الاثنين، 14 مايو 2018
Macy’s Rolls Out New Rewards, and You Don’t Need a Credit Card to Join
The department store announced this month that the Star Rewards program now includes a bronze level that all shoppers can access, regardless of their method of payment.
Bronze-level members are eligible for Star Money Days, special offers and mysterious birthday surprises. Star Money Days allow customers to earn bonus points on their purchases. Earn 1,000 points and redeem them for $10 in Star Money, which can be used without merchandise exclusions for 30 days.
Customers can enroll online, in stores or through the Macy’s app.
Is Bronze Star Rewards Macy’s Replacement for Plenti?
Macy’s announcement comes shortly after the news that rewards program Plenti is ending this summer. Macy’s was one of the initial partners in the program, which allowed shoppers who earned 1,000 points at any Plenti retailer to exchange them for $10 at a participating store of their choice. Macy’s dropped out of the Plenti program this spring.
American Express services both Plenti and Macy’s credit cards. The silver, gold and platinum rewards levels are reserved for credit card users, who receive discounts, free shipping and other rewards depending on their spending level.
Macy’s announced in January that it would close 11 stores. Since 2015, the chain has closed more than 120 locations, CNBC reports.
The company has been adding Macy’s Backstage discount departments to existing stores — and a few standalone locations — since 2015.
Lisa Rowan is a senior writer covering the retail and grocery industries at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Whataburger Wants to Give Students $5K and Burgers for Sharing Big Ideas
Yes, burgers are officially taking part in the campaign for positive change in this world — and they’re doing so by partnering with students.
Whataburger, the burger chain with outlets throughout the southern United States, is offering soon-to-be college students (and current college students) the opportunity to win as much as $5,000 for sharing a “big idea” about how to create positive change in the world.
There are more details below, but the big takeaways here are that burgers = good and that along with that $5,000, you could also win free burgers that you could cash in on during your time at college.
(And if burgers just aren’t cutting it and you’re looking for even more scholarship opportunities that can help you pay for school, be sure to like our college page on Facebook. We post awesome new scholarship opportunities there whenever we find them.)
Enter to Win $5,000 (Plus Free Burgers) From Whataburger’s #WhatabigIdeaContest
Here’s how to win up to $5,000 in Whataburger’s #WhatabigIdeaContest for sharing your best big idea on how to improve the world.
Amount awarded: $5,000 (plus free Whataburger sandwiches for a year at college), $1,000 or $500 (depending on submission type).
Number of scholarships awarded: Nine.
All three prizes will be given out in each of three regions.
Region 1: Texas
Region 2: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi
Region 3: Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma
To qualify for this scholarship, applicants must:
- Be at least 13 years old.
- Be a graduating senior at a high school within one of the contest states who has been accepted to an accredited institution or program listed under the 04/2017 link here.
- OR be a current undergraduate or graduate student at one of these accredited institutions in one of the contest states and enrolled for the summer or fall 2018 semester.
To apply, you must:
- Make a video, take a photo or create a piece of artwork or write a social-media post that represents your “big idea.”
- Share the video, photo or artwork or written post on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
- Use the hashtag #WhatabigIdeaContest and tag @Whataburger.
- Include your name and the state in which you attended school in spring 2018 when posting your entry to social media.
The video, photo or original artwork may also be submitted on the contest page located here, but the text submission must be made to a social-media channel.
Your submission should include a commencement speech or other original work about an idea that could change the world for the better, the company says.
There are three entry methods.
Video: A video submission makes you eligible to win a $5,000 prize. Videos should be no longer than 90 seconds.
Photo: A photo submission makes you eligible to win a $1,000 prize. A photo submission can be an original photograph, image, painting or drawing.
Text: A text submission makes you eligible to win a $500 prize. A written submission should include text of no more than 280 characters (text longer than 280 characters will be disqualified).
Scholarship deadline: May 31, 2018 at 5:00 p.m. Central Time
You can read the rest of the official rules and guidelines here.
If you’re looking for even more scholarships to apply for, be sure to check out our list of 100 scholarships that will help you pay for college.
Grace Schweizer is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Book This Remote Sales Job as a Group Sales Manager With Four Seasons
The luxury hotel chain is looking for a remote group sales manager for its hotel in Silicon Valley. This position is open to anyone in the U.S. who can fully work from home.
As a remote group sales manager, you’ll be tasked with finding and attracting large groups and organizations in your designated geographic region. The goal is get these groups to host functions and make reservations at a 200-room hotel in Palo Alto, California.
If a sales job doesn’t look like a gig for you, don’t worry. Check out our Jobs page on Facebook. We post new opportunities there all the time.
Remote Group Sales Manager at the Four Seasons Silicon Valley
Pay: Not specified
Responsibilities include:
- Generating hotel and resort awareness through phone calls, sales calls, trade show participation and networking groups
- Collaborating with the sales and marketing team to meet sales goals.
- Soliciting group travel
Applicants for this position must:
- Have a minimum of two years of sales management experience
- Be proficient in English
- Have good personal and professional references
- Have experience using computer programs including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Delphi and Opera
Benefits include:
- Training and development opportunities
- Complimentary rooms at other Four Seasons hotels
- Complimentary employee meals
- 401(k) retirement plans
Apply here for the remote group sales manager position at the Four Seasons Silicon Valley.
Matt Reinstetle is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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This Small Business Site Is Hiring a Remote Marketing Writer ($45-60K)
So let your creative juices flow when marketing yourself for this staff writer job at Fit Small Business. The full-time job, which was posted on the recruitment site, 4 Point Consulting, says the company is based in New York City and that the “position is open to remote.”
According to the job description, the position requires two years of marketing experience, but from there, it’s up to you.
You could tout your experience excelling as a marketing manager, building your own website or working your social media magic. Or maybe you’re a freelance business writer with a virtual Rolodex full of SEO managers and marketing analysts.
Whatever your brand of marketing experience (get it?), this job requires a writer who can interview experts on marketing topics of interest to small businesses, then break down complicated concepts into digestible form.
Not the job for you? No worries, you can check out our Jobs page on Facebook. We post new opportunities there all the time.
