If you are a renter, you may think gardening is not possible for you.  After all, if you do have a yard, it is not yours to dig up and create a garden.  Often, you may not even have room to garden.  However, there are other ways you can garden even if you are a renter, and you’ll reap the rewards of much lower grocery bills during the growing season.

Community Garden

Many urban areas offer community gardens for the residents.  You will have to follow some rules such as keeping your garden free of weeds and not using pesticides as well as picking the fruits and vegetables when they are ripe rather than letting them languish on the vine, but these rules are what you should be doing anyway.  We signed up for a community garden this year for a $20 refundable fee.  Our kids are excited about watching our plants grow and I am looking forward to the many benefits of gardening, especially getting organic vegetables for pennies.  I am looking forward to a substantial drop in our grocery bill.  To find a community garden in your area, try to search the Internet with the terms “community garden” and your city and state.

CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)

If you prefer not to do your own gardening or you can’t find a community garden, consider a CSA (community supported agriculture).  When you join a CSA, you pay up front at the beginning of the season for your fruits and vegetables for the summer and fall.  (Many CSAs begin in early June and run through early October.)  You do take a risk with the farmer; if the farm floods or the weather affects the crops, you may not get a full season’s worth of produce.  However, these events are usually rare or the farmer can replace the damaged crops with other crops.

A CSA typically costs $500 to $800 upfront, which can be quite a bit for a family to come up with at once.  However, a few CSAs allow you the chance to work for them to pay for your fruits and vegetables.  In this bartering arrangement, you either work a few hours a week on the farm or you work a few hours a week at the farmer’s market where the farm sells their crops.  In our area, the bartering “wage” works out to about $8 or $9 per hour.  For your labor, you get organic fruits and vegetables.  If you have more time than you have money, this is an excellent arrangement to take advantage of.

A great place to find local CSAs is localharvest.org.  The farm may openly advertise a bartering arrangement, or you can call them and ask if they have such an arrangement.

Organic produce, while good for you, can be very expensive.  Growing a garden or using a CSA is an excellent way to afford organic produce, even if you rent and can’t create a gardening space in your backyard.

Mother’s Day is right around the corner! You forgot didn’t you? Well have no fear! In today’s post I’ll share some money saving ideas for inexpensive Mother’s Day gifts so you don’t show up empty-handed.

1. Flowers. What mom wouldn’t love a beautiful bouquet of flowers? You don’t have to spend a fortune either. You can order flowers online and have them shipped right to your mom’s front door for as little as $30 to $50.

2.  A Family Portrait. Get the whole family together and have a professional portrait taken.  It won’t cost much if you split the cost.  Another option is to gather a bunch of old pictures and make them into a personalized photo album.

3.  Home Movies on DVD.  If your mom has old home movies laying around on VHS or 8mm tape you can have them transferred to dvd so she can enjoy watching old memories whenever she wants.

4.  Have her grandchildren make her something. It could be as simple as a card made with construction paper, crayons, glitter, and glue.   Or it could be a do it yourself project like the ones offered at Home Depot.  I take my kids to Home Depot on the first Saturday of each month for the Kids Workshop.  This month they made little planters with pretty flowers for their mom.

5.  Burn a CD of her favorite tunes.  You can download free legal MP3 songs and then burn them onto a CD so your mom can listen to them at home or on the road.

6.  Make her dinner at home.   How many thousands of meals did your mom cook for you while you were growing up?  Well guess what…now it’s your turn!   Grab a cookbook and some groceries and prepare a homemade meal for your mom.  She deserves it!

Do you have any more suggestions for inexpensive Mother’s Day gifts?

If you have a business, chances are that you rely on it for your livelihood.   Just as you would insure your home and car against disaster, you must ensure that your business is insured against anything that could damage it and take away that livelihood.

But the cost of insurance for anything – house, car, pet, business – is never as cheap as we would like to be. It can be an unwelcome expense during the best of times, never mind when business is slow or profits are tight.

Yet if adequate insurance is not in place, the cost of righting any damage or liabilities will be far, far greater than the cost of even the highest premium.  For example, could you afford to pay for someone’s medical treatment and compensation for pain and suffering if they tripped on your premises?

We are living in a litigious society, where everyone believes that where there is blame there is a claim – and even if there is no blame involved, it can be costly to defend yourself against a claim that is brought to court against you.  Attorneys charge hundreds of dollars per hour, and even if you ultimately succeed in proving that you are not liable, it will be a long time before you see that money again, if ever.

