Announcements

Ask Tight Fisted Miser

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I’d like to start a weekly feature where I answer any questions my readers might have. You can ask me anything to do with frugality or personal finance. If you want to ask about my upcoming hike or anything else I’ve posted on you can ask that too. Heck, you can ask me anything you want. I won’t guarantee that I’ll answer anything though.

I’m having a hard time coming up with stuff to post about. Most frugality topics seem either too obvious or they have already been written about many times or both. If you have any topic you would like to post about let me know.

Just leave a comment on this post with your question or topic and I’ll do my best to follow up. Thanks.

Get Health Insurance

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Sorry I didn’t post yesterday. My GF had a health scare and was admitted to the hospital and that was where I spent my afternoon and evening. This is a stressful time but at least she doesn’t have to worry about paying for everything.

I don’t like to spend money but I wouldn’t recommend going without health insurance. If you don’t have health insurance you should buy it if it is at all possible to do so.

The health insurance system is quirky. My GF is a nurse and works for a doctor’s office that is located on a hospital campus which is a block away from our house. Unfortunately that hospital doesn’t take her insurance so we have to go to one that is about twenty-five minutes away.

Hopefully, my GF will be getting out this afternoon. I’ll have an update post tomorrow.

Keeping Track of My Time

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In order to figure out where I am wasting all of my time I am going to keep track of what I’m doing for every hour of the day this Monday through Friday.  I already know I waste a lot of time on the Internet but maybe seeing exactly how much time I’m wasting will motivate me to make better use of my time.  It is possible that I might identify some other time wasters as well.  I really need to start being more productive.

On an unrelated note I took advantage of my 10 free eBay listings and put some stuff up for sale.  Probably could have selected some better stuff to sell but since the listings were free I just listed the first 10 items I found that I no longer want. Check out my eBay auctions.

Ebay, Swagbucks and Twitter

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Here are a few things I want to share that don’t really justify making a separate post about so I’m putting them all in this post.

Ebay is having a seller special that allows you to pay no insertion fees March 10-23 for your first ten listings.  This might be enough to motivate me to actually list some of my stuff this weekend.  The stuff I’m selling is mostly media which would only be a five cent insertion fee anyway but since I’ve been meaning to list this stuff anyway I might as well save a few nickels. Visit the promo page for more info on the eBay promotion.

I’ve added a Swagbucks banner to the top of the site.  They are a search and win company and I’ve been pleased with my results at the site.  I’ve redeemed three $5 Amazon gift certificates and I have points worth about $25 more.  All of this just for doing searches as normal and occassionally mentioning the site here for referrals.  Click on the banner for more information or to sign up.

I’ve added a Twitter banner to my sidebar.  I’m still figuring out how to best use Twitter.  I’m thinking I’ll mostly use it to post special deals and freebies.  I also wanted to mention this post where $3 is donated to charity for each person who follows Tim Ferriss on Twitter.

Social Media and Blog Marketing

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It seems like there is a new social media site coming out every week.  I understand that these can be used to promote your blog but none of them have ever really worked for me.  I have accounts at Myspace, Stumbleupon, and now Twitter but I haven’t done much with them.  I have received some traffic surges from Stumbleupon but not because of anything I did.  I just got lucky that someone stumbled my posts.  I am sure I could be making much better use of these media but these sites really don’t interest me.  I just want to write my blog.  Without some marketing though there won’t be anyone reading my blog and my blog won’t be producing much revenue.  I write this blog because I like to write but I also want to make money from it.

I just started on Twitter so I’m not giving up on it yet.  Otherwise, I don’t plan to sign up for any more social media sites unless they interest me for reasons other than blog promotion.  I’m thinking of hiring someone to do blog marketing for me.  This is an area where my frugality borders on cheapness.  The one time I did pay for some help improving my blog I received a huge return on my investment.  Yet I’m still hesitant to invest more money in my blogs.  I guess I need to get over that and come up with a plan for improving my blogs and then find someone to implement it for me.