Work-From-Home Marketing Writer at Fit Small Business
Pay: $45,000 to $60,000 per year
Responsibilities include:
- Researching, writing and editing articles
- Conducting interviews with marketing experts
- Providing responses to readers’ and other journalists’ questions
- Participating in social media, webinars and video
Applicants for this position must:
- Have at least two years of marketing experience
- Be comfortable writing about marketing strategies
Benefits include:
- Health insurance
- Company-matched 401(k) retirement plan
Apply here for the work-from-home marketing writer job at Fit Small Business.
Tiffany Wendeln Connors is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Car insurance: are you being taken for a ride?
Paying a voluntary excess can reduce your premium – but not in all cases. Here’s what you need to know when you’re shopping around for a policy.
Agreeing to pay towards the cost of your car’s repair in the event of a claim might seem absurd, given the whole point of paying motor insurance is to have someone else pick up the bill.
However, many of us do, thanks to the excess attached to most motor insurance policies. This is an amount that you agree to pay towards the repair of your vehicle, a common way to help reduce your insurance premium. At least that’s the plan. Moneywise investigates.
Voluntary excess box
Most price comparison websites include a question in the quote generation process asking how much ‘voluntary excess’ you are willing to pay. It’s easy to conclude that your voluntary excess is all you will need to pay towards the claim, but this isn’t necessarily so.
Scrutinise the final results page and you will see a ‘total excess’ figure, stating your contribution plus the insurer’s compulsory excess. So where you may have ticked the £250 voluntary excess box, when it comes to making a claim you could find yourself required to pay much more.
We ran a number of scenarios through a price comparison site to test how voluntary excess levels affect premiums. We looked at what a 30-year-old and a 50-year-old Ford Focus driver living in Aberystwyth, Leeds, and south London would pay for comprehensive insurance. Our drivers each ran quotes on the basis that they would pay a voluntary excess of £0, £250 or £500.
Excessive excesses
In some of our scenarios, the total excess outstrips the cost of the policy. For example, our 50-yearold driver from Aberystwyth secured a quote for £268 after opting for a £250 voluntary excess. However, after the compulsory excess is added to this Saga policy, the total excess would be £400, which is £132 more than the policy premium.
In other cases, the second-best quote would end up a stronger deal. If our 50-year-old from London opted for the second-best £0 voluntary excess quote, which cost an extra £3, they would have a £100 total excess rather than £150.
It’s even worse for our 50-yearold driver from Leeds who opted for a £500 voluntary excess to secure a lower annual premium. If this driver had paid just £16 more for a Privilege policy, they would be liable for the first £600 of any claim instead of £745, thanks to the difference in the total excess.
Higher excess, lower cost?
Agreeing to pay a voluntary excess should lead to a lower annual premium. However, in some cases the opposite happens. In the case of our 50-year-old Leeds-based motorist, opting for a policy with a £500 voluntary excess would cost £495, whereas they would pay £1 less if they opted for a £250 voluntary excess. In both cases the driver would also face a compulsory excess, bringing the total they’d be required to pay to £745 and £495 respectively.
It’s a different matter for our 30-year-old Welsh driver. In this case, the cheapest quote with a £500 voluntary excess bolted on was £503. If they had selected a £0 voluntary excess they would save £37 and only be liable for only the first £195 of a claim.
Click on the table below for the full findings of our insurance investigation.
A spokesperson for insurer Hastings, which offered some of the policies we looked at, told us: “In most cases, selecting a higher voluntary excess will lower the insurance premium. However, the effect the voluntary excess has on the insurance premium can vary based on the information provided during the quote process about the driver and vehicle.”
Malcolm Tarling, chief spokesperson for trade body the Association of British Insurers, echoed this view, adding: “Someone paying something close to the average premium will potentially not see a major saving. But the excess can have more of an impact on customers with certain types of vehicle.”
Meanwhile, Lee Griffin, founder of comparison website GoCompare, believes the odds of getting a lower quote after selecting a higher voluntary excess are unlikely: “It could happen if the customer changes details when getting a quote. But this may be interpreted by some insurers as an attempt to manipulate the quote process, and they will therefore not provide a quote.”
Comparison site wording
Given the confusion about excesses, we also looked at how the five main comparison sites – Compare the Market, Confused, GoCompare, MoneySupermarket and uSwitch – describe ‘voluntary excess’ within the quote-generation process.
Comparethemarket.com’s advice box offers one of the clearest explanations of voluntary excess. After highlighting the benefits, it points out insurers may apply additional excesses, such as for young or inexperienced drivers. It adds that policyholders will pay the combined total excess in the extent of a claim.
Confused.com invites site visitors to set their voluntary excess, offering the choice of ‘£250’ and ‘Other’, the latter opening up more amount options. When you click on either box, a help box opens, explaining the benefits. However, there is no reference to the compulsory excess and that this would be added to your voluntary excess.
Gocompare.com has information boxes that appear when you hover your mouse over the relevant section. The voluntary excess box explains the benefit of paying towards a claim and makes it clear that this is in addition to a compulsory excess.
Moneysupermarket.com takes a different approach to many of the other comparison sites as it doesn’t ask about this issue before the results page. At this point, quotes are ranked in price order, with the cheapest first and an excess column following the premium. It shows the voluntary excess, set to £250, then the compulsory excess, and finally the total. Visitors can change the voluntary excess amount via a panel at the top of the page.
The information panel on uSwitch.com offers a clear and complete explanation. It states: “A voluntary excess is an amount you will have to pay upfront if you make a claim. Increasing the voluntary excess will often give you a cheaper premium, but it can also have little or no effect on quotes – try varying excess levels to see how much your quote changes.
“It’s worth bearing in mind that if you choose to pay a large voluntary excess, it could leave you unable to afford to make a claim.”
Total excess
The comparison sites may go to some pains to explain what a voluntary excess is and why we should consider one, even going so far as to point out that it’s worth playing around with the amount to see how this affects quotes. But what none explains is why they don’t just do away with the voluntary excess box and replace it with a total excess box, with the amount repeated alongside the premium on the results page.
