Category Archives: money

Hacked on Google Gmail!

Image representing Gmail as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

I don’t know about you but I always thought Google was one of the great companies of the world.  All those brains. All that technology.  Exploring the earth the seas and the heavens.  Clever art for every holiday and special occasion.  All that money!

But that perception was taken down a peg or two on April 17, 2009 when some nasty Nigerian/Ghana hacker seized control of  my gmail account and, apparently, hundreds or thousands or millions of others as well.  He shot out an email to my list, including my business list, saying I was stranded, penniless and desperate in Africa and needed $1,600 for a meal and to make it home.

I began getting a flood of phone calls and emails asking if I was ok.  Friends, friends of friends and business associates from New York, California, Washington D.C. and elsewhere wanted to know if it was true, was I ok, did I need money.  I had to explain…..and am still explaining…. I am ok, not in Africa, appreciate their concern but this is a scam.  My gmail account has taken on a pan handling life of it’s own. And I certainly hope no well intentioned person got duped into wiring money to some “hotel manager” in a country that lives off these nasty scams.

I am still working through a bureaucratic process to reclaim my account with Google.  I had Google gmail, docs, custom rss feeds, Adsense advertising, Adwords, Google gadgets and others Google services.  Like I said, I loved Google, it’s expertise, ease of use, tech savvy.  But now I am waiting on Google to restore my service.   And Google doesn’t seem to get it.   This was their mistake, not mine.  It was their company that was sabotaged, not mine. Yes, I could open a new account but it would not have the entire history of my business correspondance on it.  Google should be sending their customers roses and Godiva candy, not to mention apologies; they should be working around the clock to restore service…… particularly to some one like me who has been splitting ad revenue with them and receiving funds at a bank where I can identify the date and amount of the last deposit, the same system Paypal and others use to verify accounts.

So Google has definitely taken a hit in my judgment, not just because of the entire hacking and scam disaster.  Their handling of the crisis isn’t shaping up as well as it should either.  And I’m amazed the media hasn’t made a big deal of it.   So, as a blogger and citizen journalist, I thought I’d share this cautionary tale with you.  And I will keep you posted on the Google response and the ultimate outcome.  If some major media outlet doesn’t do it first.  Which would be fine with me.

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On The Cusp Of the Age Of Women?

If, as The New Agenda co-founder Amy Siskind suggests: “A fraternity of leadership has led our country into an economic crisis of epic proportions, ” will women be the ones to bail us out and put our financial house back in order?  As The New Agenda further points out:

The Times:  In an article titled Age of Testosterone comes to end in Iceland:

“Iceland, ravaged throughout history by volcanic eruptions and natural catastrophes, is struggling with a man-made disaster so overwhelming that the women are taking over. It is, they say here, the end of the Age of Testosterone.”

Next week a newly minted left-leaning Government led by Johanna Sigurdardottir will start to tackle the tough agenda of cleaning out the old-school-chum networks that have led Iceland to the verge of bankruptcy.
Half of her Cabinet will be women.”

New York Times op-ed: In an piece titled Mistresses of the Universe, Nicholas Kristof posits:

“At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, some of the most interesting discussions revolved around whether we would be in the same mess today if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters.“

What do you think?

Have the guys displayed a little too much testosterone and too little….. what shall we say…brains? balance? reserve?  How about common sense?  I would hazard a guess most women wouldn’t take $1 and bet $30 on it, like most U.S. banks have done, and which got us into this mess to begin with.  Unless they’re addicts.

Oh, I forgot.  You can get addicted to power and greed.  But women, for the most part, aren’t.  So it makes sense to give them a shot at cleaning up this mess the power players have made.

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Women of the Year – The Grit To Persist

I’m a big believer in proclaiming “Women of the Year.”  I believe in identifying positive role models to give us Hillary Clintonall something to aspire to.

It also helps to give us hope when some of our goals….such as electing a woman to the White House… seem, at times, to recede before us, like those refracted heat waves that appear to form shapes, then vanish in the desert, leaving us wondering where is our palm lined pool of shimmering water? Nothing but miles and miles of dry, hot desert when it comes to women’s presidential aspirations.  But, better to light a candle than curse the darkness.  The candles women have lit and carried in the past year, or a bit over in one case, include some of the following outstanding women:

The New York Daily News named their New Yorker of the Year saying: “Hillary Clinton proved a woman of resolve and class.”

