Great advice on finding great wine

I personally love a nice glass of wine but being a bit of a tight wad I don’t like to over pay for it.  So I was really happy to find a website called 10 Dollar Wine that specializes in reviewing and recommending inexpensive wine.  Now at first I was a bit skeptical of the name of this site, I mean “10 Dollar Wine” does not conjure up images of great wines.

Well I held back my skepticism and gave the site a shot, that was a good move.  As the name of the site suggests they are all about bottles of wine that cost ten dollars a bottle or less.  I actually found they do review some wines that are in the 12-15 dollar range as well.

Each wine is rated on a unique scale that is as follows,

• Highest Recommendation
• Highly Recommended
• Recommended
• Good
• Acceptable
• Not Recommended

You can view the entire explanation of their wine rating system for more information.  Each review compares the wine to other similar wines, tells you who would like or dislike it based on other tastes and gives some food paring ideas.  To me the most valuable advices it they tell you if they would buy the wine again and if they would keep any in their wine rack.

After reading some reviews I realized I have tried many of these wines and tended to agree with much of what they had to say.  I have to say this is a great site for finding and saving money on great low cost wines.  I like to enjoy the finer things in life like wines with out paying to much.  Now here is the best part this site apart from some advertising is informational only.  Most of these wines can be found in grocery stores, wine shops etc.  They really aren’t selling anything, just great free advice.  Put this one in your book marks and join their mailing list.

Now is the time to refinance your mortgage

Let me be clear that I think the continued suppression of interest rates by The Fed is a mistake.    All I believe is going to happen is more delay to the recession/depression we have to go through and right now delay simply means when it fully hits it will be worse due to the delay.

That doesn’t mean you can’t be smart and benefit from this.  If your interest rate is more then 3/4s of a point then current rates odds are in about a week or so you will get the chance to shave a point or more off it.  The Fed seems committed to yet another cut either in the next few days or at the end of the money the next time they meet.   I have the following advice for people in different categories.

1.  If your rate is above 6 percent odds are you can cut your payment a significant amount with a refinance in the next few weeks.  If you have the credit to qualify and if it saves you money, do it.

2.  If you have decent equity in your home 30-60K or more and if you owe 10-20k in consumer debt and if your rate is at, near or above 6 percent you may have the opportunity to refinance, pay off your debt and pay LESS or very little more each month on your house payment.  If so and if you are willing to cut up the credit cards you pay off, do it and do it now.

3.  If you were a dumb ass and got into a sub prime or adjustable loan see what you can do to get a conventional 30 year FIXED rate loan now.  There probably will not be a better time for a while.  As soon as even a hint of rebound in home sales come these rates will not be held so low any longer.

I am not a massive fan of cash out refinance for paying off other debts.  Many times this is something that gets abused.  If you plan to take this approach again it is necessary to make sure you get rid of that credit card that got you in the hole in the first place.  Yet there is no question that debt on housing is better then debt on credit cards.  I honestly believe for the home owner with equity, good credit and some unsecured debt this may be the best opportunity in a long time to consolidate bad debt into not so bad debt.  If you do it, look at it like a “stay of execution” and commit yourself to a renewed quest toward financial freedom.

Establish your expertise by self publishing

If you are in business today, especially if you are in the online information business, doing public presentations or perhaps consulting then being seen as an expert can really increase your chances of success. One thing that can really help you be seen as an expert in your industry is to be an author of a book. Now I mean a real honest book that you can touch and feel not an eBook. eBooks are great for selling information but they certainly don’t carry the clout you get from publishing a hard copy book.

The problem in the past is to self publish was expensive and quite risky. Often you had to order 1000 copies or more and this led many early self publishers to end up with a closet full of books that never sold. All that has changed today with something called “print on demand” technology. Just as it sounds basically every time an book is order it is individually printed and shipped. This makes publishing low cost, low risk and open to anyone that want to take the time and effort to write a book.

