Category: Money Matters

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Starting An Online Business

A few months ago my oldest daughter and I were talking about possibly creating our own online printing business and decided to give it a go. Her husband had said he also wanted to be apart of it, so we waited until he had gotten back from his business trip to discuss our options and our plans with him, so we were all on the same page.  When he finally had gotten back from his business trip, we had all gotten together to discuss what we had in mind.

A problem we had was how to start an online business and how to customize it to fit our styles, wants and needs. My daughters husband jumped on the net to look around for help to do just that, and not too long after starting his search he found the perfect solution for our problem. Thankfully it didn’t take long at all to start the process of web 2 print solutions, and found that the site offers more than we could ever ask for, and our business took off right away.

Our site has brought so much business, its unbelievable and exhilarating to all three of us. We couldn’t be any happier and couldn’t of asked for better help at such a great price we just couldn’t turn our heads on. We recommend anyone who wants to customize their own web page for their online printing business, to visit this awesome site, and the extraordinary people who are behind it. You will not regret it, and you will be impressed with all the options you have to create your own online printing business as we are.

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Pool Heaters, A Great Idea

Last fall my hubby knew my birthday was coming up and he wanted to do something extreme that I have been wanting for the last 15 years we have been together. His plan was to make that it happen by installing an in-ground pool in our backyard with a hot tub. I unfortunately had a business trip I had to go to right before my birthday, but it ended up working out perfectly for my hubby’s surprise plans.

When I had left after taking our daughter to her grandparents house, he jumped on the opportunity to install an in-ground pool while I was on a business trip for 2 weeks. When I had arrived home, hubby wouldn’t let me even come close to the backside of the house so I couldn’t see what was back there. The next morning after we picked our daughter up he escorted us to the backyard with his hands covering my eyes and counted to three, when his hands dropped I couldn’t have been more surprised, impressed and so excited at the same time.

I have been so excited to finally go out to the back yard and take a dip in our own in-ground pool since last fall when my hubby installed it. We have been getting it ready for this upcoming summer and we just finished cleaning it last week and are now starting to talk about the possibility of a hot tub as well, but came to the conclusion that we simply couldn’t afford it.

Hubby had a clever idea for us to search on the net for pool heaters and we took an a beautiful spring evening to search for one for or pool. We came across a site that offers raypak pool heaters at an awesome price and it didn’t take log at all for us to find the perfect one for our pool. When it arrived, only 3 days later, hubby and a few of our friends had gathered in the backyard to install our new pool heater, and we now can enjoy our pool even on chilly days and/or evenings with no worries. Life is good.

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South African Hunting Adventures Anyone

How about we pack up and head out for a really cool once in a lifetime adventure and try our hand in hunting big game in Africa.  My brother and his buddies went a few years back and he highly recommends using T. Jeffrey Safari Company, LLC a full time, full service, hunting and sport fishing consultancy.

I went online and see that they have a great website that offers big game hunting safari trips to Africa.  They can help arrange a hunt here in North America but if you are going to do it, might as well do it right and they offer such bargains for several traditional African Hunting safaris as well as numerous Namibia safari hunting trip packages that are all-inclusive, in the Southern part of Africa.

The variety of programs that they have to offer is amazing, everything you ever need is there in order to get your trip up and going.  I am amazed that there are so many women into this type of hunting such big game as leopard, cape buffalo, lion, elephant and rhinoceros.  So I guess if they can do it there is no reason that I can’t give it try, but I don’t want to go by myself that is for sure.

 

 

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What happens in Las Vegas…well you know the rest

We still receive phone calls now and then from people that we knew from way back.  I love hearing from them, you never know what to expect from these phone calls.

Laurie and I go back 25 years or so, she was a bartender at the bar Hubby and I used to go to back in day.  She is now living and working as a card dealer in Las Vegas, while still going to college, and still has her son living with her.  She seems to have done pretty well and is in the process of looking into buying a condo and wanted us to look at the one Web site hone-lasvegas.com  and check it out.

These Las Vegas condos include five towers, each one is 18 to 20 stories high, with loads of spacious grounds which is guard gated, it looks like they offer all of the goodies that one would expect at such a beautifully landscaped residential community, such as spas, pool, boutiques, exercise and fitness rooms, I mean the whole kit and caboodle.

If she decides to purchase one I can’t wait to visit her and check it out my self. I have only been to Vegas once in my life and we were broke, not the best place to be when you are broke!

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Gas Prices Hinder Visits With My Sister

Just hung up from talking with my sister that lives a little over an hour away, she sounds so miserable that I have decided that I am going to drive down for a visit on Sunday.  I don’t work that day and Hubby will have the youngest with him at the flea market, so I see no reason to jump in my car and spend some time with her and her family. The cost of gas is the only concern, it will take over $20 to drive there and back and gas is getting really close to the $4 a gallon mark. It hasn’t been this high in a good long while, this is really scary folks, I’m tired of this roller coaster ride that we have been riding year after year after year – a carnival ride from hell is what it is, with no opportunity in sight to get off of that ride.

Good thing that I have a gas charge card that I can use if needed, it seems as if it is needed now more often then before, which sucks.  I am trying not to use my charge cards at all. This was the first year that I didn’t use a single charge card for anything the whole Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season. I just now paid one credit card off last week and hopefully next month I will pay another off as well, that will help when paying bills time comes around again the first of the month.

