Getting Over the Christmas Giving Blues? Take the Christmas Budget Challenge

With Christmas just around the corner, our focus is slowly starting to shift from our work commitments to Christmas and with it comes the annual Christmas spending spree.

Unfortunately many families don't set a Christmas budget and they rely on their credit cards to get them through the festive season.
Shortly after Christmas these same families will also develop symptoms of the "Christmas Giving Blues" which can include an upset stomach, lack of sleep and anxiety.

You know that feeling. You spend up big, charge it on the card, and then spend the next couple of months worrying about how you are going to pay off your Christmas debts while vowing never to let this happen to you again.

Unfortunately, this is a reality for a lot of families every Christmas and they just don't seem to be able to break out of the cycle.
This year, give yourself and your family a Christmas gift and take the "Christmas Budget Challenge" and enjoy your Christmas without the suffering the Christmas Blues.

There are two parts to the Christmas Budget Challenge:

1. Put in place a strategy that will help you survive Christmas with as little pain as possible.

 2. Put in place a strategy that will give you a plan to enjoy your next Christmas. This plan will also run itself without you even thinking about it.

Let's start by putting in place a plan that will hopefully make this Christmas a little easier on your hip pocket:

1. Have a look at your finances and set an upper limit that you can afford for your Christmas spending. Allocate a certain amount to Gifts and a certain amount to other Christmas expenses. This is the start of your Christmas budget.

2. Leave the credit card at home and pay for Christmas with money wherever possible.

3. Keep track of all your Christmas spending. A good way of doing this is by carrying a small notebook and pencil and writing your purchases in it.

Gift Buying

4. Call your relatives and agree that Gifts will only be purchased for the children

5. Take your Christmas Gift budget that was allocated in step 1 and divide it by the number of gifts you need to buy. This number will be the maximum you can spend on each gift.

Christmas Food Shopping

6. Take your Christmas Dinner budget and make a shopping list.

7. When you are doing your shopping use a calculator to make sure you stay within your Christmas budget.

8. Save money by looking for the cheaper priced goods on the top and bottom shelves. Try not to buy items that are on shelves at eye level, these are usually the higher priced items.

9. Try not to buy items that are located in the displays at the end of the shopping aisles, these items are usually more expensive than the items located in the aisles.

10. Compare prices of similar items and buy the cheaper item.

11. Remember that Christmas is only one day a year. You don't have to spend a weeks worth of grocery money on one day.

12. Ask each relative to provide a food dish, drinks or dessert.

As soon as Christmas is over and the pain is fresh in your mind. You need to take action and put in place the second part of the "Christmas Budget Challenge". This next step will ensure that you have enough money for next Christmas

1. Add up all your Christmas expenses including gifts, food and any other costs.
2. Take the total of your Christmas expenses and divide it by the total amount of pays until next Christmas.

3. Open high interest bank account with the following attributes:
- No minimum starting balance
- Interest is accrued daily and billed monthly
- Interest rate on this bank account must be higher than the inflation rate.
- No bank charges
ING Direct and Citibank have an online banking account that may be suitable for your Christmas Budget account.

4. Organize an automatic bank transfer from your bank account to your Christmas Budget account. This transfer will be on each payday for the amount you worked out in step 2. It is important that this is automated because most people will not stick to this plan if it is a manual process.

5. When next Christmas comes around withdraw your money and repeat the process again.

This plan is very simple and surprisingly effective and you will be able to enjoy your next Christmas without the suffering the Christmas Giving Blues.

Bernie Wiemers has been studying personal finance and wealth creation strategies for the past 3 years. He is dedicated to helping others achieve their financial goals and runs the website My Wealth Plan - [http://www.my-wealth-plan.com] that publishes articles on personal finance and wealth creation strategies.

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How to Become Financially Free in 5 Years

Ultimately it is everyone's goal to be financially free. Everyone has the goal of one day retiring and being able to live and afford things without being required to work for the money. A lot of people work hard all their lives only to get to retirement and discover that they don't have enough money to live well and in their final years they find themselves sick and broke. But why wait until you are 65 before you are financially free when you can become financially free in just 5 years.

Becoming financially free is a lot easier than a lot of people believe it is. The only reason it is difficult is because most people are uneducated into how to become financially free. They spend their lives working for money and then when they get their wage (after being heavily taxed by the government) they don't know how to spend it so they will become rich. So instead they buy things that make them poorer and force them to work harder and harder.

In this article I am going to share with you some basic fundamentals that you will need to know if you want to be able to live without working. I am not going to teach you everything (you could write 100 books and still not cover everything) but this will be a great platform for you to continue your learning and to work towards becoming financially free in 5 years.

