Financial stuff

If You’re Separating… Or Thinking About It

by

Let’s talk about getting a divorce.

Lest you think that all is not well in the House of Brick, I need to emphasize this post is not for personal reasons. The Brick and I have been married 30-plus years, and in spite of the occasional riffle, things are going well. (Andy’s note. This post isn’t about my wife and I either. There will be a follow-up post on why you should stay married.)

The national marriage average, though, is not looking so good. Based on DivorceRate.org, the current divorce rate for first marriages in America is 41%, and second marriages 60%. Third marriages are a stunning 73%! And if you marry between ages 20-24, chances are better than 1 in 3 that your union will not last.

Ouch. It’s especially uneasy if your own marriage experience has been rocky. And other people’s opinions about your troubles will hit all over the map. (J.D. Roth, who announced his impending divorce on his blog, Get Rich Slowly, found this out the hard way.)

First and foremost, make a serious effort to save your marriage. (I encourage you to try — it’s worth it!) But if you’re thinking that divorce is looming on your personal horizon, here are some tips, from a single friend who has had time to think on it. (She was married for ten years, with a son, before she divorced back in the mid-1990s.)

Before you file divorce papers:

*Make sure you know your current net worth. That includes real estate, bank and retirement accounts, savings bonds, etc. Include future possibilities like pensions and Social Security. (Yes, you are often entitled to claim your soon-to-be-ex’s amount on these. Sometimes that eligibility hinges on how long you’ve been legally married. Check with them to be sure.)

*Make sure you know your liabilities. Who do you owe, and how much? It doesn’t matter whether you signed on the dotted line; if you’re married, you’re responsible for his or her debts.

*Are possessions in both your names? Or yours, at least. This is especially important for a vehicle you plan to keep on driving. Make copies of important paperwork for safekeeping. (My friend sent them to her sister to hold.)

*Open an account, just in your name. Hide some cash there. My source recommended $5000, but as little as $500 will give you some security.

After you file for divorce:

*Notify everyone you have joint accounts with that you are divorcing. Sure, they’ll be frozen — and that limits your access to needed funds. (Thus the importance of a separate account just in your name!) But, and this is especially important — they can’t be stripped by your ex, either.

*Get a good lawyer. (Ask for references, or get advice from people you trust.)

*If you have children together, get your temporary custody papers done as soon as possible — otherwise, the other person could take your child and head out of state. (Maybe you should get these done before you file.)

And finally:

*Shield your children as much as possible. “In other words,” my friend says, “Don’t talk negative about him — even if he is a royal jerk.” Your ex will already be angry and/or frustrated. Talking trash about them is insulting, and won’t encourage them to cooperate while you finalize the process.

*Don’t bore your friends, family and fellow workers with all the details. Conduct yourself with dignity and good sense, and you’ll come out of this difficult time looking like the classy person you are.

This post is by staff writer Cindy Brick. Cindy is a quilting expert with several published books on the subject and has also had many published articles on a variety of subjects. You can visit her business website at CindyBrick.com or visit her personal blog.

How I Made $708.89 in Affiliate Income Last Month

by

First, I’ll have to start off with a clarification. I report my affiliate earnings when they are paid out rather than when they are made. Therefore, most of the affiliate income I reported last month was actually earned in November and December. There also fluctuations when I barely miss an affiliate program’s payout threshold for the month and the earnings rollover to the next month.

My affiliate earnings pale in comparison to the $28,000 Pat at Smart Passive Income made last month but I do have several people every month asking how I make money from affiliate programs. That is probably because my earnings seem more attainable or my traffic is more in line with their level of traffic. I’m far from an expert on affiliate marketing but I’ll do my best to share what I do know.

Place Lots of Links

The main thing that helps me make affiliate income is having lots of affiliate links on my sites. If there isn’t a link for people to click then you can’t make any money. You don’t want people who visit your site to be turned off by the site being full of affiliate ads but you can get lots of links on your site without making it look too spammy. I’ve found that links in posts work much better than links in the sidebar. Anytime you write about something that has an affiliate program make sure you include a link. You will see a few links in this post.

An affiliate ad in your header is the next best placement. You can see that I have an ad for Mr. Rebates in my header. When you do place affiliate ads in your sidebar or header it helps to switch up the ads occasionally to reduce ad blindness. Something I do at Bank Bonuses is to place an affiliate ad at the end of a post that is not related to the post. Here is an example of a post with an extra affiliate ad. This wouldn’t work on every blog but it has worked well for me on Bank Bonuses.

Another thing you can do is have a resource page on your blog. The page would include resources that would be helpful to your blog readers and also include some affiliate links for the resources. This is something that I haven’t fully implemented myself but I do plan on adding a resource page.

