OutOfYourRut.com

What Can Career Coaching Do For You?

Kevin M — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:53:20 +0000

Living (and Working) in Abundance

Guest post by Ed Burns

Have you ever asked yourself the question: “What the heck am I doing in this job?” We all go through it. Tomorrow morning as you sit in traffic or slowly make your way to your cubicle, and look around—you will realize that you are not alone. Do the faces staring back at you look like they are living their passions and callings?

Probably not, yet millions of people each day are convinced that work and one’s passion are two entirely different things. Many brush this issue aside claiming “work is work and it was never meant to be enjoyable.”

Dissatisfaction’s deeper effects

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”—John 10:10

So if you are not living and working in “abundance” or an overflowing of satisfaction, then who is stealing your life away and destroying your soul? Based on what we just read the answer is the thief (the devil).

How many families are destroyed because of a person not working in a job or career that brings them satisfaction each and every day?

It usually starts out as “After the day I had, I need a drink” or “I’ll need another pill to get me through this morning”. It typically turns into depression on Sunday evening knowing that you have to go back into the office on Monday. Before you know it, you are drinking or popping a pill every day and your loved ones become the casualties of this cyclical struggle.

What Career Coaching can do to help

Career coaches help those that have reached their low point. Our clients typically have come to the realization that there must be more to life than punching the clock and collecting a paycheck. Our goal as Career Coaches is to help clients figure out what they are “programmed” to do and then develop a plan to get there.

The first step of the coaching process involves taking a DISC profile test. A DISC profile is an online personality test used by HR companies worldwide. The test involves answering a series of questions based on work habits and likes/dislikes. It takes twenty minutes to finish and when completed, we receive a report that shows their strengths, weaknesses, jobs or careers they would excel in. It also includes a Biblical reference of who they most closely resemble in the Bible, which is a nice extra for people of faith.

This report shows our clients’ strengths and weaknesses and provides a unique insight that very few people get to experience. For most of our clients, this is the first time they have ever seen what they really look like on paper. This report also gives many examples of jobs or careers that our clients would excel in.

The interesting part is that quite often we hear people say “oh yea, I wanted to do that when I was little” or “I never thought that I could make money doing that.” We then take the information found on their DISC profile, and begin identifying the jobs or industries that our clients want to explore further.

Converting the results into concrete action

During this time we encourage and facilitate job shadowing and reach out to others already working in this field to receive valuable feedback on the benefits or pitfalls that they have experienced on their journey as well.

Job shadowing is when we get clients to follow someone else for a day or two who is working in the career field that they would like to be working in. It’s usually not paid but it gives the candidate an idea of what, for example, “a day in the life of a dog trainer” looks like.

Once the client figures out an industry he or she would like to begin targeting, we also create a résumé that includes a summary of transferable skills that can be used in this new career along with cover letters and reference sheets. Career coaches then sit down with clients and practice the interview process. We cover the most frequently asked questions in interviews and prepare the client to be able to answer the questions in a way that showcases their strengths in their previous job experiences.

The ultimate payoff

The entire career coaching process typically lasts three months from start to finish. The results are nothing less than life-changing. One hundred percent of the time clients are so relieved that they just began moving forward!

They usually find out so much about themselves and realize they can make a living doing what they love. They become inspired and full of life. Their health changes, their family relationships are much better and they just feel they are “doing what they should be doing.”

We have all heard the saying “life is too short.” Well, life is too short to be merely surviving in a job that yields a paycheck and nothing else. Career coaching provides the ground work to begin moving away from the destruction of merely existing and beginning the path to walking (and working) in abundance.

Make Tomorrow Better Than Today!

Ed Burns is the founder of The Provision Group, a Financial and Career Coaching company. He is a graduate of Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania and has held many executive corporate positions mostly with GE (General Electric). Ed has been married for 13 years to his wife Megan, who is also a financial and career coach. Together they have two children, ages 2 and 4.

( Photo courtesy of I’ll Never Grow Up’s )

China is the No. 1 energy user – what does that mean for your car?

Kevin M — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:50:20 +0000

By Kevin M

What does energy use in China have to do with your personal financial situation here in the Western World?

Many of us prefer to believe this is an issue best left to politicians or economists, but hardly worthy of serious analysis or concern by the rest of us. After all, things will play out the way they will right?

Maybe not. We spend time and money planning for any number of future outcomes—our retirement, our health, our careers, paying off our mortgages, our children’s futures—why not map out and plan a viable energy future? World leadership hasn’t done such a good job of this so far, and if energy follows the pattern of the last few years with steadily rising prices over the long term, it won’t be politicians and economists who will suffer the brunt of the problem—it’ll be us.

Energy is an issue that’s gaining greater attention on my radar screen, but since my first attempt to tackle its impact on our personal financial well-being this past spring, more news of significance continues to pour in. The BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is one such development, but there’s more.

Last week, the International Energy Agency released a report indicating that China surpassed the United States as the worlds leading energy consumer in 2009 (“China rejects world’s number one energy user title”). The agency reported that:

“According to the IEA, China consumed 2.252 billion tons of oil equivalent of energy in 2009, from sources that included coal, nuclear power, natural gas and hydroelectric power — about four percent more than the United States…The Financial Times quoted IEA chief economist Fatih Birol as saying: “In the year 2000, the US consumed twice as much energy as China; now, China consumes more than the US.”

