Archives for March 2010

Control What You Can To Improve Your Life

March 8, 2010 By Sherry Tingley

I have been to my local gym to exercise, swim and use their public steam bath many times. One of my favorite things about this experience is to enjoy ten minutes of sitting in the steam bath. The heat and moisture make me feel good and more energetic during the rest of my day.

One of the things I hate about the steam bath is that many many times I’ve sat in the steam bath when there is barely any steam at all. I’ve watched people use various methods of trying to get the steam regulator to cool down, thus triggering the release of more steam. The small regulating device is strategically placed at a height of 6 1/2 feet and must be all of about 3/4 of an inch wide. Some people are successful at getting it to restart the steam. They were either taller than I was or had a better water bottle.

If you have ever tried to actually squirt water out of a drinking container, you’ll know that the water doesn’t go very far and accuracy is difficult to obtain. I have thought many times in the past as I was sitting in the steam bath that I should buy a cheap water gun and see if that would work. I had the idea months ago, but today I actually went to buy the water gun and make it part of the necessary piece of equipment for my exercise routine.

I walked into the steam room. There were about six people sitting there and the steam looked like it was on its way to fizzling out. I sat down and inquired about the steam. I was told that it had just stopped but had previously been fine. I took my little water gun, filled with tap water and proceeded to take aim at the regulator. My first few attempts seemed to miss the bulls eye, but I continued until I could see that it was hitting it and felt that it had been sufficiently soaked. I walked to the seating area and within ten seconds the steam started coming forth with vigor. It provided the group with the best steam bath. In fact it got so hot in there that several people left.

What I learned from this experience is that if there is something that you can control to improve your life, do it. Don’t just think about it. Do it. The next time I go to the gym, I feel confident that I will be able to enjoy the best steam bath possible at the time that I want it to and it cost me 99 cents. That is really sweet.

When you work on the Internet and devote your days to building your business, many things that you choose to do can grow your business. However there are a slew of things that you can do that will not help you in the least. You have most likely already spent hours and hours getting distracted from your main Internet goals in the past. Choose to do something that you know will help. Are you offering people better information? Are you offering them a reason to link to your site? Are you improving anything about your services and letting people know?

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her. But once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game. ~ Voltaire

Expect the Unexpected With Internet Startups

March 7, 2010 By Sherry Tingley

Great Expectations

I have cut, sliced and diced hundreds of onions. So many that when I cut this onion open and saw these funny faces smiling back at me, I had to laugh. I was amazed at how perfect these images seemed. To refresh my memory of what onions normally look like, I cut into another onion and found the look I usually find – one center and concentric circles. This onion produced two smiley faces. Totally unexpected! Sometimes it is better to expect the unexpected.

In any business people try to predict their success and rely on statistics to back up their predictions. With the Internet this method doesn’t always work.

Many people start Internet businesses and plan to be successful. They’ve got a great business idea and they invest money and time towards building the business. They literally do everything they can do. What sometimes happens is that they don’t get enough traffic to sustain the business and they stop trying. This is not what they expected.

The Unexpected

On the other hand there are people who start an Internet business and have no expectations of being wildly successful, but they enjoy trying new things and testing different methods of getting their business to work. They actual stumble upon little ideas and little tricks that end up making their business earn more money. Repeating this as a regular work habit can make the site profitable.

Think about your expectations of your Internet business. Is it going well or is it a project that you have abandoned?

In a search for “websites that fail” an article was listed called The number 1 Reason Why Most Websites Fail. You would expect this site to tell you about reasons sites fail, however this site was an example of failure. Mistakes on the page were causing major errors that failed to pull in the correct information in five different areas. This is the advice they give.

Websites do fail. Lots of them fail. You will see many of them every day. Some of them fail to inspire or enthuse. Some fail to get found at all. Some fail to get completed. Some fail to understand the needs of the people visiting them. But there is an underlying common reason for all these failings..

This site expected to be an authority on why websites fail, but lost credibility because their own site was failing. That wasn’t what was expected.

Finding Success With Internet Start Ups

In 1969, Honeywell International Inc. developed a computer that sold for $10,600. It was advertised as a kitchen computer because back then, the engineers decided that the only reason people would want to use a personal computer at home was to store recipes. That was what they expected people to wanted to do. Not one of the computers they designed sold. Did they expect that when developing this product? I’m quite sure they didn’t.

When you start your business on the Internet remember to expect the unexpected. It will give you patience while you work on your site and build it and continue to build it. Success for you may be right around the corner.

As Alexander Smith, a Scottish poet

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place to-day, it is vain to seek it there to-morrow. You can not lay a trap for it.
~ Alexander Smith, Scottish poet

Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience.
~Masaru Ibuka, co-founder of Sony Corporation

Sometimes it is better to expect the unexpected.

