Foraging can be a fun and effective way to save some cash. Plus, it might help you lose weight, get more active, be more green, and — let’s be honest — look really hardcore.
See the full list of eight edible weeds — and some killer recipes to try with your haul — over at Rodale’s Organic Life.
And get ready to eat some fresh, (really) local greens!
Your Turn: Would you harvest weeds to snack on? Let us know in the comments.
Jamie Cattanach (@jamiecattanach) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes other stuff, like wine reviews and poems.
The post 3 Weeds You Can Eat That’d Cost You Way More at the Grocery Store appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
Serious question:
Would you be happy if your blog ranked in search engines as well as Quick Sprout does?
I am sure 99% of bloggers would be ecstatic.
But you’d have to travel down a long road if you want to achieve that.
However, I can show you what you need to do if you’re willing to put in the work.
Obviously, I aim to produce top notch content, but the biggest ranking factor, as you might know, is the number and quality of backlinks a blog has.
And Quick Sprout has a ton of links:
By taking a closer look at the links, you can develop a strategy so that one day, your blog can have similar types, quantities, and quality of links.
We’re going to look at actual links here: I want to get as specific as possible so that you leave this post with a specific link building strategy in mind.
In order to make it as actionable as possible, I picked one of my posts to break down in great detail. We’ll examine The Advanced Guide to SEO.
It has 842 referring domains and 2,690 links overall.
Not surprisingly, it ranks #1 for searches like “advanced guide to SEO”:
And it ranks highly for even vaguely related searches like “SEO guide”:
That post alone gets more traffic than most blogs get in total, so it’s a good one to conduct our analysis on.
Here’s what I did for the analysis:
After doing all that, which took a while, I ended up with the following results:
This by itself is very useful.
The vast majority of quality links to the page are from blog posts, resource pages, and, to a lesser extent, forum posts.
Clearly, those types of links are most abundant, so basing your link strategy on them would be a great idea.
What I want to do for the rest of this post is to break down each type of link, explain what they are (if it’s not obvious), and show you how you can get them yourself.
Some are easy, some are hard.
You don’t necessarily have to get all the types of links in the same proportions to rank well, but the more you get, the better.
Again, 61.4% of the links to my guide were from blog posts.
Now, I kept the definition of a blog post pretty broad, including both short—500-word—articles and massive guides.
Here’s an example of a guide on Smart Passive Income that links to my guide.
And here’s a link in a short Search Engine Watch article.
Both were counted equally here.
These links are as good as you can get:
It makes sense that a post of mine with hundreds of great blog post links would rank so well.
How to get blog links for your posts: Sometimes, getting links from blog posts is a chicken and egg problem.
If you dive into the links to my SEO guide, it’s quite clear that some writers just Googled something like “advanced SEO guide” and linked to the top result.
This is why I’ll continue to get more links to that page even though I’ve stopped promoting it long ago.
However, there are ways to get the rest of those links (which make up the majority).
The most straightforward is cold outreach.
Compile a list of bloggers in your niche (Google variations of “(niche) bloggers”, and use tools such as Buzzsumo:
Then, send them an email telling them about your content and why it’s special.
From here, it’s just a numbers game.
You can typically get about a 5% email-to-link ratio.
If you want 140 links, you’d need to send out emails to 2,800 bloggers.
That’s a lot but possible.
However, like I said, many of those 140 links came after my page was already ranking—let’s say half (or 70).
Considering that you won’t need as many to rank for most terms, you can aim to get about 35 blog links with an initial push.
That brings the number of emails you need to send to 700.
That’s still a lot and will require some digging, but if you want to achieve great rankings, you have to be willing to put in more work than others.
The good news is that this changes over time.
As you build relationships with bloggers in your niche, they will start linking to you naturally in their posts. Or you can just shoot them a quick, friendly email, asking them to include a specific link whenever they can.
The results of the analysis of this SEO guide will differ a bit from an analysis of any other post on Quick Sprout.
