<$Wednesday, April 16, 2008$>
Is Lifelock worth it?
| I don't tend to worry too much about identity theft. It's possible that I don't worry enough. I take all the reasonable precautions--I shred everything with my personal or financial info on it before throwing it out, my passwords all contain numbers AND capitals AND lowercase and are sufficiently obscure terms that would be tough to crack even without the number/caps jiggety, I protect my PINpad during transactions like a straight-A student protects her test answers, I don't carry my social security card around with me--and so far, I've never had my identity stolen. So it would seem that what I'm doing works. But with all of the scary statistics and the alarmist media constantly carrying on about this problem, I sometimes wonder if, so far, we've just been lucky? I've also been hearing a lot lately about lifelock, which sounds like a good idea if, like me, you are an unpleasant combination of busy/hurried/tired/lazy/ADD and are perfectly happy to pay experts to do complicated things for you. $10 a month seems a pretty reasonable fee to set this and forget it and let other people worry about it for you. On the other hand, if you are (also like me) frugal and (SO not like me) have time on your hands, I don't think they do anything that you couldn't do yourself for free. My finances being what they are, I tend to opt for the latter; but really, I think it's a relief to know that, had I the funds, I would never have to take on this headache by myself. Labels: credit cards, financial planning, money management, organizing, product love, tools |
<$Monday, March 10, 2008$>
Product Love: Dymo Labelers
I think now I can finally justify getting one. As I move deeper into home business territory, it makes sense to invest in certain pieces of home office equipment, especially since the new systems go way beyond simply printing labels. With the ability to buy online stamps and print my own postage, I could eliminate the need to spend my lunch hours standing in line at the post office to ship my eBay and Etsy orders. I could create my own address and shipping labels without having to fight with Word... and, yes, I could even label my cats. Oh, the fun we could have with a new Dymo labeler. Although I'm not sure the new models would give me quite the same sense of visceral satisfaction I used to get from squeezing out one letter at a time from those old fashioned embossing models, so I might have to keep one of those on hand for nostalgia's sake. Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, home office, tools |
<$Wednesday, January 30, 2008$>
This is why I love the internets.
| In the same vein as yesterday's post about free online image editors, there's a great post at Gather Little By Little that lists free open source software--both web based and free downloadable programs. When we get our computer, I don't plan to pay extra for Microsoft Office. With all of the open source programs available these days that are as easy to use as and compatible with MS programs, there's just no reason to. I already do the majority of my writing in Google Docs. I might not even download any programs to my hard drive--I might just save space by using web based programs! Labels: finance+blogs, freebies, frugality, resources, tools |
<$Tuesday, January 29, 2008$>
Growing Up is growing up (part 2)
| You might have noticed a little link up there in the logo banner to a little something called "the Growing Up Network." This is because I'm currently in the process of turning Growing Up into a network of three blogs: This one, renamed Growing Money; Growing Healthy, my health and fitness blog; and introducing Growing a Home, where I'll blog about my journey to buy a house and turn it into a home. These blogs are all connected via a new home page. My next step will be to set it up with its own domain, but that won't happen until after payday. I'm pretty pleased with how the home page turned out. My biggest limitation toward designing my own web pages since my computer died was the loss of my Photoshop program. I did the majority of my designing in there, and then just futzed around with the HTML until the finished project came as close as I could get it to the Photoshop design. I know all about GIMP, and once we replace our computer, I'm sure it will take care of all my web design needs. In the mean time, though, since I'm primarily stuck using borrowed computers for all my online business, anything that has to be downloaded and installed is out of the question. Thankfully, the internets have caught up to my needs by providing free web based image editors, and they have come a long way. I started out using Picture2life (aka editmypicture.com), and while they've grown a lot in their functionality since I first started using them, they have an unfortunate tendency to crash or freeze up in the middle of editing my pictures. I recently discovered Picnik. It appears to be more reliable and user-friendly than Picture2life, but the free version is fairly limited if you want to use it in a design capacity. The paid version has a lot more functionality, and I thought $24.95 a year was a pretty reasonable price to pay for those extra functions. Still, I decided to keep looking. Yesterday I found Phixr, which turns out to be almost exactly what I wanted. It's very close to Photoshop in both function and form, and I was really impressed with how much I could do with it. The only drawback I could see was that it doesn't have a great selection of fonts to choose from. I got around this by combining it with the other two programs mentioned above. Between the three of them, I could accomplish pretty much everything I needed. In a pinch, there's also always Big Huge Labs' Flickr toys, with their motivational poster generator, ID badge maker, picture framer, and more. I used their magazine cover generator to create the home page for JMBauhaus.com. This one is a lot of fun to play with. With all of the web based applications available these days, you could easily get away with not even having any office-type software on your computer. I'm sure Microsoft is just loving that. I know I sure am. |
<$Friday, January 25, 2008$>
Choose your host!