Lee Griffin of GoCompare explains why this isn’t possible: “All comparison sites would love to be able to put a total excess on our pages rather than a voluntary excess, but we can’t. Insurers don’t have a fixed compulsory excess on their policies that we can refer to. The amount you are quoted from them depends on certain factors, and we are not privy to the algorithms they use to arrive at a particular excess.
“All we can do is to offer people the chance to select a voluntary excess that may help lower their premium.”
Repair and declare?
While the point of insurance is to cover loss, the scale of a potential claim is a very important factor. A write-off will invariably far exceed whatever excess you would contribute, yet some of the most common claims for damage may not. So where does this leave you? According to car body specialist Car Cosmetics, it typically costs between £300 and £700 for a straightforward car part replacement. However, even for a ding, if other systems associated with the bumper, such as sensors, are damaged, the average costs rise to around £600 to £1,300, including labour.
Mr Tarling acknowledges that many people will not go through their insurer if they can fi x it for less than their excess and keep their no claims discount (NCD) intact as well. But he also suggests that if your insurer requires you to inform it of any incident, a common insurance clause, this is nothing to worry about.
“You may have an incident logged, which is important for fraud prevention, especially if someone else is involved too, but most insurers do not increase the premium where there is no claim made,” he says.
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Questions About Work Culture, Haircuts, Choosing Funds, and More!
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. Planning ahead for a child
2. Frugality and self-denial
3. 401(k) and multiple jobs
4. Work culture and telecommuting
5. Why don’t people save?
6. Figuring out credit card debt
7. Getting started with children’s haircuts
8. Picking funds in 401(k)
9. Parking ticket problem
10. Using Roth IRA contributions
11. Old canned items
12. Basic income? Really?
It’s strange how someone can be a regular part of your life for fifteen years and you just feel like they’ll always be there, then suddenly one day you find out that they’re leaving the area and moving far away from you.
We’ll miss you, Heidi.
Q1: Planning ahead for a child
I’m 29, my wife is 26. We just bought a house with the help of my wife’s inheritance and are now debt free. We want to have a child three years from now and my wife plans to be a stay at home mom. What are some strategies for planning ahead for this?
– David
The number one thing I’d suggest that you do is practicing on living on one income, the income you’ll have when you make this leap. Live on just your paycheck and bank your wife’s entire paycheck.
You’re going to find this challenging, and that’s the point. It won’t be easy to go down to one income, and it’s a good idea to work out the kinks now so that when you actually have to do it this way, it’s smooth sailing.
Plus, if you’re banking your wife’s salary, you’re building up a hefty emergency fund that will help you deal with whatever may come. You’ll definitely have unplanned expenses when you have that first child, trust me, and you’ll be glad that you have the savings.
So, just start by trying to live off of your income for a while and saving your wife’s income. See how it goes, and try to figure out how to overcome challenges without tapping your wife’s income.
Q2: Frugality and self-denial
I don’t see how it’s healthy to just keep denying yourself the stuff that you want all the time. You say that it leads to happiness somehow but all I see is misery in that lifestyle.
– Anna
The goal isn’t self-denial for the sake of self-denial. The goal is denying short-term desires and impulses because they’re genuinely less important to you than your big goals in life. The only thing that those short-term desires and impulses really have going for them is a sense of urgency that the bigger and more important things often don’t have.
If I see a book I want at the bookstore, there’s a sense of urgency about it. I want it now! I can have it now! Compare that to something that’s more important to me overall, like early retirement. I do want it now, but it’s not burning and urgent, and I can’t have it now – it’s something down the road. However, the desire for early retirement lasts for years and years and years, and the benefit from it will last the rest of my life. That book? I probably won’t even be very interested in it several days from now.
Frugality, to me, is about realizing that the thing that’s urgent and exciting right in this moment often fades really quickly into nothingness and regret, while the big important things might not be as strong right now, but they last and last and last and add up to far more value in life than that short term desire. So, I’m simply very careful about the short term desires that I choose to fulfill so that they don’t stand in the way of my big long term plans.
To me, that’s the opposite of misery. As each year passes, that big goal becomes more and more real. I feel less and less money stress. All I had to give up to have it was a bunch of completely forgettable short term things. That’s a trade I’m never going to regret.
Q3: 401(k) and multiple jobs
I am in law school and during the school year I have been working part time in the retail industry. The pay is $3 above minimum wage, hours are flexible enough that I can work with a law school workload, and they provide a 401k with immediate vesting (full match up to 3%, half match up to 5%).
For the summer I have secured a high paying legal internship, but this job does not allow me to contribute to a 401k. Luckily, I have been able to keep my retail job and will be working on the weekends. My thoughts are to contribute 100% of that money into the 401(k).
Is that a smart plan with the retail job (contributing 100% to the 401k)? Will that solve the tax problem of having two jobs, or does it not matter because I won’t make enough for the year?
– James
You are never, ever making a bad move contributing to retirement. Ever.
Having said that, two questions stick out regarding this plan.
First of all, is that 401(k) offering matching? If it isn’t, you might want to consider a Roth IRA for that money instead of a 401(k). If you make it as a lawyer, you will be very glad to have a pool of money for retirement that can be used tax free, which is what a Roth IRA provides, plus you have a much wider array of investment options to choose from. I’d consider a Roth IRA through Vanguard.
Second, are you accumulating any debt due to your legal education? If you are, what’s the interest rate on that debt? If it’s very high, you might get more value for your dollar by paying off some of the debt now rather than later, because the interest savings may add up to more than you could make in retirement savings.
Regardless of what you choose, the simple act of putting money aside for the future is the wisest choice you can be making right now. What exactly you do with it is very secondary to the simple act of putting that money aside at all.
Q4: Work culture and telecommuting
My understanding is that you have worked from home for ten years. Do you have any good connections with coworkers? Do you have any sort of work culture or work environment?
– David
Part of the challenge of working from home is building those kinds of relationships and work culture. It is fairly hard to do this when working remotely, but it’s definitely possible.
I have a good relationship with several people that I have contracts with. I’ve mostly built this through back and forth email and occasional phone call and extremely rare meetings for lunch when our paths happen to cross.