This report isn’t merely interesting—it could be downright cataclysmic! The United States is a mature economy and yet it continues to increase energy consumption. Despite its size, China is a developing economy–an economic baby if you will—and it’s growing rapidly. It has more than four times the population of the US and its economy is growing several times faster. All of this means increasing energy consumption. If China’s energy demand doubled in the past decade, what will it be a decade from now? What impact might it have on prices we pay for energy?

Less than two decades ago China was an energy surplus nation, now it’s a big time importer competing with the US and the rest of the industrialized world for new energy sources. In fact the world’s four largest economies—the US, China, Japan and Germany—are all massively dependent on imported energy. And that demand is rising throughout the developing world, including the oil producing nations themselves. Oil demand is rising in virtually every corner of the globe.

What if the world isn’t running out of oil?

Let’s ignore for a moment that fact that major oil producing countries, including the US, Britain, Mexico and others, are experiencing long term oil production declines, and focus instead on promising new sources.

Canada is one of the very few industrialized nations in the world that still exports energy, but about half of it’s oil production comes not from wells of free-flowing oil, but from the Athabasca oil sands in Alberta. The field is extremely large and production is expected to grow considerably in the next few decades, however much of the projected increase in production will depend on continued high oil prices. The field may be the largest reservoir of crude oil in the world, but mining the tar sands and converting it to useable oil is substantially more costly than the favored sweet crude coming out of the Texas, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Brazil is another promising oil source. Just a few years ago it was a net energy importer, but is now rapidly transitioning to the coveted status of exporter, especially with oil. But most of major new oil fields in Brazil are offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, and much of the production is “heavy oil”—a thicker type of oil that doesn’t flow as well or process as easily.

The Arctic Ocean is believed to contain substantial oil reserves and if prices remain high enough some of that oil could be flowing into a gas station near you. Beyond the fact that the region is super cold and hostile to human existence is the related fact that there are no population centers available in the area. All operations will have to be established and serviced from great distances, which will add to the cost of production—once it gets rolling in any volume.

Tar sands, heavy oil, offshore drilling…in the Arctic Ocean…all point to one thing: higher energy prices. No business entity or government authority would even consider investing the capital and labor necessary to bring oil out of the ground under such difficult circumstances or in such hostile environments unless they had a clear vision of higher—perhaps much higher—price levels. Are we willing to bet against the people with the capital?

Until the BP oil leak, we tended to believe that geopolitical disturbances were the primary threat to energy flow and price stability. But as more oil flows out of offshore fields in the worlds oceans—rather than the relatively calm waters of the bodies like the Gulf of Mexico—disruptions related to storms and equipment damage may become more common but less preventable than the political instability of many oil producing regions that we’ve become so familiar with.

The world might not be running out of oil, but it’s clear that demand is powering ahead sufficiently that higher risk sources need to be brought into production. The oil may keep flowing in the future, but it will cost more and come at greater risk as it does.

What can little, ole me do about it?

OK, let’s try connecting the dots and bringing this discussion down to practical application. Is there anything we can do about it, and when should we do it?

As individuals, there’s little any of us can do to change the big picture, but that shouldn’t stop us from working purposefully to develop practical micro strategies to prepare for a future that’s completely predictable. Some steps you can take right now:

Make fuel efficiency a central issue in the decision of the next car you buy, be it new or used. This doesn’t mean you need to buy an electric car or even a hybrid, but rather a vehicle that gets above average fuel economy.
Consider the impact of $5/gallon gas on any vehicles you own now. The time to sell a gas guzzler is before the next price spike; once prices rise, the value of the vehicle will plunge by thousands of dollars.
Consider your daily commute for work; if moving closer to employment isn’t possible, begin to develop a long term plan to work from home. Your job may not be suited to home basing right now, but with some advance planning, you may be able to either work your current job from home two or three days per week at some point in the future, or gear up for a different job or career altogether—one where home basing is part of the package.
Begin investigating the potential of solar, wind and any other alternative energy sources for your home or business. We always hear that these sources are either expensive, unreliable or technologically flawed, but advances are being made all the time. As energy prices rise over time, those advances will only accelerate–be open to the possibilities. As we continue to drink in the negative news on renewable energy, Denmark produces about 20% of it’s electricity from wind power—most of if from wind mills owned by private individuals and small cooperatives. Somebody somewhere is doing this, and so can we!
Invest some retirement money in renewable energy enterprises. As growing world energy demand bumps up against production limits on cheap fossil fuels, renewables could be the long term investment play of the century.

Note that every one of these strategies will take time to implement, which is why it’s important that we consider implementing our own energy changes now, while circumstances are relatively calm. Once prices begin to rise, the cost of making changes—be it buying a more energy efficient car, selling a gas guzzler or installing a useable renewable energy system of one sort or another—will likely rise to the point that we can’t afford to do them.

When it comes to energy, should we leave it to the “experts”? Or should we take matters into our own hands and see if we can’t work out our own best solutions?

( Photo courtesy of andjohan )

Should You Give Even If You’re In Debt?

Kevin M — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:53:29 +0000

By Kevin M

Is it OK to give money to charities and religious institutions if you owe money? This isn’t just a question for people of faith (which I am myself) but for anyone who gives charitably and is in debt at the same time.

I recognize that there are different kinds of debt, and even different types of giving, so it’s hard to be general with an answer to this question. But I think that—at a minimum—giving needs to be considered in light of the different types of debt.

Generally speaking, there are four different kinds of debt that may have an impact on our giving:

Secured loans. This includes any debts that are secured by tangible property, like mortgages or auto loans. My thought is that since they’re secured by assets that we own and that we’re expensing over several years, you can give without consideration to the fact that you owe on them. Generally speaking, they’re debts secured by assets that are worth at least as much as the debts themselves, and thus offset—no problem with giving when you owe this type.

