12 Ways Homeowners Can Avoid Home Improvement Rip-Offs

Steer clear of contractors who solicit their services at your door or ask for a hefty payment before doing any work.

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Major automakers face lawsuit over deadly 'defect' in keyless ignition cars

Lawyers have filed a class action lawsuit against most major automakers over what attorneys call a deadly "defect" in keyless ignition systems.

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5 Steps to Turn That Interview Into a Job Offer

How to make the most of this important meeting.

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What to Do If Your House Has Mold (Or You Think It Does)

Do nothing and become a cautionary tale.


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BuzzFeed Strikes First Global Agency Deal With WPP’s GroupM

The non-exclusive partnership will give WPP agencies access to data, creative teams and preferential media pricing.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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5 Steps to Maintain Financial Security in Retirement

Here’s how to quell your retirement fears so you can sleep better at night.

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8 Fun, Unusual Freelance Careers You Probably Haven’t Considered

When you hear the term “freelance,” what careers come to mind? Chances are it’s something like a writer, editor, journalist, web designer or social media manager.

But if you’re not interested in content marketing, can you still start a business as a freelancer?

Definitely.

If you’re dead set on living the freelance lifestyle but aren’t quite sure what services you’ll offer, consider these unusual freelance careers. One of them may just be the opportunity you’re looking for.

1. Calligrapher

So maybe you don’t want to be a content writer, but if you have excellent handwriting skills and a set of calligraphy tools, you can address envelopes and make $2 to $5 a pop just for being a talented calligraphy writer!

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but book a wedding with 100 guests, and you could rake in $200 or more for hand-written invites.

Launch your own website selling your services, or offer calligraphy on sites like Etsy. For example, Margo Dittmer gets creative with her calligraphy services and sells custom wedding certificates for $175 each on Etsy.

2. Date Concierge

If you’ve thought about being a freelance event planner but don’t want to plan big events like weddings, get your foot in the door with couples who haven’t thought of marriage yet.

As a date concierge, you plan the dates couples don’t have time to plan themselves, including everything from developing the date idea to booking the restaurant reservations and car rental.

Freelance date concierge Brenndon Knox charges $12.50 per hour for his services, but depending on your clientele, you could easily charge more.

Who knows? Your clients may hear wedding bells thanks to you, and if you’re into it, they might ask you to plan their wedding, too!

3. Fabric Reseller

Maybe you’ve toyed with the idea of starting your own clothing alteration business, but if that doesn’t seem right and you still love fabric, consider becoming a fabric reseller.

You’ll have to visit fabric sales or buy wholesale fabrics and then assemble small quantities of fabric into appropriate packages. There’s a decent demand for these types of fabric bundles in the quilting, scrapbooking and craft market. Check out some of these packages on Etsy for inspiration.

4. Virtual Recruiter

Do you have the skills and connections to find the right employees or freelancers for jobs? Why not become a virtual recruiter?

As a freelance recruiter, your services may include things like:

• Posting jobs
• Screening resumes
• Handling preliminary interviews
• Negotiating salaries

If you wanted to expand your services, you could work the other way around and consult with jobseekers to help find the perfect career opportunities for them.

Dorothy Rawlinson works successfully in this industry and reports most virtual recruiters are paid on a commission basis.

5. Coupon Book Organizer

If you love gathering coupons and saving money, why not turn it into a lucrative business? This low-cost service business can actually prove to be a lot of fun.

Collect coupons from local businesses, compile them into coupon booklets and sell them to people throughout your community.

6. PowerPoint Presentation Designer

If you have a knack for designing awesome PowerPoint presentations, turn your talent into a money-maker.

Freelancer Magda Maslowska designs custom presentations and infographics for businesses and keynote speakers who don’t have the time or skills to do it themselves. If you have an eye for great presentations, why not launch a business of your own doing the same thing?

7. Children’s Book Illustrator

Love drawing or designing cute images with Adobe Illustrator? You could make money illustrating children’s books. The type of illustrating you can do and the amount you can make varies immensely.

The good news is that self-publishing is on the rise. Self-published books will make up an estimated 50% of ebook sales by 2020, and children’s book authors are turning to freelance illustrators to help their stories come alive, so now is a great time to start your illustrating business.

8. Genealogist

Love putting together puzzling family trees? People will pay you so they don’t have to do it on their own.

Anthony Adolph is a professional freelance genealogist who charges between £50 and £500 per request. If you’ve been a hobby genealogist for any amount of time, you could easily charge these rates with the right knowledge base.

