A home business can equal family happiness

One of the biggest reasons I have found, at least when it comes to my profession, is that being away from home can cause many problems when it comes down to a families happiness.

I am a railroad engineer by trade, and railroad companies do not take days off. They are constantly running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. My basic work week averages 60 paid hours, not including time away waiting for a train to take back home. I have missed many a birthday, holiday, school function, anniversary, and (most important of all) time to bond with my wife and kids.

I remember about 3 years ago now, getting a play by play of my two year old opening presents on Christmas Day via cell phone from my wife because I was taking a train home, making money for "The Man" while “The Man” enjoyed his holiday with his family. This was a day that was especially tough for me, because my son was just getting to the age where he starting to understand what Christmas was all about and wanted to know where dad was.

Now don't get me wrong, I actually like my regular job. I have been wanting to drive trains since I was a little boy, and there are allot of people who would love to be able to do the same thing. It's just that the railroad industry provides a service, and that service is to ship a product to the their customer in a timely fashion. These customers do not really care how it gets there, they just want it there A. S.A. P. So when it comes to accommodating the family structure, the railroad lacks in that respect.

So about a year ago, I had asked myself what I could do to make me and my family really happy? And my answer was Time. Which creates another question, how do I get more Time? For me the answer was my very own Home Based Business that would generate extra income to allow for me to take more time off of work and spend it with my family.

So I started searching the internet for a Home Based Business. There were 1000’s of business’s on the internet that made some big promises. I even joined some and found out that they were either way to hard to learn or cost hundreds of dollars before you even started seeing results. Then I stumbled upon Stone Evans - Plug-In Profits site. See for yourself: http://www. pluginprofitsite. com/main-19149

I was pleasantly surprised with the information provided by Stone, and how easy it would be for me to start earning a descent second income that would allow me to take more time from work and spend it with my family. In fact, there were even people who were able to quit there jobs all together just through his easy to follow 30 Days to success training program, and you don’t have to spend a ton of money just to do it either.

So, if you are like me and want to start creating more happiness for you and your family, I suggest taking a minute and visit the website below. You will be glad you did.

Magazine subscription discounts

In any given month, there will be an Internet website that offers magazine subscription discounts that are so low, they are free to the consumer. These free subscription offers are termed free trade publications subscriptions. Of course, this free offer is only offered to people that have already spent money on a subscription to the Internet magazine marketing website that is sponsoring the free offer.

These marketing companies are offering you a free trial to a magazine, and ask for your credit card information too. If you provide that pertinent information, then you are entering a zone where magazine subscription discounts seem to go out the window. When the free trial is over, which is probably 30 days or 60 days, the magazine marketing website will automatically renew your subscription for a year and charge your credit card for your new subscription.

If you do not catch the transition on your credit card statement, then you will be unaware that you were charged for the free magazine subscription discounts. You might have taken advantage of more than one magazine in their initial free offering, and you will be charged for all of those magazines, once your free trial magazine subscription discounts end.

Another way to get ill-conceived magazine subscription discounts that you did not know were not discounted at all is to send someone a gift card for a magazine subscription. There is always a card for them to fill out when they start their subscription, or an 800 number they need to call to get it started. At this time, the company requests the credit card information, and the gift giver begins to look like a real cad.

There are memberships that can be found on the Internet that are legitimate and offer magazine subscription discounts. These discounts are genuine due to the size of the membership that is enrolled in their magazine selling company. They are in business to sell magazines.

These magazine marketing companies are amply rewarded for selling the magazine, the products listed in the magazine, or for advertising the magazine name on their website. Sometimes these rewards cascade on one another and the company benefits by one or two of them on the same magazine. These companies pass these discounts on to their members, and keep a small portion of the profits themselves.

There are no catches, no charges, and they are not kidding. They just want to advertise the magazines and get their money for doing so. When you buy several of the magazines, everyone wins from the proposition. These paid subscription services do not charge your credit card until you receive your magazines, and do not renew the subscription to that magazine until you fill in a card to do so on their website.

These magazine subscription discounts services have customers who trust them, and that makes them more willing to buy other magazines from the company. When people can see reviews of the subscription service they are a member of, and view positive marks throughout, then those people will want to continue doing business with that company. It’s all a part of providing good customer service.

Kenwood car stereo

Kenwood Car Stereo Lets You Listen To The Future Of Car Audio.

This brand is a household name for every car audio enthusiast. Mention the name Kenwood car stereo and they will know what you’re talking about.

