I have made it back from my honeymoon. I had a great time and I am now a happily married man. Sorry for the lack of content while I was gone but I didn’t write any posts ahead of time and I didn’t do anything on the computer while I was gone so I have a lot to catch up on. I hope to have a new post up tomorrow.

The following is a sponsored article.

One of the most gratifying – and certainly motivating – reasons to sell a structured settlement is to eliminate a mound of debt. No matter the reason why such financial distress has plagued your life, from overwhelming medical bills to outstanding credit card balances, selling a structured settlement can immediately eliminate this albatross that has wrapped itself so tightly around your family’s financial well being. Going from the chains of debt to financial freedom by selling your structured settlement is possible to accomplish in just a few and simple steps:

Line up a reputable structured settlement buyer. Choose a company well-versed in navigating their clients with selling a structured settlement in order to pay off a slew of debts. Trustworthy structured settlement companies are able to explain what an owner can expect during the process as well as when any settlement lump-sum payout will be turned into cash available to use at your discretion – or more accurately, at your soon-to-be former debt. A strong team supporting your drive to get rid of your debt once and for all ensures this action will have a successful outcome.

Calculate your structured settlement payout and total debt. A strong structured settlement company makes it known to settlement owners exactly how much their inheritance is worth. Once you tally up all your creditors and debt, these financial representatives can help you sort out your options in order to get cash for only the precise amount needed. That means you don’t have to cash out all your structured settlement funds. Because structured settlements have such flexibility, you can get a payout for the exact sum needed to make the debt vanish forever – and still have an inheritance to depend on.

Aim and fire your structured settlement cash. Once the structured settlement company has carefully crafted a selling plan and explained in full when your cash funds will be available for usage, you can start to plan an actual time line or a get-out-of-debt date. Just think about the moment you mail your very last debt payment, all because your structured settlement was purchased by a reputable company that knows how crucial it is to make sure settlement money is used to make wise financial moves. Gone are the days of creditors calling and the nights where you and your spouse stay up wondering how the bills will be paid. The knowledge such troubling financial times that debt always brings are behind you – and it is nothing short of exhilarating and liberating.

Lately, I have started taking my daily shower in the dark. Actually, the light is off but I leave the door open and there is plenty of light from the bedroom windows to see. My thinking was that this would save a little bit of money. I haven’t done the exact calculation but after looking at a couple sites it looks like leaving the lights on in the bathroom all day would cost less than a dollar. Considering my shower takes 10 or 15 minutes it looks like I’m saving about one penny a day. I will still keep taking my shower in the dark though because I find that is actually very relaxing and there is no reason to waste even that little bit of electricity.

If I were to cut back on the length of my shower I could save more money. I found a web site that estimates the cost of a shower. My only cost for a shower is energy cost since water is included in rent. My cost for a ten minute shower is 32 cents and a ten minute shower is 47 cents. Five extra minutes for 15 cents seems like a good deal to me. Just because I’m not paying for the water doesn’t mean I should waste it though so I’m going to try to keep my showers to ten minutes. I don’t think that will really affect the quality of my shower. And I will look for some better ways to cut back on electrical use.

Since I am getting married this weekend I am pretty much neglecting this blog for the week. I thought some of you might like to see our wedding reception invitation. I think it looks pretty cool. It is slightly edited to retain some anonymity. My fiancee already has a stalker and doesn’t need any more.

If you want to get us something consider opening one of the savings accounts in the sidebar. It won’t cost you anything and I will make a nice commission.

Next week at approximately this time I will be getting married.  After 42 years of being single this will be quite a change for me.  I didn’t get much done online this week and I didn’t do a lot to prepare for the wedding and reception either so I can’t use that as an excuse.  It was mainly just a case of being lazy and unorganized.  Anyway, here are a few posts that caught my eye this week.

Escaping the Rat Race from Invest it Wisely. This is a great roundup of posts about escaping the rat race. One of my posts was included even though I was too lazy to get around to submitting one.

5 Surprising Insights on Earning More Money from I Will Teach You to be Rich. This post made me think about several things. First, I don’t agree with his criticisms of frugality. Life doesn’t have to suck because you are frugal. And being frugal doesn’t mean you can’t work on earning more as well. If you have read “The Millionaire Next Door” then you know many millionaires are frugal as well. That being said there isn’t much more I can do on cutting back expenses and it is time to work on increasing my income. When he writes about people looking for new material rather instead of actually doing something I recognized myself. I need to stop spending so much time poring over blogs and forums looking for ways to make money and spend more time actually trying to make money. I will share my efforts and results at trying new ways to make money.

My June investment income went down to $89.47  from $96.83 in April, I didn’t  calculate my investment income in May. The decline is because I didn’t add to my investments and the stock market went down  quite a bit.  It wasn’t a good time to own BP.  I should have sold my shares sooner but I didn’t realize just how big of a disaster the oil spill was. I won’t be adding to my investments this month either but my investments have recovered a little so my investment income should go up a little.  This is a little frustrating since I was looking forward to getting over the $100 mark but as soon as I’m able to start adding to my investments I should reach the $100 goal.