That’s because the SEO guide is truly an educational resource.
Even though my other posts are also educational, they wouldn’t be considered “resources,” which is a special distinction given to the most thorough pieces of content.
But because it is, about 20.6% of the links to my guide came from resource pages.
These pages have large collections of the best resources on different topics (usually marketing and business in this case).
Here’s an example:
They’re not as good as blog post links, but they still have a few things going for them:
The downside is that you’re sharing that link authority with often 50+ other pages.
Getting resource page links: Some you will get naturally if you start to rank well or get discussed a lot on social media.
However, you can almost always email the person who created the list and ask to be included.
A short email like this will get a good conversion rate:
Subject: Your resource page for (topic)
Hi (name),
I came across your resource page on (site) and learned about many new great tools. In particular, I’ve already started using (resource #1) and (resource #2) from your list.
So, thank you for that.
On top of that, I wanted to let you know about one more resource. Full disclosure: I created it.
It’s called (name and link to the resource).
The reason it’s so special, and deserves to be alongside those other great resources, is because (give 1-2 sentence description of the best feature).
I just wanted you to be aware of it.
Thanks for your time!
(your name)
I encourage you to spend 10-15 minutes actually going through some resources on their list instead of faking interest. Authenticity will get you a much higher success rate at getting links.
Third on the list were forum posts, which made up about 8% of the links.
These links were mainly found on forums like the Warrior Forum and Reddit, like this one:
These types of links are:
But typically, they aren’t on high authority pages.
It doesn’t mean they’re not useful, but I wouldn’t spend too much time trying to get them.
How to get forum links: If you create something great and promote it well, it will get talked about in forums without you having to ever target them specifically.
However, if you want to ensure that you get links from forums, or you just want more, you can post on them yourself.
The key part of doing this is actually becoming a part of the forum. You should regularly post and become a part of the community; otherwise, members will think you’re just a spammer.
When the time comes and you release a post, you can make a few postings in different but appropriate sections of the forum, saying something along the lines of:
“I noticed that a lot of people struggle with (topic). I spent about 20 hours putting together a step-by-step guide to (doing something).”
Then, you post most of the body text in your opening and include a link back to your actual post before or after it.
That’s the safe way to do it.
It’s clear that while Ahrefs is one of the best backlink collectors, they have some work to do with social media.
My analysis showed about 2% of links came from social media, or just 5 links.
Considering it’s been shared hundreds of times on various social media platforms, it’s clear that Ahrefs missed some.
Regardless, these are fairly low quality links (in terms of SEO, not traffic) and likely didn’t affect rankings much.
I still think it’s a great idea to promote content on social media (which can lead to other types of links as well). I’ve written about this topic many times in the past. Here are a few of my best resources to follow if you want more social media links:
There are a select few sites that I regularly guest-post on.
When I do, I look for opportunities to link to my best content (when it’s appropriate and of course no-follow these links).
For example, I linked to the post in question in a post I wrote for Entrepreneur.com.
While I didn’t purposely try to link to my SEO guide beforehand, I’ve linked to it 5 times by chance over time.
If you need help getting guest-post opportunities, start with these posts I’ve written:
When you link out from guest posts (and no-follow the links) other people see them and naturally find your pages, share your content on the social web and even link to it from their site.
Another solid type of link is a link from a podcast notes page or an interview (which may not always be on a podcast).
I’ve spoken on a few different podcasts and often mention my SEO guide.
When you mention something, the host will put a link on the podcast notes page:
It’s easy to get the links you want once you’re on a podcast. The tough part is getting people to want to talk to you.
Below are a couple of resources that can help you get interviewed.
First, “How to Become the Person Everyone Wants to Interview”, which I wrote a few years ago.
Secondly, refer to tactic #4 of this post, which just about anyone can put into action right away.
I also got a few links from expert roundups for this post.
In a typical expert roundup, someone will put the same question to a bunch of “experts” and post all the answers.
I don’t think anyone has ever had a problem with an answer that includes a few links.