Public liability insurance is not compulsory, but it is designed to protect you from this sort of eventuality and is well worth having for peace of mind and financial support should the worst happen and you are sued.  It is in your interest to have it in place if you come into contact with the public, either in your own premises or if you work on other peoples’ premises (e.g. as an IT specialist who visits other peoples’ businesses or homes to repair their computers).  Mistakes happen to the best of us, but if someone is injured or has their property damaged as a result, it is vital that adequate insurance is in place to deal with the fall-out.

But is it possible to get a cheap premium?

Firstly, work out exactly how much cover you really need.  Be realistic in evaluating your level of risk and neither over- nor under-assume the level of coverage you need.  There are tools available online to help you to assess this.  Over-assuming your level of risk and liability will lead to unnecessarily high premiums, while under-assuming them can lead to insufficient cover (and perhaps a loss of confidence in potential clients who may want to see your public liability cover certificate before engaging you in business).

Don’t just opt for the cheapest quote online without checking the terms and conditions (and, importantly, the exclusions that might apply) before you buy.  There is no benefit to having a policy that won’t pay out when you need it to.

In today’s post I’m going to tell you about my experiences with Aweber’s autoresponder/email marketing service.

What is Aweber?

Aweber is a popular email list management and autoresponder tool used by bloggers, business owners, and internet marketers. It allows you to build a list of subscribers, send out an email newsletter, and create an unlimited number of email marketing campaigns using autoresponders so you can send out a series of messages automatically while you lay in the sun sipping cocktails.

I use Aweber on this blog and on another site I own, and I have several ideas on how I can make money with Aweber in the future (I smell a new series of posts in the near future).

Why did I choose Aweber?

I first signed up with Aweber a couple of years ago when I was running a site selling Private Label Rights articles with a little ghostwriting mixed in.  I needed a way to keep in touch with customers and prospects…to announce new article packs were available, to offer discounts, and to just to remind them I existed.

When I first realized I need a list management/email newsletter tool I went to various online marketing forums and dug through old threads to see what users had to say. I posted questions asking which was the best option available and why. And then I signed up to a bunch of newsletters to see which service people were actually using.

It didn’t take me long to realize Aweber was the way to go…

• Delivery rates are higher than other providers. What’s the point of having a list of subscribers if they never get your emails?
• Aweber’s double opt-in requirement offers protection against CAN-SPAM complaints.
• Tons of features and templates to customize your newsletter.
• Awesome training tools including a knowledge base system and live webinar tutorials.
• Killer support including real people by phone, email, and live chat.
• Integration with Twitter and Facebook so all blog posts can be automatically posted on both sites.

How I’ve used Aweber so far

As I mentioned above, I first signed up with Aweber so I can keep in touch with people who purchased my PLR article packages. I haven’t updated that site in ages and it has suffered mightily from lack of attention. I might go back and start releasing new packs and building it up again, but right now I just don’t have the time.

I also created a new Aweber list so I can build a database of subsribers to this blog.  Notice the big box on top of my navbars asking for your name and email?  That’s an Aweber web form designed to attract subscribers. Actually, you might see 2 different boxes if you visit often. I’m split-testing (one of the cool features I told you about) a couple of different options to see which gets better results.

When you subscribe using that box you’ll automatically receive email updates whenever I post a new article on this blog.

Now I know what you bloggers are thinking…why not just use Feedburner? They offer email subscriptions and they are free.

Well actually I DO offer Feedburner email subscriptions as an option. But emailing new blog posts is about all Feedburner is good at and I need more than that. With Aweber I can also send off “broadcast messages” which are basically one off emails to subscribers only. In the future I plan to hold contests, giveaways, and other cool stuff strictly for email subscribers.  I can also offer premium content and free reports to subscribers so they know how much I value them.  (I also need to create some kind of free report to entice people to subscribe.)

What do I plan to do with Aweber next?

The same thing we do every night Pinky…try to take over the world!

Just kidding…right now I want to concentrate on building up this blog and making it a “go to” place for people looking for personal finance advice. Along with that I want to build up a list of loyal subscribers. So that’s number one on my list.

But I have other plans to make money with Aweber…

1. I’m thinking of offering a series of short reports for sale. They would be priced cheap so everyone could afford them but contain enough useful information that they’d be worth many times what I’d charge. By overdelivering I could build a customer base and use Aweber to announce new reports.