Unsecured loans. This is usually comprised mostly of credit cards, but in the current economic environment, it could just as easily include the unsecured portion of secured debt where the collateral asset—the house or car—has fallen in value to something less than the amount owed. And this is where the question of giving when you’re in debt starts to become a legitimate issue. These are pure debts, meaning money you owe but there’s nothing behind them but your promise to make good on them.

Student loans are unsecured debt as well, but that’s too messy even for this discussion; we’ll just leave it out of the mix.

Money owned to other people. If giving while you owe substantial amounts of credit card debt is an issue, it would be even more so if you owe money to other people. The best way I can sum up the dilemma is with a question: how would you feel if a friend or family member owed you a substantial amount of money, and was giving money to their favorite charity?

Defaulted obligations. This would include past debts that you haven’t been paying on long enough that they go to collection or judgment. They can be a few years old, or old enough that we might even prefer to forget we have them. Medical collections are in this group, as are back taxes owed to the IRS or other tax authority. These are the debt types that are super sticky for the would-be giver—do we have a moral, ethical or faith based reason to honor these before we give to any charity?

Different kinds of giving

I want to differentiate between three types of giving:

Money gifts to institutional charities such as recognized national and local charities, houses of worship, and faith based- and political-organizations,
Gifts of your time and effort to organized charities, and
Monetary gifts (or time and effort for that matter) to PEOPLE who you know who are in need.

Now I want to make it clear that giving your time and effort to charities is a perfect way to give when you don’t have money to offer, and making monetary gifts to people in need is part of being human. The type of giving I’m calling into question is the first one—money gifts to recognized charities. Should we be giving to these organizations if we owe money elsewhere?

What are your thoughts on giving to charities when the giver is in debt? I’ll take a stab at some positions for or against:

We have an obligation to give—regardless of our financial situations
If I owe money and I give to a charity, I’m really giving the charity someone else’s money
There will always be the poor and the needy, and I’ll always have debt, so I should give anyway
If having debt is a reason to NOT give, in theory you could stay in debt forever—even borrowing to pay for your own excesses—and therefore never give to anyone
As long as a person is paying their debt on schedule, there’s no reason not to give, regardless of the type of debt owed
And here are a few questions that pertain specifically to tithing—for those of you who aren’t believers, you can sit these out…
Do you give out of your income, or do you give out of your assets?
If you have $1 million in investments, but only make $50,000, is giving 10%–or $5000 per year—a true tithe?
Since a tithe is based on your increase, and not specifically on your income, should you give based on increases in the value of stocks, mutual funds or retirement plans that you own?
Is your tithe based on your net income after taxes, or is it on your gross income before taxes?

Want to take a stab at any of these positions or questions?

( Photo courtesy of The Library of Congress )

Entertainment For Less

Kevin M — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:56:00 +0000

By Kevin M

There’s a “stealth expense” that chews through budgets and often leaves us with an empty bank account or even a little deeper in debt each month; its called entertainment expense, and at least part of the problem may lay in the fact that we’re usually reluctant to even view it as an “expense”.

Maybe this is the case because entertainment has a way of defining us—it’s often who we are, which has to be something more significant than just an ordinary expense, doesn’t it?

We can be meticulous about budgeting for housing, groceries, utilities and a host of other expenses, but entertainment is often—to borrow a political phrase—“off budget”.

Entertainment diverts our time into stimulating activities in ways that usually won’t happen through working at our occupations, managing our homes or many of the other more mundane tasks we participate in as a matter of survival. People have sought to do this since the beginning of humanity, but the one thing that’s changed radically is our contemporary willingness to break the bank to make it happen. That’s the part of it that we need to control!

The most basic purpose of entertainment is to have a good time; we need to get past the idea that we need to spend a lot of money, or even any money at all, in order to make that happen. We all have a need to be entertained but there are inexpensive ways to do it, and then there are the other ways—the ones that often lead to debt.

Entertainment as an addiction

I’m not a psychologist, but I’d be willing to wager that much of the spending on gold-plated forms of entertainment these days is an attempt to compensate for weaknesses in other areas of life, such as stress, lack of companionship, lack of community, or other voids. This goes beyond the realm of simply looking to have a good time, to the point that the planet is now crawling with entertainment addicts. And like all addictions, it must be controlled.

Replace costly entertainment habits with less expensive ones, and we can do that simply by engaging in more participatory activities, and by increasing the amount of time we spend with people. Bigger picture, much of the reliance on entertainment might be replaced by reducing stress in your life, by increasing connections with family and friends and with involving yourself more with the community and the world around you.

Do these things, and you may find yourself craving fewer restaurant meals, amusement park visits, trips to bars, and all of the other entertainment activities that can suck a budget dry.

Instead of eating out, going to the movies, to the mall to shop or to costly amusement parks and other venues, come up with some inexpensive alternative activities you can engage in so that you can still keep yourself entertained but without spending a bunch of money to do it. Don’t be afraid to consult with family, friends and coworkers for more activities—see what others are doing for entertainment, especially those of a more frugal persuasion.

Compile a list to help you when you’re looking for something to do—this will help you to develop some new habits and attitudes toward entertainment, at least until it becomes set in your mind.