Even mid-level bloggers get contacted to do these often, but if you’re not there yet, or want more, you can easily get included.
All you need to do is search for “(niche) expert roundup,” and make a list of all the ones you find.
Then, contact the creators with a message along the lines of:
Subject: Expert roundup on (site)
Hi (name),
I saw your expert roundup on (topic) today, and I think it turned out really well (shared on Twitter!).
If you’re planning to do any in the future, I’d love to be included.
I’m a (quick explanation why you’re an expert – include impressive metrics if possible).
Also, let me know if you need a bit of help promoting anything. I’m happy to share a great piece of content.
Cheers,
(your name)
No hard pitch required. The main thing most roundup creators are looking for are social shares and traffic, and you’re offering to help with that.
This is an extremely simple link to get, and you don’t even have to create it yourself.
When you create “epic” content, I hope you’re considering design.
And if you are, you’re probably not hiring a cheap designer off Fiverr.
When you hire a talented designer who wants to do great work, they also tend to want to show it off.
Most graphic designers have accounts on sites such as Behance and Dribbble, which are both authoritative sites.
For example, many images from my advanced guides have been shown off on these sites. Here’s a page with a link to my advanced guide to SEO.
If you specifically want these kinds of links, you could always encourage your designer to post them around even though they will likely do it on their own.
The great thing about this analysis is that you don’t have to take my word for it. If you have an Ahrefs or Majestic account, you can do this analysis on your own.
And not just for Quick Sprout, but for competitors in your specific niche.
From this analysis, you know the types of links you need to have to rank well, really well, for even competitive searches.
You also know how to get them.
The only thing left to do is go get them and reap the rewards.
Do you have any questions about the analysis or ways of getting each type of link? Leave them below in the comments section.
What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Disposable razor sharpener
2. Work-at-home jobs while pursuing degree
3. Student loan payoff strategy
4. CFL or LED bulbs
5. Spooked by stock market
6. Handling impatience
7. Strategies for breakfast burrito batches
8. Uses for old cell phone
9. Trying to avoid divorce
10. Cheap sturdy shelving
11. Electric toothbrush?
12. Daily/weekly reviews on paper
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of “deep work.” It’s something that’s been on my mind as I’ve noticed how my own work effectiveness varies greatly from situation to situation.
Sometimes, I can work really effectively and write lots and lots of content in just a few hours. At other times, I’m really not effective at all and barely get anything worthwhile written in an entire morning.
What’s the difference?
For me, I think there are really two key things at work. One is energy level. If I didn’t sleep well the night before, my ability to focus on anything is just awful. I’ve learned that getting a good night of sleep is absolutely vital if I want to do anything productive.
The other, though, is distractions. The more distractions there are, the worse my writing is. The biggest distraction of them all? The internet. Websites constantly distract me if I allow them to do so. Games can distract me, too, if I allow them to do so.
If I manage to get rid of those common distractions, I tend to be incredibly productive at work. I can often slip into a focused state where time passes by almost without notice and I get a great deal of work done – and it’s usually really good work, too.
The challenge for me is the same one I’ve worked on for years. How can I build a “recipe” for slipping into that “zone” of “deep work”? I have some of the ingredients, such as blocking distracting websites and turning off my phone, but it’s not a readymade formula yet. I’m hoping to figure out what that recipe is.
What disposable razor sharpener do you recommend?
– Jim
I prefer the RazorPit sharpener, myself. It’s basically a chunk of strange-feeling rubber or plastic that you run your razor blade across a few times after you use it. Doing so will hone the blades so that you can get more use out of your disposable razor or cartridge.
It does not make disposable razors or cartridges last forever, but it definitely multiplies the uses you’ll get out of each one. This tool essentially just hones the blades – eventually, they will become nicked and dulled and you will have to replace them, just not nearly as quickly as you did without honing them.
This is a great “stocking stuffer” type of gift for anyone who shaves with a disposable razor of any kind. It just simply extends the life of the blades and cartridges, which can add up to a lot of savings for very little effort.