Kenwood car stereos have produced high quality consumer electronics, test equipment and communication equipment since 1946. Kenwood car stereos primarily specialize in the design, engineering and manufacture of wireless communication infrastructure but are also renowned in the production consumer mobile and home entertainment systems. Kenwood car stereos are also committed to creating the finest quality components with state of the art technologies that has earned them a huge following in the audio products scene.

At present, Kenwood car stereos have a very impressive product lineup that would make anyone drool over, whether he is an audio enthusiast or not. For the regular Joe who isn’t really into technical stuff, and is just looking for something nice to put into his ride, Kenwood car stereos offer sleek designs that will surely satisfy anyone’s craving for aesthetic. Tech-freaks and geeks will also be impressed with the specs a Kenwood car stereo has.

A lot of Kenwood car stereo units nowadays include popup LCD panels for watching VCD/DVD movies. The Kenwood KVT-717DVD 7.0” Wide, Fully Motorized In-dash Monitor DVD/WMA/MP3 Receiver is a good candidate for any situation.

• 7.0 inch Wide Color TFT Active Matrix Display

• Full-automatic Open/Close with slide and angle adjustments

• Interactive Touchscreen Control with OSD

• Audio Easy Control Mode while Playing Visual Source

• Selectable Wall Paper (6 Patterns)

• Installer/Backup Memory of Audio/Video Setup

• Maximum Output Power : 50W x 4 (MOSFET Power IC)

• 3 Preouts with 5V Pre-out Level

• 2 RCA AV Inputs / 1 RCA AV Output

• Video Input for Rear View Camera

• RGB Input for Navigation System

• System Q/ System E's+

• DVD Menu Direct Touch screen Control

• MPEG 1/2 Video files (.mpg) and JPEG files (.jpg) Playback

• Dual Zone Source & Volume Control

• DVD±R/RW Compatible

• External Media Control — iPod Ready

• Optional TV Tuner

For those who might not get what the hell all of these means, just imagine this: a really thin monitor panel that smoothly retracts and extends at the push of a remote, crystal clear movie and picture playback, all encased in a beautiful black matte finish polymer casing done with a space age design.

If all you want is a just a regular car stereo for playing CDs’, listening to mp3s or the radio, Kenwood car stereo have a lot to choose from. A good head unit would be the KDC-MP928 AAC/WMA/MP3/ CD Receiver with External Media Control.

• Auto-Slide Detachable Faceplate

• Rotary Encoder & Jog Control Knob for Easy Operation

• 4096 Color OEL Display

• Display Customize Function

• Maximum Output Power : 50W x 4 (MOSFET Power IC)

• ACDrive (Advanced Codec Drive)

• AAC/WMA/MP3 Playback

• G-Analyzer (Graphic Motion Analyzer)

• Built-in DSP : DTA/System Q(4band P-EQ)/Digital E's/SRS

WOW Digital Effect

• O. D.D. (Offset Dual Differential) D/A System for Sound Quality

• Installer/User/Backup Memory of Audio Setup

• SIRIUS Satellite Radio Ready

• HD Radio Ready

• External Media Control — iPod Ready

• Dual Zone Source & Volume Control

• AUX Input

• Gold Plated 3 Preouts with 5V Pre-output Level

The Kenwood car stereo auto slide detachable faceplate allows you to take the faceplate (one which has all the buttons) in order to prevent theft by taking away the functionality of the unit left in the car.

How to start a small business part 2

Continuing from my earlier article. If you haven't read the article then I highly recommend you to do so. These tips will help you launch your freelance career or your small business with more confidence and surety.

# 4. Learn to Sell Yourself: if you are anything of geek like I was 9 years ago. selling, negotiating and marketing might sound like an alien words. But trust me, if you learn how to sell yourself, you’ll make 10 times of money you are making right now… Again, I can’t give justice to a topic like this in small list so I’ll write another post on it.

So far Here’s my advice to you. Go to Google and search for “Scientific advertising” by Claude Hopkins. Download this book(it’s free) and read it from cover to cover at least 10 times. It’s an old book, but it’s philosophy still applies and it's universal. Doesn't matter if you are from India, Slovakia or United states.

# 5. Network with like minded people: I so regret not trying networking when I was starting out. Find people who are freelancers in your niche. Get to know them and ask them if you could help them.

There’s good chance of someone giving you small projects from their own.

# 6 No Work is Small: Don’t mind doing small work like “assembling someone’s computer or speeding up computers performances”. Its better than sitting and doing nothing.

# 7. Think Obvious: Now too many people try to think out of the box. Trying to think different. Its not bad thinking different. But also think about the obvious. Lets say you are a computer geek and want some work.. What’s the most obvious thing to do?

You know what? Find people who have computer and solve their problems.

What’s the next obvious thing to do? Find people who own a small business running on computers and solve their computer problems.