Use the Right Program for Your Blog

Another thing that can help increase your affiliate earnings is to make sure the affiliate program you’re promoting is a good fit for your blog. Promoting credit cards doesn’t work too well here at Tight Fisted Miser but promoting credit cards does work well at Bank Bonuses. This makes sense because people come to TFM looking for ways to not spend money and a credit card seems detrimental to that goal. On the other hand people go to Bank Bonuses looking to make money which can be done for signing up for a credit card bonus offer. Programs like Swagbucks and Mr. Rebates that are more appealing to frugal types. If you’re not sure what programs are the best fit for your blog try a few different things until you find some that work.

Traffic

In order to make decent affiliate income you need to have a decent level of traffic to your site. If you only have a couple hundred visitors a month to your site then it will obviously be very difficult to make much affiliate income from the site. You don’t need a ton of traffic though if it is the right type of traffic. Bank Bonuses only gets about 3,000 visits a month but it makes decent affiliate income because the visitors are looking for banking and credit card deals and much more likely to open an account than a random visitor. It is beyond the scope of this post but if you want to build up your traffic you can do it with search engine optimization. I don’t do much SEO myself other than using the All-In-One SEO pack but I do get the majority of my traffic from search engines. You can also build up your traffic with social media but it isn’t the best way for increasing affiliate income. In general search engine traffic is a lot better than social media traffic because it is more targeted. There is tons of free information on the web on search engine optimization. With a little research you should be able to find a couple things you can do to increase your search engine traffic.

Conclusion

As I said before I’m far from an expert on earning affiliate income but I hope this post can be of help to at least some of you. I still have a lot to learn and need to do more to implement what I already know to increase my affiliate income. If you have any suggestions please feel free to share them in the comments.

Starting Out Poor or Rich: Which is Better?

by

According to a 20-year study, the gap between rich and poor is growing, not getting smaller. The difference is even more pronounced when comparing countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation. The OECD’s rep “urged governments to address the ‘divisive’ issue of growing inequality. He said they should do more to educate the whole work force – and not just the elite – while helping people get jobs and increasing incomes for working families, rather than relying on social benefits.(Unfortunately, he didn’t also explain how this is going to happen.)

So — do you learn more in life, by growing up rich — or poor?

It could be good. It could be bad. Some, like Not Made of Money, say that their money-strapped upbringings actually made them more responsible adults. Nah, John Cheese argues. If you learned bad habits when you were poor, things probably won’t change. Get a better job, and you’ll still be eating crappy junk food and blowing your paycheck.

Either way, we learn by example: good or bad. (Sharon Jasper isn’t famous for nothing.) Chatting At the Sky, talking about her dad, the former alcoholic, says, ” It seems to me the people most qualified to talk about hope are the ones who have been hopeless and lived to tell about it.” Keep the good ideas, like sticking to fifty bucks a month for food, or living richly when you’re scraping bottom. (Three words: “Less is more.”) Discard the rest.

Your parents’ response to money matters is going to affect yours — whether you like it or not. (See a good overview on this, thanks to Get Rich Slowly.) If your folks were spendthrifts, you may be, too — or you may sprint across the spectrum, and become a miser. Hopefully you won’t go to either extreme. The key is understanding where you came from, and why you react the way you do.

Case in point: my parents had a tendency to choose the cheapest appliance, regardless of its track record. I did, too, until Husband pointed out that a higher quality item lasted much longer. We spent more on a refrigerator than they did — but it’s lasted for nearly a decade, so far, with more years to go.

Just living in America has given us a leg up that many others would love to have.

Yes, I Am Cheap grew up poor…to the point of shivering through the first year or so of high school, until she could afford a winter coat. (Thrift shop, I would say!) But as an immigrant herself (she moved to the U.S. at age 6), she says, “Growing up poor in the U.S. is entirely different than growing up poor in some other countries. Even some of the worse conditions here can be better than some of the best conditions elsewhere. Homeless families here can be accepted into programs where a roof will be put over their heads. In some other countries when you are homeless, you are truly homeless. There are no resources for you.”

Rich, poor — it’s all relative. If you’ve read Andy’s post on the subject, his family had cable in his teenaged years, and he owned his own computer. (An Atari — big stuff back in those days!) His mother, on the other hand, was born in a farmhouse with no running water.

As a farm girl, we had plenty to eat, including lots of steaks and roast (luxuries nowadays). But the only television I saw until 4th grade was my grandma’s, while she was in Florida for the winter. (We kept the tiny b&w tv while she was gone.) Husband and I managed to buy our first computer only because Apple offered a half-off special to students at the University of Michigan.