I have a very good friend that currently lives in Saudi Arabia. He is looking for work at home jobs that he can continue to take when he comes to the USA to study for his masters degree in computer networks. My question is is this possible? How can you make this happen?
– Charlie
It’s possible, but I’d suggest that it’s not the best route for a person studying for a graduate degree.
A much better approach would be to focus instead on your coursework and on writing some papers and creating a great thesis. If you need income, look for on-campus ways to make money through teaching or other things.
If you really want to earn extra money in your spare time via the internet, you’re either going to be involved in building something long term, which means you’re not going to earn much for a long time but the earnings will eventually ramp up, or you can do things that will earn a little more than that immediately but won’t really ramp up. If you’re interested in the former, do something like start your own Youtube channel or your own blog. If you’re interested in the latter, check out a site like Fiverr or Mechanical Turk.
The sites that talk about earning thousands a month from home are scams. You can get there, but you’d better be bringing a lot of additional skill or experience to the table and the opportunity has to be right.
My husband and I have student loans. We moved recently and he is going to school for his PhD in Biochemistry. Right now, he is scheduled for 3-5 years left in his program, and after that, he’s hoping for a post-doc program, where he will be paid roughly around 60k a year. In his PhD program, he receives about 23k a year pre-tax income. I work and bring home 28k pre-tax income. We have built up our emergency fund to a stable 3 months of expenses and I contribute about 4% of my income to a 401k. We manage to save about 10-15% of our income each month. We have no children, except our furry dog child, whose expenses are negligible in comparison to a real child.
After this, we still have a little bit of discretionary income after taxes. Since my student loans are not in deferment, I have been paying the minimum, plus an additional $100 each month towards my principle, just so that we can pay it down quicker. Right now, my loans are at about ~$24k at an average 5% federal loan interest rate. I will continue to repay these over the next 8 years. My husband’s student loans are in deferment and while it’s not an overwhelming amount of loans (~$30k), I’m wondering if the “additional” I’m paying towards my loans each month should go to his loans? While I don’t know the exact percentage on his interest, they were all federal loans between fall 2010 and fall 2013, so it’s safe to assume an average of 5%.
What would you advise?
– Michelle
If I were you, I’d compare the interest rate on the loans and throw your extra efforts at whatever loans have the highest interest rate. Since you’re married and the marriage is presumably stable, these loans are effectively weights around both of your necks regardless of the name on the actual loan.
I would make minimum payments on ALL of the loans that have lower interest rates and put as much of an extra payment as I possibly could toward that one loan with the highest interest rate. Get rid of it as fast as you can, then move on to the next one on the list, the one that NOW has the highest interest rate.
Getting rid of those loans gives you flexibility month to month. You’re lowering your monthly required bills so you now have a greater capacity for things like career switches and so on. The fastest path to this definition is to simply start hammering hard at your highest interest loan.
I just read your article on CFL vs. LED bulbs. I am replacing outdoor (up) flood lights, I don’t know whether I should CFL or LED bulbs. Which do you recommend?
– Mickey
LED bulbs have improved so much in light quality over the last few years that I unequivocally recommend them over both CFLs and incandescent and halogen bulbs for home lighting.
The sole drawback of LED bulbs at this point is the upfront price. Once you get past that, they’re amazing. They have an incredibly long lifespan, they provide very nice lighting (which wasn’t true for them at first, but the technology has drastically improved), and they use very little energy.
We’ve basically converted all of the lights in our home to LEDs over the last year or two. Our energy bill is about as low as we can make it and we’ve yet to have to replace any LED bulb in our home – and we don’t anticipate doing so any time soon.
I have been meaning to open an account with betterment for months with a $5K initial investment (already have a Roth IRA through vanguard and contribute to an employer sponsored pension), but the current market has spooked me. Is there any reason I shouldn’t go ahead and do it now?