If you don’t get people like these what’s the next obvious thing to do? Well, leave your card with all the people you found above & giving them assurance of fixing their computer even if its 2 am.

Are you still trying to be different? You better not.

# 8. Be frugal : If you are just starting out as a freelancer. The only money you need to spend is on your business card. Everything else like office space, fax, copier etc etc are just expense you don’t need right now.

Don’t make the same mistakes I did. If you don’t mind doing some grunt work, you might see yourself working on good projects in no time. Now print this list out and paste with your mirror. So that you slam these points in your mind.

Credit counseling vs. debt settlement

Credit counseling or debt settlement? While naturally Franklin Debt Relief is inclined to argue on behalf of debt settlement over credit counseling, we also recognize that it’s impossible to declare which program is better because it depends on a number of variables that differ from individual to individual. The purpose of this article is break down which factors you should consider before choosing the appropriate option.

1. What can you afford? Credit counseling programs tend to be a lot more expensive than debt settlement programs. The reason is simple: credit counseling only produces results on the interest rates, whereas debt settlement is able to actually negotiate the amount you owe. Simply put, if you are in a true financial bind, then the clear choice for you should be debt settlement, and on a pure “money saved” basis, debt settlement will almost always be the answer. Although this is undoubtedly an important factor, it is not the only variable to consider before making a decision on which program is best for you.

2. What sort of credit impact can you tolerate? Some credit counselors out there will undoubtedly tout that their program doesn’t affect your credit score negatively. This is a play on words. Sure, your score won’t drop, but ask any lender what the impact is to your loan application. Let me save you some time---it’s devastating. That being said, debt settlement is no better for your credit, and lenders in general definitely do not like seeing debtors seeking outside help for their financial situation. On the flip side, they definitely do not like seeing the past due marks from enrolling in a settlement program. So let’s consider this example: Four years ago, John decided to use credit counseling, and Mary decided to follow the debt settlement path. They both have the same income and expenses, and they both apply for a $200,000 mortgage. Who is more likely to get it---John, who is 1 year away from completing his credit counseling program, or Mary, who finished her debt settlement program 1 year and half ago and has since been rebuilding her credit? While this may vary from lender to lender, in general Mary would be considered the better loan applicant. What if John paid a lot per month and they both finished their respective programs in the same amount of time? By itself, the credit counseling program would be better for your credit, but when you factor in the fact that Mary would probably have more savings to contribute to a down payment, she’d still probably be considered the better loan applicant. Do I think this is fair? Not at all. It’s ridiculous that lenders are so harsh on clients of credit counseling programs. Unfortunately, the system is flawed, but until there are adjustments made to correct it, debt settlement clients will be in a more favorable position to obtain new credit upon completion of their program.

3. Who do you owe? So you can save more money in debt settlement, but not always. If you owe a more aggressive creditor like Citibank, then it’s possible that credit counseling or bankruptcy may be a better option for you. The reason: Citibank not only tends to settle for more on average, but they are also more likely to pursue legal action to collect a debt. Although under most circumstances debt settlement is still successful with these creditors, it is a much riskier undertaking when you’re dealing with Citibank. If you cannot afford credit counseling and your debt is exclusively with Citibank, then unfortunately you’re probably better off filing bankruptcy.

4. What is your personality type? I’ve read just about every article online regarding credit counseling versus debt settlement, and I’m amazed by how most finance authors eliminate the human element from this discussion. The bottom line: debt settlement is not for the faint-hearted. There is no guarantee that everything will work out completely as planned. Some settlements may be higher than estimated. Some settlements may be lower than estimated. You will inevitably get some creditor calls. This is the nature of the program, and you must be willing to accept some level of uncertainty before enrolling.

I organized the following 4 questions in this order on purpose. After all, if you can’t afford credit counseling, then it’s pretty much out of the picture as an option for you anyway. I don’t mean to sound overly cynical, but we live in a material world and issues like having an anxious personality must be sacrificed when you don’t have the money necessary to freely exercise this aspect of your character. On the flip side, if you have 100% Citibank debt, it would be foolish for you to choose debt settlement over credit counseling or bankruptcy just because you fancy yourself a risk-taker.

There are countless other variables that influence whether debt settlement or credit counseling is appropriate for you (i. e. what state you live in, your income source, etc.). Your best bet is to discuss your individual situation with someone knowledgeable in these arenas.

How a millionaire manages one dollar

If you don’t know how manage a million dollars, I guarantee that the money will quickly disappear if I wrote you a giant check right now. Precisely like 90% of lottery winners that go bust within five years, they didn’t have the basic discipline or the formula to handle the money that would have created a financial foundation that would last for generations. Learn how to manage a single dollar so that you can move up to the financial big-leagues on your own.