2. I’m going to create a couple of short email courses where the main site would basically be a signup page for the free course. In addition to lots of great content there would be some affiliate links mixed in so I could cover the costs of hosting and hopefully make a little profit. The course would be delivered via email autoresponder so once I set it up it would be on autopilot. That’s passive income baby!

To learn more about how YOU can make money with Aweber click here right now.

In just a few short weeks, school will be out for the summer.  While your kids may be counting down the days to summer freedom, if they are like most kids, within a few weeks, you will begin to hear the dreaded whine, “I’m bored!”  This summer, keep the whine at bay with some of these fun, affordable activities:

Visit free museums and other attractions.  The site FreeAttractions.com helps you find free activities in your city and other surrounding areas.  I found several new activities that I did not previously know about using this site.

Go to factory tours.  Most kids love to know how things are made.  Take advantage of their natural curiosity and take them on a factory tour.  Use the site Factory Tours USA, which lists 560 tours, to find local factory tours; many are often free and sometimes offer freebies.  For instance, in Chicago, you can not only tour Eli’s Cheesecake Factory for free, but you can also get a free piece of cheesecake.

Get a pool pass.  In the heat of the summer, nothing feels better than a cool dip in the pool.  Many community pools offer passes for the entire season for $40 to $50.  If you will be going to the pool once a week or more as a family, it may be worthwhile to buy the pass.  The best part about the pool pass is that the more you go, the more valuable it becomes.

Send the kids to summer bible camp.  Many churches offer summer bible camps for a week.  Increasingly these are offered in the evening hours to accommodate working parents’ schedules.  A typical bible camp includes activities, crafts, and some fellowship.  When I was young, our church didn’t have one, but my friend’s did, and I always looked forward to going.

Take the kids horseback riding.  If you live in the city, chances are your kids have not gone horseback riding, at least regularly.  Find a nearby farm that offers horseback riding and take the kids for a fun afternoon.  It will be an experience they won’t soon forget.

Set up your own slip and slide.  Get a long tarp, lay it on the ground and spray with water and some baby soap.  Then, have fun sliding down while also getting refreshed on a hot summer day.  Kids can do this activity for hours without getting bored.

Take advantage of museum adventure passes.  If your library participates in the Museum Adventure Pass program sponsored by Macy’s, you can check out the pass and visit a participating museum for free.   This is a great way to visit a museum that costs more than you can afford or would like to spend.

While most kids can’t wait for summer break to begin, after a few weeks, they are often bored.  Keep them entertained with a few of these activities.  Not only will you avoid (or certainly lessen) the cries of “I’m bored”, but you will also be able to share fun adventures with your kids that don’t have to cost a lot of money.

I remember when I was a kid my parents went through a tough financial time and ended up declaring bankruptcy.  There was a span of several months where debt collectors were constantly calling and trying to get us to give up our bank account information so they could collect the debt.  Since I was just a kid I always told them I didn’t know what they were talking about (which was pretty much true anyway), but now that I’m an adult I’m more aware of the rights we have as consumers dealing with debt collectors.

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act places a number of restrictions on debt collectors:

• They can only call you between the hours of 8:00 AM and 9:00 PM.  That means they can’t call you after the kids are in bed or before the crack of dawn.
• They must send you a written “validation notice” within 5 days of contacting you. The notice must show the name of the creditor and explain steps for you to take if you don’t believe the debt is legitimate.
• If you have an attorney representing you, the debt collectors must contact him instead of you.
• They are not allowed to harass or abuse you.  That means they can’t use profane language or threaten you.
• They are not allowed to contact you at work if you’ve informed them that it is unacceptable or prohibited by your employer.
• They cannot reveal information about your debts to neighbors or coworkers (though they contact them in an attempt to obtain location information).
• They cannot publish your name or address in an attempt to embarrass you into paying.

If you believe that a debt collector has violated any of the restrictions listed above, you can report them to the FTC and to your state’s Attorney General.

The temperatures are starting to rise, flowers are blooming and the grass is green.  You or your neighbors may even begin outdoor barbecuing.  Summer is right around the corner.  Many people take their vacations in the summer, but what happens if you won’t be one of them this year?  Maybe you can’t afford a vacation or you are saving for another goal.  Whatever the reason, you can still have fun, right in your own neighborhood with a staycation.