This all seemed incredibly fancy to my dad, whose home didn’t have electricity until he was in his late teens. (Rural South Dakota was not exactly on the cutting edge of technology.) He only went to school through eighth grade; his help was needed on the farm. And to the end of his days, he wore the same basic dark blue shirt and pants, with clodhopper work boots, throughout the week.

My viewpoint on all this changed even more when friends came to supper Saturday night. ‘Dan’ spent his childhood in a grubby apartment in ‘Alphabet City,’ a rent-controlled complex in lower east Manhattan. He vividly remembered stepping over drunks in the hallway, fighting with gang members, and begging for money in the subway with his mom and younger brother.

His life has completely changed now, but he hasn’t forgotten the many nights they spent in New York City’s homeless shelters…or his relief, when he finally felt ‘safe.’ That feeling didn’t come until his twenties.

I never had that experience. Perhaps what seemed poor was really rich, after all.

This post is by staff writer Cindy Brick. Cindy is a quilting expert with several published books on the subject and has also had many published articles on a variety of subjects. You can visit her business website at CindyBrick.com or visit her personal blog.

Five Ways to Pay Off Holiday Debt

by

Now that the holidays are over with, it’s time to deal with the debt that’s sure to have accumulated as a result of gift buying. It’s never easy paying off holiday debt, but it’s certainly not impossible if you put your mind to it. In fact, getting that additional burden lifted from your shoulders is a little easier than you think. All it takes is a utilization of a few of the following strategies:

Eat less, exercise more: It’s a guarantee that the less you eat, the more money you’re sure to save as a result. That’s because healthy eating is all about portion, and reasonable portions are likely to be much smaller than you’re used to. But in addition, you can stand to see an improvement in your average life insurance quote due to a healthier lifestyle.

Pay triple the minimum payment: If possible, simply pay as much as possible every month. If you’re used to paying double, then go with triple the minimum payment in order to speed the process up. You’ll be paying this debt off one way or another, so the sooner, the better.

Take on a second job: This is undoubtedly the hardest method of freeing yourself from holiday debt to commit to, but if you can’t triple your minimum payments, why not take on a second job? Whether it’s tending bar, delivering pizzas, or taking online surveys, whatever gets you more income is enough to help you pay off that holiday rate debt quicker than you otherwise would be.

Negotiate better interest rates: This won’t be easy without a fierce determination to do so, as credit card agencies are certain to receive their fair amount of lowered APR requests, but it never hurts to try and get your credit card interest rates lowered after the holidays are over. If it’s the first time you’ve ever attempted such a lowering, then there’s a good chance you’ll walk away with a lower monthly payment.

Wait for your tax refund: If you can handle making minimum payments on those credit cards for a few more months, then your best bet is to wait till your tax refund in springtime. Chances are you’ll be netting around $2500 to $3500, which should be plenty to pay off holiday debt.

Whether it’s through working more hours or re-evaluating the way you spend money, paying off that holiday debt is far from impossible. The hardest part is generating the will and discipline necessary to follow through on the tactics involved. If you possess the determination to succeed in these arenas of holiday debt elimination, then there’s no doubt that you’ll prove victorious in your efforts.

Book Review – The Psychology of Wealth

by

I was recently given a copy of the book,The Psychology of Wealth: Understand Your Relationship with Money and Achieve Prosperity. Since I do believe psychology plays a major part in personal finance I chose to review this book. If you have been reading personal finance blogs for a while you know that the basics of personal finance are pretty simple. Knowing the basics of personal finance and actually applying the basics are two different things though. That is where the the psychology comes in.

Since this book is written by a psychologist I figured it would provide a good framework of the psychology needed to attain wealth. It does provide what the author considers to be the four qualities that wealthy people possess. They are self-esteem,responsibility,determination, and achievement. I agree that those qualities are good ones to have to achieve wealth but I don’t feel that the author gives much information to help you develop those qualities. He does provide lots of case studies that are interesting but not always helpful.

The author loses me when he talks about the power of positive thinking. I agree that positive thinking is a positive attribute and it can help you achieve success. But I don’t believe it has the magical power that the author gives to it. You still have to go out and do stuff and not just think about it. The author gives an example of a woman who was down to her last $5 and used it to buy a raffle ticket. She ended up winning a hot-air balloon ride which was something she always wanted. The author stated that she had a healthy sense of self-esteem and trusted her ability to create prosperity for herself. I don’t think that had anything to do with her winning. I think it was just luck. Using your last $5 to buy a raffle ticket is not a wise choice. It worked out okay for her but I guess all the other people who bought raffle tickets weren’t thinking positive. There are several instances of similar what I consider to be bad advice in the book.

I like the idea of using psychology to help achieve success and I have reviewed other books that I though did a good job of observing how psychology affects wealth. This book however, contains too much magical thinking and other bad advice for me to be able to recommend it.