Mohegan Sun hosts Run For The Roses Hat Revue

Mohegan Sun Pocono hosted the Run for the Roses Hat Revue in front of the winner’s circle [...]

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Frailey-Miller selected for ATHENA award

Michele A. Frailey-Miller of Frailey Insurance and Investments was selected for the Greater Pocono Chamber of Commerce’s ATHENA Award.To achieve this award, the recipient must meet three specific criteria: To assist women to be the best they can be; to hold the highest level of professional accomplishments; and to provide time and energy to improve the quality of life for others in our community.Frailey-Miller considers herself not only a leader, but more importantly, a [...]

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ShawneeCraft Brewery growing its business but sets limits

ShawneeCraft Brewery continues to expand its business but plans to stay within its means, making beer the traditional way.“We want to grow but not to compromise what we’re doing,” said manager Jason Startari of ShawneeCraft Brewery on the grounds of the Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort.He recently was involved in the opening of a second location – Scratch – at the Easton Public Market, partnering with Apple Ridge Farm. They call it Scratch because [...]

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Twelve Things That Changed My Life (and Cost Less Than $50)

Most of the time, when people post memes and images on Facebook, they’re pretty dull and forgettable. Every once in a while, though, I’ll see something that really makes me think. The other day, a friend of mine posted such a memorable item.

It was simple, really. “Name five things that changed your life.” I loved reading the answers that many of my friends posted and, when I decided to post my own, I actually found myself thinking about it quite a bit.

What actually did change my life?

I tried to come up with this list in several different ways. Did my friend mean five physical objects? Or were non-physical items okay? Should I think about big picture things in life? But what about the little things that subtly make every day better?

I kept writing and editing and re-editing that list and I ended up spending more thought on it than pretty much anything that has ever been prompted by Facebook.

And as I looked at the lists I was making, a few things occurred to me.

First, almost none of the items – whether physical items or not – were very expensive. Many of them were free. Even the physical objects I named were pretty cheap. The things that really changed my life the most were things that didn’t involve a lot of expense.

Second, the things that kept coming up were things that had a daily impact, not one-time things that happened in the past. Almost everything I came up with directly affects my life every day – or at least every few days – and the indirect effects are everywhere. There were many experiences in my life that were impactful, but they didn’t singularly change my life as much as anything on this list.

Third, I found that the ultimate test of something is to imagine subtracting it from my life. If things got far worse, then it probably was something that transformed my life for the better when I discovered it.

In the end, I came up with a list of twelve things that really transformed my life. Some of them were a bit of a representation of a broad group of things and thus might be considered “cheating” in a way, but I’m pretty happy with it. To me, this list shows that you don’t need a lot of money to have an amazing and fulfilling life.

1. A strong and lasting relationship with my wife

This is easily at the top of my list. My relationship with Sarah has been the glue that has held my life together for the last two decades of my life. She is my best friend, my sounding board for ideas, my co-planner for every future endeavor, the woman I love, an amazing mother for my children, an incredible hostess, and a charming and witty companion all rolled up into one person.

Yes, I put work into that relationship and time, too. One could argue that I’ve surely invested money as well, but the truth is that I’m thoroughly convinced that every dollar invested in that relationship has been repaid to me in some way or another, either through the direct economy of cohabitation and the tax advantages of marriage or through indirect benefits that come from her constant consideration and help.

I could gush on and on for pages about Sarah, but there’s no need. She’s the single most important person in my life and she has brought far more into my life than I can ever repay.

2. The Simple Dollar

In a way, this item could easily be extended to any major project I’ve taken on in my life that I’ve put a lot of time into. By this, I don’t mean little projects that can be completed in a day or even a week, but big projects that suck down hundreds of hours. However, among those that I’ve achieved in my life, The Simple Dollar stands far above them both in terms of success and also in terms of the proceeds from the project.

This site has been a daily part of my life for almost ten years now. I started writing articles in late 2006 and there have been multiple postings a day pretty much constantly since then, mostly by me but also by a number of other writers. It went from a passion project on the side to my full time gig to a small business with a handful of employees and then to ownership by another group with my continued support as a full time writer.

It has been unbelievable in so many ways to watch this site grow, to see how it has affected people, and to watch people move on in more positive directions in their life. It’s amazing to realize that I have written almost ten million words of content for this site. That’s just a stupendous amount of writing almost any way you slice it.

More than anything else, this site showed me that if you have a passion and direct that passion in a way that will appeal to others and really throw your heart into it and give it tons of time to grow without flagging or giving up, good things will happen.

3. A strong friendship that has lasted more than 20 years

When I first went away to college, I was the first person in my immediate and close extended family to actually go to college after high school. I went to a pretty good school that was far enough from home that I couldn’t live at home or even see my family all that often, but it was a school where I literally didn’t know anyone.

That first year, I made two very good friends, one of whom has been one of my closest friends ever since. We actually first started hanging out together before classes even started that first year because we lived on the same dormitory floor. It was a friendship that grew over years until we chose to share an apartment together near the end of our college careers. I visited him repeatedly during the months when he struggled to find work after college, then he couch-surfed with Sarah and I when he did find work. He was the best man at my wedding and present within hours of the birth of each of my children.

He’s been as reliable and constant and trustworthy as a friend could be. His anarchic sense of humor has brought just the right amount of levity to countless situations in my life. He’s been there when I’ve needed him more times than I can count.

There are few things better than having a friend in life that you can truly rely on like that.

4. A really good calendar and task management system

I started this article off with a few less tangible things, so it’s perhaps appropriate to spend the rest of the list looking at things that really are physical objects – or at least intimately connected to physical objects.

And it makes a lot of sense to start with this one, at least in my eyes.

I am a father of three. I am a husband. I have a challenging career. I have a couple of side gigs, too. I am a homeowner. I volunteer in the community and for political causes. I have a very healthy number of friendships that I want to maintain.

If you add those things together, it makes for a very busy schedule. A typical day has a healthy handful of scheduled events at certain times, a frighteningly long list of things to be done, and usually several brushfires that need to immediately be put out. That’s just the normal course of everyday life.

If I did not have a strong, reliable system for keeping track of dates and appointments and tasks and things that need done, all of this would fall apart. I simply could not continue to juggle all of these balls. Just like a juggler, I need a system in place to keep all of those balls in the air, and that system is a smart calendar and to-do list.

I currently use three elements to keep all of this going. First, I use Google Calendar to manage all of my dates and appointments. It sends me alerts in advance of events and makes it easy to see my daily, weekly, and monthly scheduled events. Second, I use Remember the Milk to keep track of all of my tasks (though I very highly recommend Todoist for new users – I’m just wedded to the specific quirks and features of RtM at this point). Third, I use Panda Planner for an offline daily review as it provides a great format for it, though previously I just used blank pages.

5. A slow cooker

How on earth does a slow cooker wind up on this list? It might seem like a bizarre choice, but our slow cooker has enabled our family to eat a lot of meals around the table together that would have essentially been logistically impossible during busy evenings, and I find that our family meals are the centerpiece of our days as a family and a big part of our strong family bond.