We couldn’t agree more.  And she did a lot more than that.  She made it more feasible for a woman to run for President of the United States, and she upped the ante for contenders to 18 million votes.  But Clinton’s skills as a campaigner, we predict, will be overshadowed by her skills as a serious decision maker and global negotiator.  I, for one, am heartened and relieved that , at least, the second phone call which comes in at 3am will be to Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

I don’t believe in “book-ending” Governor Sarah Palin with Clinton, but neither do I believe in ignoring her plucky candidacy. She was called on and she took up the challenge, energizing her party and becoming a celebrity in the process. Common wisdom has it that she made Tina Fey a bigger celebrity in the process as well with her Saturday Night caricatures of Palin.  I don’t deny those caricatures were fun, of a type, but I will find them a lot funnier when we actually do have a woman in the White House.

I think we should give Queen Elizabeth of England some appreciation if, for nothing else, endurance.  She fills that classic Elizabeth II in 2007requirement: 50% of winning is “just showing up for the job”.  Queen Elizabeth has shown up for over 50 years, if you only count the years since her coronation. ( She also, for example, presided over public events and, during the war, trained as a driver and mechanic, and drove a military truck  making her the first, and so far only, female member of the Royal Family to actively serve in the armed forces.)

I met Benazir Bhutto in San Francisco in 2001, I believe.  Although there was some controversy surrounding her I always admired her and found her speaking inspiring. “Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state,[5] having twice been Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988–1990; 1993–1996). She was Pakistan‘s first and to date only female prime minister. She went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007, and was assassinated on 27 December 2007, after departing a PPP rally in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, two weeks before the scheduled Pakistani general election of 2008 where she was a leading opposition candidate. The following year she was named one of seven winners of the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.

Benazir Bhutto

I think Bhutto provides another example of a woman persisting in her beliefs and showing up in the face of personal danger. Although she died a few days before 2008, it is now time to mark the anniversary of her violent death.  I salute her and say farewell.

I know there are many, many more women who should be saluted and honored in 2008.

I would nominate all the women who worked so hard for their candidates in 2008.

I would nominate all the mothers and daughters and wives who worked to maintain their families and those who lost loved ones in national service in conflicts abroad.

I would nominate all of us who have persevered, despite an unlevel playing field and personal challenges.

I suspect that might be all of us.

If you have women you think should be named women of the year,  please do write and share with us who they are.

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How to Get Really Rich!

BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JANUARY 15: Real Estate t...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I hate just about all the articles and most of the books about “How To Get Rich in 6 Ridiculously Easy Steps” and everything remotely related to that genre.  Usually, on the Net at least, there’s a photo of a  24 year old in front of a glamorous swimming pool or standing on a beach in Hawaii, Diamond Head peaking up in the distance.  Of course, there’s no telling if the young man is simply occupying a room in the hotel with the swimming pool and the beach. ( Or even a waiter or busboy there.)

And a lot of you may have seen John Chow.com, self proclaimed “dot com” mogul, whose limitless ads about “making money online” look pretty cheesy to me.  But that’s just me.  His video on his website, The Dot Com Lifestyle, shows Chow, an ordinary looking guy in average clothes, walking his baby in an ordinary stroller to an ordinary park against a very average landscape.  Pretty unimpressive stuff. Certainly not the stuff of which dreams of vast wealth are made.  But who knows?  He just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to downplay whatever he may have since he runs an ad proclaiming “Learn How I Went From Zero to $40,000 A Month By Blogging and How You Can Too!  Hmmm…….

At least when Donald Trump tells you he’s rich you may argue about the details….. a couple of hundred million?…..a billion? …..a couple of bankruptcies?…..no, those are just his casinos, “less than 1% of his net worth“……. at least he’s got the flash and gaudy, gold plated grandeur to back it up.  He has real buildings and real hotels and beauty contests and employees to authenticate he’s worth a lot of something.