One of the best Book Publishers for the would be self publishing author is called Author House.    They offer a exceptional array of services to help new authors get started and with just a bit of effort anyone can become a published author today.    It definitely takes some effort to write a book but the reward is usually well worth it.    Thanks to new services like Author House it is an option for more people today then ever.  For move information visit their website for more information at www.authorhouse.com

Tax rebate checks may be on the way

In an effort to stimulate the economy the congress and the president are working to provide an economic stimulus package. One big part will be sending most tax payers some of their tax money back, to the tune of from 300-800 dollars per taxpayer may be even as high as 1600 per household. You can read an article by newsday.com to get more specifics about it.

In any event I have mixed emotions about this. As a Libertarian I believe that all income tax is theft in the first place and I really can’t argue with the government giving back money they should have never taken in the first place. However, in this instance while not totally opposed (I just can’t oppose less tax no matter how it comes) I have sever very big concerns/issues with this plan.

• Right now everyone is worried about the 2008 election. So even Mr. and Mrs. raise taxes (Barak and Hillary) are behind this massive retroactive tax rebate. Make no mistake this is buying votes by both sides of the isle.

• True conservatives are always saying lower taxes are good for the economy and liberals always say that is wrong. Yet now that we are in deep shit everyone agrees cutting taxes makes the economy better? All this means is they all know all the time that low taxes are good and simply keep up the graduated income tax as a way to distract us all with “class warfare”.

• In most instances I don’t see cutting taxes as “spending” yet in this case it is pure reckless spending. Why? How? Simple, no one in congress is talking about cutting any expenditures to fund this rebate. In other words they are still going to spend all the money they were going to spend and GET THIS our country is OUT OF MONEY. So where will we get the billions to fund this rebate? Well the fed will fire up the presses and just print more money at least symbolically. Honestly though our government will borrow it from foreign governments and increase out debt. In other words you kids get to pay back you debt on your 800 bucks with interest and will have to do so with a dollar that is weaker in the world market every day.

• This package is a very short term fix. The whole theory is most people will “blow” their money and dump it in the economy and that will beef up spending for a bit and put more money into the economy and the rising tide will then float all boats. The theory is sound most people will blow it (instead of saving or paying on debt) and it will make it “better” but our “boat” has big holes in it. Make sense? This move won’t reduce US debt, reduce toxic consumer debt, fix the housing market or reduce our massive spending deficit.

So how could this plan actually work? You only have to change the spending equation on the side of the government to make it work very well. Check this way out,

1. Require the government to give back at least the money they plan to right now.
2. Require that they also cut 2 dollars in spending for every dollar returned to tax payers

That’s it! That would “stimulate the economy”! Our nation is not in trouble because our people spend to little, it is in trouble because the government takes too much of our money and then spends far more then even what they steal from us. Fix that problem, yes cut taxes but cut spending by 2 dollars for every dollar you refund to us.

Get certified and make more money

Part of building wealth is maximizing your income in the first place. Many times the difference between making good money and making great money comes down to some additional skill sets and a sheet of paper that proves you have them. No where is that more true then in the IT and Technology industries. Yet a lot of IT professionals work long hours so how do you take time for more training and make sure you get proper credentials to go along with it? One solution may be to take technology or Microsoft Training from QuickCert.

Right now the technology sector is hot and I mean red hot. Trust me I know in my businesses I have to hire people to fill various positions and the IT/Tech people are the hardest to find and attract. Many IT people don’t even take real “jobs” any more preferring the higher rates from contract positions and the flexibility and travel that come with them. I know a few that work 3 month projects, take a month or so off and then basically have their pick of the next assignment. Opportunities like this will only grow in the future.

So if you’re an IT pro that wants to build wealth by maximizing your income consider adding to your skills and certifications by visiting QuickCert.