It’s pretty simple, really. If an evening looks busy, we make supper in the slow cooker. We have a huge variety of recipes that we use, from lasagnas to sandwich mixes, from enchiladas to soups and stews. We can prepare these meals in the morning and set them to cook automatically during the day so that when we’re all at home, we have a meal ready to go. All we need is a fifteen minute window where everyone is at home together – or a significant portion of our family is together – and we can have a family dinner regardless of whether anyone has been around in the late afternoon and early evening to prepare it.

Our almost-daily home cooked family dinners around our dinner table are a central part of our family life. It gives us a chance to see each other, to talk to each other, to share our day’s experiences, and to eat something reasonably healthy and tasty together. Without a slow cooker, this would essentially be impossible most nights.

6. A good pillow

When I decide to end my day and head to bed, my goal is to fall asleep as fast as I can so I can get the best night sleep possible in the time available. That means getting under the appropriate amount of covers in a very dark room, but for me, an absolutely essential part of that is a good pillow.

Simply having my head at the right angle when I lay on my side (yeah, I’m a side sleeper) to fall asleep makes all the difference. If it’s at the wrong angle, I toss and turn and can’t fall asleep for a long while and usually wind up with a restless night of sleep.

That’s why, at home, having the right pillow is absolutely magical. For me, it’s central to getting a great night of sleep, and a great night of sleep provides much of the fuel that gets me through a busy day.

7. A good pair of shoes

I’ve worn dirt cheap shoes. I’ve worn expensive shoes. I’ve worn generic dollar store shoes. I’ve worn dress shoes of all kinds and athletic shoes of all kinds.

In the end, a pair of shoes that allows your feet to tolerate many miles of walking without blisters and without significant discomfort is absolutely vital.

For me, a pair of shoes like this isn’t all that expensive. I have a few brands and models that I watch for in my size with online sales, ones that have worked for me many times in the past. I’m personally a big fan of New Balance shoes, both in terms of walking/running shoes and casual shoes. I can walk and walk and walk in those shoes without getting blisters and without getting sore feet.

I’ve experienced awful foot blisters before. I’ve experienced incredible sore feet before, once in the midst of a family vacation. It’s just miserable. Simply having feet that aren’t sore and blistered is wonderful.

Good shoes make my life choices so much more flexible. I don’t even give it a second thought when I feel like going on a long walk, even if I know the kids are going to want to play soccer later.

8. A good all-purpose kitchen knife

When I first moved out of the dorms in college and moved into an apartment, I had no idea how to cook my own food. I was lost. I picked up a few cheap pots and pans and made some fumbling attempts, but honestly I was so broke that I lived on a steady diet of ramen and free food on campus for at least a couple of years.

It wasn’t until I had launched my professional career that I actually had the opportunity to try cooking for myself – and I was pretty awful at it. I messed up almost everything I tried.

Over time, however, I came to learn how to prepare quite a few things in the kitchen. I now cook all kinds of things and prepare all kinds of meals for my family.

If there’s one single tool that is the most indispensable in my kitchen, it’s a good all-purpose chef’s knife, like this one. Keep it honed and it will basically do anything and everything you need to do in the kitchen, cutting meats and vegetables in countless ways. Sure, pots and pans are important tools, too, but having a knife that you know exactly how to use after many years of practice makes so much meal preparation as easy as can be.

9. Ledges State Park

I could simply say “state and national parks” in general here, but this is far and away my favorite park.

I love walking on the trails here. I love going off the trails here. I love the picnic areas. I love the streams. I love the recreational spots. I love the widely varied terrain. I love the widely varied trail difficulty.

I’ll often take day trips to the park in the spring. I’ll find a very shady spot to work, rattle off a few hours of writing, and then put my bag back in the vehicle and go on a trail walk. The scenery of the park, the way I feel after climbing up a big hill and looking out over the top of it, the sounds of nature, the smells, the relative solitude, the beauty of it all… it just inspires me and makes me feel alive.

I could talk positively about many other parks, but Ledges just feels like “my” park. It makes me feel renewed in a way that few things ever have.

10. A chess board

Perhaps this is just emblematic of strategic board games in general, but I think a chess board simply winds up on top of the pile for me, even if I’m not particularly good at the game.

Why does it appeal so much? It’s easy to find the pieces for it almost anywhere. It’s relatively easy to teach – my five year old knows the basics. Yet it’s so deep that it is essentially impossible for the human mind to master. You can chase that rabbit down the hole and it just keeps getting deeper.

It’s also been a big part of how I bonded with several close friends. One of my roommates and I bonded over chess, as we kept a constant game set up in our house and made moves on the board once or twice a day and would have a great postmortem at the end of the game (as we both would take pictures of the board and make notes at various points). I bonded with my wife’s younger sister over chess, too, building one of my first strong connections with her family.

If I were stuck on a desert island with another thoughtful person – or even just with myself – I’d probably start making a chessboard out of whatever materials I could find.

11. A library card

I’ve been an avid reader for most of my life. Some of my earliest memories involve sitting on a pile of pillows in my closet reading books (it was kind of my “reading nook” as a child). Even now, I read about two books a week – usually one fiction and one nonfiction.

The only way I can really feed that passion for reading in a way that wouldn’t bankrupt our family is to use the library. I can simply go to the library, wander the aisles, find countless great books to read, and take them home, for free. The library isn’t just a source for books on the shelves, either – I can request just about anything I want and they’ll eventually get it for me. Wandering the shelves becomes something of a book discovery tool for me, too.

Not only that, it’s also kind of a central part of our family bonding. I take my children to the library at least once a month and they do the same thing. They explore the shelves, find interesting things, and take them home.

You’ll often find everyone in our family sitting around our living room reading books from the library together. It’s become a tool for growing our intellect, our imagination, and our family connections, too.

12. A journal

I’ve written in a journal with amazing regularity since I was about ten years old. It’s contained a lot of different things over the years: the things I did that day, my thoughts on the books I was reading or the music I was listening to, my frustrations and joys regarding interpersonal relationships, the things I learned, the big problems I was thinking about, and so on.

Those things are valuable, but the thing that carries a journal onto this list for me is how my journals have been a tool for me to plot out my future.

Many of my journal entries, even from the earliest days, are about plans for the future. They’re concrete expressions of dreams, in other words. I’d write about something I wanted for myself in the future, but I wouldn’t stop there. I’d start constructing a plan to make it happen.

I’ve never wanted to be fabulously wealthy. I’ve never wanted to be famous. Instead, what I’ve always wanted is a comfortable life with the freedom to do interesting work and with a family around me that loves me. Over the past twenty five years or so, I really have achieved those things, and it was all planned out and considered in the pages of my journal.

It’s easy to start a journal. You can start an electronic one on your computer essentially for free, or just go buy a college-lined notebook for a few dollars at the store. Then, just start writing down the things that are on your mind and piece together how exactly you arrived at those thoughts and, if it’s a goal, how you might move your life in that direction. Sure, a lot of it won’t come to fruition, but enough of it will that your life will be far better for it if you stick with it.

