The barter system was used for centuries before the invention of money. It was a great way for people to exchange goods and services for other goods and services. The local Tailor may trade a nice pair of pants for a weeks worth of milk from the dairy farmer. It didn’t really cost either person anything except their time and skills.

A few weeks ago a lady at work overheard me talking about needing a babysitter. She jokingly told me she would babysit for me anytime I wanted to come over to her house and cut her grass. I never really thought any more about it until a couple of days ago. Why wouldn’t I take her up on this barter for services?

We usually pay our babysitters $25 or so for a couple of hours of service. That’s a pretty big amount per hour for a babysitter, but we feel it’s not worth the hassle of someone coming to our house for less money than that. This can make a date cost upwards of $80 for dinner and a movie. Why wouldn’t I barter for free babysitting?

The lady from my work hates yardwork and tending to her lawn. She would much rather watch our kids for a couple of hours than cut the grass. I actually don’t mind yard work and I could always find an extra hour or so to tend her yard if it meant free babysitting.

Think of some ways you can use your skills to save some money. With the recent recession I think it’s possible you will start seeing more of the barter system being used. An ancient system may be making a comeback!

So it would appear that our economy is headed back to the positive. Over the last six months the DOW has gained over 2,200 points. Investors are slowly gaining enough confidence in the market to start buying stocks again. But, what about the housing market?

The last few years has given the market in real estate a major beating. Home values have been pounded with little signs of recovery. Just recently the housing market seems to have became somewhat stable. Instead of falling home sales it appears the market has became flat.

So what trend will mortgage interest rates follow? The last week has given way to another slight decrease in the 30 year fixed rates, which brings me to the real reason for writing this article.

A few months ago I wrote an article about buying some land to build a future home. We got a great deal on a foreclosed acre of land in a nice neighborhood. The land appraised for just over $80,000 and we paid $52,000 so a deal that was hard to pass up. When we purchased the land we couldn’t find the developer in the phone book or Internet so we assumed the rules for building would be relaxed. The only rule that worried us was having to build a home within 8 months after purchasing the land.

We were prepared to build the house in the next couple of years, but 8 months would be a little too soon for us financially. Well about a week ago I met the developer while cleaning up the lot. Needless to say he wants us to start construction as soon as possible in order to keep the contract valid. He was very nice about the situation but wants us to start within a year.

With all this said, I’m hoping interest rates continue to stay well below 6% over the next year. A difference of 1% in interest rates will cost us an extra couple of hundred dollars per month. We’re listing our house next month by owner with hopes of a quick sale. We want to rent for 6 to 8 months while saving some money for a good down payment. Hopefully interest rates will stay on our side.

Whether you are looking forward to retirement or dreading your final day of work we all hope to be prepared for the day when it arrives. With the current economy retirement planning has never been more important. There are many different paths to choose when it comes to planning for retirement, the key is to pick the type of retirement you feel is most appropriate for you personally.

What if a company you were wanting to work for offered a particular type of retirement program. Would this have any affect on your decision to take a job with this company?

Two popular choices among many companies are defined benefit or a defined contribution plan. Both of these plans are still in use today by employers. If you were given the option which would you prefer?

A defined benefit plan (DB) is like a traditional pension or fixed pension. Usually, the employee is guaranteed for the rest of their life and sometimes even the rest of their spouses life, a set monthly amount of money upon retirement. This amount is determined by factors such as years of service and their salary while working. This benefit may also include additional perks including health insurance and a cost-of-living increase each year. A defined benefit plan is popular among government agencies.

A defined contribution plan (DC)  is a retirement plan where the employer usually promises to contribute to the plan, but does not guarantee there will be any certain amount of funds available upon retirement. Examples of defined contribution plans include 457, 401(k), and 403(b) plans.

There are pros and cons to both types of retirement plans. Traditionally defined benefit plans offer much better retirement benefits, however in return salaries and wages are typically lower. Likewise, employers who offer defined contribution plans pay higher wages but don’t guarantee any funds available at retirement.

There are many factors I would have to consider before chosing a retirement benefits package if given the choice. Obviously, the percentage the employer offered to a defined contribution plan would have a great impact on my choice.

Second, many companies seem to be moving away from traditional pension plans. New employees aren’t offered the same plans older employees were offered years ago. The original retirement packages are much more taxing on the company than they originally assumed. So it appears pension plans are on the way out.

Finally, I think I like to have more control of where my money is placed. It’s my future and I feel involved more in the decisions. Most defined contribution plan have a variety of fund options available for investment. You also have control of how much money to put in these funds and can move funds around as you choose.

So, personally I would choose a defined contribution plan given the option. You have more control of your money and you typically earn a higher income while you are working. This means if you budget correctly during your working years you can save more for retirement years. 

Many, many year ago before credit cards were invented people paid for everything with cash or a barter system. I know for most of us it’s hard to imagine not being able to conveniently whip out the plastic at the grocery store, gas station, movies and even fast food restaurants.