Give a millionaire a dollar and they will do something predictable: They will display the discipline not to spend it. That dollar will be deposited into a savings account where it earns interest income. A millionaire does not spend earned income! They only spend the income from their investments. A millionaire cycles money from a job, overtime pay, bonus, etc., into investment accounts. When you start out, you probably don’t have any investments so how are you going to pay your bills? Reject the saying: “Try to save some money after you pay the bills each month.” This rarely happens and may be too little to add up to much. That saying is psychologically backwards. The new saying that I you want to begin with is: “Don’t invest all of your earned income each month, pay a few bills with it.” Do you see the millionaire difference?

Let’s talk about financial building blocks. Give a millionaire a dollar and they will split it up into the distinct building blocks of a solid financial foundation. Ten-cents of that dollar will be allocated to a permanent investment account that is never spent. This account builds your wealth. As I have said before: “Wealth can only be created and maintained by the amount of money that you receive and do not spend.” Well, this is that account, and you need to increase it by a piece of every dollar that you receive. Another ten-cents will be allocated to a savings account. This is a delayed-spending account for expensive purchases such as vacation, home repairs, or cars.

Millionaires save money to buy something before they purchase it, not afterward on credit where you have to pay interest. The next ten-cents is allocated to wealth education. The economy is always changing and you are ultimately responsible for directing all of your money. The only way to do this wisely is to add to your investment knowledge. Get investing ideas by paying for advisors, books, courses, newsletters, magazines, and newspapers. The three-dimes that were just allocated for different purposes is the wealth formula of millionaires; this is how wealth can be built to last for generations. It is only after these three buckets get their share of the dollar that part of it is allocated for taxes on that dollar. Notice that a millionaire pays the taxman after the important building blocks get their share.

There is no such thing as “income before taxes”. There is a tax liability on all income from whatever source. So a millionaire will have a tax strategy in place to receive that dollar before it is ever deposited at the bank. Millionaires don’t overpay their taxes, they manage tax liabilities because they are your single largest expense (Add up how much you paid for income tax to the IRS, state, city, and property taxes – it is probably a much bigger number than you expect). Some ways to minimize your taxes include setting up a part-time business to create legitimate deductions, buying investments that offer depreciation like real estate and oil, and finding the best CPA to give you advice.

The managing-a-dollar formula that the millionaires follow is: minimize the tax liabilities, allocate parts of it to build your financial foundation, decrease the percentage of earned-income that you spend until it is zero, and forge the discipline to consistently follow this routine. Now, at what age do you wish that you had learned this material? At what age do you think you should start exposing your children to these ideas? The correct answer is: as early as possible (and when they start getting an allowance at the very latest).

How you could take the first step to become financially free

Short description

The author explains what “truly wealthy” means. Various possible routes to achieve this through earning passive income are suggested but Internet Business is recommended because it is by far the most exciting, rewarding and the best home based business. Tips are given that are for professional business working from home.

Like the majority, I have been working very hard each day believing that the harder I work, the more money I would get. I would bust my proverbial butt out working year after year slaving away for BOSSES who show little sign of appreciation, to earn a paycheck that could hardly pay my bills.

After some trying and tiring years, I realized to my disappointment that I was not getting anywhere. I tried many other alternatives but none could work to my satisfaction and I began to resign to the fact that I’ve to forget about my DREAMS and continue to live life of the majority i. e. get up in the morning...get into the traffic jam...go to work... come back from work...have dinner...watch TV... go to bed...kind of life!

Still, deep down in my heart, there was a burning urge to continue my search. I attended seminars after seminars to seek out a suitable direction that I can follow.

At long last, in one of these seminars, I chanced upon an interesting finding - most of the very wealthy people do not actually work hard at all! I'm talking about people who live life on their own terms.

They’re people who have all the money they need, yet they seem to have a choice to work when they want to...where they want to... for whom they want to. Best of all, they have all the free time in the world to travel...to spend with their kids... do gardening... lower their golf scores... to learn a new recipe in the kitchen... and to really, really enjoy life.

I also learnt the word,“LEVERAGE”which these multimillionaires used to create wealth by doing the minimum while harvesting the maximum. The true meaning of“wealth”suddenly dawned on me.

“TRUE WEALTH”means the ability to do what you want, however you want it and whenever you want it. This is “FINANCIAL FREEDOM” many of us are and should be yearning for.

Also, the time when you're due to retire has nothing to do with your age. You can retire any time you want once you've achieved financial freedom.