Much more important than that has been connections to local people who also telecommute or work from home. I have formed a small group of such people and we meet regularly for coffee and occasionally for lunch and sometimes for group work sessions. That’s been the replacement for my “office culture,” in all honesty, and it’s actually even better than that because our commitment there is to each other and not to the company or to getting a one-up on each other. We’re not really in any sort of conflict, so our purpose is in helping each other and getting help when we need it. If we help someone else in the group, there’s no real worry that they’re just going to get promoted over us or something.
My advice to anyone considering working at home, especially if your employer is far away, is to find a local group of people that you can work with regularly. Get together with them regularly just to chat about work issues and bounce ideas off of each other.
Q5: Why don’t people save?
You often link to that story about how 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and to articles about how little people have saved for retirement and how much debt they have. I don’t understand why it happens.
I understand that some of it has to do with how you were raised. I was raised in a family where saving for the future was really important. My parents put money away for the future.
Why don’t people just do this as a matter of course?
– Dana
My honest feeling is that you have to consciously choose to focus on the long term in order to save consistently, and most people don’t have that long term focus. My experience has been that, for a lot of people, they don’t really think about the future beyond the next month or two and they assume things will just work out.
Some people have childhoods that really train them to look into the future. A few others just do it naturally. For most people, though, it doesn’t come naturally and they weren’t trained in childhood to do it.
For some adults, the value of that long term focus pops into their life at some point and they have a financial turnaround. That happened to me. It’s not impossible for it to happen.
Another challenge, of course, is that the short term distractions are really compelling and tempting. They make you want to focus on short term things. I think that many people who might have had a long term focus in another era might be distracted by the many short term temptations of today.
Q6: Figuring out credit card debt
I have debt spread across four credit cards and need help figuring out what to do next.
Credit Card A – $5000 balance, $8000 credit limit, 19.9% interest, good rewards
Credit Card B – $2200 balance, $5000 credit limit, 19.9% interest, all right rewards
Credit Card C – $1000 balance, $8000 credit limit, 24.9% interest, good rewards at one retailer
Credit Card D – $2000 balance, $5000 credit limit, 31.9% interest, no rewards to speak of
Obviously Card D is bad and I should pay it off first, but what about the rest? Should I pay off C next? Should I try to balance transfer off of A so that I can use the rewards program? I use A for most purchases.
– Anna
Carrying over $10,000 in credit card debt is a sign that you might not be good at staying within your means unless you very recently got a really good job or were using cards to stay afloat in between jobs or something. If you accumulated this debt with your normal salary, you should spend some time living entirely without credit cards and mastering living completely within your means while paying down these cards. Your first step in that situation should be to make minimum payments on these cards while building up a small emergency fund in your savings account, then paying down these cards quickly starting with D, then C, then B, then A.
If you accumulated this debt during a low income period and now you’re earning a lot more and paying this down rapidly, and you wish to use Credit Card A as your main credit card for purchases, I’d try to transfer some of the balance of A to B if possible, then focus on paying down D, then C, then B, then A, as stated above.
In short, clearing out D and C should be your highest priority, regardless of your situation.
Q7: Getting started with children’s haircuts
I have two young boys at home aged 4 and 2. I have taken them to get haircuts in the past but the process seems really simple and so I wondered why I couldn’t do this at home. I looked up a few tutorials on it but they seem to include buying expensive clippers. How does one get started on this on the cheap?
– Emily
Really, all you need is a comb and a pair of kitchen scissors, though hair clippers are pretty useful. This is probably my favorite tutorial on the subject. It’s really not very hard.
If you’re wondering about gear, kitchen scissors are fine as are any old combs you might find at the dollar store. For clippers, the best “bang for the buck” ones I know of are these sub-$30 Wahl clippers which will pay for themselves with just one cut.
The biggest suggestion I have is to give them a “long” cut the first time you do it. Cut their hair a bit longer than you normally would, so that if you mess up, you can cut it shorter to fix the problem (and hair clippers can really fix it if it gets too problematic).
Q8: Picking funds in 401(k)
I signed up for my 401(k) at work in January. The women who walked me through the form said that it didn’t matter what investment I chose and they just kind of pointed me at one. It is a Total Stock Market Mutual Fund. Is this the best choice?
– Alex
Without knowing your age, the year you hope to retire, and what options are available to you – and that means knowing the exact funds they’re talking about – it’s hard to tell if that’s the best option available to you.
From just the name alone, it sounds like it’s not going to be entirely bad. It’s most likely a very diversified stock market investment, which means that if one company goes bankrupt, it won’t hurt your investment very much. You’re actually invested in the stocks of a lot of companies at the same time, owning just a little bit of each. So, if one company does really well, it only helps you a little, but if one does really bad, it only hurts you a little. There are definitely worse things in the world!
I usually nudge people toward Target Retirement Funds if they’re available in their 401(k) package. Those types of funds are ones that are optimized for the year you plan to retire. So, there might be a Target Retirement 2040 Fund or a Target Retirement 2050 Fund. Just choose the one that has a year close to the year when you turn 70 and you’ll be in good shape.
Again, it’s really hard to give specific accurate suggestions without knowing a lot more information than this. I would say that your current choice is probably a reasonable one and that a Target Retirement Fund is probably a good choice, too.
Q9: Parking ticket problem
I have received repeated letters in gradually more aggressive language about a parking ticket that my car apparently received in a city I’ve never been to. I’ve never even been to that state. I am single and no one has ever driven my car but me. Not sure what to do.
– Nigel
This ticket is probably due to an incorrect VIN in a database somewhere, or possibly an incorrectly typed license plate number. At some point, someone registered a car with a similar VIN as yours and it got typed in wrong.
Just go through your bank records or credit card records or other records and make sure you have some clear evidence that you weren’t in the area at the time of the supposed ticket, then contact them. Simply state that you’ve never been to that area and have records showing that you were in another part of the country on that date. That should clear things up in a jiffy.
I’m almost certain that this is due to someone typing in a VIN or a license plate number wrong somewhere.
Q10: Using Roth IRA contributions
In my late twenties I got super serious about saving for retirement and maxed out my Roth IRA for several years while also contributing 15% to my 401(k) and getting 5% of that matched. I am very well off for retirement now.