 

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Walmart

When The Eagles released their CD, Long Road Out of Eden, they did a special deal with Wal-Mart so that only Wal-Mart carried the CD. At first I thought it was clever of Wal-Mart to grab onto something practically guaranteed to be a big hit and use it to drive traffic to their stores. But later on I was reading web articles and realized that The Eagles were the ones who benefited from the exclusive distribution arrangement. What really happened is that the traditional record studios charge a ton of money for publishing, advertising and distributing music. That’s how they make their money and they make a lot. In the end, whatever other people make off your music is money that you, the artist, do not make. So by using Wal-Mart to handle the advertising and distribution, The Eagles could basically self-publish their music and keep a whole lot of the money for themselves. Sounds like a win-win situation for both of them.

You hear stories about how Wal-Mart comes to town and run the little companies out of business. Well, it looks like the mighty Wal-Mart has decided to grab even more of their money away from banks and record companies. Even though the Government told them that they cannot be a bank, they are doing everything a bank does inside of their stores – from cashing checks to credit cards and debit cards, and sending wire transfers of money out of the country and down to Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and everywhere else the immigrants came from and want to send money back to their families.

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Fundraising Is A Fact Of Life

Gone are the days in most cities and towns across America when kids were sent knocking on people’s doors trying to sell folks items for a fundraiser.  Let’s face it, schools, churches, sports and all the other non-profit groups, they all desperately need money and fundraising can be a lucrative way to get it.

Unfortunately in today’s world it isn’t necessarily safe for our children to go around the neighborhoods anymore.  Most fundraisers specifically request that the kids do not go door to door anymore, they tell you to have family, co-workers and close family friends help in supporting the organization.

With having two kids I have done my fair share of fundraising and I certainly will still participate when I can.  It was a lot easier when members of my immediate family were all living pretty close to each other, now a days everyone is spread out all over the darn country so that puts a damper on using them as a resource, for the most part.

I ran across a really cool fundraising program on the Web called Schoolpop.com and I am going to contact our elementary school and see if they would be interested in participating in this non-traditional school fundraiser opportunity.

By using Schoolpop, you can pay down your tuition and any extracurricular activity costs, it can assist in paying back student loans for college and help your school earn monies, all year round by shopping at the several hundred listed of name -brand merchants and service providers whether it be online, in stores, catalogs purchases, even with gift cards or with the Schoolpop Visa credit card.

You can apply for the Schoolpop Visa credit card right on line!  Every purchase that you make for your groceries, gas, clothing, movies, restaurants  – it contributes 1% to the student’s school.

It sounds like Schoolpop may be a way to raise money that would/should be embraced by our school and the families, we shall see when I call them this week.  I’ll also call my sister who has a son in a very nice private school and see if she would be interested in learning a cool and easy way to raise money for private schools along with us in the public school system.

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Nationwide Better Be On My Side

After experiencing a fender bender in the bank parking lot, we now get to deal with insurance adjusters and body shops right before the holiday season. Since this happened in a parking lot the police couldn’t do anything but write a report for us both to submit to each person’s insurance company. She backed into me, there is no way of getting around this one. I took pictures with my cell phone and made sure she did the same thing.

After waiting around all day for the insurance rep to arrive, we finally got a call telling us that the adjuster was running behind schedule and won’t be able to get to us until tomorrow.  Of course that ran Hubby into a tissy, he still isn’t feeling well and is mighty grumpy.

Hubby has been sick in the bed for a few days now and his back is hurting, wish we could afford a new bed that would be gentle on his back, the older he gets the worse it seems to bother him.

We will see what tomorrow brings us.

 moonie

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Garage Repairs

When our neighbors tree fell in our yard last month it took out a chunk of our garage, too. It fell on a corner of the garage and tore the siding off the top parts of two of the garage walls. The insurance company adjuster said he would give us enough money in the claim check to fix all four sides, if we were smart about negotiating with the home improvement contractor.

The garage was here when we bought the house, so we didn’t have any say in how it was first built, but now that it has to be repaired, we are looking into the different types of vinyl and siding. I was reading about the benefits of vinyl siding over plasterboard and wood, which is more technical than I ever knew. To sum it up, vinyl is best because it lasts a long time and needs almost no maintenance. It doesn’t need to be scraped and painted or stained, like wood. And vinyl doesn’t split, peel or rot. So vinyl is the way to go.

I want to use a company like American Home Craft Inc to do the repair work. This company is fully licensed, bonded and insured, which is important if anything was to go wrong during the job. But American Home Craft Inc has an excellent reputation and uses only only highly trained and certified workers, so we can rest easy that the job will be done by professional who will take the greatest care with our property. I also like the fact that they use only the best materials, and every product has a lifetime manufacturer’s warranty. They care about the environment like I do, and use materials that are environmentally friendly and the most energy efficient products available.

I’m looking forward to having my garage fixed so we can start using it once again.

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Free Moving Quotes

When my parents moved to the next county over, I was sixteen, they used a Penske moving truck from the moving truck company down the street by my dad’s office. There was no other choice, you used that company, always.  Now a days we get on the Internet at type in “moving company” and the whole world opens up it’s doors for you.

Seems Ms. Jinx is using a company MovingOrbit.com, it is so cool, it lets you compare multiple estimates for local and/or interstate moving companies.  Done completely on-line, not even a phone call is necessary.

Of course the companies listed are all licensed and insured, none of the fly-by-nights companies that you hear all the horror stories about.  Ms. Jinx needs to find one with great customer service and movers that will treat her lifelong’s belongings with kid gloves.