– Denise
Assuming that you’re saving for a retirement that’s more than ten years off, you shouldn’t worry about the current ups and downs of the stock market, for two reasons.
For one, it’s basically impossible to predict when the stock market is at a “bottom” or at a “peak.” No one can reliably do this. Trying to “time” the market – which is what people are doing when they’re “spooked” and don’t want to invest in the market at the moment but intend to do it later when the market is “better” – is a losing proposition. Yes, there’s some chance that the market will go down more from where it’s at right now, but at the same time, there’s a chance you’ve already missed the bottom and you would have been better off investing two weeks ago. You just don’t know. Because of that, the best thing you can do is to invest as soon as possible. The sooner you invest, the more dividends you’re going to collect because you’ll already own the stock and the more likely you are to catch all of the rebound. Yes, there will probably be some “perfect” date in the future where you might have had a better balance if you waited, but there’s virtually no way to identify that perfect day.
For another, given that you’re investing for the very long term, the up and down volatility of the next few months won’t matter very much in terms of your balance when you’re actually ready to use it.
The best thing you can do, if the short term volatility bothers you, is to just not look at the balance very often. Just trust that it’s working for you because, frankly, it is.
I’m on a path much like yours. About a year ago, I paid off all of my debt and now I’m saving about 40% of my income in various accounts. I believe I can retire in about 12 years at age 45.
The problem is that I’m really impatient for this to happen. I feel like there’s nothing I can actively do to make this process go faster and I almost get frustrated thinking about it. I’m afraid this will eventually turn into me doing something impulsive and undoing my work. Suggestions?
– Leon
I know exactly what you mean. I’m impatient, too.
It’s not so much that I think I need to have the rewards of my efforts today, at least not for me. It’s more that I think often about the virtues of what complete financial independence will be like and I really look forward to it, especially in the more stressful moments today.
I mostly handle this by really looking at the virtues of my life right now while automating everything for the future. I don’t really have to think about the steps I have to take to save for the future – it’s all handled automatically.
Instead, I try really hard to focus on the good things that exist right now. My children are young – they won’t be young forever. My physical health will inevitably decline, so I want to do things now like walking on trails and so forth that might not be available to me later on. I have a job that I enjoy 95% of the time. Those things will not all be true in ten or fifteen years, so I should enjoy them while they last.
Got any good strategies/tips for big batches of breakfast burritos? You’ve mentioned making them in the past. I have made two batches, one of which turned out really good and the other was bland.
– Adam
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that almost any food that you freeze will taste bland unless you add more salt than you think is necessary. Go above and beyond your instinct when salting stuff and don’t be afraid to salt it more if it tastes bland after reheating.
Another trick I like to use is to use plenty of hot sauce in the burritos. If you don’t like heat, then use mild hot sauce. The flavor that hot sauce brings to the table is invaluable.
Another great tip is to make everything as dry as you can (except the hot sauce). Extra moisture is going to come from everywhere and can potentially make for very soggy burritos. Make your eggs dry, your meat (if you’re using it) dry, cook your potatoes to a crisp… you get the idea.
I also encourage you to make sure that whatever you freeze is wrapped really well and sealed off. I like to use resealable containers when I freeze things so that I can reuse them later and they do a really good job of keeping the food safe from the freezer environment.
Are there any uses for old cell phones? I have a Galaxy S4 that’s just sitting here doing nothing. Ideas?
– Tom
One great idea that works for any cell phone is to simply charge it up and leave it in your glove box in the event of an emergency. Any cell phone is capable of calling for emergency help, regardless of whether it’s under contract.
If it’s a smartphone, like your S4, there are a lot of things you can do with it. You can turn it into a really simple home security system, for example. You can stick it in your kitchen and use it as a media player for when you’re preparing food – just leave it docked and maybe stick a small speaker on it so you can listen to Pandora or podcasts while you’re making meals. You can make it into a small digital photo frame for your desk. There are lots of good uses if you play around with it.
