Did I meet my goals?

Previously I posted some goals at the beginning of the month, now 30 days later I will check my progress. Here are my Goals for June:

1. Get 5,000 page hits - I'll do this through posting well written articles, participating in forums, providing productive comments on PF Blogs, and submitting my articles to carnivals
2. Create 3 streams of passive income totaling $100 - I'm utilizing different advertising programs, and will seek out more sponsors, if your interested contact me
3. Create 1 business - I will establish at least one business this month
4. Get mentioned in 5 blog carnivals - this will only be accomplished through hard work, and interesting, intelligent writing
5. Increase networth by $2000 - continue saving with my current budget

What did I do?

1. My total page hits are up to 4,249 so I did not reach 5,000 - I did not follow through with frequent posting, and commenting like I originally intended due to vacation and family obligations. I must admit I'm dissappointed with the quality of my writing lately. I'm working on developing a more organized system of posting good, useful information for readers.
   
2. I have more than 3 streams of passive income (made up mostly of different sponsors and text advertisements) but they do not total $100, much less in fact. I believe that this goal was a bit too high to reach. My passive income this month was pretty poor coming in at less than $20. I contribute this shortcoming to poor planning and limited organization. Each month I will try to increase passive income until I reach the ultimate goal of have enough passive income to pay for my total monthly expenses.
3. The business I created this month is Stuffdogswant (trademark pending). It is a company who simply makes products for dogs. So far we have created a variety of 100% cotton chew toys, and some other products are still in the R&D phase. The products have been tested and approval by my Boxer Dog Rosie. I also started a Boxer Club for dogs and owners in my area. Eventally, I would like to organize a dog walk for cancer. I'm thinking it'll have to be either this fall or next spring. I will get some sponsors (local pet stores, a radio station, animal shelter) and raise money and awareness for a charity.
   
4. I did get featured in 5 different carinvals this month and recieved a few trackbacks. I'm happy I reached this goal, I also went above and beyond creating the Carnival of Future Millionaires.
5. Networth did increase by more than $2000, here I was successful because I stuck to my budget.
   

Overall I did pretty well for my first month. I'm hoping to ride this wave of success into July. If you are interest in goal setting, which I highly recommend, check out this site about GOALS

Back from the Bahamas

I just got back from the Bahamas last night, I was on vacation. It was excellent. The Atlantis is a very nice hotel/resort on Paradise Island and I would definately recommend it. It was a great trip, good food, snorkeling, sun, sand, and surf. The weather was beautiful and the water was gorgeous. One of the day we took a boat trip on a catamaran. We sailed to a smaller island and we went snorkling over a coral reef and saw a lot of different tropical fish. The Atlantis has enormous aquariums with schools of fish. There is a waterslide and a shark tank. There is a humungous manta ray named Zeus. There was a festival called Junkanoo going on, full of dancing and music. I had blackened Grupper and plantans with rice - delicious. If you can afford to go the Bahamas, then go there. If you budget for your vacation then you will be able to take a nice relaxing trip. Be sure to budget for it, so you can relax instead of worry about how much everything costs. I'll be publishing less often, but hopefully lengthen the articles with more interesting/relevant content. On vacation I was able to do some more reading. I'm still interested in real estate, and am learning the game slowly but surely. I actually found a condo in the Bahamas for about $198,000 comparable to the prices and size of the properties in the area I live and NJ is definately not a tropical paradise.

Future Millionaires Carnival is Up!

Check out this week's Carnival of Future Millionaires.

Carnival of Future Millionaires - June 19, 2006

Welcome to the June 19, 2006 edition of carnival of future millionaires.

Steve Faber presents Why Boring Stocks Can Be Oh So Sexy posted at Debt Free.

Peter Kua presents 19 Steps to Power Negotiations - Part 1 posted at RadicalHop.com by Peter Kua: Light Speed Personal Development.

Katie presents Your goals are the engines that move—how are yours running? - Aridni posted at Aridni.