As these options show, freelance careers aren’t limited to the writing or marketing industries.

Your Turn: What type of freelance career are you thinking about launching?

Lisa Stein owns FreelanceMom.com and is a college business professor and a mom to two growing daughters.  Lisa is dedicated to playing a part in helping women and moms run businesses they love, help support themselves and their families, and create flexible lifestyles.

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Why You Can’t Time the Market: Thoughts on Investing in Stocks

Unless you have a time machine handy, there’s no way to time the stock market. Photo: William Warby

Marcus wrote in with a great reader mailbag question that really couldn’t be answered in brief, so I expanded my answer into a post. Here’s what Marcus had to say:

There seems to be a consensus right now that the stock market is near a high point and is going to drop in the future and yet you suggest not selling stocks right now. Why not? Aren’t you supposed to buy low and sell high?

The stock market has been on an upward trend and has been quite bumpy as of late, with some big one-day drops and some recoveries in between those drops. The reason for that is simple – some people think it’s time to sell and are selling, while others see the drop in prices after the result of that sale and think that it’s time to buy and are thus buying.

In both cases, we’re talking about huge financial institutions that play on the day-to-day changes in the market in order to make money. For a company with, say, $500 billion in managed assets, a 0.1% change in the market means $500 million dollars. There’s a huge amount of money at stake for those people.

However, those people have little to do with what average investors ought to be doing in their day to day lives, for several reasons.

First, for most investors, a small change in the stock market isn’t going to add up to a lot of money. Let’s say you have $100,000 invested in the stock market. A 0.1% change is only $100. That amount of money is not going to make you or break you.

Second, brokerage fees on buying and selling will eat up a lot of whatever you gained. Let’s say you’re with a brokerage that charges you $10 for every “buy” or “sell” you order, and let’s say your stock is split up among 10 different companies. If you choose to sell it all, that’s ten “sell” orders, which at $10 a pop is going to eat up the $100 you might have lost in a 0.1% drop.

A combination of brokerage fees and a low overall balance means that most ordinary people can’t afford to buy and sell very frequently in a normal investment account. If you buy and sell very much at all, your gains are going to be completely devoured and any losses are going to be amplified. It is a losing game, period.

The large investors get around this because large investors avoid those brokerage fees — they actually have people on the floor of the stock exchange. A brokerage fee essentially means that you’re paying for someone who has a seat on the floor of the stock exchange to execute that trade for you. Those big investors don’t have to worry about those fees for each trade – they’ve already got their people on the floor and those people are usually salaried, so they can buy and sell as they wish.

In other words, in a normal, taxable account, unless you have all of your money tied up in just one or two investments and are extremely skilled at guessing the peak of the market, you’re not going to make money by timing the market.

Now, has the peak already passed? Or is it yet to come? Will the stock market be higher than it is now in five years? You can’t answer those questions and neither can I. No one can.

A much better approach is to let the money sit in the investment until you need it, letting it ride the ups and downs of the market.

Why Buying and Selling Doesn’t Work: An Example

Let me give you a very specific example, with numbers from the past several years. I’m going to use points that are near but not exactly at market highs and lows for this example, because no one is going to be able to accurately nail the highs and lows.

Let’s say someone had $10,000 to invest on January 1, 1998. You decide it’s a great time to invest – this is the period of “irrational exuberance,” right? You buy into an S&P index fund, which sits at 963.36 per share. So you wind up with 10.37 shares (remember, there’s a $10 brokerage fee, so you’re only actually buying with $9,990). We’re going to assume for convenience sake that each year you’re in the stock market, you’ll earn $200 in dividends, to keep it easy.

Okay, you stay in until January 1, 2002, earning $800 in dividends along the way, where the stock market has now spooked you. It’s going to go down – way down, you think. It’s already off of the record highs it set earlier, so now it’s at 1,140.21. You sell your 10.37 shares and pay the $10 brokerage fee. This leaves you with $11,813.98.

You sit on that until January 1, 2005, where you’ve now read the tea leaves and you believe the stock market is going to shoot up in the coming years. You watched it bottom out in 2002, struggle to come back to life, and then start chugging along in 2004, so you believe the bad part is over. You buy back in with your $11,813.98, and the S&P 500 is at 1181.41, so you’re able to buy 9.99 shares in the S&P 500 after your $10 brokerage fee.

You sit on that until January 1, 2009, where you’ve witnessed a huge downturn in the market and you want out. You earned $800 in dividends over the last four years. You decide to sell your 9.99 shares, but the S&P 500 is at 865.58, so you earn $8,637.14 on the sale. You sit out for a year.