So, imagine my surprise when I came across this post by someone who actually seemed to have some life experience revealing how many people actually do get rich.

From what I know, author Paul Sloane really has it nailed. He doesn’t mention inheriting money, or marrying for money but I’m not going to quibble because I think he’s talking about how to go about making money if you have to work for it. ( Marrying for money could be considered work but we’ll save that for another post.)

Sloan starts off The Six Best Ways to Get Rich” by saying:” We tend to assume that if we work hard and save money then one day we will end up wealthy. This is wishful thinking. We are more likely to end up with some modest but useful savings. If you want to accumulate serious wealth then there a number of approaches you can use and some are much more effective than others. The best ways are as follows:”

I’m not going to detail all 6 ways.   I’m going to give you the two I think most likely for the majority of people.  But you can always go to Sloane’s post if you want to read the rest:

  1. “Start your own business and eventually sell it.This is the most effective and proven way to become rich. If you can find a new approach to a customer need and build a profitable business that addresses that need then you have created real value. It could be a cleaning business, a hairdresser’s, a consultancy or an investment bank. It will probably take years of very hard work to build up the enterprise. Most new businesses fail so the risks are high. You need all the skills, dynamism, perseverance and diligence of an entrepreneur. But if you can pull it off the potential rewards are huge. This is how many of the seriously wealthy people did it.” Of course most people don’t have the risk tolerance to start their own business and many lack the tenacity to stick with it, so this will be the minority.  But many believe it to be a happy minority because they are doing what they want and at the very least, have their independence.
  2. Join a start-up and get stock. Odds are low.  But if you think you might be lucky, go read Sloan’s post.
  3. Exploit your skill as a self-employed expert. Takes a lot of discipline to develop expertise. So, statistically, odds are low
  4. Develop property. Here’s a real winner.  Many people do it with their homes, just by buying in the right neighborhood and continuing to scale up at every opportunity.  Sloan says:”Buying, developing and selling property is a well-established way to build a significant capital position. One of the key elements is that by borrowing money you can gain leverage on your investment. Say you borrow $200,000 and put in $50,000 of your own to buy a property for $250,000. Then you develop the property and sell it for $400,000. The property has increased in value by 60% but your $50,000 has now grown fourfold to $200,000. You have to select the right properties in the right areas and develop them wisely. You are at risk from booms and busts in the property market. However, in the long term this remains a proven way to accumulate wealth.”  I can authenticate for you that this works.  It’s not as fast as winning a lottery but it’s a sure thing.  And you don’t lose all the friends who want to borrow money from you, if you win the lottery.
  5. Build a portfolio of stocks and shares. Many don’t have the discipline to accumulate a portfolio of stocks and hold on to it through wars and recessions.
Oh.  Now that I look at this post again I see that Sloan actually did mention the two I thought he’d forgotten  Number 6 is:
  • Inherit wealth. It helps if you were born to successful or wealthy parents but failing that, you could marry fortuitously!
But the first you have no control over and the second is not as easy as one might think.  So you may want to aim for starting your own business and buying a house you can afford in a great neighborhood, then putting a lot of energy into improving it over the years.
Do you have some other ways to get rich?  Or do you have some examples we can learn from? Send them in..
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Want To Survive? Forget Profits, Focus On Cash Flow

When I was starting out in business I had a difficult time understanding cash flow.  I thought in terms of profit.  Making the big score. Incredibly I saw people making big bucks but still teetering on the edge of disaster.  I saw business people who thought they could spend their way to success, and, instead crashed and burned.  I determined then that cash flow was a mystery I had to master if I wanted to succeed.

You may find it hard to believe there are individuals with $100,000 a month income who find, at the end of each month, they’re spent more than that. There are businesses in the same position. No matter how much cash comes in, it’s always possible to spend more. The reason some people and businesses bump into this reality is not because they are wanton spendthrifts, but because cash flow itself is a more fluid and dynamic process, more subtle and challenging to master than a simple balance sheet. But master it you must, if you want to be in control of your money; master it if you want to survive in business, because without cash, no one cares if you’re worth a million dollars on paper or in widgets, the doors will shut and you will be out of the game.