Tim MMF presents Wealth Requires Courage posted at MyMoneyForest.

leverage

Tim MMF presents How To Make A Million posted at MyMoneyForest.

success

David Lorenzo presents Face Your Fears posted at The Career Intensity Blog.
>, saying, "Success starts with beating your fears!

Enjoy the post!"

The Prince of Thrift presents Buyer Beware posted at Becoming and Staying Debt Free.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of
carnival of future millionaires
using our >carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our

blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:

carnival of future millionaires, blog carnival.

Get your articles in for the Carnival of Future Millionaires

Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of future millionaires using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. The deadline is 5pm eastern standard time today. The carnival will be posted tommorrow.

The World Cup and it's effect on the stock market

The World Cup rages on. Today's matches were especially entertaining. I was very disappointed in the referee. It was unnecessary to dole out a total of 3 red cards in the match. I digress, I believe the stock market "correction" was due to the world's interest in the World Cup. For those who don't know, Americans, the World Cup is the tournament of tournaments, the championship of the world in soccer, known to all others as football. The world is so interested in the games and cheering on their respective countries that they do not care about buying and selling stocks. That's what caused the dip. Because the World Cup is the premiere event those companies who are set to profit are those who are advertising in the stadiums and at commerical breaks. Namely Nike and Jose +10, Adidas, AIG, and others. These companies will do well and so will others that sell soccer apparelle and flags. Just take a look into the stands at the match.

Who can you trust with your money?

Recently my wife and I went to pay a visit to our Financial Planner. We scheduled the meeting to in order to get a detailed picture of our financial situation. We went into the meeting with our financial records and excitement. After he asked a number of questions about our assests, our professions, salaries, plans, etc. he found that we could combine our debts into a nice Mortage Equity Loan. Then he crunched the numbers and spun off some facts and figures. At one point in the conversation he actually said and I quote "we're practically giving money after." This is where I started to get an uneasy feeling. Then he went on to compliment my wife telling her that she looks like Nicole Kidman. I was not too please because well she was still blushing, he was eager to get us to start filling out the loan application. I told him that we will think about it and get back to him. After the 1 hour meeting, I found myself not trusting our financial advisor, because although the plan to combine our debts (- school loan, parent's loan, and mortgage) it would be a poor choice at this time. He wanted to take our equity and increase the amount of time we would be paying off debt. He told us - don't pay off your debts, you're gonna need that money, instead get another loan to combine your debt into one payment. Basically this deal is good for the bank and not good for us, so we've decided not to take his advice at this time. This brings me to my original question- Who can you trust with your money? How do you know which CPA are really working for your best interest, versus working for their own best interest, they are in business.

How to Prosper

There is a new internet service that allows regular people to loan money to others to help them "prosper". The site offers lenders and borrowers a place to link up and set up a personal loan. The site is www.prosper.com and it is becoming popular. The reason this service works well is because once you agree to lend money, then you let them worry about the rest. They will even hire a collection agency if appropriate. So check it out, if you need money or have money to lend.

9 ways to save money today

Here is a quick list of nine things you can do today to save money.

1. Turn off lights when you are not using them
2. Make your own food, instead of eating out/eating pre-made meals
3. Pay your bills online and never pay for stamps again
4. Have a no spend day once a week - where you don't spend any money
5. Take faster showers - use a timer and try to be finished in 5min - men, 10min - women
6. Shop around for the best deal on car insurance and switch, the internet is an easy way to compare prices
7. Sign up for direct-deposit at work
8. Carpool
   
9. Pack your lunch

Join the Carnival of Future Millionaires!

I'll be hosting the new Carnival of Future Millionaires next week June 19th. Submissions are due by Sunday June 18th by 5:00pm EST. This week topic is "who wants to be a millionaire?" and will feature articles from those people who are interested in attaining millionaire status. Your article should be informative, and have a specific date set of when you want to be a millionaire, also include how you will accomplish it - do you have your own business, are you in real estate, stocks, etc. I am also looking for people to host this Carnival. You can sign up at Blog Carnival or send me an email.