Given this do you think it is a good idea to use Roth IRA contributions to help pay for my son’s college education? I am a single mom with only one child. He’s going to a state university and living at home while doing so for at least the first year or two. My Roth contributions can cover his tuition for three years or so. Good idea or not?
– Brenda
Again, it’s really hard to know the right answer without seeing a full picture of your finances. It does sound like you are in good shape for retirement, but I would consider it more important that you’re in great retirement shape than paying for his college tuition.
Unless you are extremely sure that you are in absolutely great retirement shape, I wouldn’t pull out my Roth IRA contributions to help. Instead, I’d have him take out some student loans to pay for the tuition. If you can help a little out of pocket, make some payments on those loans when they’re in forbearance to keep the interest in check, but don’t tap your Roth IRA for it.
If you’re dead sure you’re in extremely good retirement shape and helping your son emerge from college without debt is very important to you, then it’s a reasonable choice, but be absolutely sure you’re in good shape first!
Q11: Old canned items
My parents used to do a lot of canning until they got sick. They have a lot of older canned stuff in their pantry. How old is too old for canned foods?
– Amy
I’d generally stick to USDA guidelines on this. They recommend that high-acid foods like tomatoes are eaten within a year and a half, and other items within five years. Canned foods are sterile – if they’re not, the lid will pop up and you should discard them. The reason for those guidelines is that beyond them, the foods really start to break down and become mush.
If the lid is still sealed and it hasn’t popped up, the food is still safe to eat, but it may not be a pleasant experience as it may all be mush.
Q12: Basic income? Really?
Are you really in favor of a basic income?
– Daniel
I’ve made this offhand comment several times, but I haven’t really addressed it in detail, so let me clarify.
I’m not in favor of a basic income today. I don’t think that in a situation where there are lots of employment opportunities that basic income is helpful.
Rather, I’m looking forward to a future in which there aren’t jobs available. Like it or not, most entry-level jobs are going to be automated in the next ten to thirty years. The pieces are in place already to automate a lot of jobs – the only reason it hasn’t happened in a lot of industries yet is because the initial investment is high. As developers of a lot of the technologies that make automation possible start lowering the price (and they will), companies will start looking at their balance sheet and start automating a lot of jobs. Tens and even hundreds of millions of jobs. Truck drivers, cabbies, farmers, vegetable pickers, construction workers, and on and on and on. Those jobs will be automated in a few decades.
The time to start thinking about how society will handle that is right now. How exactly do we handle a situation where the vast majority of the population don’t have the skills needed to be employed? There will be jobs left in this future, but there won’t be many and they’ll require a rather strong technical skill set. What about everyone else? What about a situation where people who want to work literally can’t do anything that a machine can’t already do better?
Solution A is to let people starve. I’m not on board with that. Solution B is to force companies to employ people. I’m not really on board with that, either, but that’s closer to the solution. I think simply providing everyone the means to meet their basic needs is the solution, actually, and paying for it via taxation of companies that use widespread automation (in this future, that’s most companies).
Our challenge is going to be finding things for those idle hands to do. I honestly don’t know how to solve that problem, but it seems more humane than letting people starve if they don’t have a Ph. D. in robotics or computer science.
It’s a sticky problem, and there is no wonderful, perfect solution. We have thirty years or so to figure out a solution. Basic income is the best solution I’ve found so far, though I’m definitely open to better ones. It’s not a problem that I know how to solve; it’s just that basic income makes the most sense to me in a world where the vast majority of people don’t have the skills and natural talents necessary to produce things that machines can’t produce more efficiently.
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.
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How to Build Your First Email List From Scratch
Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is not dead.
Sure, there are newer content marketing strategies out there today that may seem more appealing. But if you want your business to thrive, you’ve got to have a core foundation for your strategy.
Stick to the basics. If you’ve recently launched a startup company, one of the first things you should do is build an active email subscriber list.
It’s one of the best ways to get people excited about and engaged with your brand. You’ll use this list to stay in contact with your customers on a regular basis.
Ultimately, your email subscriber list will help you increase engagement, generate leads, and drive conversions.
What’s even more appealing about email marketing is how profitable it can be. In fact, the average return on investment for email marketing campaigns is a whopping 3,800%:
If you have been in business for a while but still don’t have an active list of subscribers, this guide is relevant to you as well. It’s not too late for you to get started with your first list.
You may be a little bit behind right now, but if you want to catch up to your competitors, start focusing on your email marketing strategy as soon as possible.
That said, starting from zero can be daunting. It feels as if you’ve got a long climb ahead of you.
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.
Fortunately, if you follow the tips I’ve outlined in this guide, you’ll have a much easier time building your first email list from scratch.
Pick your platform
Before you proceed with anything else, you need to choose email software you’d like to use.
This will depend on many factors based on the wants and needs of your company, but you’ll have plenty of options to choose from. Constant Contact is a great starting point for beginners:
But it’s not the only option. Check out similar email marketing platforms such as:
For the most part, they all will have similar features and benefits. It all depends on your preferences for the interface, pricing, and other factors.
Compare at least a few of these choices before deciding. One thing for sure: you’ll need software to help you with this task.
Email marketing platforms will make your life much easier. That’s because what you’re trying to accomplish here is much different from sending a mass email to your friends and family.
Sending promotional content to your subscribers directly from your personal email account isn’t a viable option if you want to take things seriously.
Plus, you’d spend way more time than you needed to if you did this manually. We both know how much you value your time, so take advantage of any available time-saving marketing tools.
Build your opt-in landing page
Now that you’ve selected a platform for sending emails, it’s time for you to set up a way for your website visitors to subscribe to this list.
You need to build a strong landing page specifically designed for turning web traffic into subscribers. In theory, this is simple, right?
But you’ll need to do much more than creating a landing page that says “Sign up for emails.” That alone won’t be enough to add subscribers.
There is a science behind landing pages that drive conversions. For example, you need to take into consideration the placement of your opt-in button:
As you can see from this data, placing the button in the footer results in a drastically higher conversion rate than placing it in other locations on the page.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for you to take your time when designing the layout of your opt-in landing page. Make sure it’s simple and clear, and think about other aspects such as the color scheme.