Final Thoughts

When I think about things that have shaped my life, these things bubble to the top. Many other things that are part of my life are deeply important to me, but they almost all take a backseat to the things on this list.

Yet nothing on this list is expensive. Many of the things are free. The value that they bring to me is either through the investment I’ve put in or in how they support the fundamental needs of my life – food, sleep, basic comfort, family, close friends, and health, both mental and physical.

In the end, if I can maintain those things, I’m going to have a pretty good life. For me, the things on this list play a big, big role in supporting that life.

The post Twelve Things That Changed My Life (and Cost Less Than $50) appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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14 Ways to Make Money in College

Memories of college include eating beef ramen noodles by the case in order to save a few bucks.

I was fortunate that the Army National Guard paid for most of my tuition plus my mall job of selling vitamins and protein powders at GNC helped with my bills.

Despite this I always felt broke.

Scratch that, I was broke!

I was always looking for ways to make extra money in college.

Oh how I wish articles like this existed back then!

Even if you have your finances carefully planned in advance, sooner or later you’re going to find yourself needing to earn extra money to get you through college.

I’m going to recommend some money making methods that are more entrepreneurial than job-related.

The problem with holding a job in college is that they typically pay no better than minimum wage, which forces you to work long hours that cut into your study time.

I’m also not going to recommend some of the standard make-money-in-college ideas, like filling out surveys, donating blood, or selling on eBay. Most of those efforts produce very limited income, and get old in a hurry.

Instead, I’m going to make recommendations that can play into your natural talents, provide you with a flexible schedule, and hold the potential to earn a lot more money than a minimum-wage job. And some of them even have the potential to grow into businesses that you can continue after graduation.

Good deal? Check these out…

1. Tutor

Being a tutor can be especially lucrative in a college community. This is because you will be able to provide your services not only to college students, but also to local high school and elementary school students. In many markets you can learn at least $30 per hour.

Another advantage is that the subject areas you can cover are pretty broad. The greatest demand is usually for math and science, but you can also tutor in writing and reading, as well as history and soft sciences. If you’re bilingual, you may even be able to tutor in languages, or with English as a second language.

Tutors don’t typically require any kind of special education or licensing. You can market your services through the various departments around the campus, as well as local high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. A simple flyer showing your subject areas, geographic range and a personal description can do the job. You can also include your hourly fee, but that can work for or against you, depending on how competitive your fee is compared to what others are offering.

In addition to high pay, you can have control over your work schedule, as well as where it is you will commute to (services are generally provided at the student’s home, but you can also arrange to do it in school or at an agreed-upon neutral site). Still another advantage is that the work runs with the school year, so you’ll be free over summer vacation.

Tiffany Alexy of DivvyInvestments.com tutored while in college. In fact, she tutored two kids in Spanish and three brothers in Chinese! How much did she make? $15-$35 per hour. Not bad it all! It pays to use your skills (in this case, knowing multiple languages) to tutor others.

Pauline Paquin of ReachFinancialIndependence.com also tutored while in college, teaching Spanish and English and earned around $30 per hour. Pauline also put her musical abilities to good use and taught piano for $40 per hour. $40 per hour!

2. Bartending/Serving in a High End Restaurant or Club

You probably have a good idea as to what bartenders and servers do, so I won’t spend any time on that. However, the type of establishment you work in will have a huge impact on how much money you earn. High-end establishments typically come with much higher tip income, while those on the lower end could be no better than minimum wage.

Bartending and serving can also be a good way of blending your social life, at least if you work at establishments that your friends frequent. It also has the benefit of paying daily (or more likely, nightly), since most of your pay comes in cash tips.

The downside is that you may find yourself working when everyone else is out relaxing or playing. For example, dinner shifts tend to be the best for servers, and weekends are generally better paying for bartenders. The work can be tough, but you can probably make more money working two or three shifts per week than you could working for five days a week in a minimum-wage job.

Bartending may require that you complete a bartending course, though there generally are no formal requirements for a server.

3. Babysitting

As ordinary as this sounds, it can actually work quite well for college students. This is because babysitting often involves long periods of low- or no-activity, such as when the kids you are sitting are doing homework or have gone off the bed. The benefit is that this downtime will give you time to do your own homework. In can seem as if you’re getting paid to do your homework, which is no small advantage.

Pay is generally in the $10 and $12 an hour range, but you can get more for special occasions, and sometimes even collect tips over and above regular pay. And since babysitting gigs usually happen on an as-needed basis, you won’t have a grueling schedule to keep. That can make the work easy to blend with your school schedule.

4. Freelance Writing

There are tens of thousands of blogs and websites on the Internet, and many of them need content on a regular basis. If you like to write, have good writing skills, and have command of one or more topic areas, you can earn money writing articles on the web.

How much you can earn will depend upon how much time you put into the venture, as well as the types of sites that you write for. On the blogging side, you can earn anywhere from $30 to well over $100 per article. Business websites may pay even more, particularly for writing on technical topics or creating marketing copy.

You can sometimes find work writing for agencies, but the pay per article is much lower than the numbers quoted above. The best way to find clients, particularly those who pay a decent amount, is to approach those clients and websites directly. This will also provide you with the ability to choose the specific sites and topic areas that you want to write about.

5. Create Videos for YouTube

This can be excellent venture if you are creative and have a flair for capturing what’s unusual, interesting and fun. If you can, you may be able to create videos that can generate a steady flow of views, and earn advertising revenue as a result.

This isn’t anything like a job or even providing a service, but more like a business. You create videos, put them on YouTube, set them up with Google AdSense (much as you would with a blog), then earn income as people view your video, and click on the ads displayed.

Should your videos draw thousands of viewers, the income can be steady, providing you with a regular monthly income from the ads. This will require that you produce multiple videos, since some may be popular, while others may go nowhere. But if one or more of your videos goes viral and draws hundreds of thousands of views, ad revenue can be substantial.

The disadvantage is that you may need to produce several videos before you generate a steady income. You will also need to create fresh videos as existing ones fade. But an unexpected bonus is that success in this venture could translate into a profitable business both now and after graduation.

6. Do What You’re Good At

We’re talking mostly about the Internet here. College students are often more savvy in navigating and using the web than most of the rest of the population. For example, along the way you may have become quite accomplished in regard to social media, graphic design, creating websites, or creating videos. Any one of these skills could be sold to both businesses and individuals with the potential to produce a large income.

Pick your specialization, see what others are charging the same services, then set your fees a little bit lower. Many businesses and individuals are looking for someone to handle special projects for them, and being able to do that at a low fee can often get you business.

Once you get a few projects going, and you are getting repeat customers, you can look into increasing your fees. But your primary purpose at the beginning will be get some paying clients. This is another business venture that could mushroom into something more serious after graduation.

7. Becoming a Sports Referee

Virtually every community has a network of recreational athletic leagues, and they all need referees for their games. If you played any sports when you were growing up, you could be a referee for any of them at the local level. And since sports are seasonal, it will be to your advantage to be prepared to referee for sports that cover different seasons. For example, you might referee basketball in winter, baseball in spring and summer, and soccer or football in the fall. That will keep you busy year-round.