More about silver

With all the talk of a coming recession I am sitting down with my financial adviser this week and I am moving more of my money out of U.S. stocks and for that matter U.S. dollars. I am buying more gold, more silver and more foreign government bonds. Please understand that I tend to hold gold and silver more in “funds” then in hard metals. Though I do think there is a place to actually hold some bullion as well.

As I have been researching silver I came across an investors web site that specializes in metals called Monex Precious Metals, and they have a great page about silver. I encourage you to watch their video about silver as you will learn some pretty interesting silver facts.

One suggestion is that the video does not stream well. I advise you to click play, let it run a second, then click pause and let it pre load while you do something else. Come back to it in a few minutes and then watch it. Someone should get with Monex’s marketing department about using YouTube for their videos. I am 100% sure that bad steaming is costing them viewers.

Building your brand with promotional products

Everyone loves free stuff, be it a pen a koozie or perhaps a coffee cup. Of course that is why stuff like these things make great Promotional Products for building your brand, handing out at trade shows or just doing something nice for your customers. You can break out of the usual stuff too. I used to go to a lot of trade shows and I got tons of cups, pens, etc. all the time. Don’t get me wrong they were cool and all but off all that stuff there is one item that I remember carrying and using for a long time after receiving it.

The item was a simple shoe shine kit and it was small enough to carry in any pocket and certainly took up very little space in my brief case. And what do these little things cost? About 53 cents a piece from a pretty cool online shop called, Gimmees.com. What made this little shoe shiner so cool is first how small it was and second it worked. I would get off a plane or walk a few city blocks and have scuffed up shoes and a simple swipe and they looked great when I walked into my meetings.

Gimmees.com (got to love that name) has tons of cool items you can use to build your brand and very low prices in fact they are some of the lowest I have found anywhere. So if you have a trade show coming or a customer function or just want to do something for your regular customers have a look a their site and get creative. Everyone likes to get cool free stuff and by putting your name on it you earn a lot of good will every time your customers or prospects use it.

Native Americans are responsible for the US Constitution

Well not completely but on some levels it appears to be so. Let’s take a trip back to grade school and remember what we were taught about Native Americans or “American Indians” (though some consider that term politically incorrect). The short answer was that the Americas were sparsely populated with many tribes and they where not a very advanced civilization. This is just yet another example of our school system teaching dogma rather then facts, and you would think liberals would be all over this one?

The reality is when Europeans first came to the Americas they were heavily populated and very advanced in many ways. Recent archaeological evidence is that both continents were heavily settled and the Indians, in both North and South America, had, for millennia, shaped the land to fit their needs and desires. This includes even the rain forest that lies in Amazonia. It was the diseases that the first visitors that decimated the populations and left them in the sparse state that we pushed onto reservations a few centuries later.

Despite this they may have had more to do with our Constitution then the Magna Carta or Greek Influence and by a large margin. Apparently people known as the Haudenosaunee (ho-dee-no-SHO-nee) or Iroquois as we leaned to call them in school and were made up of six tribes that inhabitated the area in and around today’s upstate New York had a “Great Law of Peace” that specified among other things,

• A council would rule the tribes and their business between each other but power was granted to the council and could be with drawn and the council only made decisions on external matters like peace treaties
• The council had no power over the inner functions of tribes
• The council could not declare war with out a referendum from the people
• Every man was considered free and would never subject himself to the will of any other man

Does this sound familiar? It should and in fact one of the biggest issues that Europeans had with American Indians is that they had no respect for any “class structure”, they believed no man was better then any other man simply due to a birth right, possessed wealth or title. For this they were both feared and despised. Much of the revolutionary idealism that spawned the American Revolution came directly from colonists interaction with Native Americans.

This is yet another sacrifice that went into creating what was once the most free nation on the planet. Today many of the constitutional freedoms our founders died and risked all for are either gone or may soon be.

To learn more about these true roots of America’s freedom I recommend the book - 1491, - New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus - by Charles C. Mann.