One use I’ve really liked for old smartphones is as a dedicated MP3 player for the car. One of my friends just leaves an old phone in her car hooked up to the car stereo. She listens to MP3s on it and also has it set to download podcasts when she’s at home and the phone is on her home wi-fi network.
My husband and I have been discussing getting a divorce. We were married at age 22 (now we’re both 35) and we have no children which is part of the problem. My husband has always wanted children but it turned out that due to medical reasons having our own children is impossible. We have talked about adoption but I do not want to raise someone else’s child. My husband is really frustrated by this and wants to be with someone with whom he can have a child and now we barely talk. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want him to leave because he is a good man.
– Linda
First of all, I’m not sure I understand what you mean about “raising someone else’s child.” You can adopt newborn children and, as adoptive parents, the child is legally yours in an ironclad way. You won’t have a child ripped out of your arms. You won’t be raising someone else’s child. It will be your child, period. If there isn’t a deeper issue involved here, I strongly encourage you to consider adopting an infant.
I’m going to assume you’ve already investigated other techniques for having children as well, though I’m not sure what is available to you with your medical concerns.
In the end, I get the sincere feeling that the problem here is that you were both on the same page with having children, but after your medical situation, you changed your mind on the issue and your husband did not. If that’s truly the case, it may be one of those unresolvable situations.
I strongly, strongly encourage you to seek marital counseling. This is the type of situation where marital counseling can make a tremendous difference in terms of resolving your differences and your feelings and figuring out exactly how you can move forward from here.
This is not an issue that revolves around lack of trust. It seems that you both trust each other, but the problem is that you’re just in very different places in terms of the child issue. You need to work through this together if you love each other, regardless of what the eventual outcome is. Even if you end up needing to go in separate directions because of this, that does not change the fact that you love and care for each other, and you owe it to each other to figure this out together.
I want to install shelves in a spare bedroom for a “home library” but man is shelving expensive or what! How can you get shelves for cheap? Need shelves that can hold lots of books.
– Carl
It really depends on how cheap you want to go. If you don’t mind a mishmash of shelving, you can watch your community’s freecycle and grab any and all bookshelves that pop up. It won’t look consistent, but it will work.
The original shelving that I used in our first apartment was acquired by similar techniques. I knew of some shelves that were getting tossed from a building near my workplace, so I just snagged them and put them in my home.
The thing is, if you actually want shelving that’s strong enough to hold lots of books for a long period of time and you want it all to look consistent and look good, you’re going to likely have to pay for that. There are a lot of ways to make it a little cheaper – building it yourself from wood pieces, for one, instead of using kits or buying finished pieces – but it will never be truly cheap.
Do you think an electric toothbrush is a good idea? Is it worth the money?
– Daniel
I’ve used an electric toothbrush in the past and had great results with it. Specifically, I’ve used an older Sonicare model that worked for several years but eventually failed, and today I use a different one (which I’ll discuss below). I am firmly convinced that an electric toothbrush does a very, very good job of getting my teeth and mouth clean, better than a manual toothbrush.
Having said that, I am not sure that the cost of a high-end electric toothbrush is really worth it. I’ve been using an $8 Spinbrush for a while now and, honestly, it’s basically indistinguishable from the results I got with my old Sonicare.
Now, the real question is whether a manual toothbrush does a “bad” job. I don’t think that it does at all. I think manual toothbrushes get a person’s teeth more than adequately clean. I think that electric toothbrushes might get your teeth even a bit more clean than that and do a great job of creating a “clean feeling” in your mouth than manual toothbrushes don’t pull off. However, manual toothbrushes do the job in terms of controlling odor and getting your teeth more than adequately clean to prevent damage.
Manual toothbrushes have the added bonus of essentially being free if you get free ones from your dentist at regular checkups. Electric toothbrushes, even the relatively cheap Spinbrush I like, do have additional costs.
For me, the relatively cheap Spinbrush I use is a splurge because I like the clean feeling in my mouth. I consider buying a higher-end brush to be rather unnecessary and even this cheaper brush really isn’t necessary. It’s just a small splurge.