Organize Your Financial Life

March 4, 2010 By Sherry Tingley

Keeping your financial life in order is one way to get yourself on the pathway to being wealthy. When you have a pile of bills and paper work cluttering up your office, it is likely that you don’t know what is coming in and going out. You have relinquished control when you are in that state. If you have one huge plastic bin that you throw all your mail in you’ll want to update your system.

If someone needed your tax returns for the past year, could you locate them easily? If you needed your social security card, birth certificate or will, would you know where they are?

Have you left instructions for your family members to retrieve important financial information in case you passed away? Do they know where your life insurance policies, bank accounts or your property deeds are located? Dealing with the death of a loved one is difficult enough without putting the burden of locating your important information on the shoulders of your children, relatives or friends.

Create a filing system that will be easy for you to use and tell your family where you’ve put your important papers. A filing system is important for keeping tabs on your investments, your tax returns, your will, your insurance information and other legal documents. Is your system going to help you locate the important papers when they are needed? Most people understand how helpful a filing system is once they have it working for them.

What do you do with your mail? There are so many advertisements and junk mail that accumulate. It’s best to deal with this trash on a daily basis. If you have mail that you want to get rid of, be sure to use a shredding machine. Important information can be on unwanted mail. There are people who make a point of rummaging through trash to get this information and that can put you in serious risk for identity fraud. You don’t want that to happen to you.

What about bills that come in? Where do you put them before you pay them? With the online banking services available you can simply take the bill and set up a scheduled payment for it that will be sent out when you choose it to be sent. Then destroy the bill if you don’t need it for any record keeping. If you can keep up with the mail and bills coming in with a system that is orderly, you’ll avoid a lot of late payment fees and be able to use the money you earn more effectively.

No plan is going to work for you if you don’t actually do it and with money matters, some people just hate dealing with organizing this information. Even looking at a credit card bill can feel devastating. If you’ve had spending sprees that you regret, you won’t even want to open your credit card bills.

It may be difficult for you to imagine what is going to get you back in control of your financial life. The most important thing to do is to have the courage to create a good system that works for you. Get rid of the large bin that you toss your mail into and forget about for weeks on end. Get back on the pathway to wealth by creating a system that works for you. You’ve done much harder things in the past. Organizing your finances is one way to treat yourself well and gain back a feeling of peace in your life.

Banking with an FDIC-Insured Bank

March 1, 2010 By Sherry Tingley

It is hard to trust anyone these days especially when it comes to money. Money talk is always serious talk which means that people are very stringent when it comes to where they will be putting their money. In these hard times, this is already the norm since money is so hard to earn that it’s almost impossible for someone to just put money anywhere. But what if you want to put your savings in the bank? Would putting your money in the bank be a much safer choice rather than just leaving it home in your closet?

Established in 1933, the FDIC or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has served as a safety net for bank depositors. Ever since its inception, no depositor has lost a single dime from their FDIC-insured funds. The independent agency of the US government does not only insure US citizens, they insure other citizens from other countries as well as long as the banks they bank with are insured by FDIC.

An FDIC-insured account means that your bank account is backed by the US government in full credit and full faith. This reputation is something that other insurers cannot offer. Operating for over 70 years now, the FDIC is the people’s support system when or if their banks close. The insurance limit for every account you open in an insured bank is $250,000. The agency however does not insure money invested in mutual funds, stocks, bonds, life insurance policies, municipal securities, and annuities even if the said investments are made in insured banks. The other types of accounts that the FDIC does not cover are safe deposit boxes and their contents. US treasury bills, notes or bonds are not insured by the FDIC as well but they are backed by the US government.

But what does this deposit insurance cover?

FDIC-insured accounts range from checking, savings, money market deposit, to time deposits and negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW). The depositors given this insurance are those who bank with insured banks. Banking with an FDIC-insured bank means your money is protected dollar for dollar. If you own two accounts in two different banks and these banks are FDIC-insured, it means that your two accounts also have the FDIC protection. This means that if these two banks close, you will have an insurance of $250, 000 for each account. If you have two accounts in one bank, you will not get two FDIC insurance, just one.

The standard maximum deposit insurance amount also known as the SMDIA allocates $250, 000 per depositor in every insured bank. This insurance will run through until December 13, 2013. By 2014, the said allocation per depositor will go back to $100,000 except for certain retirement accounts which will retain their $250, 000 per depositor insurance in every insured bank.

Banking with an FDIC-insured bank means that you as the depositor will receive insurance if the bank closes all of a sudden. Although this is something that most of us never imagine to happen, it is better to be safe than sorry.