Eight activities for under $20

To help you get started, here is a list of activities which will get you out of the house and into the world without bleeding you dry:

Visit with friends and extended family—your house or theirs; we’re social creatures so people are the best source of entertainment
Head out to the local park or a nearby beach; pack a lunch, bring your bikes, in-line skates or a ball or two, and spend a couple of hours just taking it easy and enjoying the outdoors
Window shop at the mall; bring $10 with you and remove your credit and debit cards from your wallet; sometimes just being out and about is all we really need
Plan “Family Night In” with a home cooked dinner and a video, or cook a nice dinner at home, then go out for dessert afterward—which is just as much fun but much cheaper than a full restaurant meal
Go hiking in a state or national park—you don’t need to be an athlete to walk, and you can do it at your own pace and enjoy nature as you go
Pass some time in your local library, or at one of the chain mega book stores; you can browse or read for hours and no one will ask you to leave. Some large book stores also have coffee shops, and you can always get a cup for under a couple of dollars.
Hang out with family or friends at Starbucks or some other coffee house
Pack a lunch or some snacks and spend the afternoon or evening at your local neighborhood or community swimming pool. At our community pool, daily admission is $3 per person, $12 for a family of four, and there aren’t a whole lot of places you can go for less than that.

This is just a start—work on expanding the list, and I’ll bet you could come up with at least 20 activities you can engage in for less than $20 each and many of them free. A lot depends on your own personal preferences, but the more possible activities you can come up with, the less expensive your entertainment will become, so be purposeful in developing a list.

We’ve found over the years, that doing several low- or no-cost activities in combination can make for an enjoyable day. You can have a picnic in the park for dinner, window shop at the mall for a bit, hang out at the bookstore for a while, then go to Starbucks for coffee and dessert—an enjoyable evening for under $20.

The more options and combinations you can come up with, the less likely you’ll need to go to the movies or an amusement park.

What are some other ways you can think of—or have done yourself—that you can entertain yourself or your family for not a lot of money?

( Photo courtesy of dionc )

Why Bundling Services Might be a Bad Deal

Kevin M — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 16:29:45 +0000

By Kevin M

Companies are always trying to get us to take their bundle plans, neat packages that promise a veritable one-stop shopping trip for all of our communication needs. Cable TV, internet, land lines, cell phones—they’ll load them all into a pretty little bundle for us and provide a nice discount for dealing in bulk.

It’s easy to see why we’re drawn to these arrangements. Not only do we get the lower rate for the package deal, but we can also consolidate several monthly bills into one and, we might reason, with so much of our business placed with one provider, we’ll have clout! After all, surely a provider won’t want to lose ALL of our business if we’re unsatisfied with any single service.

As attractive as that might sound—especially from a life’s simplification standpoint—my experience with bundles hasn’t been terribly positive. As good as the bundle plans might look from time to time, I’ll keep my communication services spread over three or four different providers.

Here’s why…

Not all providers are good at all services

I learned the hard way that a company that’s good at one thing may not be good at others. We took a too-good-to-be-true package from one company we were successfully dealing with. We already had their landline phone service which, though pricey, was excellent. When they came around bearing gifts with an internet and cable TV package we jumped. The option to add our phones into the package at a substantial discount was open, but given my normal hesitation in this area, we decided to wait before combining.

Thought the internet service was nothing special, the cable was outstanding—except for one thing: most of the time it didn’t work.

Five teams of technicians came to the house over a space of several weeks, but none were able to identify the problem, let alone fix it. We were down more than we were up, and the internet usually went with it. After a two month experiment, we terminated the deal. Sadly, we had the same company for our cell phones a year earlier and they were equally inept at that. The only thing they were good at was landline phones, but they weren’t inexpensive either.

Needless to say we severed all ties with that company, including the excellent but pricey phone service. Wiser for having been burned, we returned to our policy of spreading our services over several providers.

That company needed to do what they did best—landline telephones—and find a way to do it for less, rather than branching into providing services that are beyond their abilities.

Lack of flexibility

When we’re shopping for deals and price is the primary criteria, we can be leaving a lot on the table in other areas. What ever company you decide to deal with you’ll be limited to the features and product selection they offer on any service. They may have the best cable TV package on the market, but if their cell phone and internet services are something less, you’ll have to take them anyway or lose the pricing benefit of the bundle.

Customer service and billing can be another flash point. If billing is a problem with one service and you have four services with them, you’ll have four billing problems. Or one billing problem spread over four services. It’s not a mix and match, you’re taking what ever they have with all the attendant problems that go with them.

A lot of people prefer a four-in-one bill with all services on a single bill. While you might save money with this, you can end up with one massive monthly bill the size of a modest car payment. If you’re not particularly good managing your budget, this can become a problem.

It restricts the search for better deals

The communications industry is in a constant state of flux. Deals and packages come and go and the only way to be able to take best advantage of them is to be ready to make a move when they come up. Bundles complicate this.

When you’re in a bundle, the price you’re given is usually dependent on having all of the component services in the original plan. If you withdraw one service to pursue a better deal with another provider it will probably mean that the rate on the remaining services will go up, reducing or even eliminating the advantage that might be gained by switching one service. This is one way that providers keep us from straying from their bundles.

One of the factors that might push you to look for better deals is of course that once you’re in a bundle the price will go up. Sometimes it will go up in unannounced small increments that you may not notice unless you compare this month’s bill to one from a year ago.

Sometimes it will go up in a single, announced increase. And sometimes you’ll experience both the gradual monthly increase along with a sudden spike.

Often, we pay the increase because replacing all of these services can be a real hassle. You spend hours on websites studying the matrix of service and program combinations of competing provider bundles, and once you select one, hours more on the phone working out a series of small but critical details. Then the service people need to come out and you need to be home when they do. After everything’s up and running, it’s nail biting time to determine if

the combination of services is right for you
if the service performs as promised
finally, when the bill comes if the pricing is exactly as promised; this is complicated by the fact that you often have to wait two billing cycles to know for sure, since the initial bill usually contains a host of adjustments of one sort or another.