Referees are typically paid a flat fee per game. You might earn anywhere from $20-$50 to referee a single game. The lower age groups that play shorter games (maybe 40 to 60 minutes) will be on the lower end of the pay scale, while the higher earnings will come on longer and more competitive games played by older kids. It may even be possible to eventually work your way up to where you are refereeing for high school games at higher rates of pay.

Since so few people want to be referees in amateur sports leagues, there are usually plenty of openings. No formal qualifications are usually required, other than your own knowledge of- and experience with- the sport, though some leagues may require completion of a first aid course of some sort.

Once you sign up to be a referee in a league, you are added to the rotation. Games will be assigned based on your availability, and will generally take place on weekends. If you love a sport or two, becoming a referee is a way of turning your passion for it into a source of income.

8. Mow Lawns

If you’re in college and have access to a truck, a lawn mower, and an edger, make use of those tools and mow lawns!

This is a fantastic business for college students living in sunny areas where the grass grows quickly. And, because grass grows faster during the summertime than any other season, you’ll be able to run your yard maintenance business while you don’t have any classes.

At this job, you’re going to have to be fast and skilled. There is a lot of competition out there, so make sure you do a great job for your clients, be polite, and throw in some extras like weeding or blowing off the walkways.

You’re probably not going to need a business license for mowing lawns, but be sure to check with your local government to see if you do.

You might be able to get $100 per month for weekly service. Let’s say that you do. If you mow a residential lawn and it takes you an hour, that means you’re making $25 per hour – not including preparation or driving time. That’s not bad at all.

Try mowing lawns to make money in college. It’s worth giving it a shot.

9. Housesitting

Summertime is also a great season to do some housesitting for folks vacationing at the beach (or wherever else they are). There are a few reasons why people want someone to housesit. Let’s explore them.

First, many people want someone to watch their house because they actually want them to watch their pets! Many pets don’t go on vacation (like cats), so they’ll need their litter box cleaned, water dish filled, and food dish filled on a regular basis. Sometimes this means coming at least once per day.

Second, some people like the idea of having someone they trust monitor the house for security purposes. While they probably won’t expect you to bust out your ninja moves on intruders, they will expect you to call them, the police, or the fire department should something suspicious or dangerous happen.

Some homeowners simply want someone to take care of the pets and monitor the home. If they’re cool with it, you can even do some studying for classes while you’re housesitting.

This job probably won’t pay very well if you look at it from the perspective of an hourly rate, but remember, you’re probably not doing very much while you’re there anyway.

Let people know you’re available to housesit by posting about it on bulletin boards at community centers and tell your friends and family.

10. Be a Virtual Assistant

Virtual assistants help business owners get more stuff done. What makes a great virtual assistant? Here’s what you need to know.

Great virtual assistants are fantastic at organization. They live and breathe it every day. Just about aspect of their lives are organized, and believe it or not, many successful entrepreneurs need the help of virtual assistants to keep everything going in the right direction.

The tasks a virtual assistant might help with might include but aren’t limited to:

• Organizing a business owner’s calendar.
• Managing virtual employees or freelancers.
• Maintaining a business task list.
• Orchestrating speaking engagements, meetings, or events.
• Completing research on behalf of the business owner.
• Reminding the business owner of their schedule to keep them on task.

These are just some of the main ways a virtual assistant can help. But there are others.

Virtual assistants are often skilled writers, designers, or tech experts. Sometimes they help lend their skills to build something online for the business owner.

Truly, how you define yourself as a virtual assistant matters. Seek out your very best skills, advertise them, and see what happens.

11. Blog!

Yes, you can make money blogging. If you would have asked me years ago if you could, I would have probably said no way. But today? Yeah, I would believe you.

That’s because I’ve found tremendous success with blogging. I believe you can make money blogging, and while it may take you several months or years to see results, it’s a fun and rewarding experience.

If you can write, and you’re passionate about a topic, you can blog. WordPress is a popular blogging platform you can use to create a free blog. If you want to host the website yourself, you’re probably going to have to pay a few bucks, but it’s worth it.

If you’re going to make money blogging, you have to have great content. Whatever you do, don’t write just for the sake of writing or earning money. Produce content that you can be proud of and will help other people.

It helps to get the advice of some other bloggers before you start. Study their tactics and discover what worked well for them. The most important tip I can give you is to never stop learning. Search engines are continually updating their search algorithms which in turn affects your website traffic. And, your website traffic affects your ability to earn money.

The other great thing about blogging? You can do it anytime, day or night. Many jobs require you to be at a certain place at a certain time. As a blogger, you can be anywhere there’s an internet connection and write anytime. It’s one of the most flexible jobs available.

So, if you aren’t pressed to make a lot of immediate income, and you like the idea of being free to work whenever it fits with your schedule, then blogging might be the ticket.

By the way, if you’re into finance and you want to blog about it, I encourage you to attend the Financial Blogger Conference. There, you’ll learn from top bloggers and financial experts about the topics that interest you. Why take the long road when you can attend a conference and learn from the best?

12. Drive for Uber

Have a nice car? Put it to good use and drive for Uber.

Uber is a company that connects riders with drivers – and drivers with riders! Uber allows riders to request a ride from their smartphone. That’s when you, the driver, gets a notification letting you know there’s someone that needs a ride.

You can track how much you earn as a driver through the Uber app, and best yet, you can set your own schedule. So, if you’re in college and meet Uber’s qualifications, this is a great opportunity for you.

You might also want to try driving for Lyft, a similar company.

Either way, you can make quite a bit of money as a driver for these services. Just make sure to check your local regulations to ensure you can operate as a driver in your area.

13. Become a Handyman

Are your friends always calling you up asking you how to fix this or that? Do you have more tools than your local hardware store? You just might be a handyman – why not put your skills to good use?

You can do all kinds of jobs as a handyman, including but not limited to: plumbing jobs, construction jobs, woodworking, and much more. Some of these jobs you might need to be licensed for, so be sure to check with your local government.

Just imagine the possibilities. You might have yourself two career paths to choose from by the time you’re done with college: to continue your handyman business or to follow the career related to your major. The choice will be yours! The more doors you have available to walk through in your career, the better.

14. Help Out at the College

Colleges love hiring students to do all kinds of tasks around campus. For example, you might help out with some of the janitorial duties or serve as a secretary or receptionist. You might enjoy overseeing a dormitory or providing security for the college. Make sure to ask your college about the opportunities that are available to you.

Professors also sometimes need help with some of the technical aspects of their jobs. Ask them to see if there’s anything they might need help with. You might help them with preparing slideshow presentations or creating homework documents.

The great thing about working at a college is that they understand you take classes and can’t be in two places at once. You might find the work programs are available after classes and/or on the weekends – exactly what you’re after!

Todd Tresidder of FinancialMentor.com worked a number of jobs for a university to help pay his living expenses. He cooked dinners for a fraternity, spent summertime digging steam trenches, and did other manual labor jobs and major maintenance projects. He used the cash to pay for his books and other expenses. He said working for the university was a fast way to make money because he could live for almost for free during the summer while housing prices were low.