That’s because you can’t rely only on users visiting your website to navigate to this page. As I’ll discuss shortly, people will land on this page from a variety of sources and marketing channels. And that’s why you’ll need to take other factors into consideration as well.
Drive traffic to your landing page
You’ve got your email platform set up, and your landing page has been built. Now, you need to convert your website visitors into email subscribers.
The best way to do this is to get as much traffic as possible to your landing page.
You can start by increasing your SEO efforts, but that alone won’t be enough to build a huge subscriber list. You’ll need to feature this landing page on as many of your marketing channels as possible.
Share the link on your social media channels. Blog about it.
Put a CTA on the sidebar of each page on your website to increase the exposure and encourage conversions.
Here’s a great example of this strategy being used by HubSpot on its blog homepage:
Notice that a subscribe option is featured on multiple locations of this page. This makes it easy for visitors to spot it.
You can employ the same strategy. Visitors will need to make only one click to get to the opt-in landing page you built.
Anything you can do to drive more people to this page will increase your subscription rates.
Give people a reason to subscribe
Your company might be great, but not everyone knows that. This is especially true if you have a startup company.
Plus, people get enough emails throughout the day. Do you really think they want to receive more?
In fact, the average person who works in an office receives 121 emails each day.
Furthermore, 49% of consumers report they receive too many marketing emails from businesses.
It’s important you recognize these statistics. That’s because website visitors and customers won’t subscribe to your email list unless you give them some type of incentive.
You’ll need to provide them with some offer or value that improves their lives or experience with your brand.
Monetary benefits and discounts are some of the best ways to entice prospective subscribers.
For example, let’s say you’ve got an ecommerce store. You can have a pop-up or promotion on your homepage offering a discount off a purchase when a customer signs up to receive emails.
I don’t want to call anyone out, so I won’t use their name. But here’s an example of something I recently saw on an ecommerce website:
Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t completely off the mark. But look at this pop-up, and tell me if it excites you.
Telling subscribers they will be the first to know about a new product release, promotion, or story may not be enough to get them to opt in.
Instead, take a look at this example from Bed Bath & Beyond:
Compare this to our previous example. It’s much more enticing.
Why?
That’s because Bed Bath & Beyond is offering value people can actually use. People can get excited about a 20% off discount.
They may sign up just to receive that initial discount, but if you establish a good relationship with them, they could turn into subscribers for life. We’ll discuss that in greater detail as we continue.
Segment your subscribers
Here’s something else you need to recognize and keep and mind.
Not all your subscribers are the same, and not all your subscribers will sign up for the same reasons.
The key to building a great subscriber list is identifying these differences and grouping people accordingly—in other words, segmenting.
According to a 2017 study by MailChimp, segmented email campaigns have a 14% higher open rate. What’s even more astonishing is that segmented campaigns have a 101% higher click rate.
Segmenting your subscribers will help you lower your bounce rates and unsubscribe rates as well.
How do you segment your subscribers? You have many options, but some of the most common methods include factors such as:
- interests
- location
- type of message
- email frequency
If you properly design the opt-in landing page I discussed earlier, this shouldn’t be difficult. Here’s a great example of how Bonobos uses this strategy to segment its list based on frequency:
Now, they won’t have to worry about sending too many emails to subscribers who want to hear from them only once a month.
Giving your subscribers the option will improve their experience and ultimately increase sales in the long run.
This will also keep your list strong and active, reducing unsubscribe rates.
Encourage your subscribers to invite their friends and family
To get the most out of your subscriber list, have your subscribers work for you.
Make it as easy as possible for them to forward your content to their friends and family.
Even if you’ve got a great newsletter or promotion, it’s unlikely that most people will do this out of the kindness of their hearts. You’ll have to continue with the strategy of giving them an incentive or added value to encourage an action.
You should offer a discount to your subscribers for getting their friends or family members to join your email list as well.
Research shows that 28% of people would be more likely to make referrals if they received a reward for doing so.
The idea here is to create a snowball effect.
You want each new subscriber to get more people to join. As I said earlier, you can’t rely on people signing up only from your website. Encouraging sharing will help you get more subscribers.
Send relevant and timely content
Now that you’ve got subscribers, you don’t want to lose them.
Make sure you send promotional content to your subscribers. Recall the discussion about segmenting your subscribers, and communicate with them accordingly.
Each campaign needs to have a reason and a purpose.
Sending a message “just to say hello” is a quick way to get lots of unsubscribes. Avoid that at all costs.
You worked hard to get people to opt in, and now you’re losing them. That’s why you need to create highly relevant content for each message.
Don’t get me wrong. Unsubscribes are inevitable, and they happen to the best of us, including me.
Here’s a look at the top reasons why people unsubscribe from email lists:
Don’t spam your subscribers.
As you can see from this graphic, the most common reason for opting out of promotional emails is receiving too many emails.
Sending emails too often can annoy your subscribers. This can have an adverse effect on your company beyond losing subscribers.
Developing a negative association with your brand could cause them to stop buying as well. Just make sure all your content is relevant and sent in a timely fashion.
Keep adding subscribers
So you’ve finally reached your first 100, 1,000, or maybe even 10,000 email subscribers.
Congratulations!
It’s time to kick back, put your feet up, and relax, right? Wrong.
Growing your email list needs to be a constant priority. The sky is the limit here. There is no downside to adding more subscribers.
Depending on the platform you selected earlier, you may get charged more, monthly or annually, based on the number of people added to your list.
But the costs are marginal and worth it because of the high ROI of email marketing campaigns.
Now, you just need to use your email strategy to increase conversions and drive sales through offering great content.
Conclusion
No matter what type of business you have or what industry you’re in, you need to have an active email marketing list.
But for those of you who haven’t started this yet, building this list from scratch can feel like an overwhelming task. Just follow the guide I’ve outlined above to make your life easier.
Start by selecting a platform to use. Next, build your opt-in landing page, and find ways to increase your website traffic.
Give people a reason to subscribe. Offer value and incentives to get them to join.
Segment your subscribers so it’s easier to send them timely and highly relevant content.
Follow these tips, and you’ll be on your way to growing your email marketing list from scratch in no time.
What strategies is your brand using to add more subscribers to your first email marketing list?