Moral of the story: moving entire bundles isn’t easy—which is reason number two why you probably won’t move it. And the providers know this too.

The good news on bundles is mostly up front when you first enter them. But the price advantage tends to decline in over time as other services become available for less and the cost of your bundle increases.

What are your experiences with bundles? Did they save you money? Were/are you satisfied with ALL of the services in the package? Do you have any bundle horror stories?

(Photo courtesy of djwudi )

How to Control Your Spending Habits and Avoid Debt

Kevin M — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:53:11 +0000

The following is a guest post by Kevin Craig

Bad spending habits are something that every spend-thrift American is addicted to. Easy availability of credit cards and quick access to loans has fanned this fiery practice all the more. And the result is deep debt crisis faced by almost every second person in the US. Though there are several debt settlement companies across different states in the US your own endeavors can save you and keep out of debt.

Does your careless spending habit take a toll on your finances every month and leave you at the mercy of creditors? Why not start taking a little initiative to put a check on reckless expenditures and avoid unpleasant debt problems? Breaking bad spending habits is not a Herculean task. It is all about imposing discipline on your expenses.

Just check out the following three tips to kick-start your cost-curtailment plan:

Prepare a monthly budget: A monthly budget is a must if you have a cost-curtailment plan on your agenda. Start by preparing a budget for your expenses every month and develop the habit of sticking to as far as possible. A budget would not only help you to keep track of exactly how much you spend but also would keep a check on your expenses. If you are disciplined and honest with your budget, your money management is sure to improve. And this in turn would help you to save quite a lot of money!
Avoid credit cards as much as possible: It is easy to overspend with credit cards. But if you are head strong not to overspend, immediately part with your credit cards. Use them as little as possible and stick to cash or debit cards for all of your purchases. Avoid comparing your personal finances with that of others. Do not get carried away by the luxuries your friends and acquaintances can afford. It is absolutely unwise to follow the uncontrolled spending spree of others. After all, you never know whether they are exposing themselves to debt or have an additional source of income to afford the extravagances. It is very crucial to understand that recreation is definitely required, but savings is also important. However, it is foolish to cut out all recreational expenses. Do go for recreations, but take care not to spend beyond your limits. And you will simply rejoice to find the savings at the end of the month.
Find out alternatives to regular expenses: Have you ever thought how much you spend on regular items like coffee, snacks and cigarettes every month? They actually cost you quite a bit without your knowledge. Try to think of ways to lower these expenses that are burning a big hole in your pocket. You may also save money on your utility bills, by lowering the air conditioner or the heater while you sleep. Avoiding such apparently minor costs can save you a whole lot of money over time.

Now isn’t that really easy? As I said earlier, controlling a bad spending habit is not that difficult. All you need to develop is a logical approach towards the way you spend your money. Abstain from taking rash financial decisions and indulging in wild spending sprees! Think smart, think economic! And a financial crunch will not be your cup of tea for sure!

Kevin Craig is a financial writer with Oak View Law Group, a firm that works with people who have credit problems. His articles have appeared on various web sites. He is not affiliated with OutOfYourRut.com or Lighthouse Creative Ventures LLC.

( Photo courtesy of Andres Rueda )

Starbucks, Blockbuster and Friday Round Up June 25

Kevin M — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:24:49 +0000

By Kevin M

Random musings from this week…

Free Wi-Fi at Starbucks but you have to sign up 6700 Starbucks coffee shops are rolling out free Wi-Fi beginning July 1st. Don’t tell anybody, but you can sign up right now and get the free service immediately. I took advantage of the change late last week, and though the service is free, you do have to go through a fairly cumbersome sign up process. You have to purchase a Starbucks gift card (minimum $5) to get the card number and activation code, which become part of your permanent entry codes. A pamphlet is available to walk you through the process, which is establishing a Wi-Fi account through AT&T. One tail though—the free service is limited to two hours per session, after which charges will apply. Still, that’s a minor limitation in exchange for having access to free internet at thousands of outlets.

Healthy snacks. When we take our family to the movies, we stop at a store and buy any candy that we want, since the same stuff they sell for $3.50 to $6.00 at the movies can easily be had for about a dollar a box on the outside. Walgreens is offering a new and healthy twist: right there with the movie sized candy boxes are snack sized boxes of dried fruit.

Wow, snacks that look almost like junk food but are actually good for you. On my last trip in a got a box of raisins for a dollar—and somehow it just tastes better coming out of one of those candy sized boxes. Whoodda thought? I guess someone did—brilliant idea!

Is alternative energy impossible? In light of BP’s Gulf oil crisis…we often hear that alternative energy is impractical, unworkable, too costly, and too far into the future to help us now. Yet Denmark has been making quiet but steady progress in generating electricity from windmills, most of them privately owned. Despite being oil rich, Denmark now generates nearly 20% of its electric power from windmills. It’s something to think about as crude gushes into the Gulf of Mexico or the next time oil/gasoline prices spike to uncomfortable levels…

All good things come to an end, and so has Blockbusters No Late Fee policy This may not come as news to some people, but Blockbuster has quietly ended their much celebrated no-late fee policy. We don’t rent videos often, but did a week or so ago, and found that they’re back to their get-it-back-within-five-days-or-else policy. It was nice while it lasted, but we won’t be renting too many movies there from now on—once we’ve watched them a couple of times we kind of forget we have them…

Save your left over coffee! I left the following comment on a post at Provident Planning this week, but didn’t realize at the time that it might represent money saving advice:

“Any iced coffee drinkers out there? I save our left over coffee, refrigerate it, then mix with milk and an artificial sweetener and it’s superb! It’s also been recently reported to be an effective appetite suppressant–that never hurts.”