For some of us this still remains true. My dad still only carries cash to pay for many common things such as those mentioned above. Even the president of the company where I am employed told me he still only uses cash for most common purchases. I have gotten so used to using a credit card to pay for things it’s hard to imagine life without them.

What would life be without credit cards? So many times I have heard that you can save so much money by using a cash only system. It hurts so much more to pay for something with cash than with a credit card. I’m still not completely convinced this is true for me, but recently I have thought about something that does temp to to test the cash only system.

Let’s assume I went to the grocery store and only took $80 cash to pay for my groceries. I left my wallet at home with my credit cards hidden away to prevent any possible usage. I would think twice about buying those Twinkies for $2, after all that’s 2.5% of my weekly grocery budget! On the other hand if I had a credit card I basically have a $10,000 + limit so buying something unnecessary would be much easier. So using an all cash system in this case would definitely help save money.

Another great example of where I could see an all cash system being successful in our life is with the eating out budget. Sometimes we spend over $400 per month eating out. I know we could easily make it on $200 and put an additional $200 per month in our savings account. If we only brought $20 cash with us for dinner it would be much easier to skip dessert or the appetizer that we don’t really need anyway.

I think an all cash system could definitely save our family money. However, because we have used the “pay your credit card off every month” system for so long I think it will be very difficult to get used to destroying our credit cards. Maybe I will have to create a happy medium to ween ourselves off our addiction!

So the government had a great idea to help boost the economy and eliminate some pollution by offering the “cash for clunkers” program. As you may know from a previous post Once again screwed by government stimulus plan I wasn’t a big fan of the program. Today it was reported that auto sales were up 1.3 million in August, a roughly 30 percent increase from July.

Guess what? The program is over and there are no more rebates to hand out. Car sales are expected to drop in the coming months leaving many dealerships struggling to make sales goals. Will the government have to spend even more money for another bailout program or will the auto industry be able to lure more buyers with great incentives and low interest rate financing.

No matter how you feel about the “cash for clunkers” program or if you didn’t get to take advantage of the program there will probably still be some good deals on new cars in the coming months. For the first time ever that I can remember Toyota is offering 0% interest on the new Camry. If you are in the market for a new, dependable, family car it’s almost too good of a deal to pass up.

I’m not a big fan of purchasing new cars, but with some of the deals that may be coming in the following months you may want to consider a new purchase.  So, because of the hard times that hit the auto industry you may be able to take advantage of a struggling market.

I know we’ve all seen the advertisements, make thousands of extra dollars per week taking surveys from home. Truth is I don’t really think this can be true. Maybe it’s been done before but I’m going to guess it’s similar to multi-level marketing techniques where the people who make that kind of money are on top of a large pyramid. Most of us will never find ourselves on top, but you can make a few extra dollars taking surveys.

My first paid survey experience happened in college, before I knew anything about Internet marketing. A research company visited campus and offered $5 to a set number of students who took the time to fill out a survey. As you can imagine they had no problems meeting the quota, the line was backed up all through the cafeteria with eager students wanting to make $5 for just a few minutes of their time. I didn’t really understand why they would want to give us $5 to fill out a survey or how where the got all the money to give away to the survey participants.

Now, years later I understand that market research is a very big business. Large and small corporations both depend on feedback and consumer research to better their products or to find needs for new products. Consumer opinions are very valuable to these companies and they are willing to pay a lot of money to research firms to gather this information.

There are hundreds of research firms that are willing to pay you a portion of their earnings for your time and opinion. How much money? Many times surveys only pay about $1, but there are occasions that you can easily earn $5 for 20 – 30 minutes of your time. Not a great income but you probably waste that much time as some point during the day, why not earn a few extra bucks.

Before you start a google search on paid survey companies, do some research. There are hundreds of paying research firms, however, there are also just as many that promise to pay you and never do. I can tell you about two that I use that have been paying me for years.

Epoll.com has mostly entertainment based surveys. They have a lot of questions about movies, television and celebrities. I seem to get a couple of surveys from there each month and they pay various points. The points can be redeemed for gift certificates and gift cards. Sorry, they don’t offer true cash rewards.

Mysurvey.comdoes offer cash rewards for completing surveys. Again they reward you with points that can be redeemed for cash or prizes. The cash is obviously the best deal but they do have some fun merchandise as well. Both of the programs are legit and do pay their members. I’m sure there are many others, these are just the two I am most familiar with.

If you have a few minutes of free time in  your day you may want to consider signing up for at least these two programs. It’s nice to get a $10 check in the mail unexpectedly or a gift card to your favorite restaurant.

Thinking about filing for bankruptcy? I know it may sound like the easiest thing to do and in certain circumstances it may be the only option, but before you give up all hope maybe you should try some type of debt settlement program.