Include the following and email your submissions to howtomakeamilliondollars@walla.com by Sunday June 18th by 5pm EST


- name of post
-title of author (or pen name)
-trackback link
-summary of post
-your blog url

Learn From My Mistakes #3 Avoid signing up for Credit Cards

Learn From My Mistakes #3
Every Tuesday I'll post a financial mistake I've made. I do this in order for you to learn what NOT TO DO. AGAIN I REPEAT, DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES and you'll be much better off financially. In college, I made a horrible mistake. I eagerly signed up for a credit card in order to get the free item they were handing out. Bad decision. I just gave them all my personal information as fast as possible and signed the agreement before even reading all the paperwork. Bad, bad, decision. The item that induced me to sign up for credit. I am ashamed to admit that it was a hat, a lousy hat. It took my a while before I realized that I had opened a pandura's box. Shop around for a credit card.

I'm in another Blog Carnival!

Today my blog post about "the importance of goals" made it into the Carnival of Business. Check it out. 2 down, 3 more to go, by the end of June.

Monday - Blog Carnival Day!

I finally made it into the Carnival of Personal Finance! Check out Financial Fruition for this week's Carnival. One Carnival down, 4 more to go.

Creating your own company

In order to create your own company you first need to have is a name and a product. My first company is called "Stuffdogswant". I read a book about trademarks and found that you can apply and get registered with the Federal Trademark Registry for about $365. You are free to create a name and use it, before registering as long as it doesn't sound like another company's name or confuse consumers. I created this company to attempt to bring in a little cashflow from my household inventions, I use to keep my dog busy and my house intact. Being a the proud owner of a 1.5 year old boxer named Rosie, I find minor damages to furniture and woodwork from time to time. In order to decrease the damages I've come up with the DoorShield - which does what it says, and basically protects your door from scratching and paint stripping. I also invented the SlobberGuard - a nifty device for your car to prevent the window and doorsill from getting slobberized by your dog when going on car trips. I also created a line of chew toy products called Tasty-Knots. This is my first company, and hopefully it will do alright. Check out Boxer Dog Rosie for more information. If you are interested in building a corporation, then find out how you can do it online.

Welcome International Visitors!

I want to extend a warm welcome for all of those who travel to visit this blog from over seas, I've had many from India, China, Japan, Austraila, England, Canada and many more. I believe that India's economy is about to take off. I work with a number of people from India and I enjoy learning about the culture and customs. I was amazed to find that some sections of the country have a 100% literacy rate. Being able to communicate ideas across languages and countries is becoming increbibly easy with the internet. Globalization is occurring more and more each day, and the world is truly getting smaller.

Spotlight

Each Thursday I'll Spotlight one outstanding PF Blog. This week's Spotlight Blog is Consumerism Commentary

This blog is an excellent resource for Personal Finance information and pulls from a variety of reliable sources go and check it out now.

Don't Lend Money to Your Friends - Learn from my mistakes

Whatever you do, don't lend money to your friends. Even if they are really in trouble, my advice is just don't do it. Why? Because it will only stress the relationship. Your friend will be in a compromised position. I tell you this because one time I lent one of my good friends some money and it took him a very long time to pay it back. It caused a lot of tension in our relationship which could have been avoided. I repeat don't lend money, unless you are a bank and can receive interest on the loan.

Networth updated

A great sight that allows you to keep track of your networth is NetworthIQ here is my networth for May 2006. My goal is to reach networth of 1 million dollars by the time I am 30.