A heartfelt thanks to Len Penzo for inviting me to post on his site this week while he’s away on vacation (Behind the Green Curtain: An Insider’s View of the Millionaire Mind, Monday, June 21). Len is one of THE most creative writers in the blogosphere, and it was a real kick not only to do the post, but also to participate in the rich commentary that follows on his site.

The round-up…

Brad at Enemy of Debt created quite a stir this week with his on-the-edge post The Cold Hard Truth: Debt is STUPID and You Might Be Too!!. While I think there are compelling reasons people go into debt that are outside the preserve of semi-permanent insanity, sometimes we need someone with the intensity of a drill sergeant to get our attention. Mission accomplished!

Jason at Redeeming Riches takes on a subject that is the source of great tension for most Christians, the dividing line between faith and money–there shouldn’t be any! In How to Live Missionally With Your Money he provides a careful analysis of why everything, including your finances, should be handled within the framework of faith and not the other way around.

Paul at Provident Planning is doing his part to bring us home to the simple pleasures of summer in Sweet Tea: A Cheap Alternative to Soft Drinks but Tastier than Water. Despite his passion for sweet tea, there’s a strong financial message in the post. How much money do we spend each year keeping ourselves supplied with soft drinks? How much can we save if we substitute our own home prepared beverages compared to the cost of buying popular soft drinks off the shelf? There’s some real money to be saved over the course of a year with this simple do-it-yourself (recipe provided!). And the mason jars DO add a nice twist.

A site coming up that’s well worth paying closer attention to is KNS Financial. Khaleef from my home state of New Jersey has a two part series this week Trying to Reduce Expenses? Sweat the Big Stuff! on major expense reduction, including Car Costs and Cell Phones & Utilities. We can only clip so many coupons and recycle so much stuff, but the real savings are going to come when we take a look at the bigger expenses and start chopping there. Car costs are one of my favorite targets, as anyone who’s read a few of my posts knows.

Peter at Bible Money Matters offers one of the most comprehensive posts I’ve ever read on the costs of having a baby in What Expenses Should I Expect When Having A Child?. It’s a subject close to his heart as he and his wife await the arrival of their new baby boy. Having had two myself (well, my wife helped) it’s obvious he’s done some extensive research on what to expect, and I’d recommend the post to anyone who has a baby on the way or plans for one in the near future.

Sometimes the simplest things have the greatest impact on our lives. Kevin at Financially Poor introduces a single one word question (from youth) that might eliminate the need for all of the will power you never had in This 1 Question Will Change Your Spending Habits. He speculates that the perceived need to spend money is often driven by deep emotional issues that can be successfully challenged with this one word question. I think he’s on to something.

John at Rich and Fulfilling Life asks a serious question “where do you get your financial advice?” in Money and Sex. People often get their advice from common sources like friends, the internet and the media without any critical analysis of their validity. So where should we get financial advice? Check out the post and see.

Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme had a thought provoking post this week, On the universally declining standards of living. While we focus heavily on micro strategies to squeeze more out of each dollar on personal finance blogs, my own thought is that it’s close to meaningless to do so unless we have some understanding of the big picture factors affecting our finances. Probably the biggest of these is the flat (or declining by some measures) standard of living that been happening since at least the early 1970s. Unless we know what it is we’re truly facing, there’s no way to adequately prepare ourselves.

Speaking of big picture, I’d recommend virtually anything written by my friend Matt and his partner George over at The Online Investing AI Blog. If you like your reality even if it hurts—and I do—there’s a wealth of wisdom on this site. Good posts this past week included Why now may not be such a Great Time to Buy a House and Six Tips for Running the Millionaire Marathon, and while I recommend these, the site is rich in hard hitting information and opinion posts throughout.

That’s it until my next round up—which could be a few weeks in coming…

( Photo courtesy of whatleydude )

How to Make Money with an “Authority” Blog

Kevin M — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:29:01 +0000

This is a guest post by Brian Garvin, a commenter here on OutOfYourRut.com. He runs an online business so I asked him to write a post describing what it is he’s doing to make that happen.

If you’ve worked in the Brick & Mortar world for any length of time, chances are you’ve picked up a skill that could be applied to the internet to start your own blog. Basically an Authority Blog is a large, content based blog lots of other bloggers and the Internet Community at large visit and respect as one of the larger blogs in that particular niche.

Most people think of Authority Blogs as being run by just large companies, but that’s not the truth. In fact many single people are running some of the largest Authority Blogs in some of the most competitive industries, such as Internet Marketing, Real Estate, Forex, Health & Wellness and Dating. So the main question to be asked is if building this type of blog is right for you. We’re gonna go over a list of questions you should answer. Answering the questions below will determine if setting up a blog is right for you.

Do You Enjoy Writing Unique Content?

If you’re considering starting an Authority Blog, you will be writing lots of blog posts and articles. If you are already an expert in a particular area this will make things much easier for you. Blog posts can be any length, usually the longer the better since Search Engines love unique content, but should at least be 150 words when possible. You will want to write articles and use what they call the author biography to point relevant anchor text links back to your blog. You will want to submit articles you write to the major article directories such as Ezine Articles, Go Articles and Articles Base.