If you get a handle on the dynamics of your cash flow, that act alone will both improve your business and improve you as a manager, the beginning of a very positive and powerful cycle.

Jeff Cornwall has some thoughts on that in Why Cash is King:

“There are four key reasons why watching cash flow in a business is more important than ever.

First, you can anticipate greater uncertainty of sales over the next several months. Most businesses are seeing smaller and less frequent purchases by customers.

Where a strong cash position is particularly important is during “sales shocks,” which can occur when large, steady customers suddenly stop ordering. If this is because they have found a better price from a competitor, you have a chance to win them back. But, more and more businesses are waking up one morning to discover that one of their longtime customers has suffered a business failure.

Secondly, as I have written about in the past, bank credit is getting more difficult for small businesses to obtain and some entrepreneurs are beginning to have their loans called by their banks.

SBA loans are drying up

The news last week that the Small Business Administration loan program funding also is drying up makes finding credit even tougher. SBA loan funding is down more than 50 percent from this time last year. The SBA program offers guarantees for qualified small-business loans.

Third, just as your business may be feeling the effects of the economic slowdown, so are your suppliers. You should anticipate that your suppliers may begin to tighten their terms on trade credit to help shore up their cash flow.

Some may even begin to refuse to sell to you on credit, even if you have been paying on a timely basis in the past.

Finally, even in a bad economy you may find new opportunities. Don’t count on any external sources such as banks or investors to fund new initiatives.

If you do not have the cash to fund expanding into new products, new markets, or even to buy up struggling competitors, you may not be able to pursue these opportunities.

If you do not do so already, watch your cash flow statements very carefully. And if the business starts to have consistent negative cash flow, you need to also measure and monitor how long your current cash will last.

Develop weekly, monthly and quarterly cash budgets to help make decisions on which bills need to get paid, or can get paid, and when.”

As I mentioned in a previous post, using Mint.com to track your cash automatically might be a big help to watching over those nickles and dimes and greenbacks.  Because a Mint screen shows the cash you have on hand and the debts you owe….your credit cards, for example, it can be a bit of a bracing shock, if you have less cash on hand than the amount you owe, even though you’re paying your credit card debt off over time.  Nonetheless that shock of staring your finances square in the face and watching them shift may be the shock you need to swing into action, get vigilant, get thrifty, make changes and survive.

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Mint.com Revisted

Recently, when I wrote a post about Mint.com, – Think Outside The Box : Get A Free Online Financial Guru – I promised to get back to you and report on  my experience using it.

In a nutshell I loved it. And I guess a lot of others do, too, as Mint.com has 250,000 users.  ( No, I don’t own stock in the company although I wish I did.)  Mint.com is the largest and fastest growing personal finance application on the web and I gather, perhaps the most award winning. Mint.com (www.mint.com), , was named by PC World as one of the 100 Best Products of 2008 for its innovative online money management service and has received two Webby awards since their September, 18, 2007 launch,

Fast Company tells us: “the same day Mint went live ,it won $50,000 in the TechCrunch40, a demo derby run by Web impresario Jason Calacanis. Two weeks later, Mint won best in show at Finovate 2007, a personal-finance confab. It also signed up more than 40,000 users in the two weeks after launch.”

Just as aside, in case you’re interested….if you’re not, skip on down to the next paragraph, Mint has the pedigree to die for: the management team includes industry veterans drawn from the ranks of Charles Schwab & Co., eBay, Expedia, Intuit, and PGP . Investors include top venture capital firms and individuals associated with companies including Blue Nile, Google, Intuit, PassMark Security, PayPal, Yahoo! and others. Whoa, that’s a lot of brain power in one room!  But the really important thing for me, and I think for you too, is that Mint.com is easy and useful.

Easy

I think Mint.com is so popular because it’s so easy. After entering your bank and credit card info, ( with Mint using the same 3rd party security that banks and credit card companies use, you never to do anything else except look at the information you want. You never need to import or synch your data as Mint does that for you in real time. It categorizes transactions; provides a unified view of all account activity; alert you to low balances, bank fees, upcoming bills, and even potentially suspicious account activity; and give personalized suggestions for significant savings opportunities.