This can happen when you reach the age of 30, 35 or 40, not necessarily 55 or 60 as we're all brought up to believe. There're people who're in their 60's or 70's but could not afford to retire because they need their jobs to continue paying their bills!

I was advised to stop“THINKING JOB". We, for many generations, our parents, their parents and their parents’parents had been brought up to have only one major objective in life -- JOB. We work hard in schools so that we could get good grades to advance to colleges and universities where we worked even harder so that we could get a good and secured JOB. Once we’ve got the jobs we want we continue to work very hard in order to maintain them and to climb the so-called organizational ladder of success.

As a result, we all have fallen into the trap of the RAT RACE.

Although some of us could be drawing quite a handsome income, we're not truly“wealthy”because we're not free to do what we want and when we want.

I've heard of many sad stories of rich EMPLOYEES not being able to spent badly needed valuable time with members of their families who're sick in hospitals because they could not afford to be away from their place of work for too long as their services are urgently required by their employers.

Doctors could not really relax and enjoy a long vacation for fear of the loss of income or patients while their clinics remain closed.

The bottom line is - we all have our JOBS to look after! We have no time to think of becoming TRULY WEALTHY and FREE.

I therefore suggest that you stop THINKING JOB effective from today. You should now realize that a job would not make you rich. If you have a job, you're being paid a salary for your EFFORT. Is it possible to get paid for putting zero or very little effort ? If your answer is “No”, you're dead wrong! Because you're still thinking job!

What I'm about to propose to you is this - copy what the truly wealthy people are doing (or rather not doing). They earn their income through various LEVERAGE STRATEGIES which allow them to make money while they’re sleeping, meddling with hobbies, or having vacation in far away places such as the beautiful beaches in Hawaii or Malaysia.

The first step we need to take is not to have a job working for others. You should start having your own business and work for yourself. Don’t get me wrong! I’m not suggesting for a moment that you start investing heavily in building a store, shops or even factory, getting employees, build up inventory, getting permits and licenses etc, etc. If you did this, you’d end up putting a lot of EFFORT and still having a “JOB” to look after this TRADITIONAL physical business!

There’re many routes the rich and wealthy are taking but not all of these would be suitable for you. You have to screen them carefully before deciding on the right one to copy.

Here are some of the more popular CONVENTIONAL routes:

1) FRANCHISING

This sounds like a good idea. You could tie up with big reputable organizations who could help you set up your business real fast. But you need to invest quite a huge sum of money and eventually you still end up having to look after the business physically. You still have a “JOB”. Is this what you want? No, I don’t think so.

2) STOCK, COMMODITY AND OPTION TRADING

On paper this is a very exciting proposal. Many make their money from the trading. Despite the fact that there’re many tempting and seemingly attractive strategies put forward by hundreds of trading gurus, statistics still show that 90% or more of the traders would end up getting their fingers burnt in the long run. Is this what you want? No, I don’t think so.

3) LONG TERM INVESTMENT

You could consider this possibility. Many had tried this and attained success in their lives. We need to invest considerable amount of money at the outset and reap the profit only after 5, 10 or even 20 years. Warren Buffett had the initial capital and enough resources to wait for 10 to 20 years. But can you wait that long? No, I don’t think so. We want more immediate results.

I’m talking about getting a system that allows you to “recruit” thousands if not millions of “salesmen” who are willing to work for you 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The best part is the fact that they’re willing to do so for nothing!

I’m talking about a system that allows you to switch your business to “Autopilot” mode so that you could continue to earn money whether you’re awake, asleep or holidaying in Bangkok or Penang.

I’m talking about a system which allows you to work from home or some places 10,000 km or more away from home.

I’m talking about a system by which you could make money even if you do not have large capital or any products of your own.

I’m talking about a system that allows people who hate selling to perform excellent sales job to a level which is beyond their WILDEST IMANGINATION.

Yes, I’m talking about Internet-home-based-working-in-pajamas-online business. And I would seriously recommend that you pick the “Affiliate Programs” to start off.

The easiest way to get into business on-line is through affiliate programs which allow you to sign up as an affiliate member. You’re set to go within one to two weeks with your own websites all created for you…very often free of charge! You earn a referral commission from selling the program owners’ products.

These products are usually information products such as electronic books (eBook) and software that can be delivered as a file that is then downloaded directly to your customers' computers.

They could be reproduced, downloaded and sold repeatedly at no cost. There’s no packing, shipping and delivery cost. Owing to this, affiliate program owners usually pay their affiliates high commissions (50% or more).

I look forward to seeing you in the Web. Get ready and start working tonight in your pajamas to take the first step in your exciting journey to becoming TRULY WEALTHY and FINANCIALLY FREE!