Understand What Being Financially Free Means

A lot of people struggle to become financially free because they don't know what it means, so they never set it as a goal. Instead they play the lotto with the desire to become instantly rich, and they continue to work hard at their jobs and buy things that make themselves poorer.
Being financially free means that your passive income (income that you don't have to work for) is greater than all of your expenses. So you can live indefinitely without ever having to work in order to pay your expenses. If you can understand this, and set this as your goal then you are one step closer to being free for life and never having to work again.

Think Cashflow, Cashflow, Cashflow

A lot of people have the goal of becoming rich. They see being rich as a dollar amount, maybe it is $1,000,000 in their bank account. But they don't think in terms of having your passive income greater than you expenses and having your money work for you. If you want to be able to retire you need to invest for cashflow. If you desire to be financially free in 5 years then you need to invest in assets that generate an income.

For example, when it comes to real estate some who wants to be 'rich' without really knowing what being rich means will often buy real estate for capital gains. The real estate will cost them money every month and they hope that they will get that money back when they sell the house. When they sell the house they use the extra money to buy a bigger 'investment' that costs them even more money every month, tying them to their jobs even more. But if you want to be financially independent then your goal is to having money coming into your pocket each and every month that you can use to live off. So instead of buying just for capital gains you want to buy for positive cashflow. This means the income from your investment is greater than the expenses and thus you receive cashflow each and every month.

Cashflow is what pays you bills and buys you food, and if you want to be financially independent then you need to be investing for cashflow. Let me ask you a simple question:
Based on your wage how many investments could you afford to own if each investment cost you $1,000 per month to own? The answer would certainly be limited. But how many investments could you afford to own if each investment earned you $1,000 per month. The answer is only limited by the amount you can get your hands on. So by purchasing investment for cashflow purposes you are generating an income that will fund you when you stop working. If you want to be financially free in 5 years then you need to invest for cashflow.

Have A Plan

Investing, to put it simply, is the act of following a financial plan to reach a financial goal. A lot of people make investing sound complicated and difficult. If you want to be financially free in just 5 short years then you need create a plan. In order to create a plan you need to know where you are now financially and you need to know what passive income you will require to be financially free.
Then you need to choose your investment vehicle of choice. It might be real estate, it might be stocks or bonds, it might be businesses. Everyone is different so your investment strategy will be different to everyone else's, but one thing needs to remain clear, you should ultimately be investing for cashflow.
Then you need to work out exactly how many investments you need. For example, if I chose real estate as my investment strategy and I know I can earn $100 per month on each property I buy, and I need $1,000 per month to live then I will need 10 properties in 5 years. Or an average of 2 properties per year. By doing these basic sums you can get a better understanding of what you need in order to stop working.

Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to cover a lot about becoming financially free in just 5 years. That is why I have created a free email newsletter that will give you helpful training and advice every week. By signing up today you will receive a free audio teaching on "How To Become Rich Without Earning More Money". Sign up now at http://www.richacademy.com but hurry while it is still free.
Becoming financially free in just 5 years is possible for anyone. It doesn't matter what your current financial situation is, you can become rich and never have to work again in just 5 short years. You don't need a high paying job or a get rich quick scheme, you just need real training on creating real strategies for getting rich.

Go to http://www.richacademy.com and sign up now to start you free training on "How To Get Rich Without Making More Money". Don't waste any time, start training yourself to be financially free today by signing up for your free teaching.

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Starting to Write: start at the beginning & use your imagination

How to Write Travel

Good travel writing has the power to motivate others to invest time and money exploring a town, city, state, or country that someone else has described with mesmerizing effectiveness. The art and aim of travel writing is to paint the best picture possible of a destination in order to educate, enlighten, or entice readers. To accomplish successful travel writing, a writer must identify their audiences and learn how to effectively present different types of writing for the travel genre.

Different Types of Travel Writing
A writer may choose between an array of approaches regarding travel writing, which spans guidebooks, newspaper articles, magazine spreads, advertising and corporate work, and website content. Within each sub-genre of travel writing, a variety of techniques and tactics help writers to efficiently introduce well known- and lesser-known locations around the world. It is important to recognize that the flow and depth of information for each sub-genre will differ. For example, writing a guidebook on Florida travel for families is much different than creating a guidebook for the college student.