Useful

Being able to click on one screen and see where you are in all your accounts at a glance is the second reason it’s so popular and the one that completely won me over.

I’m thinking now I may even be able to make a  hard and fast budget in my personal life, and prompted by alerts and items which pop up letting you know where you’re spending the most money…..thank goodness it wasn’t something fluffy and outrageous like Tiffany’s or, on a more modest scale, Starbucks.  My overages, if I were to have completed a budget, are pretty practical: Mint knows that HEB is my grocery store where I also buy things like detergent. ( Also, thank goodness, I haven’t been to the Apple store since I started using Mint.com, and if I ever finally gear up to buy a Kindle electonic reader from Amazon I wonder if that will be classified as “books” or electronic toys?  Perhaps I shouldn’t do the budget until after I get a Kindle.)

What do you think?  Have you used Mint.com yet?  If you have or if you do, please write and tell us about it.

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List Of The Best Christmas Shopping Credit Card Deals and 0% APR Offers

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The Best Christmas Shopping Credit Card Deals and Offers.

It’s almost that time of year again….stores are already brimming with lighted Christmas trees, holiday displays and specials… where, bleak economic times or not, we all have to prepare to go shopping for our loved ones at Christmas or whatever their holiday celebration.  Now most of us are probably keeping a tight grip on our wallets, plastic and checkbooks, in preparation for even more gloom and doom from Maria Bartiromo, and belt tightening tips from Suzie Orman.  So here’s a very valuable list from Money Blue Book to help you preserve cash and credit and make it somewhat if not entirely unscathed through your holiday purchasing bout.

List Of The Best Credit Card Reward Offers and 0% APR Deals For Christmas Holiday Shopping

Here is my list of the best Christmas shopping reward credit cards (I’ve bolded the percentage rate you will most likely earn for purchases made at online stores and at most brick and mortar department stores and malls):

  1. Blue Cash® From American Express – Get up to 5% cash back for everyday purchases like groceries and gas, and up to 1.5% for everything else when you exceed $6,500 worth of usage. Prior to that you’ll earn 1% cashback.
  2. Starwood Preferred® Guest American Express Card – Get 1 point for every $1 spent, redeemable for versatile hotel and airline travel rewards. Potential to earn up to a potential 1.25% back with bonuses.
  3. Discover More Card – Get 5% cash back bonuses in purchase categories like department stores, travel, home improvement, gas, groceries, and restaurants, 5% to 20% cash back at retailers through Discover’s online shopping site, and 1% unlimited rewards for everything else. Earn a $50 bonus when you make $500 in purchases within 3 months, and with Discover’s special Christmas promotion, you can get $20 back for every $200 that you spend at participating mall locations.
  4. Chase Freedom(SM) – Get 3% bonus cash back on gas, groceries, and fast food purchases for the first 6 months. Earn 1% cash back on everything else with unlimited rewards, no spending cap, no restrictions, and no expiration date.
  5. Citi Premier Pass Master Card – Get 10,000 bonus points after $300 in purchases made within 3 months of account opening, and earn 1 point for every dollar spent (1% back), redeemable for airline travel rewards.
  6. Citi Cash Returns Card – Get a full 1% cash back on every purchase plus an average 5% cash back at 400 retailers within the Citi Bonus Cash Center, along with an extra 20% bonus for the first 12 months.
  7. HSBC Weekend Card – Earn 2% cash back rewards on everything you buy on Saturday and Sunday. During the rest of the week, you get 1% cash back for everything, with unlimited reward earning potential.
  8. HSBC Platinum Mastercard Cash Back Rewards - Earn up to a potential of 2% cash back with a limit of $400 worth of rewards, or 1% unlimited cashback on all purchases depending on qualification level.
  9. Capital One® No Hassle Cash(SM) Rewards Card – Get 2% cash back on purchases at gas stations and major grocery and drug stores, and 1% cash back on all other purchases, with no earning limit or expiration.
  10. Fidelity Investment Rewards Visa Signature Card – Enjoy a full 1.5% back on all purchases with no merchant restrictions. Points can be redeemed for cash and deposited into your Fidelity brokerage account.