However if you don’t like writing, you can outsource all your content but it could end up being pricey. Articles typically run $6.00 to $15.00 each depending on the length and the quality of the article. Blog posts can usually be outsourced for $3.00 to $5.00 each. We’ve used a company called Need An Article for many of our ghost written articles for almost 3 years now and have had major success with them. The beautiful thing about starting a blog is you can do it almost totally broke as long as you write all the content yourself. It will usually take from 500-1000 blog posts before you site receives any decent traffic.

How Do You Monetize Your Blog?

I assume you’ll be spending lots of time and/or money building a massive blog so you can earn an income with it. So you’ll need to decide now how you’ll be monetizing it.

You can earn money each time someone clicks your ads with companies like Google Adsense or Chitika.
You should also offer a free PDF download that offers good solid information in return for them subscribing to your email newsletter.
You can start promoting affiliate programs on the backend and start making sales this way via automated follow-up messages.

What we do on our Total Health At Home blog is write small 300 word reviews on products inside the health niche. Then we send them to affiliate programs related to popular products within the health niche. Many of our terms rank well in the search engines, so when people click through the Google listings to our site and review the product, and they click through and actually buy the product, we earn a commission on each sale we make. Sometimes the commissions can be as low as 25 cents, but we have products we earn over $160.00 per sale for.

How Much You Can Expect to Earn

One common belief when creating a large niche blog is that you’ll throw up 10-20 pages and the income will pour in and you can just take your long vacation that you’ve been planning. Sorry but it doesn’t quite work this way. I’ve been spending 8-12 hours per day on our blog for 2 months and in the last 30 days we made close to $120.00. This doesn’t sound like much, but assuming the same growth rate and assuming I put in the same amount of work each month we could easily be at $1,450 per month within a year at this rate. And to be honest I feel very lucky to earn this much this quick.

As a general rule I wouldn’t expect to see much of anything for 6-9 months as far as monetary returns go. First you need to get your pages up and then you need to get backlinks to those pages. Then you need to get more than your competitors for each page you want to rank on to expect a top 10 search result. So in summary, getting your posts up is only 50% of the battle; the other 50% is getting backlinks to those posts.

How Do I Get Backlinks to My Blog?

The great news is there are plenty of “white-hat”, or ethical ways to get backlinks to your blog posts. You can write articles and submit them to the major article archives as I mentioned earlier. I’ve found that posting comments on blogs is probably the best way to pass on Page Rank and help you rank for your posts. Keep in mind when you write comments on other blogs, that Page Rank is borrowed and not owned by you.

To maximize your chances of your comment staying on the owners blog, write relevant content based on what the blog post is about. This way if the blog owner decides to “clean house” and delete all the spammy posts, yours won’t get trashed right along with them. Another thing you can do is send out an occasional Press Release.

The income strategy for my health blog will be to pick out 3 super competitive keyword terms and try to rank on these over the next 2-3 years, the type that get 30,000 or more visitors per day. Then I’m going to be working on about 30 medium competition keywords, the kind that will make me about $200 per month each when I rank on them. Then the site will have hundreds of other “long-tail” keywords. These won’t make much income per page but will typically be very easy to get top rankings on.

I use a tool called Market Samurai not only for all my keyword research, but to find all the blogs I need to post on. It took me a while to get the hang of this tool, but now it’s working as a godsend and is helping me build my entire business. For my super competitive keyword terms, I plan on sending at least 500-1000 blog posts to each of these. For my medium level keyword terms, I plan on making 200-300 posts each and I’ll randomly choose long tail keywords and make 5-10 blog posts on these for keywords I see that are close to ranking in the top 10 and just need a little push.

So yes building an authority site is hard work, especially the first 1-2 years. But the dream of relaxing and working a few hours per week is a definite possibility once you build one. There’s a bit more to building one of these sites than I explained, but what you just read are the basics and if you follow these rules it’s just a matter of time before you succeed. My biggest word of advice is to start as soon as possible and be patient.

Brian Garvin & Jeff West run the Total Health At Home blog, which is a Health & Wellness blog that reviews popular Nutritional Supplements and other Health Related products.

Do you have a blog you’d like to make money on? What are you doing to make that happen? What have you tried that hasn’t worked?

( Photo courtesy of smemon87 )

Manage Your Distractions to Take Control of Your Time

Kevin M — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 23:39:23 +0000

Better control of your time means more control of your income and your finances

By Dave Kelly

So, I have been thinking about this… wait just a minute, someone is calling me on my cell phone. “Hello, this is Dave Kelly. Yup. Um-huh. Real World: Motivational Speakers? I like it. Send me an email. Thanks.”

Sorry about that. Anyway, I was going to say… wait, now my phone is buzzing. A text message. Oh, that’s good. Gotta text back. “U R kidding. LOL. HA!”

So, the thing with distractions is… A tweet! Let me see, what is my friend, who tweets his every move fifty-plus times a day, up to?

Getting the point?

And that is just from one medium of distraction, my cell phone.

What else do you have going on? Video games? Facebook? TV? Boyfriend – girlfriend – husband -wife? Multiples of those?

No matter what your distractions are, choose to manage them in an intelligent way. Just because your phone rings, you DO NOT have to answer it. That is what voice mail is for. Do you spend all day checking email? Really, are you that important that the latest set of joke motivation posters can’t sit in your email box until later in the day? Set aside a certain time or a couple of times per day when you will check email. If something is urgent, let the person call you.