Rachel of AdventuresinMobileHomes.com was hired by her school to take notes in class. These notes would then be repackaged and sold to students. What an excellent idea! Many students aren’t great notetakers, so why not see if your college would be interested in doing this for their students?

If you need to make money in college, don’t be so quick to take a minimum-wage job at a local big-box or fast food joint. Instead, think about what you can do – and what you like to do – and how you can turn that into an income source. That will enable you to both earn higher income, and have greater control of your time.

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Want to Get a Better Deal Online? Abandon Your Shopping Cart. Here’s Why

On CardPool.com, I clicked on a $100 Home Depot card for sale for $94.

Buying discounted gift cards for places you plan to shop anyhow is like buying money on sale, and I had a lot of shopping to do at Home Depot. But a minor household emergency kept me from completing the order.

The next day, I received an email from CardPool.com encouraging me to complete the sale. It included a $5 coupon, almost doubling the original $6 discount on the card.

This has happened many times since with other retailers. I’ve learned to routinely abandon online shopping carts and complete my purchases a day or two later — often with a discount.

It’s basically a new form of a classic “walk away from the table” negotiation strategy. The idea is to get the other side to offer something to get you to come back.

Ready to give it a try? Here are some tips, along with a list of vendors known to offer a coupon or discount of some sort to win over reluctant shoppers who have abandoned their carts.

How to Properly Abandon Your Shopping Cart

You can try it with any online vendor or start with the ones listed below. But in order for retailers to send you that email begging you to return (and offering a discount), they need your email address.

Set up an account before you start shopping (if you don’t already have one), and be sure you’re logged in when you close your browser on your incomplete order.

At least one report suggests some companies may target only new customers with bribes for returning to complete their orders. So try this trick the first time you buy from a retailer: If you’re already a regular, open a new account with a different email address and you may be treated as a new customer.

Finally, marketing practices change often, and companies individualize their efforts according to your profile.

In other words, your results may vary.

In any case, it generally costs you nothing to try.

Retailers That Offer Discounts

Chicago Tribune, Shopify, Consumerist, Digiwonk, This Is Money and Rather-Be-Shopping.com have all reported on this strategy.

Here are some of the retailers that offer discounts, along with notes on what they’ve offered in the past.

• 10DollarMall.com: 10% off (sometimes 20% off)

• 1-800-Mattress: Various discounts

• Babies ‘R’ Us: Free shipping offer sent the next day

• Bass Pro Shops: $20 off a minimum $100 purchase

• Bed, Bath and Beyond: 20% off

• Best Buy: No specifics

• Birchbox.com: 20% off minimum $35 purchase

• Cafe Press: 20% off

• Coastal: Various discounts

• Crocs: 20% off

• Dick’s Sporting Goods: 10% off

• Dorco: 5% off

• GoDaddy.com: 30% off

• Guitar Center: Various discounts (possibly sent days later)

• Home Depot: No specifics

• JC Penney: Coupon codes sent if you leave after just viewing a few products

• J. Jill: $20 off a minimum $80 purchase

• Kate Spade: 15% off

• Land’s End: No specifics

• Levi’s: 20% off, and sometimes 25% off up to two days later

• Macy’s: 15% off coupons

• Nieman Marcus: 10% off

• Nomad: 15% off

• Office Max: Free shipping

• Overstock.com: Various discounts

• Princess Cruises: Large discounts offered when abandoning the cart after going through travel agencies

• Pro Flowers: 10% off (and possibly a free vase)

• Purity Products: 30% off and free shipping

• Sierra Trading Post: 35% off

• Shutterfly.com: 20% off

• Talkingfriends.com: 10% off

• Thinkgeek.com: $10 off minimum $50 order

• Toys ‘R’ Us: Free shipping offer sent the next day

• Urban Outfitters: 20% off

• Virgin Media: Various discounts

• Williams-Sonoma: Free shipping

• Zappos: No specifics

• Zazzle: Various discounts

Be Patient

I opened an account on Udemy and took one of the free classes. Then I considered some interesting classes that cost $40 or more, but abandoned my cart because I was too busy to commit fully to completing them.

Two weeks later, I started getting regular emails from Udemy offering a variety of classes for just $10 — some of which normally cost $100 or more.

I’ve received emails offering discounts within an hour after abandoning my shopping cart with some retailers, but it’s more common to see them the next day or even after several days. So, be prepared to wait.

Also, try again if this trick doesn’t work the first time with a given website. Some retailers change their policies often.

Your Turn: Have you ever received a coupon or discount for abandoning your shopping cart? Which retailers, and how much was the discount?

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).

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Rite-Aid eyes move to Main Street in Stroudsburg

Rite-Aid officials have begun meeting with Stroudsburg borough officials to consider relocating to a new store on Main Street.The pharmacy store, currently located in the same plaza as Shop-Rite on North Third Street, would take the place of 10 existing structures on Lower Main Street to be developed into an 11,115 square-foot store with a drive-through pharmacy, according to development plans submitted to the Monroe County Planning Commission in late March. The lot would also include [...]

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The Insane Story of a Family Who Paid Off $45K of Debt in Just 10 Months

Tabitha Philen was at the end of her rope.

Years of poor spending decisions had led her and her husband into a deep hole of overwhelming debt — one they thought they’d never escape.

The tipping point came when they one day found themselves unable to afford gas or groceries.

They saw a bankruptcy commercial on TV, and imagined it’d be their saving grace. But they soon realized it was the biggest mistake of their lives.

Keep reading for the incredible story of how this family left bankruptcy, negotiated their debt down by 40% and paid off $45,000… in less than a year.

Digging a $175,000 Hole

“My parents never taught us anything about personal finance,” Philen says. “The only thing I knew about finance was that my mother would occasionally write bad checks, and tell me not to tell my dad.”

When she left for college, not only did she take out student loans, she also maxed out eight different credit cards.

Her husband’s situation wasn’t much better.

“Neither one of us had been trained on how to do well financially,” she says. “We thought debt was the American way.”

They eventually got married and moved into a townhouse in Mobile, Alabama. Philen soon became pregnant with their first child. Six months later, disaster struck: He was laid off, and her income was cut in half.

“You’d think that would be our wake-up call,” she says, “but actually we thought maybe the answer was buying a house.”

Now, on top of $75,000 of debt — divided equally between a personal line of credit, credit card debt and student loans — they had a $100,000 mortgage.

At 29 and 31, with a baby on the way, they were $175,000 in debt.

Still, they didn’t realize they needed to change their ways.

“We were just living off credit cards,” she says. “We were using them to pay for anything and everything.”

On a typical date night, they’d go out to dinner and then each spend $50 at the mall, all funded by plastic.

Their much-needed wake-up call didn’t come for three years — when they could no longer afford gas or groceries with their maxed-out credit cards.

“We stripped everything,” she says.

“We didn’t have cable, we got rid of our pets, we didn’t have cell phones. We had nothing variable in our budget at all. We were relying on people at church who would occasionally put $100 in our mailbox to help us buy groceries.”