Credit Cards That Offer 0% APR Rates For Interest Free Purchases (Ideal For Christmas Shopping)

  1. Advanta Platinum 90-Day Interest Free Business Card – Permanent 90 day interest free grace period on all purchases. This special Advanta credit card grace period offer is recurring and continuous year after year.
  2. American Express Blue – 0% APR for purchases (up to 12 months)
  3. American Express Blue Cash® – 0% APR for purchases (up to 12 months)
  4. American Express Blue Sky® – 0% APR for purchases (up to 12 months)
  5. American Express Platinum Business Credit Card - 0% APR for purchases (12 months)
  6. American Express Clear Card – 0% APR for purchases (12 months)
  7. Capital One Platinum Card – 0% for purchases and balance transfers (Up until October 2009)
  8. Capital One No Hassle Cash Rewards Card – 0% for purchases (until October 2009)
  9. Chase Flexible Rewards Platinum Visa – 0% for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
  10. Chase Perfect Card – 0% APR for purchases and balance transfers (both 6 months)
  11. Chase Platinum Visa Card – 0% APR for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
  12. Citi Diamond Preferred Card – 0% APR for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
  13. Citi Platinum Select Card – 0% APR for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
  14. Citi Business Card - 0% APR for purchases (12 months)
  15. Citi Business Card With ThankYou Network – 0% APR rate for all purchases (12 months).  Extra bonus offer of 10,000 ThankYou® Points after $250 in purchases, redeemable for a $100 gift card.
  16. Discover More Card – 0% APR for purchases (6 months) and balance transfers (12 months)
  17. Discover More Card – Clear – 0% APR for purchases (6 months) and balance transfers (12 months)
  18. Discover Open Road Card – 0% APR for purchases (6 months) and balance transfers (12 months)
  19. First National Business Edition Visa Card – 0% APR offer for purchases (12 months)
  20. HSBC Weekend Card -  0% promo rate for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
  21. HSBC Platinum Mastercard Cash Back Rewards - 0% interest rate for purchases and balance transfers (both 12 months)
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Tough Times Make For Desperate People: Don’t Fall For Scams

Telemarketers!

Image by Cayusa via Flickr

Not only do people get desperate.  Companies do, too.

Some offer to reduce your credit card debt for a fee.

Some prey on people whose homes are being foreclosed.  For a fee, this person or business, will make that crisis disappear.  But, usually, the only thing that disappears is your money.  In one case in San Antonio, Texas, a couple lost the home they’d raised their family in after paying an unscrupulous business owner more than they owed the mortgage company.  This, after the business owner had already gotten and agreed to a “Cease and Desist Order” from a court over just this kind of predatory behavior.

These are scams pure and simple.

Perhaps it’s too harsh to call all of these enticing propositions scams.  But when you analyze some of the things companies, even very large, respectable companies, are asking you to do, they certainly could be classified as much better deals for them than for you.

Last week my mortgage company asked me if I’d like to pay 2% less interest and several hundred dollars less a month in my mortgage payment, for no fee from them.  Naturally, I said “Sure!”  But when I received the paperwork yesterday, it turned out there were over $10,000 of additional fees, added into the mortgage payment.  Yes, over the life of the loan I’d be paying less interest, but it would take me 40 payments, or 3 years and 3 months to get back to where I am today.  Was that a good deal?  For the mortgage company, yes.

Seth Godin in Too good to be true (the overnight millionaire scam) writes about the scams that crop up in tough times and the imperative to avoid being suckered in by them:

“Times are tough, and many say they are going to be tougher. That makes some people more focused, it turns others desperate.

You may be tempted at some point to try to make a million dollars. To do it without a lot of effort or skill or risk. Using a system, some shortcut perhaps, or mortgaging something you already own.

There are countless infomercials and programs and systems that promise to help you do this. There are financial instruments and investments and documents you can sign that promise similar relief from financial stress.

Resist.

There are four ways to make a million dollars. Luck. Patient effort. Skill. Risk.

(Five if you count inheritance, and six if you count starting with two million dollars).