The Importance of Goals

Without goals we have nothing to shoot for, nothing to measure our progress, we are lost. Creating goals is the easy and helps you get motivated. Writing down your goals make you accountable. Put your goals in a place where you will see them every day. After you set your goals and you have the end in sight develop a plan to reach it. The hardest part is taking action and following through with the plan. At the beginning of each month I'll write some goals and assess at the end of the month. These are my goals for June:

1. Get 5,000 page hits - I'll do this through posting well written articles, participating in forums, providing productive comments on PF Blogs, and submitting my articles to carnivals
2. Create 3 streams of passive income totaling $100 - I'm utilizing different advertising programs, and will seek out more sponsors, if your interested contact me
   
3. Create 1 business - I will establish at least one business this month
   
4. Get mentioned in 5 blog carnivals - this will only be accomplished through hard work, and interesting, intelligent writing
   
5. Increase networth by $2000 - continue saving with my current budget

If you are also goal oriented post a comment and I'll set up a forum where everyone can post their personal goals.

How to Tackle an Unpleasant Task

Procrastination is like an illness. The longer you it contiues, the worse off you are. Destroy procrastination and stagnationation by getting your ass in gear. If you are putting something off it is probably because you don't want to do it. It may be cleaning out the closet, or writing a paper. Whatever it is, is not something that you like to do, or it'd be done by now. Here is how to get into action. Get a timer and set it for 30min. I have a quick alarm on my phone that I use. For that 30min devote your total concentration to the task no matter how large and luminous it may seem. Break it up into smaller parts that you can chew. After 30min take a 10min break, you've earned it. Then get back at it until you are exhausted or until the task is complete. Another option is doing a little each day but this doesn't apply if the deadline is soon and you don't have any more time to delay.

Always update and upgrade

It is very important in these days to keep ahead of the curve. The faster you can change and adapt to market demands the quicker you will make more money. My blog is seriously lacking in the functionally department. I'll admit that I'm not a professional when it comes to HTML code. I'll do my best to make the site more user friendly.
Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. So let me know what you think of the changes over the next few weeks.

Is my blog HOT or NOT?

Save money - barter, trade

There are other ways to get what you want without paying for it. Barter or trade for the object or service. This does not cost you any money to do, and you don't have to pay any take on the transaction. The government hates when they don't get your money through sales tax. Try this technique when you are going to a flee market. Take some old things that you don't want and try to trade for things you would use. A nurse that I know was able to barter for pediatric child care for her children by offering to write a child-care medical newsletter for the doctor's office. Yes this cost her time and energy, but it did not cost her money and she traded her time and effort in order to receive free pediatric care which would have cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Be creative.

Always read the fine print! Learn from my mistakes

Hopefully others will learn from my mistakes and avoid the same traps and pitfalls that have hindered my finances over the years. When I was younger I eagerly signed up for Columbia's House's Music club. They sold me with the advertisement of "18 CDs for one penny, only pay S+H". I was young and dumb, little did I know that I was agreeing to sign up for a subscription to their music club, which required me to purchase 6 CDs at regular price. I could cancel the subscription if I sent back all of the CD's and paid for shipping and handling. The regularly priced CD's ranged from $18.99-$20.99. I was so angry that I got duped into the subscription that I tried to get out of the club after only buying one CD at regular price, unsuccessfully. So I ended up spending $180 on 24 CD's which is still a decent price per CD at that time but the bad thing about it was that I was running out of CD's that I wanted to buy. I was so desparate to get out that I bought less than desirable CD's to fullfill my obligations. Ever since then I've always have been very suspicious of excellent deals and I am very cautions of any "money back guarantee" or "just pay shipping and handling". The lesson is to always know ahead of time what you are getting yourself into. Read the entire document if you are going to sign your name to it. Also research products and services before you purchase them.