Philen sold The Pampered Chef from home, and her husband worked as the assistant band director at a local high school.

Together, they brought home about $3,000 a month for their family of four — too much to qualify for government assistance, but not enough to pay their bills.

“The amount of debt was sucking up any income that we made, she says. “It was taking everything.

Only making the minimum payments on their bills, they continued to fall “further and further behind.”

“It just didn’t seem like there was an answer,” she says.

The Truth About Bankruptcy

Then they started to notice commercials advertising bankruptcy.

“[They] made bankruptcy sound like a fresh start, which is a complete lie, but we took the bait,” she says.  

On a “very cold” December day, with a newborn baby in tow, they signed the papers and declared Chapter 13.

Their monthly bills now amounted to $950 to the trustee — an increase from pre-bankruptcy, since now they were paying more than the minimum — plus $815 for their mortgage, because they’d left their house out of the filing.

They quickly realized bankruptcy wasn’t the “easy way out” they’d been promised.  

“Bankruptcy was so opposite of what we wanted to be,” she says. “It changes who you are. You can’t be generous; you can’t do simple things that you used to do.”

For the Philens, their biggest issues were restrictions that didn’t allow you to give to charity or have a savings account.

Three years later, they received a $7,000 tax refund — which Philen saw as their way out.  

She “just couldn’t stand” the thought of being confined by bankruptcy for another four years, so she turned to her husband and asked:

“What if we just bailed out of bankruptcy — what if we just left?”

And that’s what they did.

To say the least, it was an unconventional decision. Although their attorney tried to have their bankruptcy reinstated against their will, they stood their ground.  

Because they left the bankruptcy early, they had to pay back nearly all of the debt they’d entered with.

Translation? Those $900 payments they’d made every month for three years essentially vanished into thin air.

Negotiating Their Debt Down by 40%

As soon as the Philens left bankruptcy, creditors began calling and demanding their money… now.

So Philen read everything she could about debt, and soon discovered these collections agencies had only paid 10-30 cents for each dollar of her debt.

Armed with this knowledge, she began to negotiate.

“Whenever they called, I acted like I knew more than I did,” she says. “I told them, ‘I know you didn’t pay full price for this debt, and I’m not going to pay you full price either.’”

Leveraging her $7,000 tax refund as a down payment, she convinced the creditors to allow her a 10-month payment plan…

And also reduce the amount she owed by 40%.

Paying Off $38,000 in 10 Months

Thanks to the tax refund and Philen’s negotiating skills, they now owed $38,000 — instead of $75,000 — and had 10 months to pay it off.

“We looked around at what we had and we sold it,” she says. “And then we thought about talent.”

Her husband was a musician, so he called “every person he knew to see if they needed a live musician at their event.” He also taught private lessons after school.

Philen used her cooking skills, selling gourmet apples and cinnamon rolls out of the house. She also researched photography on the internet and started taking senior portraits.  

“We did so much,” she says. “It was anything and everything we could do.”

“Child care, washing people’s laundry; we were hustling all the time. I wrote my first book for Kindle, and put it on Amazon.”

She did all this while raising an infant and a 2-year-old, and homeschooling her 8- and 5-year-olds.

“I would teach the kids in the morning,” she says. “In the afternoon I’d tell them, ‘OK, this is mommy’s P&Q time.’ Peace and quiet time. They had to be in their beds with their feet up, reading a book.”

“I didn’t sleep,” she admits with a laugh. “I did not sleep. Literally, I’d be up until 2 or 3 a.m.”

A Truly Fresh Start and Perspective

Somehow, this intense experience didn’t tear their family apart — it actually made them stronger.  

“It really taught us the value of family, and of marriage, because things didn’t mean as much to us anymore,” she says.

Now, instead of going deeper into debt, the couple’s date nights consist of “cuddling up on the couch” with a DVD.

“It just really changed our priorities,” she says. “It’s no longer important to try to keep up with people — we’re content with what we have.”

Want to read more about Philen’s inspiring journey? Curious how you can negotiate with credit card companies?

Click here to visit her blog Meet Penny.

Your Turn: What do you think of this story? Did it inspire you to pay back debt in your own way?

Susan Shain, senior writer for The Penny Hoarder, is always seeking adventure on a budget. Visit her blog at susanshain.com, or say hi on Twitter @susan_shain.

The post The Insane Story of a Family Who Paid Off $45K of Debt in Just 10 Months appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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This $70-Million Diamond Probably Won’t Fit on a Ring

Do you have a recently engaged friend who uses any excuse to flash her huge new rock?  

Well, better tell her to quit stunting, because there’s a new player in town.

The world’s second biggest diamond was recently discovered…

And it’s really huge, really old and really, really expensive.

Yup, a $70 Million Diamond

Clocking in at 1,109 carats, the Lesedi La Rona is the biggest diamond discovered in over a century — and the second biggest in history, Bloomberg reports.

If you need some perspective, it’s the size of a tennis ball.

Sotheby’s, which plans to auction the diamond on June 29, estimates it’s 2.5 to 3 billion years old and will sell for more than $70 million.

The diamond was uncovered in Botswana in November; its name means “our light” in the country’s Tswana language.

“It took months to determine even an estimated price, because it is so large that it does not fit into conventional scanners used to evaluate a stone’s potential worth,” CNN reports.

“Not only is the rough superlative in size and quality, but no rough even remotely of this scale has ever been offered before at public auction,” Sotheby’s Jewellery Division chairman David Bennett told CNN.

He called the diamond “the find of a lifetime.”

Want to see what $70 million and 3 billion years worth of rock looks like?

The diamond will be on display at Sotheby’s New York on May 7, and Sotheby’s London from June 18 to 28.

If you’d like to find a stone of your own, don’t forget you can go jewel prospecting at these parks and mines, including the promisingly named Crater of Diamonds State Park.

Your Turn: Can you believe this diamond is worth so much?

Susan Shain, senior writer for The Penny Hoarder, is always seeking adventure on a budget. Visit her blog at susanshain.com, or say hi on Twitter @susan_shain.

The post This $70-Million Diamond Probably Won’t Fit on a Ring appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Vodafone launches free mobile roaming in 40 countries

Helen Knapman

vodafone-sign.jpg

Vodafone has today announced the launch of free mobile roaming in 40 countries worldwide – but the catch is you need to get a specific contract to get it.

Vodafone has today announced the launch of free mobile roaming in 40 countries worldwide – but the catch is you need to get a specific contract to get it.

read more

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6 Accidental Ways to Ruin Your Split Tests and Limit Your Profit

You’re one of those people, aren’t you?

The kind who stay up late at night, thinking of ways to improve their businesses.

It’s great to have this much passion.

By now, you’ve probably at least read the basics about split testing. And while the general concept is very simple, it’s fairly difficult to run a conversion rate optimization campaign properly.

There’s a reason why conversion experts get paid a ton.

Too often, marketers and business owners run a split test, make a change based on the results, and find out that it either made no difference or produced a negative result.

That being said, you can definitely run split tests on your own and get great results.

However, you need to make sure that you set up your test correctly and that you know how to interpret the results.