Guidebooks
Today, guidebooks serve as a peek into the history, art, sightseeing, activities, cheap accommodations, theater, museums, and culture of a particular destination. Some of the best guidebooks blend sightseeing information with helpful advice and facts. Depending on the target audience, a writer will vary their approach and use specified styles of writing. An easy-to-follow writing style that touches upon theme parks, casual restaurants, and kid-friendly points of interest suit family-oriented guidebooks.
Student travel guides tend to focus on affordable eateries, clubs, concerts, drinking and drug rules, and youth hostels. The style of writing is often bolder, "hip," and laidback, including interesting facts with brief sections of text. Some guidebooks target a specific subject regarding a destination, such as "Top 20 Museums in Italy" or "Restaurant Guide for Mexico." The style of writing is typically straightforward and aimed to interest a wide-ranging audience.

Travel Narratives
A travel narrative is quite similar to writing a novel, where a fiction-writing background comes in quite handy. The writing is very descriptive with a goal of keeping the attention of readers through detail. A travel narrative may include fictitious characters written in the third person, utilize dramatic narrative (stories with a beginning, middle, and end), and include a hint of conflict and character development. Characters may also speak to one another through detailed dialogue taken from the author's memory.
An example of a travel narrative may include a publication titled, "A Year in South Africa," which traces the exploits of a business executive who abandons his career to explore the nooks and crannies of South Africa, embarking on a soul-searching journey that explains the connection he makes with the inhabitants, culture, and natural wonder of various locations.

Magazines, Newspapers & Brochures
Every magazine and newspaper approaches the subject of travel quite differently. Usually, a writer can draw upon a wealth of experiences pertaining to just one trip that are later written down to accommodate specific target audiences and publications. The writer who visits Italy may review a restaurant in Rome for a food-related magazine, show how to cook Sicilian Lasagna for a local newspaper, rate popular museums in Florence for a travel and leisure magazine, or list new clubs in Verona for a passage in a student travel brochure. Description, anecdotes, and travel tips are quite helpful in this type of writing.

Want more tips on writing go to
[http://www.novelmaster.com]

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Three Ways to Work From Home on PC Computers

Is it true that you can work from home on PC computers and earn money? You sure can. There are three main ways to make money online. You can either write articles, be a virtual assistant or provide customer service through a company that provides call center services.

What is the easiest way to work from home on a PC?

If you can write articles, there are several websites that will hire you to write web content. One of the best is Textbroker.com, but if you look around you'll find that there are several others as well. You don't have to be a professional writer to work for these sites. You just need to be able to put together a coherent article that has an introduction, a few paragraphs to make your points and a conclusion.

The amount you can make depends on how quickly you can write, but some writers are able to make as much as $20 per hour writing online.

What are other ways to work at home from a PC? You could find a company that hires virtual assistants or call center workers. A virtual assistant may be asked to do research, data entry or any other task that would typically be completed by an administrative assistant that can be done without being physically present in a given location.

Obviously, you can't fetch coffee for the boss this way but there are plenty of things that can be done remotely and many companies are now taking advantage of this by hiring virtual assistants.

How do you get a call center job? There are several companies online that offer this type of employment. Most of them require that you have high-speed Internet and a Skype account. The call center forwards calls to your Skype account when you are logged on and available to take calls. You may be paid by the hour while you are on-call or by the minute when you are actually talking to someone. Either way, you can earn a respectable income doing this type of job.

James Dempsey is a top internet marketer who works with industry leaders from around the world. He has a passion for helping others achieve their goals, dreams and aspirations. To learn more about James Dempsey and his team of Marketing Mentors meet him at: [http://www.unlimited-cash4u.com/]

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3 Ways To Sell Physical Products Using Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA)

Did you know that Amazon is not the seller of everything on Amazon? Did you know that ordinary people like you and me can sell physical products on Amazon? This opportunity has been around for a while, but it is becoming very popular right now due to educational courses that are popping up everywhere.

There are three ways you can sell physical products on Amazon: sell other people's products on Amazon and ship the orders yourself; sell other people's products on Amazon and let Amazon ship and sell your own products on Amazon and let Amazon ship them.
The first way is called merchant fulfilled. You list your merchandise on Amazon's website, but you actually fulfill or ship the orders yourself. The last two ways are called FBA.

Merchant fulfilled may be the easiest way and least costly to get started, but it is a lot more work. You list your products on Amazon's site. When the products are bought you are responsible for actually shipping the products to the buyer. You can even sell things that you have around the house using this method.

You can also use FBA to sell other people's products. In this case, you go to the store and find things that are already selling on Amazon, purchase them, put your own unique UPC label on the product, pack it, create the listing, ship it to an Amazon warehouse and wait for the buyer.