I’ve loved your articles on productivity and how you organize your days and weeks. I have a question about how you do daily and weekly reviews. Do you write these down on paper? Or do you do them electronically? How do you review things?
– Tom
I usually do a “double” daily review, which is usually on a piece of scratch paper. At the end of the day, I look for things that went well during that day – pointing out two or three things – and things that didn’t go so well, too, that I can work on down the road. This forces me to reflect on my day a little bit. I usually put together a to-do list for tomorrow on paper of things that are in the front of my mind, then I transfer those when I’m done to my actual to-do list manager, Remember the Milk. This takes about fifteen or twenty minutes, but I find it really worthwhile.
The next morning, I’ll review that piece of paper and, at the same time, try to identify what my big focus for today will be. What will I do today to make today great? Often, it’s something like “avoid distractions” or “eat really well” or something like that. This usually takes about five minutes.
For my weekly review, I basically do all of this same stuff, but I back it out to the scale of a week. I usually do this one electronically, though. I’ll go through my completed and uncompleted tasks and figure out what I did well during the week and what I didn’t do so well. I’ll usually come up with a big handful of tasks I want to accomplish in the coming week and add those, and I’ll also think about the “big picture” of what I want to do in the coming week and what my bigger life goals are and whether the things I’m doing connect to those goals. This usually takes me a major part of an hour and I find it incredibly worthwhile.
Got any questions? The best way to ask is to follow me on Facebook and ask questions directly there. I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive many, many questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.
The post Questions About Impatience, Razor Blades, Student Loans, Light Bulbs and More! appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
Does your nightly wind-down routine include getting lost in (or outside) the lines of an adult coloring book?
Do you find yourself doodling every time your hands are free?
Maybe you’re a student whose heart is screaming for art school, but whose head (and wallet) are a bit more hesitant.
Either way, you’ve got to meet Christine Fleming.
She’s an artist and designer who creates beautiful adult coloring books — and she made $14,000 last year teaching others to draw their own digital patterns.
Fleming is a professional graphic designer and self-taught illustrator.
She’s the mind behind Might Could Studios, the headquarters for her plethora of creative focuses, which range from creating logos and animations to selling custom-painted Russian nesting dolls.
Long story short: She’s a super-cool lady making a living following her dreams and creating art.
While sipping coffee before starting her work one morning, Fleming doodled a geometric design. She liked what she created, so she posted it to Instagram — where other people seemed to like it, too.
Soon, she’d doodled nine more geometric designs, and was wondering what to do with them. That’s when she remembered how much she’d been hearing lately about adult coloring books.
“I realized that the line quality of the designs would actually lend themselves well to being colored,” Fleming said, “so I jumped on it!”
It turned out pretty well for her. Three coloring books later, she’s earned about $1,000 off their sales. She sells the books both on Etsy and at craft shows she attends.
But Fleming’s doodles didn’t just allow her to participate in — and earn money from — the coloring book craze.
They also helped her hone her artistic skills and realize an even higher earning potential than she expected. She’s also able to share her talents with eager learners through a course she created on Skillshare, a peer-to-peer digital learning platform.
The unique requirements of adult coloring book pages necessitated the use of both sides of Fleming’s artistic expertise.
As an illustrator and designer, she found she had the perfect combination of talents to create the clean, regular and fun patterns that lend themselves so well to meditative coloring.
Starting with her skills as an illustrator — what she calls her “art brain” — Fleming can “stay plan-free and experimental while sketching out the overall design” of the pages.
“Then, I move to the computer to digitize the artwork, and my design brain kicks in, adjusting all the lines and shapes so they are perfectly symmetrical and aligned,” Fleming says.
By using an online time-tracking app to time her work on each project and keep track of how long they take to finish, Fleming tightens her time management and efficiency skills.
“I know exactly how much time was spent creating that first coloring book: 185 hours. SO WHACK!” she said.