On January 1, 2010, you decide to buy back in because the bad times are over. The S&P 500 is at 1,123.58, so your $8,637.14 buys you 7.68 shares in the S&P 500. You just sit on that up until August 21, 2015, earning $1,200 in dividends (I’ll count the full year for 2015 there). The S&P 500 is at 1,970.97, meaning your investment is worth $15,137.04. You also made $2,800 in dividends along the way on your initial $10,000, so that $10,000 turned into $17,937.04. Good, right?

Now, what happens if you just buy in on January 1, 1998 and just leave it there? You buy 10.37 shares on that date. Then, over each of the next 18 years, you earn $200 in dividends, totaling $3,600 in dividends. Your 10.37 shares are now worth $1,970.97 apiece, so your investment is worth $20,438.96. Your $10,000 turned into $24,038.96.

In other words, if you just sat there and didn’t even look at your investment for 18 years, you made way more money than someone trying to time the market. It’s not even close.

Why? Well, for one, the person timing the market is never going to hit the exact bottom or the exact top. Often, the beginnings of a stock market turnaround in either direction look like normal volatility. It isn’t until a big slide or a big jump is in full effect that it becomes clear. Because of that, you’re not actually buying at the low or selling at the high.

If you do try to perfect your guesses, you’re going to just end up buying and selling a lot more often. You’ll probably eventually hit the exact top and the exact bottom, but you’ll be doing a lot of poor buys and sells near those dates and each of those actions will cost you brokerage fees. It’s not going to work out for you, in other words.

That leads us into the second problem – the brokerage fees. Here, the brokerage fees ended up costing about 0.01 shares on each trade, shaved off the top. Each time you bought, you ended up paying a brokerage fee, which meant you got a little less in terms of shares than what you paid for. Each time you sold, you paid a brokerage fee, which meant you got $10 less back than you paid for.

Another problem is that whenever you’re not in the market, you miss out on dividends. Even if stocks are dropping, the companies still pay out dividends at around, say, 2% per year, which means that if you look straight at the current sticker value of the S&P 500, you’re missing out on the money you’ll make by just sitting around and earning dividends.

Yet another problem with buying and selling is that if you do it too often, the gains you earn won’t be long-term capital gains. When you sell stocks, you want anything you gain to be a long-term capital gain so that you pay a lower rate in taxes.

What about retirement accounts? The only thing a retirement account helps with is the tax issue. When you sell within a retirement account, it doesn’t matter in terms of taxes – all that matters is what comes out of the accounts when you actually make withdrawals in retirement.

Having said that, everything else above remains true with retirement accounts – you’re still facing brokerage fees, missing out on dividends, and being inaccurate about hitting the tops and bottoms of the market.

That’s the problem with trying to hit the market. As you do it, you’re facing brokerage fees which cost you on every single buy or sell, you miss out on dividends while you’re out of the market, you’re not perfectly accurate as to the tops and bottoms of the market, and you’re probably not doing much good with your money when it’s not in the stock market. Those add up to a fool’s game, in my opinion, for the casual investor (meaning me and you) when trying to time the market when buying and selling stocks.

What You Should Do Instead

So, what’s the alternative strategy here?

My strategy is simple. I only invest in the stock market if I have a long-term goal, meaning more than 10 years down the road from when I put the money in. I invest that money in index funds and then sit on them until I need to sell them off. I don’t care what the market does today or tomorrow or next month. It can go up 20% or down 40% – I’ll just ride it out until I actually need the money.

So, let’s break this down into bits.

Why only long-term investing? As I pointed out in the above example, the stock market is very volatile. Note that “volatile” is the word I chose, not “risky” or anything else. Volatile simply means that over the course of a day or even a year or two, the behavior of the stock market can be really erratic. It can go way up or way down over that short period in time based on all kinds of human behaviors – short-term panic, short-term exuberance, and so on.

However, over the longer period, cooler heads prevail and things settle down. What happens over time is that stocks have always and, for the foreseeable future, will always go up over the long term – and by long term I mean more than a decade at least. Stocks will retain value because the companies that issue them pay out dividends, which means that if nothing else, you can just sit on them and earn some income without doing anything else. Stocks will grow in value because companies that are healthy usually slowly increase their dividends over time as the value of that company grows. A healthy company grows in value because, over time, there is a constant growth in good ideas and worker productivity all over the world.

