Personal Finance Blog

Tips And Stories To Help You With Managing Money

Punahou High School Graduates Invited to Comment

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Inviting all Punahou high school graduates to comment about their favorite Punahou memory.  That includes any Punahou graduates that may even be running for President of the United States, running large corporations or just kicking back on the beach.   A large group of alumni are gathering on LinkedIn to network with one another, so don’t miss out on the opportunity to join us.

Hawaii was certainly a wonderful place to attend high school. Memories of high school events somehow seem to fade away with the sunset.  Anyone have fond memories of beach parties, prom nights, the Punahou carnival, malasadas, ferris wheels or lily ponds?

Comment below to share your most memorable time with Punahou. 

old school hall at Punahou High School
Old School Hall, Punahou Campus

Punahou High School
Pauahi Hall, Punahou Campus

Blogging Tips Plugin for WordPress

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Blogging has become a popular way of building a website and many times that website can become a lucrative business.  Getting ideas to write about becomes difficult for some people and after they have written their first ten posts, they don’t know what to write about. They need blogging tips.

One of the first plugins to be written for Word Press was a plugin called, “Hello, Dolly.”  Similar to the Hello Dolly format, which puts a line of lyrics in the upper right hand space in the Word Press Administration screen, the blogging tips plugin displays random blogging tips and suggestions. The tips are just some ideas of what you can do to improve the popularity of your blog and improve the content.  All of the tips are designed to inspire you to be a better blogger.

It is easy to install plugins to your blog.  You just download the zipped file and then open the folder on your computer.  You read the installation instructions and then just upload one file to your blog.  You will put it in the folder called plugins which is under the folder called wp-content.  Then you look for the file in your plugins directory within your Word Press back office and find the plugin called “Blogging Tips.” You click on activate. Be sure you deactivate the Hello Dolly plugin if you are currently using that. Enjoy the plugin.

Add a little fun to your Word Press blog and download this plugin for blogging tips.

What does it cost?

I am releasing this WordPress Plugin with Blogging Tips into the blogging community as donation-ware.

However, these plugins do take time to write, update, and provide support … so if you find it useful then please consider making a donation. You just click the button below and it will direct you to PayPal. You can donate any amount you wish.

Nine Million People in the United States are Millionaires

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According to www.cnbc.com, some of the nine million people feel poor.  They are the “middle class” millionaires.  Laurel Touby, a successful internet entrepreneur, who recently sold her website www.mediabistro.com for $23 million could be one of them. She tells CNBC that she is not that rich.

Laurel Touby
Laurel Touby

Money Making Idea

She wanted to build a website to include a community for the media where there were job listings, bulletin boards, classes,  and a freelance marketplace.  She raised money for her website by hosting parties where she invited editors, writers, and other content creators.  Her parties went on and on and her contacts grew to thousands. Now, her website is worth $23 million, with an Alexa page ranking  of  5,275 , which means that the number of visitors she gets is within the top 100,000 most popular sites in the world. There are  2,745 websites linking to mediabistro.com.

She sold her website in July of 2007 to Jupiter Media. She called her rich friends to see what they recommended she buy with her newly acquired wealth.  When she was told to invest in a jet, she laughed and thought that if she did that, her money could be gone in an instant.

See how the really rich live

According to CNBC.com, a financial news site,  “In 1985, there were 13 billionaires in the United States and today there are over 1,000 billionaires.” CNBC has a special page devoted to videos and information about the investment bankers, hedge fund managers and private equity partners who make up the .001% of our population.  What toys do they play with? Perhaps a Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, or Dusenberg would pacify them? Find out how many cars Tim Durham, a 45 year old financier from Indiana has in his garage.

Job Search Remedies

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Do you hate to perform a job search?  Does it make you sick just thinking about searching for a job? Well, you are not alone. People who have worked their entire lives at a business and then get laid off or fired are at a loss when it comes to searching for another job. It may have been over 20 years since the person has written a resume.

Here are some job search remedies for you.
Find someone else to write your resume

Avoid the pain of writing your resume by asking someone else to write it.  Of course you can pay someone to write it at Monster.com.  For $249 you can get a cover letter and resume written for you. Tackle the job of writing your resume as soon as possible.  If you put it off, you are losing months of time in getting that job.  Don’t sweat it too much though because there are websites that can actually give you ideas about writing your resume.

Job Search Websites

  • LinkedIN provides you with search features for the zip code you live in and is a networking website of professional business people.
  • Monster.com will allow you to build your resume online or upload your own.  They also offer professional resume writing for you.
  • Indeed.com is actually a job search engine.  As of July 25, they had posted 141,178 new jobs in the past 7 days. It searches job sites, newspapers, associations and company career pages.

When you are looking for a job, it is easy to get overwhelmed with advice. Try just a few of these ideas to see if they will remedy your job searching headaches.  Leave us some of your suggestions to add to this article.

Rent a Movie

Fun With Dick and Jane
Fun With Dick and Jane

You may be depressed about your job loss, but watching this movie will make you think about your situation in a new light. This movie will move you from the couch to the floor because you are laughing so hard.

Falling into debt is like falling into quicksand

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Debt is quickly becoming America’s ball and chain. The personal credit card debt held by consumers as of July 10, 2008 is $5,312,998,074,837.08. That is $5.3 trillion dollars of personal debt.

So you are not alone in your struggles to control your debt. The whole nation is right along with you.

Reasons to avoid debt

  • The weight it causes on your day-to-day functioning can be extremely burdensome.
  • Problems arise because sometimes it takes years to actually feel the pinch and pain you have gotten yourself into.
  • The credit card companies delight in your failure. They make things so easy for you to get into debt and they love it. One day, you make be sinking so fast, you can’t get out.

    • Track your spending

    Hopefully you take managing money seriously and actually look and keep track of how much money is coming in and how much money is going out of your accounts. Being oblivious to this critical factor is what keeps people at debt’s beck and call.

    If you were to relate this feeling to gaining weight, assuming that you didn’t have a medical problem that was causing weight gain, the day-to-day input builds up and soon you’ve discovered you’ve put on 20 pounds.

    Stop getting further into debt

    Have the courage to look at what is causing you to go into debt. Sometimes it takes a little cheering from others to encourage you to start making a strategic debt reducing plan.

    Learn from the debt control experts

    Dr. John DeMartini, teaches debt management principles that are so simple that anyone can remember and practice them. If I were to sum up his philosophy it would be: “If you emotionalize money, it goes. If you put strategies with it, it grows.”  That philosophy is so true.

    Pay your debts on time

    Automate your credit card payments using online bill paying with your local bank. Life so frequently just gets going and people forget to put payments in the mail. Don’t let being forgetful be the cause of late payments. Late payments can ruin your credit.

    Order a free credit report

    A recent amendment to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act requires each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies “ Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months. 

    The Federal Trade Commission offers you a free credit report, so take advantage of it and find out what problems you may be having with your credit.

    Make a plan and move on

    Perhaps the worst thing to do when you are in financial trouble is to give up.  It’s also the easiest and certainly it’s understandable.  However, when you give up, life just gets worse. It might seem like you have little or no control over your situation, but in reality, the opposite is true.  

    William Ernest Henley, in the late 1800’s, said, “I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.” Your attitude determines your future. Make a plan to track your finances, pay your bills on time and take charge of your debt reduction plan today.

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