“But I’ve made three coloring books since then, and have gotten more efficient with each one. My second and third coloring books took 48 hours, and my most recent, which I just finished last week, took 30 hours.
“The Skillshare classes happened the same way: My first class took me 114 hours, while my seventh and most recent class took 46 hours. So I try to learn with each round how I can be more efficient with the next!”
What’s more, she found another way to monetize this newfound use of her skill set.
“By that time, I was already teaching classes on Skillshare, so I decided to teach a class on how I made the designs to tie in with the book as well.”
Last year, Fleming earned $14,000 off her seven Skillshare courses. Plus, she’s sharing an awesome skill with eager learners, without much cost to them. Skillshare memberships start at just $6 per month.
She’s even sharing the wealth by offering you guys a special deal! Get 15% off her new coloring book on Etsy with the promo code PENNY.
Be sure to check out her Skillshare course if you’ve got the artist bug yourself — or even if you just want to try your hand! You can craft your own coloring book pages, even if you “can’t” draw and have no experience with digital art software.
Fleming’s story is another great reminder for those of us warily looking at a career in the arts that success is possible — but like most worthwhile things in life, it might not be easy.
And it’s important for passion to come first.
“I didn’t start drawing these geometric designs with coloring books in mind at all,” Fleming says.
I think my best and most successful projects are the ones that grow organically from personal experimentations, not from sitting down in the beginning and thinking, ‘How can I make money today?’
Fleming’s success as an artist is, arguably, directly related to the passion compelling her to make art, regardless of fiscal compensation. Happily-made art is good art, and good art usually ends up being the kind that sells well.
But no matter how much you love what you do, don’t go in imagining you’ll kill it in the first few weeks.
“If you want to be an artist or a freelancer — be in it for the long run!” Fleming notes. “It may look like people have overnight success, but that’s hardly true for anyone.”
And once your business starts being successful, Fleming advises you try to spread your focus around so you have a variety of options, in case something falls through.
“Diversify your clients, your projects, and how you spend your time,” she says. “It’s good to have specialities, but it’s also good to have opportunities to fall back on when something doesn’t work out.”
By keeping her fingers in many pots, Fleming has developed “a sufficient income that keeps growing,” earned from enterprises that function “as a kind of web, so that even if something falls through, the whole business still stays afloat and I can still buy groceries!”
After all, who wants to draw or color without snacks?
Your Turn: What kind of adult coloring book would your doodles create?
Jamie Cattanach is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes other stuff, like wine reviews and poems — you can read along at http://ift.tt/1RiB7sH.
The post How Doodling Helped This Artist Start a Business That Made $15K Last Year appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
Living with psoriasis … psucks.
If you suffer from the uncomfortable autoimmune disease that shows itself in rash-like patches of skin, you no doubt split your time trying to get rid of it and trying to hide it.
Unfortunately, there’s no cure for psoriasis — but you’re not alone. As many as 7.5 million Americans have the disease — about 2.5% of us.
Even Kim Kardashian and her mother have been diagnosed.
But, we found a way for you to get a little payback for your suffering — and help others with the disease.
M3 Global Research is recruiting psoriasis patients to participate in paid online surveys.
This isn’t a clinical study. You don’t even have to leave your couch.
Register here to get started. Surveys take about 20-30 minutes to complete — and pay $10-$100.
The company is also recruiting for surveys on several conditions, including diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
After you register and complete your profile, you’ll receive survey invitations tailored to your information. You won’t be spammed with irrelevant surveys.
So, select that you have psoriasis and you’ll receive market research surveys relevant to living with and treating the condition.
It’s one small reason to be grateful you’re in the elite 2.5% of people afflicted with psoriasis… right?
Your Turn: Do you have psoriasis or know someone who does?
Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. Adding these links helps us keep the lights on in The Penny Hoarder HQ, which makes it a lot easier to play shuffleboard after a long day of deal-seeking!
Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more, attempting humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).
The post Psoriasis Psucks. But This Company Will Pay You $100 if You’ve Got It! appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