I know they sound like simple things, but most split testers make several mistakes that lead to subpar results.

In this post, I’m going to show you 6 common ways to do split tests wrong. You may not make all these mistakes, but I bet you’ve made at least one at some point.

After you understand these, you’ll be able to run split tests with more confidence and steadily improve your conversion rates. 

1. Not segmenting your traffic

When it comes to split tests, the more control you have, the better.

Whenever you do any sort of analysis on your website, whether for split tests or not, you need to understand and consider segments.

A segment refers to any section of your traffic.

The most common segments are:

• Returning visitors
• New visitors
• Visitors divided by countries
• Visitors divided by traffic sources
• Different days
• Different devices
• Different browsers

Here is data broken down by the days of the week:

The important thing to know about segments is that you cannot compare visitors from two different segments.

For example, if you have 100 visitors who use Chrome and 100 visitors who use Internet Explorer, there’s a good chance that they will act differently.

So, imagine if you sent the majority of Chrome users to one landing page and the majority of the IE users to a different landing page.

Can you fairly compare the results? No way. You might arrive at the opposite conclusion if you reverse the test.

The practicality of segmenting: Ideally, all your visitors sent to each version of your test would be identical. In reality, that’s impossible.

Having a large enough random sample size (more on that later) will mitigate a lot of your issues, but you will likely end up judging tests that aren’t perfectly segmented.

The reason for this is because you can’t perfectly segment a test in the vast majority of situations.

If you did, you’d be left with barely any traffic. For example, how many users would tick all these boxes?

• Use your website on Monday
• Use Chrome
• Use a tablet
• Live in the U.S.
• Come from organic search traffic

Even if your site has a lot of traffic, you won’t have many users matching all the parameters—certainly not a big enough sample to run a test on.

The solution is compromise.

Right now, I want you to identify the segments that have the biggest influence on your results. For most sites, that will come down to the traffic source and, possibly, the location.

When you’re analyzing your split test results, make sure you’re analyzing the results only for users from a specific traffic source (e.g., organic search, paid advertising, referral, etc.).

2. Ending your tests too soon

Ideally, anyone conducting split tests should have at least a basic understanding of statistics.

If you don’t understand concepts such as variance, you’re likely making many mistakes.

If you need an introduction, take the free statistic classes at Khan Academy.

At this point, I’ll assume you have the basics down.

Although many marketers have a good grasp of the basics, they still frequently make one mistake: ending the test without a sufficient sample size.

There are three reasons for this:

1. Lack of knowledge – they don’t truly understand how to calculate the right sample size;
2. Negligence – they’re in a rush to do something else, so they rush the test;
3. Over-reliance on tools – most split testing tools offer some sort of confidence metric, but they can be misleading.

The first and third can be fixed.

If you’ve ever used a tool such as Unbounce to conduct split tests, you know the analytics show you something like this:

The table gives you the current conversion rate of each page you’re testing and a confidence level that the winning one is indeed the best.

The standard advice is to cut the test off once you hit 90-95% significance, which is fine advice.

The problem is that a lot (not all) of these tools will give you these significance values before they even mean anything.

You’ll think you have a winner, but if you let the test run on, you might find that the opposite is true.

Keep in mind that conversion experts like Peep Laja aim for at least 350 conversions per page in most cases (unless there’s a huge difference in conversion rates).

You must understand sample size: The fix for this problem, and most sample size problems, is to understand how to calculate a valid sample size on your own.

It’s not very hard if you use the right tools. Let me show you a few you can use.

The first is the test significance calculator. It’s very simple to use: just input your base conversion rate (of your original page) as well as your desired confidence level (90-95%).

The tool comes up with a chart that has a ton of scenarios.

You can see that the bigger the gap between the “A” page and the “B” page, the smaller the sample size needs to be. That’s why it’s best to test things that could potentially make big differences—they speed it up too.

Here’s another sample size calculator you can use. Again, you put in your baseline conversion rate, but this time, you decide on the minimum detectable effect.

The minimum detectable effect here is relative to your baseline, so start by multiplying them together to get 1%.

What that means is that you will have 90% confidence that you’ve detected a conversion rate on your second page that is under 19% or over 21% (plus or minus 1% from the 20% of your baseline conversion rate).

That also means that if your split test results show a 20.5% conversion rate for your second page, you cannot confidently say that it’s better.

Use either of these calculators to get an idea of what sample size you need for your tests. More is always better.

3. Running a split test during the holidays

This is related to segmenting, but it’s an often-overlooked special case.

Your traffic during holidays can be very different from your typical traffic. Including even one day of that abnormal traffic could result in optimizing your site for the people who use your site only a few times a year.

You also have to consider other special days that influence the type of traffic driven to your site:

• Sales
• Features in press
• Big events in your industry

On top of that, these special days aren’t usually one-day things. For example, when it comes to Christmas, those abnormal types of visitors may visit your website leading up to the big day and a week or two after.

The solution? Go longer: The best solution is to exclude these days from your test because they will contain skewed data.

If it’s not possible, the next best solution is to extend your split tests. Go over your minimum sample size so that you have enough data to drown out any skewed data.

4. Measuring the wrong thing

Although it’s in the title, it’s still easy to overlook.

Conversion rate optimization is all about…conversions.

Whenever possible, you need to be measuring conversions—not bounce rates, email opt-in rates, or email open rates.

Those other numbers do not necessarily indicated an improvement.

Here is a simple example to illustrate this:

• Page A – 5% email opt-in rate, but only 1% (overall) become customers
• Page B – 3% email opt-in rate, but 2% become customers

If you were measuring only your email opt-in rate on the page, you’d say that page A is decisively better (66% better).

In reality, page B converts traffic twice as well as page A. I’ll take twice the profit over 66% more emails on my list any day.

This is another simple thing, but you need to keep it in mind when setting up any split test.

5. Running before and after tests

This mistake is most commonly done by those new to split testing.

In an attempt to avoid any coding or using tools, the split tester runs a single variation first and then, after collecting enough data, switches the page.

Then, the tester compares the conversion rate of the two pages.

Hopefully, you already see the problems that this causes, which includes many of the things we’ve already gone over.

While it’s still possible to segment your traffic this way in some ways, you automatically can’t segment it by date.

You’ll be comparing the behavior of visitors from different times of the week, month, or year, which is not a valid comparison.

Moral of the story: Always run your split tests simultaneously, or you will mess up your test right from the start.

This brings us to the next mistake…

6. You didn’t test long enough

No, this is not the same as testing until you reach statistical significance.

Instead, it’s about the absolute length of time that you run your split test for.

Say, you used one of the calculators I showed you and found that you need a minimum sample size of 10,000 views for each page.

If you run a high traffic site, you might be able to get that much traffic in a day or two.

Split test finished, right? That’s what most split testers do, and it’s wrong.

All businesses have business cycles.

It’s why your website’s traffic varies from day to day and even from month to month.

For some businesses, buyers are ready to go at the start of the week. For others, they largely wait until the end of the week so that they can get started on the weekend.