| *Sponsored Post* ETA: I just used it to run a search for hosts that cost under $10 with no set-up fee and at least 25MB of disk space, and came up with 637 options. With that much competition, a tool that helps you narrow it down will definitely come in handy. Labels: disclosure, extra income, resources, tools |
<$Thursday, January 17, 2008$>
New Resource: Credit Exchange
| *Sponsored Post* If you have a lot of different debts, of course one of the more ideal ways to deal with it all is to consolidate them so that you only have a single payment each month. This can be easier said than done, though, especially if you have a low credit score. Credit Counseling is an attractive option for some, but those waters can be pretty murky, hiding a lot of sharks. The Credit Exchange seems more like a rescue dolphin -- okay, "murky" is starting to describe this metaphor. Anyway, they're not a debt management company, but a credit counseling and referral service. Their web site has a lot of educational tools and resources, too. I'm making pretty good progress paying off my cards with my "debt snowflake" method, but if my situation was more dire, I'd be tempted to put these folks to work for me. Labels: credit cards, debt consolidation, debt reduction, disclosure, PPP, reviews, tools |
<$Wednesday, January 16, 2008$>
Free Money Files: Pepperjam Network
| *Sponsored Post* Affiliate Marketing can be a great source of passive income, if you use the right tools and find the right companies with which to affiliate your blog. Unfortunately, this is harder than it sounds, which can be pretty frustrating. Most Affiliate Marketing networks are flawed in one way or another, which can make it really hard to find the right affiliate match. Even when you do, sometimes you have to go through so many hoops that it doesn't seem worth it, or sometimes you just can't keep up with all of the changes that get made to your service agreement. But there's a new sheriff in town that promises to fix all of that, or at least come really close. Pepperjam Network is a new affiliate marketing network with big advertisers along the lines of Blockbuster, among others, which promises better communication, advertiser transparency, and a clean Web 2.0 interface--and that's just a few of the improved benefits they offer. I'm willing to try them out. Take a look at their press release below to judge for yourself. Pepperjam Announces Launch of Next Generation Affiliate Marketing Network Labels: affiliates, disclosure, extra income, free money, PPP, tools |
<$Tuesday, January 15, 2008$>
Business Resources: Fastteks
| *Sponsored Post* Starting an online business is a popular way to earn extra income, but the logistics of setting up a home office aren't always easy, especially if you have a staff. Be they hired help or family members, chances are they'll need their own work stations, which means network installation might become a high priority on the to do list. There are DIY tools available for this; however, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust myself to get such a technical task done right the first--or second, or third, or etc.--time. I would much rather save my time for actually running my business, and hire professionals to do the job. Fastteks specializes in getting small businesses up and running on their own networks. If you have a need to share a high-speed internet connection with your employees and/or volunteers, they might be just the resource you're looking for. Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, extra income, PPP, tools |
<$Thursday, September 6, 2007$>
Affordable Web Hosting For Your Small Business
| *Sponsored* A lot of people on the debt-reduction and financial improvement trail run small businesses on the side in order to bring in extra income. For a lot of people it's either that, or get a second job. I know for me, after putting in long, exhausting hours at my full-time job, the last thing I want to do is go stand on my feet for several more hours flipping burgers or hawking somebody else's merchandise, so I've found online business endeavors to be ideal for bringing home that extra that lets us get ahead. Of course, the thing about running an online business is that it can get expensive, which pretty much defeats the purpose. It can be a challenge to find small business web hosting at prices that don't cut into your profits; but it can be done. Concentric offers a basic web hosting plan that has everything I could possibly need if I decide to move my knitting shop off of Etsy, for an affordable monthly fee. They even offer a free domain name with every hosting account--AND they let you have up to ten domain aliases, which means you could feasibly run up to ten different business off of a single account. That's handy, especially if you're ADD like me and have about ten different business ideas a week. I'm bookmarking these guys for future reference. Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, extra income, PPP, tools |
<$Tuesday, April 17, 2007$>
Web Tools: FICO Credit Score Estimator
| Lifehack.org (via DumbLittleMan) posted a link to a handy FICO Credit Score Estimator. I just tried it out, and it appears to be pretty accurate. Guesstimating within a range-span of 50, it estimated the range in which my credit score fell the last time I checked it a couple of months ago. It wouldn't be my go-to source if I were getting ready to apply for a loan, but it looks like a good bet for tracking my score as I work to improve it. Labels: credit cards, freebies, tools |