So you’re getting 300 to 600 dollars in a tax rebate check

A few days ago I posted my thoughts about the proposed “economic stimulus” where the government will be giving back about 300 dollars per tax payer in a retroactive tax cut from 2007’s tax year. You can read my thoughts about this tax rebate here. In short though I believe income tax is theft and I am for any and all cutting of income tax for anyone from the poorest to the most wealthy. On the other side though I think this rebate is bad for the country because there will be NO SPENDING CUTS on anything to fund it. All we are doing is going deeper in debt. Again read my full post on this to understand this better.

What I wanted to ask though today is what will you do with your 300-600 dollars in rebates?

Since I posted that orginal post I have been getting many visitors each day finding my blog from Google, they are all searching for things like

• “when do we get our tax rebates”
• “government giving out rebate checks”
• “will we get stimulate the economy checks?”
• “when will we get our government rebate checks”
• “800 dollar rebate checks government”
• and you have to love this one “government giving 300 dollars to everyone“

Now I am not here to criticize anyone but my guess is most of the people doing these searches are just itching to get that “free money” and blow it. Indeed that is “the plan”, yes indeed Uncle Scam (not a misspelling) wants you to spend every dime on consumer goods to “stimulate the economy”. The theory is more spending is good because more money is in circulation.

So please comment below after you read this post and tell me what you plan to do with your money. As many may suspect mine will be invested and many in the government want to not give the money to people like me that will save it. No they want “good Americans” to spend the money and “put it to work”.

So what are you doing with your refund?

• Taking a vacation
• Just blowing it
• Saving it
• Paying on debt
• Investing it
• Not sure yet?

Let us know because it is interesting what happens when you really ask yourself what you will do with extra money. Perhaps just perhaps thinking about this may make a few more of us think about saving this refund for a really rainy day. Trust me if you remember 1978 times are really not that bad right now.

Keep in mind this is not some government “entitlement” this is indeed your money, your tax dollars that you paid being returned to you. To do so your government has grow our debt by BILLIONS more. Again I am 100% for any rebate, any tax cut, any tax abolishment. Just realize that our elected officials did not think about how to fund this thing, they are just buying your votes from you with your own money and charging it along with interest to your children.

So knowing that how will you be spending your money, remember it is indeed yours it is not a gift from our exalted officials.

Managing the expense of moving your vehicle

I remember when I moved my family across many states and 1400 plus miles.    It was an experience to say the least and of course we were a two car family.    So I hired ABF Freight to move our furniture.    They dropped off the trailer and I and friends loaded it, they picked it up and dropped it off at our new home and then took it away after we emptied it.    One thing I really didn’t think about doing back then though was having someone else take care of getting one of our cars from the old house to the new one.

So when I was asked to take a look at a website that provides auto shipping services I thought right away that I may be able to save my readers some money and some headaches as well.    The company is called National Auto Shipping and they offer a variey of services to ship vehicles in a very painless and cost effective manner.

Think about how this went for me. I drove one vehicle down to the new place a week before the actual move with a few things packed inside it.    I then got on a plane, flew back to my family, loaded up with them and made that long 1400 mile drive all over again, this time with a kid, a wife, two dogs and two cats!    It would have more then paid for itself to use someone like National Auto Shipping and today with gas at 3 dollars a gallon it would make even more sense.

Instead I spent 26 hours driving, put lots of miles on my vehicle, had to pay for a plane ticket and had to pay for transportation to the airport.     Worse I spent 52 hours behind the wheel in total and that was a mental strain. I also burned up 3 days of lost income!    So if you have any reason to move a vehicle across the country or perhaps even across a state take a look at National Auto Shipping’s Website.     They offer free quotes so you have nothing to loose by getting pricing for a coming move.

Four things I would start doing online to make money as a newbie

It seems like forever ago when I first built my first website. In fact it was more then 10 years ago and at times it is easy to loose touch with how overwhelming it is for a brand new potential internet entrepreneur who wants to get started today. So I though I would share four ways a new person can begin to get started. None are all that hard but none can be complete with out learning more, these are just starting points.

1. Get a blog and do some blogging for dollars. I suggest you try not to be to obvious about this because Google has begun to give the smack down to bloggers that do this. I recommend you never use the name of the companies that you go through to find business on your blog as you are just asking for problems. What I can simply say is go to google and search for “get paid to blog” and you will find many options.