There are smart phone apps that you can use to scan products before you buy them to help you determine if you can make a profit. If you like to shop, are good at finding bargains and can ship a box, then this may be the business for you. The other great thing about using FBA is that your products are eligible for the Amazon Prime program. People who participate in this can get free 2 day shipping. Many people are willing to pay a little more for a product for this convenience.

The second way to use the FBA program is to actually sell your own products. You find a product that you can sell, find a private label manufacturer, create your own brand and sell you product. This is the most lucrative of the ways to sell on Amazon; however, it requires more capital up front. Also, it is more risky because you have to order inventory.

As you can see selling on Amazon is definitely something that you can do to earn extra income or become your full-time business. If you are looking to start an online business or you want to add an additional income stream to your existing online business than you should definitely consider FBA.

To learn more about selling on Amazon check out FBA Genie. Visit The Online Newbie if you are interested in learning more about Adrienne Dupree or starting an online marketing business TODAY to get out of the rat race, take control of our own destiny and stop trading time for dollars.

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Living Life to the Fullest: How to Enjoy the Simple Things in Life and Improve Your Self Confidence

Every day on the way home from work I sit on the train and observe the goings on in the carriage around me.People, dressed in their constrictive little penguins suits, shuffle around so they don't have to sit next to one another or (God forbid) look at one another. 

Plugged into their little white earphones they are completely oblivious to anyone sitting around them. 

Carefully arranged bags make the seat next to them look just uninviting enough to deter anyone who might want to attempt sitting next to them. 

Since when have we become such a self involved and insular community? People are, for the most part of their day, shut off from all the amazing experiences around them.

The thing is this... It all makes me feel really lucky. Since I experienced my own quarter life crisis and started travelling life has become a completely different experience for me and has opened my eyes to world around. I really hope that others can experience the same kind of excitement about life as I have right now. 

Many people are scared to let go of their preconceived notions of what their lives have to be and they become depressed by it. I'm so fortunate that on my travels I have met so many other people who, like me, are experiencing life to the full. It gives me inspiration to keep on going.

There is also not just one way of going about experiencing life, which is partly what makes it so great.Even just taking a different route to work or watching less T.V and going for a walk can be enough for some people to shake off the shackles of their day-to-day stupor.

I really explored this concept this after attending some excellent courses run by Karma Jiga. Karma Jiga was a senior monk at the world-famous Samye Ling Monastery in the Borders of Scotland and the founder and Project Director of Rokpa Dundee. He opened my eyes to a lot of things including the theory of mindfulness and since then I would encourage anyone if they have any interest in getting rid of stress and living more in the moment to attend some meditation classes. They don't have to be religious if you have no interest and can be used as a really effective life tool for all sorts of things. Some of the most important principles were very straight forward: 

Take notice of the world; focus on whatever you are doing; commit random acts of kindness; be thankful for yourself and your life just the way you are. However, these are things that most people forget on a daily basis. Too many people spend their lives wishing their lives away. Psychology today also recently printed an interesting article on trying to live in the moment.

For some, maybe the way to reconnect is just looking a little harder at what is going on around them. A few weeks ago I went to see an exhibition by the artist Louise Hawson Who, In 2009 decided to spend a year exploring and photographing one new Sydney suburb a week. The suburbs of Sydney vary hugely from place to place and i think most people would be surprised if they headed out from the CBD to Auburn, for example, which has a high population of Islamic people and a plethora or Iranian, Turkish and Middle Eastern restaurants. 

Louise shares her experience here on her blog, 52suburbs.com.au She has now extended her project and is looking at suburbs around the world. I'd highly recommend her blog to anyone and it is a fantastic insight into some of the lesser known suburbs In the city.

For others, maybe the way to discover happiness is by travelling and I am so fortunate that I have so met so many other people who, like me, are experiencing the world though travel. For some really interesting blogs based on travel check out my section on fantastic blogs which will be being updated periodically. 

When I talk about my travels many people express how they WISH they could travel too but can't because of commitments or finances. I'm never sure exactly what to say to them except go for it! You will never regret the things you do... only those that you don't. For some more practical advice the other day I read a fantastic blog by The Nomad Grad who explains how she manages to finance a nomadic lifestyle... so now there are no excuses!

I'm aware this has been a bit of ramble but I hope it inspires people to go out there and start living... or at least let someone sit next to them on the subway without a grumble. Who knows what interesting stories they might have to tell or where it might lead you!

If you want to read more about the adventures that I have had since I decided to take that first step towards self discovery then read more at my blog: Scottish Nomad

http://scottishnomad.wordpress.com

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