It’s not valid to say that buyers who buy at one part of the cycle are the same as buyers at another part. Instead, you need an overall representation of your customers, through all parts of the cycle.

Your first step here is to determine what your business cycle is. The most common lengths are 1 week and 1 month.

To determine it, look at where your sales typically peak. The distance between your peaks is one cycle.

Next, run your split tests until you (1) reach the minimum sample size and (2) complete an integer of your business cycle, e.g., one, two, or three full business cycles—but never 1.5.

That’s the best way to ensure that you have a representative sample.

Conclusion

If you’ve started split testing pages on your website or plan to in the future, that’s great. You can get big improvements, leading to incredible growth in your profit.

But if you’re going to do split testing without the help of an expert, you need to be extra careful not to make mistakes.

I’ve shown you 6 common ways that people mess up their split tests, but there are many more.

Any single one of these can invalidate your results, which may lead you to mistakenly declaring the wrong page as the winner.

You’ll end up wasting your time and even hurting your business sometimes. Even if you get a good return from split testing, it might not be as much as it could be.

For now, keep learning about split testing, and make sure you completely understand the 6 mistakes I showed you here. If you have any questions about them, leave them below in a comment.

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Appreciation Versus Depreciation: A Powerful Insight for Your Spending Choices

No matter how careful we are about spending and saving our money, the truth is that all of us spend some significant portion of our income on a mix of things we need and things we don’t.

Some of those things are consumed, like food and water and gasoline and experiences, for instance – and you’re left with nothing but the memories afterwards. Other things are not – our car, our home, our hobby items, and so on. You continue to hold onto those possessions afterward and can, in theory, sell them.

Those things that you can potentially re-sell fall into two groups as well.

One group has a resale value less than what you paid for it. You paid $50 for something and can only get $5 for it later. That’s called depreciation.

Another group has a resale value that’s more than what you paid for it. You paid $50 for something and can get $60 for it later. That’s called appreciation.

In the end, you spend your money in one of three ways: on things that are consumed, on things that depreciate, and on things that appreciate. It’s all about the eventual money you can get from selling that item – it’s either nothing (because you used it all up), less than what you paid for it, or more than what you paid for it.

I’m going to make a very simple suggestion: the more of your money you spend on things that appreciate, the better your long term financial health will be.

It doesn’t require a radical shift, either. Simply spend a little less on things that return nothing or things that return less than what they cost, and spend a little more on things that return more than what they cost.

Let’s look at some things that fall into each camp. This is far from an exhaustive list, but it does cover many common things that people spend their money on.

Things That Return Nothing

Food is something that you simply consume. You eat it, it goes away, it doesn’t return any value to you. That doesn’t mean that you don’t need it to survive, but that every dollar you put into food and beverages disappears.

Experiences follow the same trajectory as food. When you pay money to experience something new, you’re left either with nothing or with something that cannot be resold. That’s not to say that there isn’t personal value in memories and experiences – there is – but most of the time, that experience doesn’t translate into money. (There are exceptions, which I’ll touch on below.)

Things That Depreciate

Cars depreciate quite rapidly. It’s not a stretch to say that cars lose a significant portion of their value the second you drive them off the lot and continue to gradually lose value over time after that. It’s extremely rare to get back what you paid for a car; that generally only happens with an extremely well maintained older car.

Appliances depreciate significantly with use. Most of the time, people use appliances until they fail and then haul them away to the dump. On rare occasions, people might sell used appliances, but they’re never going to get the full original value for it.

Computers and smartphones are great examples of depreciation. As soon as you buy them, their value starts slowly slipping away, drip by drip, drop by drop. Many people do eventually re-sell their phones and computers, but they get only a small fraction of the original value.

Clothes also depreciate rather rapidly. Sure, you can always get a little value for them via yard sales or consignment shops or even from the tax deduction that comes from donating them, but that value is a tiny fraction of what you originally paid for those items.

Entertainment items, such as DVDs, books, Blurays, video games, and so on all depreciate. You can almost always get at least some return from those items when you sell them, but that return is virtually always significantly lower than what you originally paid for the item.

Things That Appreciate

Homes, for the most part, tend to grow in value over time. The only real question is whether or not the additional costs of home ownership – property taxes, insurance, and so on – outstrip the gains.

Investments almost always appreciate in value. If you can buy something, hold it for a while, and sell it for more than it’s worth, that’s a great choice. Some investments, like bonds and dividend-paying stocks, even pay you money while you hold them.

Smart self-improvement can definitely appreciate in value, but it comes with the caveat that you can’t actually sell it. Instead, it adds more dollars and cents to your life than you paid for it. A great example of this is a college education, which will almost always pay you more in the long run than you ever paid for it.

Collectibles can appreciate, but you have to know what you’re doing, have some capital up front, and have a strong sense of when to buy and when to sell. In the end, the appreciation of collectibles tends to rely on a large set of domain knowledge from the collector – they have to know their stuff.

What About “Slow Depreciation”?

Like it or not, everyone is going to buy things that depreciate. That’s just a fact of modern life. Buying things that depreciate is going to have a negative impact on your finances – another fact of modern life.

However, you can choose to buy things that depreciate more slowly than other things. For instance, you can buy a more reliable car instead of a flashier car.

This has two real benefits.

First, the depreciating items go down in value more slowly. If something is reliable and has a known history of reliability – like, say, a Toyota or Honda automobile – it’s going to go down in value much more slowly. That’s because a used version of that item is going to have more value after, say, ten years of use than a Volkswagen.

Second, the depreciating items do not need to be replaced as often. This goes hand in hand with why the value of some items drop more slowly than the value of other items: it’s because they last. A well-made car with 100,000 miles on it is going to run for a lot longer than a poorly-made car with 100,000 miles on it. That means that you’re going to be able to keep driving that well-made car for many more years and you won’t have to deal with replacing it nearly as often (which is an expensive endeavor).

What Can You Do?

So, what’s the solution to all of this? What can you do to take advantage of these groupings?

First of all, spend a little bit less money on things that depreciate or that return no value at all, and spend a little bit more on things that appreciate. Cut down on your wardrobe and hobby spending a little bit and put some money into retirement or into smart self-improvement. If you’re going to put money into a hobby, invest in items that are going to grow in value if possible.

Second, if you’re going to spend money on things that depreciate, choose things that depreciate slowly if possible. Buy cars that have a history of reliability. Buy household items with a long warranty because they’re so well made.

Third, maintain your stuff. Take the time to do proper maintenance on the things that you own. Doing so will extend their lifetime and slow down their depreciation, which effectively means money in your pocket.

Final Thoughts

The value of spending money on things that do not depreciate came to me from a friend who had turned his Magic: the Gathering hobby into a side business. He had spent a great deal of time studying the market for those cards and figured out some pretty good methods for figuring out which cards will hold their value and appreciate over time and which ones would not, and thus he would trade for and acquire the ones that held value. Over the long haul, his collection has actually appreciated significantly in value because of his choices.

The same phenomenon really is true in all areas of life. If you spend your money on things that build value rather than lose value – or at least on things that lose value more slowly – your finances are going to end up in much better shape over the long run.

Good luck!

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