Disclaimer: This is not my actual investment income. To get this figure I first add up my retirement savings, emergency fund, and any other money I consider permanent savings. What the total of my savings would earn at 6% interest for a month is my monthly investment income. My goal is to get this amount to $1000 a month. If I have $1000 in monthly passive investment income I will be able to retire early.

For the month of June I made $414.06 in online income. I report my income when I actually receive it not when I earn it so my income total may not reflect my current income trends. The total I report here is my gross income but the total I include in my monthly income is minus some expenses so the totals will not always match. Here is a breakdown of my income for June.

Google Adsense     $295.79

Text Links                $37.16

Affiliate Sales         $67.00

Direct Ad Sales      $14.11

My Adsense continues to go down.   Since there is a one month delay in payment I already know my Adsense total for this month is down and it looks like it will be down again next month.  I have done a lot of experimenting with my Adsense to try to increase my Adsense revenue but so far I have just found a bunch of ways to decrease my Adsense revenue.  I will keep trying while also trying to increase my income from sources other than Adsense.

If I receive the payments owed me my affiliate sales total for July will go way up.  I have also already had one  nice direct ad sale for a full year making a nice increase in my direct ad sales total.   I am also talking to a couple of other advertisers, if all the possible deals come through July should be my best month for online income to date.  I’m not counting my chickens yet though and I need to keep working on increasing my income and diversifying the sources of income.

We ordered some food from Angel Food Ministries last month and I thought it was a good deal. For $30 we got about $60 in groceries. It is a frugal way to buy groceries. With shrewd shopping and good use of coupons you could probably match this savings but it is a lot easier to just order a box of food. It was also convenient. We just went to the pickup spot and they loaded the box of food in our car. It was much faster than grocery shopping.

If you are not familiar with Angel Food Ministries they are a non-profit that distributes low cost food to thousands of people every month. Although they are distributing low cost food they make it clear that this is for people of all incomes. They have several packages of food you can buy but we just got the signature box. The menu changes every month but the foods you get are pretty similar every month. Here is this month’s menu. This wasn’t really a good deal for me when I was single since you can’t choose what goes in the signature box and it always included several foods I don’t eat. Now that I am part of a bigger family though there is always someone who likes everything.

Although I have only tried Angel Food there are several other similar programs. Some of them are:
Prairie Land Food
SHARE Colorado
Food For All

If any of you have tried any of these programs I would like to know what you think of them. Are they a good deal or not?

Since today is July 11, the convenience store 7-11 is celebrating it as they do every year with free slurpees. Since the nearest 7-11 is three hours away I won’t be taking advantage of the deal. Here are some of my favorite posts from around the Yakezie network this week.

Free From Broke asks whether you should “Automate or Unautomate your Finances?” I am in the unautomate camp. I like to be in control of my money and I have been burned in the past by an erroneous automatic debit.

Financial Bondage has a book review of The Total Money Makeover. I don’t agree 100% with everything Dave Ramsey says but this book is full of good advice and has helped lots of people get out of debt.

Rainy Day Saver asks “How do you file your paperwork?” I just use a shoebox. It isn’t a fancy system but it works for me.

The Saved Quarter has collected “The Best of the Yakezie Challenge.” There are all kinds of good posts to read there. I was late in joining The Yakezie Challenge but it has paid off for me. My Alexa rank has risen by about 200,000 and I’m getting new readers on my site. I’m also getting more advertising inquires so the Yakezie Challenge will soon be paying off financially.

It is pretty easy for me to be frugal because there is very little that I want to buy. There is actually very little I want even when it is free. There just are not many things that I think are worth the money they cost and a lot of things that I don’t think are even worth the hassle of owning even if they are free. This natural frugality does save me money but it does have drawbacks. Obviously, there are some things I need to spend money on whether I think they are worth it or not. Sometimes I find myself not wanting to spend money on things such as health care which could end up costing me a lot more money in the future. In instances like that I have to overcome my natural resistance to spending any money. I have gotten much better at doing that in the last few years but it has been a process and it is still ongoing.

An example is the shopping trip at Target my fiancee and I went on yesterday. It actually wasn’t a shopping trip but registering for wedding gifts but it still seemed like shopping to me. Although my fiancee knew I wasn’t enthused about registering for gifts she thought I would come around once we started the process. It may seem strange to most people but even in a big store like Target there just isn’t much I want even if someone else is buying. I don’t want to ask for anything that I wouldn’t purchase myself, it seems like a waste to me. My fiancee took my lack of interest in the wedding registry process to indicate a lack of interest in the wedding and marriage and was rather upset. The marriage is very important to me but I don’t much care about the wedding and reception. However, since they are important to my fiancee I should have made more of an effort to participate. That was another lesson learned and I have to continue to make sure that my natural frugality doesn’t negatively affect my relationships.