Now you are going to have to blog for about 90 days and do so at least 4 times a month to qualify for these types of services. Once you do however, you can and will make money. I won’t go deeper right now but will make some specific how to details available in the future. Let me just say that anyone that wants to can put an extra 500-1500 a month into their income column can just by doing this.

2. Learn the very basics of website design and publishing, even a tiny bit of say PHP programming can go a long way. Today if you can slap together a website you can make some money. Spend the money for a good design software and take a course on it at a community college or a CEU class at a university. Total investment may be about 1,000 dollars and it may make you a lot more then any degree will. You don’t have to be a great designer but at least be able to build simple sites, you can out source the actual “graphics” work.

Most sites are nothing but a header, a footer and some pictures. Outsource your graphics and build a site. Make your first site about something you just love to talk about and don’t worry if you make a dime on it. All you need at first is the “ability” to build and design sites. Learn how to do it and do not rely on site builders they are to limiting. Today if you can publish content there are countless ways to make money. Oh and you can pay your tuition with one months worth of blogging with suggestion number one above.

3. Start with affiliate marketing and take your skills from item two to build unique websites that provide information, build email lists and sell a few products around a niche. Later you may and honestly should create your own products and keep all your profits but in the beginning you are learning how to market and sell online so dedicate all your efforts to doing so.

A great source of items that others have made that you can sell for about a 50% commission can be found at Click Bank. Odd are there is a product about any subject you can think of. Most sell in the 50 dollar range and pay about 25 dollars in commission. You don’t have to make anything, deal with customers, etc. This is not a long term way to get rich but it is a great way to learn and earn at the same time.

4. Become an adSense Affiliate and a Yahoo Publisher, neither pay the big money they used to but they are both very passive ways to earn some extra money. In time with enough sites anyone can pull in a hundred dollars a month at least. Remember invest 100 dollars a month from age 18-65 in quality funds in a tax deferred or sheltered account and you are a multi millionaire.

The key with adSense and Publisher is make your ads blend into your sites. The inexpensive wine site I reviewed a few days ago does a good job at this. Use back ground colors that match, make the links the same color as links on your site and above all no borders for the ads. Then be sure to put the ads in prominent spots on your site, don’t hide them remember you want people to click on them.

So there you go 4 places to get started with making money online. Each has its on benifits and challenges yet if you commited to learning how to at least do all four in the next 6 months you are well on your way to truly building a solid and passive online income. In time you out source more and more and you don’t do all the work yourself. Yet in the beginning it is important to be sure you understand things, learn what you want and what you don’t want.

More then that learn to make some money asap and again bloggin for dollars is a 100% guaranteed way to start the income flow. From there you can branch out, learn more and keep building.

One more important thing. Don’t buy over priced crap, info courses and other bullshit. There are countless gurus out there, well countless self appointed internet marketing gurus that claim to have the secret to making money. They are mostly full of crap and even the ones with good info unless you learn the fundamentals first it won’t do you any good.

Start with free advice and perhaps use some of the online video courses that don’t cost to much. Learn basics, learn “how to” and then you can develop “what to” on your own terms. I promise you one of the surest ways to kill of your future in making money online is buying one to many 297 or 997 dollar how to courses.

Don’t buy that crap, start with a blog, learn to make sites, practice with affiliate products and sell ad space along the way with Google and Yahoo. Look for solid how to advice and instruction and limit your spending on “education” to 50 dollars or less a month (other then stuff like the college course I mentioned) and you will in time work things out. Gurus exist not to make you rich, they exist to enrich themselves with your dollars.

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.

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.

The income tax is unconstitutional

Yes you read that right it is unconstitutional and in fact no one in the government can or will show you a law that says you have to pay it. Today I would like you to take just fifteen minutes of your life to review the video below. It is from a documentary called “From Freedom to Fascism”. Don’t go thinking this is some alarmist, tin foil hat wearing tripe. In fact I will send anyone a fifty dollar bill that can prove one thing stated in this video that isn’t true.

No one is saying you don’t have to pay income tax, this isn’t one of those scams it is simply telling you some facts about taxation, the new national ID card, how much power the government has and some other frightening truths. If you are a republican and tired of “Bush bashing” don’t sweat it when you start hearing about George Bush, just wait a few more seconds and you will hear the same things about Bill Clinton as well. After you watch the video I would love to hear your comments about it.