So, in the end, as long as there is a constant growth in good ideas and worker productivity and economies remain generally stable, the stock market is a good long-term investment. I view such investments as more of an investment in capitalism than anything else.

Why index funds? One of the challenges of investing in the stock market is knowing what to invest in, however. The stock market is made up of the stocks of a lot of different companies, some good, some bad. Some big companies might shrivel over the years, while others grow up. It’s hard for individual investors to gauge which companies are going to remain healthy over the course of a long-term investment.

Remember, for example, that a decade ago, Facebook was nonexistent and Apple and Google were comparatively tiny, just to name three companies. On the other hand, it only took a couple of years for Enron, which was one of the biggest companies in the country, to go from enormous to completely out of business.

Index funds solve that exact problem. Index funds essentially allow you to buy a sliver of the stocks of a lot of companies at once. Some simply include a bit of every publicly traded stock in the United States.

What does that mean? It means that some companies will boom – and you’ll be on board for every one of them. A few will go bust, and you’ll ride that elevator, too. Many others will be strong and stable and grow steadily over the long haul, and you’ll ride those as well.

Not only that, index funds are very, very cheap. They often have minimal fees to buy them, especially if you shop around, and they usually come with very minimal management fees, too.

All of our investment money is in index funds for those reasons.

Why “buy and hold”? It should be pretty clear from the above example why I prefer to buy and hold an investment rather than buying and selling and buying and selling an investment.

Buying and holding means that you’re not paying brokerage fees on all those transactions. Buying and holding means that you never miss out on even a little bit of a stock market upswing. It also means that you really don’t have to worry about your investments on a daily basis – they’re just fine without your active interference.

Each week, I stick some money into our investments. All of that money is just going to sit there until we need it.

‘But the Bumpy Stock Market Is Scary!?’

The biggest reason people are tempted to sell when the stock market dips is because, frankly, it’s scary. It’s hard to see the stock market have a few hard days and you see 10% of your investments just vanish in a week. Over the course of a few months in 2008, people saw 40% of their investments vanish. That’s really, really hard for some people to swallow.

The problem with that perspective is that it just ignores why you’re invested in the stock market in the first place.

First of all, you should only invest in the stock market if you have a long-term goal. If you don’t know what your goal is, don’t put money in the stock market. It’s a bad place to put money that you may want in a year or even in five years. Don’t.

Once you do that, your money is on a journey not too different than driving along a curvy country road. That road is going to get you to your destination, but it’s going to curve on the journey. Sometimes, that road is going to curve in a direction you don’t like.

Selling your stock in the midst of a downturn is kind of like stopping your car when the country road curves away from your destination for a little while, or deciding to try to take your car off the road and drive straight in the direction of your destination. Both are really foolish ideas that might feel good in the moment because you’ve exerted some “control,” but in both cases will cause you to actually take longer to get to your destination.

Stay on the road. You know it’s going to curve away from your destination sometimes. You know your investment is going to drop in value. But, at the same time, you know the road is going to curve back toward your destination. You know your investment is going to rebound.

One last thing: The media loves to hype market fluctuations as if they’re big news, but the truth is that they’re ordinary events. Just like the economy goes up and down over time, the stock market does the same thing. It’s all cyclical, it’s all normal. The media reports on this stuff because it’s something to breathlessly talk about, even though it’s as normal as the changing of the seasons. Don’t waste your time listening to their hype and getting yourself all worked up.

• Related: And the Stock Market Outlook Is… Who Cares?!

Final Thoughts

I’m going to give you one final secret, the one way to make market timing actually work. It’s a powerful secret, so be careful with this knowledge.

The one way to actually make money with market timing is to use a time machine.

Do you have a time machine? No? Then market timing isn’t worth it.

You can’t guess day to day where the peaks and valleys of the market are, and if you miss it by much, you’re going to cut enormously into any advantage you might get from market timing. Add into that the fact that you’ll be paying brokerage fees and you’re devoting a lot of time to study, and the disadvantage grows.

The much better approach is to do things passively. Only invest in stocks if you have a goal that’s more than a decade in the future. Buy a broad based index fund (like the Vanguard Total Stock Market Fund) and reinvest the dividends. Then ignore it until you actually need the money. The market will go up. The market will go down. It doesn’t matter.

It’s simple and it works. Good luck.

The post Why You Can’t Time the Market: Thoughts on Investing in Stocks appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Don't Overlook the Big City for Your Retirement Home

Not everyone wants to live in a suburban retirement community. Find out why you may want to spend your golden years in the big city.