We have fallen into this “you’re it” mentality with email wherein if I send you a message about something, it is now your responsibility. Other than in a work hierarchy, do not let people do that to you. Remember, “Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”

Love “Family Guy”? That’s OK, it’s fine to have programs you enjoy. They are great for relaxing and forgetting about the day. However, that program comes on in Atlanta from 7-8 pm on “Peachtree TV”, some nights from 8-10 pm on “TBS”, and from 11 pm-midnight on “Cartoon Network”. If you sit there for all five hours, taking in “King of the Hill” from 10-11 pm as a sorbet, who is in control? You or the electronic device that you bought?

Have you fallen madly in love and found your soul mate? Great! You want to spend every waking minute either with them/talking to them/thinking about them/texting them? And, at the same time, maybe not so great (but certainly understandable). You have to take control of those feelings in order to be productive. Put your soul mate’s picture on your desk and limit your contacts to either certain times when you can talk or a maximum number of texts per day.

You control your time, if you choose to. You can make it productive time or you can let it get away from you.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch Jack Bauer save the world (“24”, everyday at noon on the Crime Investigation Network). Hey, it’s my lunch hour!

Do you need a great inspirational speaker for your next event?

No matter what you call it, I am available for your next conference, convention, conclave, convocation, reunion, rally, workshop, ed session, orientation, meeting, before/during/after breakfast/lunch/dinner, gathering, commencement, groundbreaking, team building, staff development, leadership retreat, continuing education, ceremony, assembly, congress, council, confab, forum, roundtable, symposium, opening session, closing session, or any session in between. I present practical information in a fun and informative manner with humor, stories of overcoming obstacles, and with anecdotes about cats, football, and biscuits and gravy (among others). I can entertain and inspire your audience for 15 minutes to as long as you need me to. Please call or email me and we can easily work out the details! To see what dates I have available, feel free to contact me via email.

( Photo courtesy of cambodia4kidsorg )

How Much Student Loan Debt Is Too Much?

Kevin M — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:33:51 +0000

By Kevin M

The state of the economy over the past few years has called into question on our cultural love affair with debt of nearly all types. The once unassailable notion that home mortgages in nearly any type and in almost any amount were “good debt” has all but crumbled. A mailbox stuffed with credit card pre-approvals—once seen not only as evidence of a sterling credit rating but also as a symbol of our status as solid citizens—is now considered a temptation on a magnitude not seen since the infamous apple caper in the Garden of Eden—resist we must!

But reversals in the job market and collapses in asset values have all served to bring home a point that seemed to be virtually ignored in recent decades: debt has to be paid back!

As had become our happy little way, debts were seldom extinguished outright by full payoff in the time honored way, but rather by rollover, consolidation or the sale of the securing assets. When those avenues are exhausted we’re left with two unpleasant options—payoff or default. OUCH!

Not all debts are created equal

But what about those most sacrosanct of good debts, student loans? What have we learned about those, or have we learned anything?

Placing the Blame as Students Are Buried in Debt (Yahoo Finance via New York Times, June 1, 2010) reports that students and “their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason, much as sub-prime borrowers assumed the value of their houses would always go up.”

The article focuses on the plight of a young woman whose carrying $97,000 in student loans but has been unable to find employment in her major field of study since graduating from New York University in 2005. While this might seem to be an extreme example, it goes on to report that “10 percent of people who graduated in 2007-8 with student loans had borrowed $40,000 or more”.

I’ll go a step further and say that those numbers understate the problem since college related indebtedness frequently originates outside of direct student loans in the form of credit cards and second mortgages taken out by parents to cover some of the costs of educating their children. Students themselves often leave college with substantial credit card debt used for expenses not covered by student loans themselves.

OK, we can all agree that student loans aren’t like other debts in that they can facilitate the preparation of young people for survival in a complex world; but does that mean that they operate outside the realm of economics or the limits of good sense?

There are three rarely discussed aspects of student loans that make them potentially very dangerous debts to have:

they’re unsecured
they’re long term, and

they generally can’t be discharged in bankruptcy.

Now if you land in a well paying job related to your degree right after graduation you may not give these caveats much concern. But in the highly uncertain employment environment we’re in now—and have been for the past couple of years at least—should we be paying as much attention to the pitfalls of student loans as we now see as only obvious with excessive credit card debt and no income verification and sub-prime mortgages?

The entanglements listed above are complicated by the fact that there are few qualifying safeguards in place with student loans—a student can borrow almost as much as needed, and do so without any form of qualification. They’re loans based exclusively on the borrowers future potential–isn’t that exactly what preceded the mortgage meltdown?

It’s usually not until after the fact, when problems have clearly manifested themselves, that we see what was plainly staring us in the face all along. Only then do we ask ourselves the oxymoronic “what were we thinking?”—oxymoronic because we weren’t thinking at all!

What are your thoughts?

Here are some questions for you…

How much student loan debt is enough? How much is too much?
Should there be some sort of metric to limit how much money a student and their family should borrow in order to finance a college education? With mortgages for example, the rule of thumb for decades was “28/36”—primary monthly housing expense should not exceed 28% of stable monthly income, primary monthly housing expense plus other recurring debt should not exceed 36% of stable monthly income. Should there be some sort of limiting guideline in relation to student loans?
Have we reached the point of diminishing returns on a college education, that the state of the economy and of the job market no longer justify the costs of attendance at many colleges?
Have student loans been driving the explosion in college costs, fueling a non-stop Catch-22 we’re bound to lose?
Are there alternatives to high cost universities and high student debts that could be considered?
Is it possible that student loans are acclimating college students to a lifetime of indentured servitude?

Am I off base with these questions? What do you think?