It Pays to get along - More on Synergy

Remember when you were young, and the teacher told you to play nice with others, continue to do this throughout your life. Wikipedia , the greatest online encyclopedia out there, has some great information on synergy. Here are Wikipedia's definitions of synergy - "Human synergy relates to interacting humans. For example, if person A alone is too short to reach an apple on a tree and person B is too short as well. Once person B sits on the shoulders of person A, they are more than tall enough to reach the apple. In this example, the product of their synergy would be one apple. Another case would be two politicians. If each is able to gather one million votes on their own, but together they were able to appeal to 2.5 million voters, their synergy would have produced 500,000 votes.
Synergy usually arises when two persons with different complementary skills cooperate. The fundamental example is cooperation of men and women in a couple. In business, cooperation of people with organizational and technical skills happens very often. In general, the most common reason why people cooperate is that it brings a synergy. On the other hand, people tend to specialize just to be able to form groups with high synergy (see also division of labor and teamwork).
Corporate synergy occurs when corporations interact congruently. A corporate synergy refers to a financial benefit that a corporation expects to realize when it merges with or acquires another corporation. This type of synergy is a nearly ubiquitous feature of a corporate acquisition and is a negotiating point between the buyer and seller that impacts the final price both parties agree to. There are two distinct types of corporate synergies:
· Revenue: a revenue synergy refers to the opportunity of a combined corporate entity to generate more revenue than its two predecessor standalone companies would be able to generate. For example, if company A sells product X through its sales force, company B sells product Y, and company A decides to buy company B then the new company could use each sales person to sell products X and Y thereby increasing the revenue that each sales person generates for the company.
· Cost: a cost synergy refers to the opportunity of a combined corporate entity to reduce or eliminate expenses associated with running a business. Cost synergies are realized by eliminating positions that are viewed as duplicitous within the merged entity. Examples include the head quarters office of one of the predecessor companies, certain executives, the human resources department, or other employees of the predecessor companies. This is related to the economic concept of Economies of Scale."

Home Depot sells chocolate!

Recently Home Depot made a $40 million dollar deal with Hershey chocolate company to sell Hershey's candy and products. After a successful test study done in selected Philadelphia Home Depot stores, the deal was made. Look for Hershey's in the check out line at the Home Depot. Last time I was in Home Depot I saw a Dunkin Donuts, amazing. You made have seen similar pairings such as McDonald's in Walmart, or Starbuck's in Barnes and Nobles. Companies make huge deals to make more money. How can you use these same ideas to make more money. It's called creating partnerships, or wheeling and dealing. If you are not good at something or don't know how to do it, get a professional to do it. Create a deal that will benenfit the two parties involved. Make sure you have something valuable to offer and be sure that you get something of value in return. Use synergy - where the combined efforts of two independent parts work together creating a sum greater that each one of the parts could create alone. For example if you want to create a website, but lack the required knowledge, barter with a web designer and get a discount by advertising their services on your site. Make partnerships, team up with those who are better than you, and they will help you to become better. If you could pick your own basketball team who you pick Micheal Jordan or the short skinny white kid? Learn from the best, ask a lot of questions, be humble, specialize in one area, but be knowledgable about many. Know when to ask for help, and don't be afraid of failure.

How do you create wealth? 3 different ways

Many people work at a job for money, trading their time and labor for money. Labor can be either mental or physical and your actual job or what you do at work can be an infinite number of things. There are traditional and non-traditional jobs some are clearly defined such as a doctor or a teacher, others are more ambiguous such as financial specialist, vice president of information technology. Directly trading your time and labor for money is just one way to create wealth. Wealth can be created by investing money into an assest that appreciates or grows in value over time. The only work you do is researching the investment and monitoring it, which can be as often, occasional, or never. The time you put into investments can be far less than the time you put into your job. Initially you may spend hours, or days researching, but once you find a good investment, you set it up and it can automatically increase in value over time, without you putting more physical work into it. Another way to create wealth is by creating a business, which provides either products or services, something of value to customers. Initially again, the process of setting up and creating a business takes a lot of hard work, time and energy, but the returns you can make on a successful business are limitless. Instead of buying stock, you could be the one selling shares of stock. Then there are royalties and payments from copyrighted material, which is used by permission of the author, an example would be writing a book and selling it, or writing a song, and selling it. There are many ways to create wealth and it is important to remember that working at a job is not the only way to make money. A stable job may be the safest bet, and if you are good at your job and love what you do, stick with it, but if you find yourself dreading work consider your options. Find out what your passion in life is and get involved in that area.