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Just Having A Mobile-Friendly Site Isn’t Enough To Ensure It Shows In Search

If you think having a mobile-friendly site is all you need for mobile SEO, think again. Columnist Bryson Meunier explains how businesses can go beyond just being mobile-friendly.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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How to Save Money in September

This shopping guide for the season will help you score the best deals.

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Account-Based Marketing: Back To Basics

Worried that your advertising isn't working or that your website is weak? Then it's time to start using account-based marketing, advises columnist Peter Isaacson. He lays out three key components to get you started with ABM.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Think Outside the Box by Buying 'Open Box'

Save some green by purchasing refurbished goods and those that have already been opened.

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How to Invest in Bond Funds During a Bear Market

Bonds could be a safe haven for investors looking for stability, but you have to know the basics.

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Why Buying Expensive Clothes for Kids Is Dumb

Children outgrow shirts and shoes before they get any real use. 

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Twitter B2B Top-Dog Targeting: Thursday’s Psychographic Hot House

Ever had a product or service to promote to the C-Suite within a large corporation and wish you could reach the CEO, CFO, CMO, or all of the above? In last week’s post, we showed you how to target the C-Suite on Facebook, Nail B2B Authority Targeting: Psychographic Targeting Hot House. In this...

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4 Reasons Working from Home is Perfect for Empty Nesters

By Christy Schutz In the past, I have written about the changes that take place as our children leave the house and we transition to that “Empty Nester” status. I have one more child at home who is entering her sophomore year of high school, so, it is something I think about quite often. As […]

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13 Weird Mystery Shopping Gigs: Get Paid to Go to Spas, Casinos and Amusement Parks

When you think of mystery shopping, you probably imagine going to a restaurant and quietly checking out the environment, service and food. You’ll get a free meal, maybe a few bucks and that’s it.

But you might be surprised by many of the other niches in mystery shopping, and some of them are more interesting and more profitable.

For example, I recently reported on being a “mystery worshipper” for $45 per church service. You secretly rate the church, and it uses the information to improve its services and attract new members.

Sometimes a mystery shopping company specializes in one niche, while other times they have several departments. Here’s a look at some of the more unusual mystery shopping opportunities.

1. Get Paid to Enjoy Spa Treatments

Coyle Hospitality evaluates companies in travel-related niches, and one of its specialties is spa mystery shopping. These assignments are all over the world, so this could be a good one if you want some freebies and extra income while you travel.

The company also offers hotel and restaurant assignments, but if you just want the spa treatments, don’t worry. The sign-up page says evaluators “may request assignments at their discretion.”

As for potential earnings, the page says “All mystery shopping assignments pay a fee plus reimbursable expenses as directed by the client.”

2. Make Money Going to the Movies

As a “certified field associate” for Market Force, you go to theaters to watch movies and trailers, to count patrons and sometimes to set up movie posters. Some visits are traditional mystery shopping assignments, while at other times the management knows you’re there and your task might be something like; “Watch and record all advertisements shown prior to the feature.”

The Penny Hoarder founder Kyle Taylor says he was paid $30 to attend a Harry Potter premiere, but the pay varies and can be lower than that. Of course, getting to watch movies for free in exchange for counting ads or patrons isn’t such a bad deal.

3. Get Free Beer

The “Bar Integrity Mystery Shop” is one MSP Services’ specialties. As a mystery shopper, you’ll pose as a regular customer while secretly rating each bar on speed of service, friendliness, accuracy, cleanliness and other factors.

MSP Services does other types of mystery shops, but the application page makes it clear “you can choose the shops that best fit your schedule.” That means you can skip the restaurant assignments if you just want to go to bars.

4. Mystery Shop at Home

Web Mystery Shoppers specializes in evaluating companies doing business online. Working for them as a web mystery shopper, you basically visit websites and interact with them while recording your “thoughts, feeling and suggestions.”

I’ve previously written about this kind of website testing, and like other companies that hire for these positions, Web Mystery Shoppers pays a reasonable rate, promising, “Most jobs take about 30 minutes and pay $10-$15.” The problem, in my experience, is that assignments are not available very often.

5. Ride Roller Coasters for Free

Riding roller coasters is just one of the possible duties you’ll have working as an amusement park mystery shopper for Amusement Advantage. The company works strictly in the amusement industry, a niche that “includes theme parks, amusement parks, water parks and family entertainment centers.” In other words you could have some fun assignments.