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Announcing: Stories from Our Readers
We’re excited to announce a brand new season for The Simple Dollar that’s written by you! It’s called Stories from Our Readers. We’re celebrating personal financial stories, not from financial experts, but from people just like you.
Since the inception of this blog, we’ve seen how community can forge strong morale in a financial environment that’s not easy to navigate. Getting financial advice is great, but learning how people are using it to create real wins in their own lives is what it’s all about. And like Trent, we want to connect with others who’ve been where we are and have the practical tips to show for it.
We’re not changing the blog as you know it. Rather, this is your chance to contribute to the TSD community, learn from others, and share financial wins on a regular basis.
We’ll be kicking off with personal stories from some of our regular TSD writers in the coming weeks. But that doesn’t mean you have to wait to get involved.
You can share your story now via our live submission form.
We will review all submissions and be sure to get your full consent before posting anything. If your story is approved, we’ll feature it on our site and social media pages for the benefit of our community.
You may submit any questions you have via the submission form as well. We’ll work as hard as we can to make sure all the details are as clear as we can make them.
Don’t forget to follow us on our new Instagram page, on Facebook, and on Twitter to see your story featured, read others, and continue taking practical steps toward financial independence.
We’re excited for this new opportunity and look forward to you joining us!
–The Simple Dollar
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How Much Should You Be Saving for Retirement? Use This Spreadsheet to Find Out
There’s one obvious question that usually goes unanswered despite all of the articles, podcasts, and news segments on the importance of saving for retirement: How much money should YOU be saving for retirement?
It’s easy to find benchmark percentages, like rules saying that you should save 15% of your income. But that doesn’t factor in anything personal like your age, your current retirement savings, or your retirement goals.
It’s also easy to find calculators saying that you need something like $1,000,000 by the time you retire, but that doesn’t tell you anything about how to get there.
What you really need is a specific dollar amount you should be contributing to your retirement accounts on a monthly basis. A number that takes your personal goals and information into account and gives you a personal result.
That’s exactly what you’ll get here.
We’ve created a simple spreadsheet that you can use to calculate your personal retirement savings goal. This article will show you how to do it.
How to Get Your Personal Retirement Savings Goal
First thing’s first, you can grab the spreadsheet here:
Then all you have to do is fill each of the fields in the Inputs section. Here are some notes on each one:
- Current Age: If you are single, enter your age. If you are married or otherwise in a relationship where you’re planning for retirement together, enter the age of the oldest partner.
- Current Retirement Savings: Add up all of your retirement account balances – such as 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and IRAs – as well as any other money that’s specifically earmarked for retirement, and enter the total dollar amount here.
- Estimated Retirement Age: Enter the age at which you’d like to be able to retire. You can play around with this to see how it affects your savings target.
- Estimated Monthly Expenses in Retirement: Enter the amount of money you’d like to have available to spend each month in retirement. This is another variable you can play with to see how it affects your savings target. Your current monthly spending is a reasonable place to start.
- Estimated Monthly Social Security Income: You can either download your Social Security Statement here to use your actual projected Social Security benefit, or you can get a rough estimate here. Keep in mind that recent projections show that even if no changes are made to Social Security, there’s enough money to pay out 73% of projected benefits through 2091. So while you may not want to count on your full benefit, it’s reasonable to count on receiving some benefit.
- Estimated Social Security Start Age: Most people can start collecting as early as age 62 or as late as age 70. Keep in mind that the age at which you start drawing benefits will affect the monthly income you receive.
Once you’ve entered your information into each of those fields, you’ll be presented with two savings goals.
The first, and likely the most useful, is your Monthly Savings Goal. This is the amount of money you should be contributing to retirement accounts on a monthly basis in order to put yourself on track for retirement. Matching contributions from your employer do count towards this goal.
The second is your Annual Savings Goal, which is simply the monthly savings goal multiplied by 12.
These numbers will tell you one of two things:
- If you’re already saving that amount or more, you can feel good about your retirement savings pace. You could even play around with the Estimated Retirement Age and Estimated Monthly Expenses variables to see if you might be on pace to retire early or to have more disposable income in retirement.
- If you’re not already hitting those goals, they give you something specific to work towards. Whether you can immediately increase your savings or work to slowly increase them over time, you now have a concrete goal you can feel good about.
A Few Words of Caution
While this retirement calculator is a great way to get yourself on the right track, there are a few words of caution to heed before you put too much faith in the numbers.
First, there are a few big assumptions being made here, specifically around your investment return and the rate of inflation. Those are outlined in the Assumptions tab of the spreadsheet, and you’re welcome to tweak them if you’d like, but reality will almost certainly be different than what’s assumed here and those differences will affect your results for better or for worse.
Second, your goals and circumstances will change over time, which means that you should be re-visiting this calculator on a regular basis to see how your savings goal has changed. Setting a calendar reminder to re-evaluate your savings goal once per year in November or December would give you time to make those adjustments for the next year.
The bottom line is that while this calculator is a good barometer for how much you should be saving, there are too many unknown variables to ever be able to say for sure that you will meet your retirement needs, no matter how much you’re saving.
Save Away!
Hopefully this calculator makes the process of saving for retirement a lot clearer. With a specific dollar amount to shoot for, you know exactly what you need to do and you can plan ahead with confidence.
Matt Becker, CFP® is a fee-only financial planner and the founder of Mom and Dad Money, where he helps new parents take control of their money so they can take care of their families.
Related Reading:
- What to Do When Your Retirement ‘Number’ Seems Impossibly Big
- Are Jean Chatzky’s Retirement Savings Benchmarks Realistic?
- Six Fresh Ways to Think About Retirement Savings
- When It Makes Sense to Scale Back Retirement Savings
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This Pro Travel Blogger Shares Her Tips for Getting Paid to See the World
And at 31, Sula has seen more of the world than most people will in a lifetime.
After packing her bags and moving from the United States to Germany in 2016, Sula traveled to 85 cities last year — and earned $200,000.
Make no mistake, though — Sula isn’t being paid to travel (she actually only accepts a few sponsored trips per year). Instead, Sula makes a living through her highly-successful travel and lifestyle blog Helene in Between.
Here’s her story — and advice for anyone looking to make a big leap or change in their own life.
