Building Wealth - Cutting Costs

I talk a lot on this blog about things like saving, investing and making money. I encourage people of every walk of life to spurn consumer debt and build wealth so they can live good even when times are bad. I want to shift gears a bit today though and talk a bit about how to protect your hard earned wealth.

I just got done reading a new book called Asset Protection 101 from Donald Trump’s Trump university and I have to say I learned a lot of new ways to protect the wealth I and my family have worked so hard for. In fact basically I just learned how to be a millionaire in reality and at the same time appear penniless on paper.

Of course I got wealthy in the first place by being a bit of a tight wad and knowing how to spot a good deal. So check out this deal from Trump University, buy a copy of Asset Protection 101 today and you also will get the following bonuses

• 3 J.J. Childers E-Books-valued at $19.95 each, these 3 e-books provide you with even more information about protecting your wealth, saving on taxes, and enjoying a stress-free retirement.
• 5 Special Reports-over 100 pages of extra material to help you build your wealth structure (worth $150!).
• The Top 50 Most Overlooked Tax Deductions-this gift alone could save you thousands of dollars when April comes around again!
• J.J.’s Asset Protection Worksheet-the master’s tool to show you where you may be vulnerable to lawsuits and how you can minimize your tax burden.
• Asset Video - addressing specific asset protection issues, which you can view on your computer
• 20% off the registration fee for Trump University’s Wealth Preservation: Asset Protection Retreat featuring instructor J.J. Childers.

There is also an awesome 1 hour free teleseminar. Now for a 20 dollar book those are some great bonuses. I don’t normally tell my readers to go spend money but in this case it will be a Andrew Jackson that is well used. For more information visit the Trump University Site for the special offer on Asset Protection 101.

If you have read this blog for any length of time then you know I am big on teaching children to save, invest and understand money from an early age. What I have observed in talking with people from many generations is that there is a direct correlation between how a person views both money and debt and what generation they come from.

My Grandfather’s generation saw debt as a prison and felt that you should scrape and save every penny you could. My father was a lot like his grandfather and passed much of that wisdom to me but yet his generation was more open to some debt and some more free spending. In my generation people live in debt (I am a Gen X’r) and the Y generation is graduating college with enough debt to fund most first home mortgages. With each succeeding generation comes more spending, less savings and more debt.

I really feel it was my firm connection to immigrant grandparents that went through hell to get here, then dealt with the great depression and then served in World War 2 that cemented my firm conviction in the principles of saving, keeping debt low and always planning for a “rainy day” that I discuss on this blog.

One thing I think parents can do with children to ground them in these sound principles is to make sure they are connected to their roots. So when I was asked to look at a website where you could build a family tree for free I was happy to do it.   The site is called Tribal Pages and it is very cool and at a cost of free it is a great low cost activity for you to do with your kids and involve the rest of the family.

As you build out your tree you have you are able to do it on your own free web page, other family members can view it online and help you fill in missing spots. (Don’t worry if you are not technical it is a very easy system to use.) I firmly believe that a child that knows their past and how hard their ancestors worked to ensure they could have the opportunities we do today will be more likely to value money and opportunity. When I interview and hire people from Gen X and Gen Y, I see a ton of “entitlement attitude” and it really bothers me. Most people today seem very disconnected from the reality of just 50 years ago.

So if you want your kids to value what they have and in fact if you want to value it more yourself I encourage you to research your past, build a family tree and understand why we have so much opportunity today. Research the values of your family a generation or three ago and build that connection. Tribal Pages definitely makes my list of recommended sites for providing a great service at no cost that helps families understand and preserve their identities.

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.

Right now if you are paying very much for domestic long distance in the United States I just don’t think I can help you. There are so many cheap options for domestic calling you kind of have to be stubborn to pay more then a few cents a minute. Or perhaps like many you tossed out your home phone all together and just use your cell phone, many have and there are good reasons to do so.

Now for international calling I generally recommend VoIP service but for some it just doesn’t work and others just don’t call often enough to bother. Additionally if you have gone the cell phone only route and don’t have a cable modem it isn’t an option. So what is the solution?

Try using discount international phone cards for saving money on all your international calling. GetMeCallingCards.com is a great source to shop for many different calling cards for many different needs. For instance I often call Russia to talk to one of my outsource programmers, I found a card for Russian long distance that costs only 1.2 cents a minute, that is a huge savings over even my VoIP rate.

Use this site to shop around they have a great card search tool where you can put in your country you call from and to and get the best rates and more importantly the best terms. Each card they recommend you can view all the details, charges and fine print beyond just the surface rate. Many times the lowest rate is not the best price over all so be smart read and pick the one best for where, how and how often you call.

GetMeCallingCards.com breaks all that down to easy and clear English so it definitely makes my list of recommended sites.

One of our chief goals here at CutThatBill is to help you find creative and cool ways to cut costs so when I was asked to look at a new website about heating and saving money on your costs I was happy to do it. The site is called DESA Online Outlet and they offer great prices on a variety of room heaters. A small room heater is often viewed as something that raises rather then lowers bills but that is not the case when used properly. Match the right heater with the right sized room and you can take the chill out of the room you are in most often and keep your overall thermostat setting lower.

Another cool option is using either ventless gas logs or vented gas logs into your fireplace. I prefer ventless because they provide far more efficient heating and still give you a lot of the feeling of a traditional wood fire. If you really want the look and feel of wood though vented logs will give you more of that. Either of them are more efficient and less costly then wood, (unless you cut your own). One more thing I really liked about DESA Online Outlet is they show you exactly how to cut your winter expenses by 15% rather then just claiming it to be the case.

So if you have a fire place that you don’t like dragging wood in for, would like to cut the cost of your heating or if you just have one room that is always to cold give these guys a visit and see if they have a deal on what you are looking for they certainly make my recommended sites list.

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.

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.