Staycations don’t have to be boring.  Simply look at a staycation as a way to explore your own city—you become a tourist in your own hometown.  Consider some of these staycation activities:

-Set up camp in your own backyard.  There is no need to drive to a campsite and pay to camp.  Instead, set up your tent in your own backyard.  Let the kids pitch in and have a campfire where you can cook a meal and roast marshmallows and make s’mores.  Then, spend the night in the tent (and the house is nearby if the little ones get scared.)

-Explore tourist destinations you have not visited.  Your hometown may have many tourist destinations, but chances are you haven’t visited them.  You may even drive by them every day, but you have not stopped because you are so busy living your own life.  Look at your town through the eyes of a tourist.  What destinations are the must-visit spots for tourists?  Visit those places.

-Take the kids somewhere they have wanted to go.  Maybe your kids have been begging you to take them to the water park, but you could never get time off from work.  During a staycation, take them to the places they have wanted to go.  You’ll enjoy spending time with the kids, and they will enjoy getting to go some place they have always wanted to visit.

-Try a new restaurant.  If you were a visitor coming to your city, what restaurant would be on your must-go to list?  Splurge a bit on your staycation and go with your spouse and hire a babysitter for the kids or take the kids if it is a family-friendly restaurant.  Since you are having a staycation rather than travelling, you can afford to spend a little bit of money for a fun night out.

-Indulge in foods you wouldn’t normally eat.  Hot dogs may not be on the menu regularly in your everyday life, but for your staycation, consider giving the kids foods they enjoy but don’t normally eat such as hot dogs or ice cream or whatever treat they don’t regularly eat.

If you are planning your own staycation, make sure to treat it like a real vacation.  Take time off from work (and that means not doing any work at home either—this is not the time for home improvement projects), make your arrangements in advance, booking restaurant or other reservations you must make ahead of time, and include the kids in the planning.  While having a staycation may not be as exciting as visiting a new locale, it can still be a lot of fun, and, more importantly, it will give you the time to both relax and spend time together as a family.

Spring is nearly here, which means that soon we will be discarding heavy jackets and coats in favor of short sleeve t-shirts and shorts.   If your New Year’s Resolutions have fallen flat, you still have time to drop some weight and get in shape before the summer season.  However, doing so doesn’t have to cost a bundle.  There are plenty of ways to save money when trying to lose weight.

What Weight Loss Plan to Choose

Generally, you will spend the most money if you choose a weight loss plan that requires you to buy their food.  You will have to pay for all of their prepackaged food plus enrollment and/or meeting fees.  Instead, choose a weight loss plan that teaches you how to eat right using food that you choose and prepare.

Also, depending on your personality, you may want to consider an online weight loss plan.  For instance, Weight Watchers offers members the option of coming to a meeting weekly or of following the plan online.  However, the online plan is nearly 50% cheaper than the meeting option.  If you don’t need the supportive environment of a weekly meeting, you could save quite a bit of money following the plan on your own at home.

What Food to Buy

Despite what marketing executives would like us to believe, you don’t have to buy any expensive food or special weight loss foods.  In fact, the foods that are best for your body are often some of the cheapest.  Buying basic produce such as carrots, celery, apples, pears, and bananas, you could pay less than $2 per pound, especially if you buy them in bulk.  In addition, healthy carbs such as oatmeal and barley are also low cost.

How to Save on Exercise

A key component of any weight loss plan is to also include exercise.   However, you don’t have to join a gym and pay a monthly fee.  There are several low cost fitness options:

-Follow an exercise DVD.  You can buy these at a steep discount on a site such as eBay.

-Play outside with the kids.  On nice spring days, take your kids out for a walk.  Challenge them to a race or play a game of tag.  You’ll feel like a kid again, and you will also be burning calories.  If it is a rainy day and you are stuck inside, put on some music and dance around with your kids.  They will appreciate your silliness, and the whole family will get some much needed exercise.

-Buy a piece of exercise equipment you love.  If you like walking on a treadmill or using an elliptical, for instance, ask around to see if anyone you know is looking to get rid of one.  Chances are you could get it at an excellent price this way.  Another alternative is to check Craigslist.  Don’t be afraid to haggle with sellers.

Losing weight will improve your health and make you feel better about yourself, especially in the summer months when there is not a sweater or jacket to hide behind.  Losing weight doesn’t have to be expensive.  Stick to low cost options, and you can drop the pounds without hurting your wallet.