A Blessing in Disguise: How a Heartbreaking Accident Changed the Course of Sula’s Life
Sula started the Helene in Between blog six years ago after a rock climbing accident left her on the couch, recovering from a broken ankle.
She writes on her blog: “I was laid up at home, unable to go to work for weeks. My only outlet was to pour my heart into this blog. It became the silver lining.”
With a day job in digital marketing and social media, Sula realized she could put her professional skills to use to grow and monetize Helene in Between.
“I quickly became invested in the idea of growing the blog,” Sula explains. “I enjoyed the connections I was making, and I wanted to grow those connections in a more meaningful way.”
Break the Rules: Blogging Her Own Way
There’s one blogging rule Sula doesn’t follow — while heavy on travel content, her blog doesn’t fit neatly into a niche.
“Everyone tells you, ‘you need a niche’,” says Sula. “I was never very interested in that. I wanted to be able to talk about my passions, and I was still finding success despite talking about a variety of subjects.”
In addition to blogging consistently, Sula soon realized the power social media could have on her brand. She began to spend more time on Instagram, where she now has more than 128,000 followers.
“I realized I could use Instagram as a way to transition people back to my blog,” Sula explains. Her Instagram took off when she moved abroad, and Sula began using the platform as a way to share her day-to-day life with her followers.
Along the way, Sula experimented with various monetization tactics, adding display ads to the website and working with third-party marketing companies to write sponsored posts.
She eventually stumbled into affiliate marketing, but it wasn’t until she launched her first online course that she knew she could actually turn her blog into a career.
Transitioning into Travel Blogging
The travel bug bit Sula early on.
Born and raised in Dallas, Sula had the opportunity to travel to Europe each summer while her parents taught a study abroad program in London. When she was 18, Sula begged her parents to let her then boyfriend, now husband Michael join them for a summer in Europe. He fell in love with travel, too.
From Texas to Germany
As Sula’s blog grew, so did her desire to travel.
“Michael and I were always taking short trips abroad,” she says. “It was so quick.”
Newly married and fresh off buying a home, the Sulas began contemplating a move abroad.
“The driving force was a desire to see the world in a manner that allowed us to appreciate it,” Sula says.
The couple wasn’t rash in their decision to move. They spent six months saving money, and then moved to Nashville, Tennessee for a year as a “test run” for being away from home.
During that time, Sula quit her job and transitioned into full-time travel blogging. With years of successful blogging under her feet, the time was right to make a big move to Europe.
“We’ve always been super conscious about budgets and money,” Sula explains. “We realized the best way to see Europe and to do it cheaply was to move there. I think we’ve proved ourselves right in that respect. Flights are inexpensive. It’s easier to travel around.”
But where would the couple live?
“We did tons of research on where to live,” Sula says. “Our requirements were that the destination we chose was centrally located in Europe, had a good freelance visa program, spoke some English and fell within our budget.”
The Sulas looked at several “best places to live in the world” lists and noticed Germany popped up often, and fit their criteria. They discovered Heidelberg, a charming town in southwestern Germany. Heidelberg had a European vibe, but was still very connected with easy access to the airport and other destinations.
So in September 2016, never having set foot in Germany, the Sulas packed their bags, two dogs in tow, and moved to Heidelberg.
For the past two years, the duo has called Germany home, while working and traveling the globe.
“I haven’t looked back since,” Sula says.
An Income Breakdown
Sula has always been transparent on her blog about how she makes money.
With an income of a little over $200,000 in 2017, Sula earns four times the amount she made at her highest paying corporate job.
Curious about how exactly how Sula makes money? Here’s her income breakdown.
Online courses and classes (65%): Sula’s online course, Instagram For Success, and membership site, Blog Boss Babe, make up the biggest slice of her income pie. More than 1,200 students have enrolled in Instagram for Success and Blog Boss Babe is currently home to 250 members.
Affiliate marketing (15%): Affiliate marketing, Sula’s favorite income stream, allows her blog and brand to earn money passively. “Affiliate marketing is a trustworthy way to monetize what I already would be talking about on my blog. I use everything I promote. Why not get paid for it?” Siteground, ConvertKit, Trello, Booking.com and Trusted Housesitters are among the brands Sula promotes.
Thinking of Making a Big Leap Yourself? Follow Sula’s Advice
If you’ve wanted to make a big change in your life or perhaps travel more, take note from Sula’s book.
1. Make a plan
Making a plan was key to making moving abroad a success, Sula advises.
“When we started this idea of moving abroad, we weren’t sure of what we really wanted until we started figuring it out. If you don’t plan, you might not actually know what you want out of life,” she explains.
2. Find a balance
Sula admits to struggling with striking balance, especially because there’s so much she wants to accomplish. For Sula, balance looks like investing money into her business and skills, and outsourcing when possible.
“You can’t improve your skills unless you’re willing to learn. Every time I invest in myself, I make the money back tenfold,” she says of the various courses on photography, Facebook advertising and travel blogging she’s taken over the years.
Similarly, Sula has learned the importance of hiring people she trusts to help with her business — she recently hired her husband to join her venture.
“Hiring my husband 100% was the best decision. He plans most of our travel and contract work and takes photos of me, and I focus on the creative side,” she explains.
3. Don’t worry about perfection
Being a travel blogger, you’d think Sula spends a lot of time on her phone or using her camera to get the best shot for her blog or Instagram.
Preferring to spend time actually seeing the places she’s visiting, Sula doesn’t worry about taking the perfect photo, and even found a way to quickly batch edit photos using Adobe Lightroom.
“The world is too big a place to spend it looking down at my phone,” Sula says.
4. Make the leap
The number one question Sula is asked is “How do I know I’m ready to _________?”
Sula believes no one is going to tell you when you’re ready, and while taking a leap may be scary and force you out of your comfort zone, you have to go for it.
“You have to take the leap of faith to just do it,” Sula says. “I’ve learned that it’s OK to fail, and it might actually teach you something. Don’t wait until every single duck is in a row.”
Jessica Lawlor is the president and CEO of Jessica Lawlor & Company (JL&Co), a specialty communications agency. She has a serious case of wanderlust after writing this article.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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