Conspicuously missing from this list are effortless 1-2-3 systems that involve buying an expensive book or series of tapes. Also missing are complicated tax shelters or other ‘proven’ systems. The harder someone tries to sell you this solution, the more certain you should be that it is a scam. If no skill or effort is required, then why doesn’t the promoter just hire a bunch of people at minimum wage and keep the profits?

There are literally a million ways to make a good living online, ten million ways to start and thrive with your own business offline. But all of these require effort, and none of them are likely to make you a million dollars.

Short version of my opinion: If someone offers to sell you the secret system, don’t buy it. If you need to invest in a system before you use it, walk away. If you are promised big returns with no risk and little effort, you know the person is lying to you. Every time.

Has anyone tried to scam you?  Write and share your experience.  It will help all of us to have a common pool of scams to avoid.


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Think Outside The Box : Get A Free Online Financial Guru

Tough times have arrived.  Time to think outside the box.

Do you ever spend more than you should?  Let your bank account get too low?  Put off budgeting?  Forget or delay paying off those high interest credit cards? Who doesn’t?

What we could all use is a a financial planner/ manager who will take care of all those myriad money details for us.  But who can afford that?  You can.  We all can.  Because Mint is free.

Mint – Manages Your Money

http://www.mint.com/

“Mint is fresh, intelligent online money management. Not only is Mint free, it saves you money….

With Mint , you can achieve better online financial management in less than five minutes. After that, … Mint money management software does the rest, with virtually no more work required. It automatically pulls together your bank, credit union and credit card data, and provides up–to–date and amazingly accurate views of your financial—life from the big picture to specific details, in a friendly and intuitive way.”

How Does Mint Work ?

Mint connects to more than 5,000 US financial institutions. Your account information is updated daily. Mint automatically categorizes all your purchases, showing you how much you spend on gas, groceries, parking, rent, restaurants, DVD rentals and more, with amazing precision.

Secure: Mint provides bank–level data security and industry–leading identity protection. Its security and privacy have been validated by VeriSign and TRUSTe. Users sign up with nothing more than a valid e-mail address, password, and zip code, then enter login credentials for supported financial institutions. Mint doesn’t store any of these credentials, working instead with Yodlee, a third-party financial aggregation service provider that’s provides similar services for “top” US financial institutions. Mint uses 128-bit SSL encryption to communicate with Yodlee and pull your transaction data. Mint never knows your identity.Their level of security is much the same as Paypal.com, eBay.com, your bank or many of the other online companies to whom you’ve given your financial information.

Mint Is Your Financial Traffic Cop/Watchdog

An advanced alerting system highlights any unusual activity, low balances, unwanted fees and charges, and upcoming bills so you’re in constant contact with your money. Plus, Mint is proactive—alerting you when you are exceeding your personal budget, have a low balance, need to pay a bill, and more.

Mint Is Your Sharp Eyed Accountant Looking for Savings

In addition, Mint goes beyond visibility and analysis providing personalized money–saving and money–making suggestions. Mint provides users an average of $1,000 in savings opportunities during their first session. Mint is constantly working to find you savings. Mint keeps looking for new ways for you to save every day—continuously comparing your needs to product, service and bank offerings most relevant to you. ( Of course, the companies who are making the offers are also financing the program, Mint, so you don’t have to….to you it’s free.  Just bear that in mind when you evaluate the offer.)

Mint is Your Always On, Anywhere/anytime access, Free Financial Planner

These are some of the goals Mint can help you with.

Perhaps in some ways we all practice a little avoidance ( perhaps even denial) when it comes to our finances.  Do we really want to know how much we spend eating out or whatever our personal indulgences are? Maybe not.  Or, at least, maybe not by choice.  But a recession is upon us and, for most of us, there is not only the possibility but the real likelihood that the champagne will not be flowing and the airline tickets won’t be raining on our heads.  One way or another, we should all be contemplating the recession time strategy of tightening our belts, lowering our expenditures and increasing our savings to ride out this gathering storm. I, for one am going to be trying Mint to see if it can help me achieve some of those those financial goals I’ve procrastinated about.  Where else can I get a financial guru I don’t have to pay, feed, meet with or take to an expensive lunch?

If you try Mint, please do write us and share what you think and how it’s working for you.  If you have any other online, automated financial guru you’d like to recommend, please do.

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