Category Archives: work and money

Apr 24 2012

MOVING EXPENSES

Posted on by

Thanks for the guest post by Jonathan Curtis

I finally got our taxes done this week! Whew, was that a pain in the butt! I used my clearinternet to submit them electronically, which was nice. Being able to submit them electronically was just about the only nice thing that went along with our taxes this year. My husband and I recently relocated for his job and I couldn’t believe how much money that we spent moving! It made me sick. After I added up all of the totals, it turns out that we spent well over five thousands dollars! We thought that we were saving money, but we actually lost a lot of money. We rented a UHaul rather than get a mover. The truck cost sixteen hundred dollars to rent. We totaled up the entire amount of money that we spent on gas for the UHaul and to drive our two cars here, the grand total was eighteen hundred dollars!! Gas prices are killing me! I also calculated how much money we spent staying in hotel rooms. I just wish that I had all of that money back. It made me so sad! I wish that moving and life wasn’t so expensive!

Jan 23 2012

Trying to have my creative voice in writing

Posted on by

Guest post written by Tim Hall

I’ve never been great at drawing or painting, but something that my teachers always told me in school was that I was a good writer. Sometimes I wish that I had gone into writing as a profession but that’s much easier said than done. Well, now I’m going to try and pick it up again as a way to have some fun.

I’ve been doing my research to see exactly how I can really get started creative writing in the right way. While I was online looking for some tips, I ran across the site www.debtsettlementfamily.com. After I looked through it a little bit I decided to use it to help our family get out of debt. I want to set a good financial example for our kids and I think this would be a great step towards that.

I have found all kinds of great tips online about how to really get started with creative writing. I mentioned something about it to my kids, so they got me a nice little journal for Christmas. It was so sweet because they had really paid attention to know to get that. I plan to fill up that and many journals.

Jan 18 2012

Refinancing to Save Money

Posted on by

Buying a house seemed like a daunting task. I worked really hard to find the best rates and looked at a few places like Housing Wire to get ideas about what was going on in the market at the time.  I was very pleased with the outcome of my mortgage rates and even happier with the house that I was able to purchase.

I’ve  been working on paying off my mortgage for awhile now and am trying to make sure that I can get some decent refinance rates. I’m hoping to lower my monthly payments so that I can pay for a few other expenses during the month, especially those pertaining to my daughter.  Lady Bug has expressed interest in playing some team sports and I know those leagues aren’t free to join.

The FHA refinance rates are a lot better than I had hoped. If I’m approved for the new loan, I think I will save a few thousand dollars and pay off my credit cards. I really hate being in debt. I’m just happy that most of all my debt is because I’m a home owner, and not because I went and had a shopping spree on things like expensive shoes.

Jan 4 2012

Marketing Ideas

Posted on by

Gone are the days when people only advertise on paper through mailers, posters, and fliers.  Now many companies rely on the internet to do a large portion of their marketing online.  On almost every website I visit I see an advertisement for something.  It’s difficult not to run into advertising in social media.  Many companies even have their own Facebook pages and use Twitter.  Don’t  get me wrong, television, radio, and print are all still viable avenues to deliver successful advertising.

In order to get some good ideas about what I can do for a few things at work, I did some research online looking at an advertising agency.  I was able to get some really terrific ideas.  The company I examined provides internet marketing, social media marketing, and mixed media marketing. A mixture of all of these media outlets would be perfect for my company, and is exactly what we need.

I think it might be easier if we just hire one of the companies I researched for ideas rather than trying to recreate everything all on my own.  The agency I took a good look at seems to provide a custom package tailored to whatever our company needs.  Another thing they provide is analysis of the marketing strategies they implement to study their effectiveness.  I know that having charts and graphs filled with data to explain if something is working the way I planned it to or not will really make me feel comfortable about schilling out my companies money on advertising.

Sep 15 2011

Dealing with Insurance Reps

Posted on by

I was on the phone with the insurance company all morning. They had tons of questions to ask me about the accident and my life. I thought it was strange that they asked me what the nature of my trip was, where I was going, and what I was doing. I don’t really see how that has anything to do with their client smashing into my car and totaling it.

The questions just kept on coming. What was my employment status, my salary and job duties, and lost wages. I suppose they need to know this to cover the days I’ve been out of work. They also need to determine if me being out is reasonable based on my job duties.  I have to have my supervisor fill out some paper work and fax it in for verification.

They sure are making me jump through a lot of hoops for all of this.