The company says it often pays only expenses, but that “includes reimbursement for reasonable expenses associated with completing the assignment such as parking and purchases you need to make at the facility such as tickets, food, merchandise and games or attractions charges.”

In other words, you (and sometimes a partner) get a free day of fun, and sometimes additional pay, including a $5 bonus for quickly submitting your evaluation.

6. Get Paid to Go to the Doctor

The Baird Group does medical mystery shopping.

As a medical mystery shopper, you’ll “pose as patients on the phone to hospitals and clinics, or observe on-site interactions to help us create more positive patient experiences and stronger provider/patient relationships,” according to their careers page.

Sometimes, “mystery patients will present as patients with symptoms of a non-threatening matter,” similar to working as a standardized patient. The website does not mention what you’ll be paid, but as with many mystery shopping companies, you’ll need a PayPal account to collect.

7. Make Money Test Driving Cars

BestMark is one company that does automotive mystery shopping. You go to car lots and pose as a potential buyer, which means you test drive a car and listen to a sales pitch, and so on.

Kyle Taylor says he made $60 for each dealership he visited when he was doing automotive mystery shopping.

8. Mystery Shop Banks

Customer Impact does financial institution mystery shopping. As a shopper, you evaluate banks, credit unions, and investment companies for their service, facilities and more. Assignments are both for in-person visits and phone call shops.

9. Evaluate Apartments

Jancyn has a division focused on apartment mystery shopping. You pose as a potential tenant and go through the process of looking at apartments.

Don’t be sloppy filling out the shopper application. Jancyn says, “Our mystery shoppers are evaluated for their integrity, writing skills and attention to detail before becoming independent contractors with us.”

10. Mystery Shop Real Estate Agents

You can be paid to look at houses and rate the agent who shows them to you by working with AdvancedFeedback.

You might do phone call shops or become an “Advanced Undercover Video Specialist” and work in the field. The latter position requires you to get a couple certifications first, and the application page says, “At this time, please do not apply for our video shops unless you are experienced AND own your own equipment.”

11. Paid to Gamble

OK, they’re not really going to cover your losses if you gamble, but both Imyst and BestMark have casino mystery shopping opportunities. You might be evaluating the slot attendants, the table games or the casino’s restaurants and bars.

12. Mystery Shop the Government

Shopper Confidential does mystery shopping of government agencies and services. As a shopper, you might use websites, make phone calls and visit offices of municipal, provincial and federal governments in Canada and the US.

The website FAQ says, “Typically, Shoppers receive payments of $15-$20 per assignment, plus any expenses incurred are reimbursed.”

13. Get Paid to Go to Concerts

BestMark has been targeting the producers of “Sporting events, concerts, conventions, plays and many other public events” for its mystery shopping service.

“If you’re fortunate enough to snag an assignment where you get to cover a concert, football game or another public event, you’ll be tasked with making note of how facilities are operated from the perspective of a patron,” the company says.

Have Fun but Be Careful

Mystery shopping scams do exist, so be careful. It’s usually a good idea to stick with companies that are members of the MSPA (Mystery Shopping Providers Association).

In any case, here are some simple rules you can follow to avoid being scammed:

• Never pay to become a mystery shopper
• Never pay to see a list of mystery shopping jobs
• Never agree to cash a check and send money back

You generally don’t make much money as a mystery shopper. Kyle Taylor made $5,000 per month auditing liquor stores (and got free beer), but most gigs pay very little for your time. For most shoppers, it’s not a way to pay the bills, but a fun way to generate some extra income and get some freebies.

Your Turn: Have you ever been a mystery shopper, and what’s the most unusual gig you’ve had?

Steve Gillman is the author of “101 Weird Ways to Make Money” and creator of EveryWayToMakeMoney.com. He’s been a repo-man, walking stick carver, search engine evaluator, house flipper, tram driver, process server, mock juror, and roulette croupier, but of more than 100 ways he has made money, writing is his favorite (so far).

The post 13 Weird Mystery Shopping Gigs: Get Paid to Go to Spas, Casinos and Amusement Parks appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Fishy smell over Coles’ sneaky backflip

COLES said it was doing the right thing when putting this popular product on its shelves. But now, the supermarket giant has been accused of its misleading customers.

Source NEWS.com.au | Business http://ift.tt/1Km6m5d

30 ways to increase your take-home income

A sudden promotion or raise might seem unlikely, but there are many ways to boost your paycheck that you might not have considered. Read on to discover 30 ways to increase your take-home income — some of these might even improve your quality of life at the same time.

Source Business http://ift.tt/1KlPyv4