There are thousands of different agencies who are willing to help you settle your debts with your creditors. I’m sure there just as many who are only interested in your money and not at all in actually helping you, but you don’t even have to use a third party to settle you debt.

The term debt settlement simply means negotiating with your creditors to reduce the overall balance of your debt. Debt settlement only works with credit card debt and unfortunately, most creditors won’t negotiate until you’ve stopped making payments on the debt and have racked up hundreds or thousands of dollars in interest.

When you declare bankruptcy you may be hurting hundreds of other people, not just yourself. The money you owe the companies goes to other peoples salaries and helps provide income for many families. Before you make the decision to declare bankruptcy please consider a debt settlement program or at least contact your credit card companies and try to settle the debt by yourself. Many times you can save thousands of dollars with just a phone call.

Yesterday my wife and I got mail from one of our credit card companies. Not that it matters too much for us because we pay our credit card balance every month, but it was still interesting.

The government recently set new restrictions on credit card companies. These restrictions were supposedly put in place to help the consumer with credit card balances. After reading over the changes to the policy there are some policy changes that are definitely designed to help the consumer, but there is also some bad news for those with credit card debt. I don’t have the letter in front of me so I’ll just talk about the things I remember from the notice.

First, the monthly minimum payment will increase this will help pay off the credit card debt quicker and may deter additional spending. Many consumers may view this is something bad because they can barley make their current minimum payments.

Second, the credit card company will no longer increase your interest rate on existing balances because you pay late or skip a payment. They can however increase your rate for future purchases and you know they will do this. Again this may help denture additional unnecessary monthly spending.

Third, additional payment you send over the minimum payment will be applied to the highest interest rate debt. This is a great plus for the consumer and I must admit I’ve been caught by this trick in the past. Credit card companies sometimes offer low or no interest balance transfers. If you take advantage of this offer any additional spending will be charged your normal interest rate and it’s usually in the double digits. When you send payment to the credit card company this money is used to pay the lowest interest rate loan first. This means until you pay off all the 0% balance transfer you will continue to accumulate a high rate interest on any additional spending. I’m sure so many people have complained about this that the government finally took action.

Finally, late fees and the current interest rate both increased. I guess since many of the features were designed to help the consumer save money they had to add this one to counteract the savings. I guess the credit card companies have to make money too.

We could always rest assured that our money was safe if it was placed in the bank. Even if the bank got robbed or if the bank failed your money was still safe. The basic insurance amount covered by the FDIC is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank. This is probably more than enough to cover most peoples basic savings and checking accounts.

Today it was reported that the FDIC may now need a bailout. Because of all the failed banks the FDIC may need to draw cash from banks or the federal government.

During the early 1990’s a similar event occured. It was called the savings and loan crisis and the FDIC was forced to borrow $15 billion from the US Treasury to cover the peoples money.

Don’t worry too much, your money is still covered by the government up to $250,000 so don’t head to the bank and withdraw your savings account and put it under your mattress. Your money is still more safe in the bank than in your home. Remember, this has happened before and everything worked out alright.

This is the second part of my series about making some extra money using some of your free/spare time. Today I want to talk about using a very popular advertising program called Adsense by the ever so popular search engine, Google.

The Adsense program allows you to place small or large text or graphic advertisements on your website. Adsense in turn shares a portion of their profits to you the publisher, or the displayer of the advertisements. You will only get paid for “clicks” on the advertisements and advertisers will only be charged for those clicks. In theory you could show millions of advertisements on your website and never get an actual click, but from my experience this usually doesn’t happen. If you have a large amount of traffic to your site you will get clicks.

1. Create a blog. Your blog should be something you know a lot about, something you have a passion for, or something you really want to learn a lot about. You will have to try to post a new blog everyday or at least every other day, so it’s good to know what you are talking about.
2. Choose a blog template that works with the Google Adsense program. There are tons of templates designed for displaying Adsense advertisements. Just do a quick search on your favorite search engine.
3. Read over the Google Adsense policies and guidelines. Make sure you blog follows all their rules.
4. Apply for the Google Adsense publisher program
5. Setup your first google advertisement and put it on your blog.
6. Write, write write. Try to add a new blog entry every day. Try to write at least 300 word articles. This will keep search engines interested in your blog, and in turn bring you more traffic.
7. Follow the rules of Adsense or you will get suspended. The biggest rule breaker is not clicking on your own advertisements. They have ways of tracking this and will give you the boot.
8. Tell all your friends to follow your blog. DON’T encourage them to click the advertisement, but if something interests them they will probably help out anyway. Post your blog on social networks, forums and other websites. The more you expose your site the more visitors you will get and the more cash you will make.
9. Once you get an established blog repeat this process as many times as you want. It only takes 10 or 15 per day to write a post, especially if it’s something you are already familiar with or something you are passionate about.
10. Collect the extra cash every moth to your paypal account or checking account!