Penny Seeds

Today, is networking day. I’ve spent some time reading other people’s blogs, learning, commenting, updating social profiles, ect. So, I thought I’d share what I’ve been reading today! Here’s some track backs to some great finance blogs I’ve been checking out.

Also, if you’d like to follow me on any of my networking sites it’d be much appreciated. : )

Twitter - Blogged - Delicious -

Read the rest of this entry »

• Get your work proofread for free! I've been needing a little help to get my work approved at Constant-Content. They're very picky about grammatical mistakes. You can always get a friend to proofread, but they may be no better skilled than you are. Plus, they'll get tired of your requests after a while.  Professional proofreaders are......
• Download money saving coupons, and clean up at the grocery store! I was reading Money Ning recently, and they had an article on 'The coupon Lady'. Now, my mom was a massive bargain shopper. She took Winn Dixie for everything they had on triple coupon day. However, this lead her to purchase a lot of items we normally would not need......
• 15 ways to save every month Kill your land line phone (You're paying for a cellphone anyway!) $40+/a month Don't need or want this service! My cell plan provides more than enough minutes (and they're anytime! No crappy long distance service for me!), and half the calls on your land line will be telemarketers anyway. Cut......
• 8 DIY home repairs you can do yourself to save cash Whenever something breaks your first thought is to call a professional, but that's not always the best plan. Many things are very easy to repair, and you may as well throw cash into the street instead of calling a repair man. Do it yourself has many rewards including learning new......
• Where are the best interest rates hiding? It's always a cat and mouse game to get the best interest rates. Don't just believe whatever your local banker tells you. They're getting paid to secure your investment! Just because they say that's the best rate available doesn't mean it is. I surprised a bank employee who was trying......

• Review: The Sheikh's Blackmailed Mistress by Penny Jordan This was a pretty decent read. One of those books you read once and don't plan to revisit. There were some obvious contrite plot mechanisms and I felt the hero wasn't really a flesh and blood character, but one pulled out from a standard issue mold. I did enjoy......
• Free Suze Orman Book Download. If you have seen her on television and have always wanted to see what Suze Orman was all about, this is your chance to do it for free! Right now until 11:59 p.m. CT on Thursday, January 15, her newest book "Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan" is available as a......
• Improve Your Financial Life With Five Daily Actions The year is drawing to a close, and soon people will be scrambling to declare resolutions for the New Year.  I am no exception.  In years past I have identified two or three things I would like to improve on, but usually burn out by March. The goals probably sound......
• 40 Books to Read if You Love Twilight by First Mate Keira If you haven't yet read the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer, you should. All 4 books are out. This is their order: Twilight New Moon Eclipse *Breaking Dawn Plus there’s a companion piece to Eclipse entitled The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. Wondering who......
• Why Didn't Anyone Teach Me This Review [/caption] It's not often that I do a book review. Though it seems that at least once a month some author's marketing team sends me a new book, I almost never get around to them. The biggest reason is that I'm an extremely slow reader and most books would take......

Learning is a big part of my life. I’m addicted to RSS, because it delivers tidbits of knowledge from every source directly to my reader page every morning. I sit down at my computer, check my messages, and see what I can learn today. Which, I honestly think is a good way to start the day! I wish I’d have started doing it years ago, because hopefully without being too cliche “knowledge is power”.

Why don’t I pay somebody to fix my computer? Because I’ve learned to do it myself.

Why don’t I pay somebody to manage my websites? Because I’ve learned to do it myself.

Why don’t I pay somebody to do my taxes? Because I’ve learned to do it myself.

Knowledge like anything else is varying in its degree of neccesity. I might learn how to build something fascinating today, but tomorrow I might just learn a new cookie recipe. Today I’m learning that I am at an important age. The age where people form most of their wonderful ideas, because they don’t know enough yet to be weighed down by the reality of failure. So, I present a few articles that have inspired me today, and hopefully they will do the same for you.

Financial Lessons Learned From A life In Punk Rock

I was instantly interested in this article. Kevin Lylman who is among other things the organizer of the ever popular music event ‘Vans Warped Tour’. I’ve attended this event myself, and enjoyed it a lot. His interview with Forbes gives insight into how he became a music promoter, and the legacy that unfolded. Also how he’s still kicking himself for dishing out a full partnership stake to his lawyer.

Once a broke student - now a CEO

I’ve never lived off the classic college diet of ramen noodles. I’ve always been fortunate enough to have a better dining selection. I can however sympathize with Betsy McLaughlin’s need to establish her own financial plan. Like her I never grew up with one, both of my parents were awful with money. Now she’s the CEO of Hot Topic, and definately has her paperwork in check.

• Learning how to improve your google ad words quality scores Google adwords quality score effects the way your ad runs, costs you ensue, and the overall success of your campaign. Without the right fine tuning an ad campaign with low quality can bleed you dry of funds, or even not be shown at all. Learn how to achieve a better......
• Make money from home - Sell affiliate products using facebook ads! Everyone knows facebook now a days. Even your 80 year old auntie is probably working the night away playing farmville! There are many mixed opinions about facebook, but one things is certain – the audience is huge. It's also very diverse! Using some targeted ads, and the right product you......
• A little birdie told me to day trade with Twitter. I like to read other personal finance finance blogs; because.. well I that's one of the things I like to learn about! I recently was reading The Wild Investor, and came across a nifty little post that introduced me to Stock Twits I've never been a fan of Twitter, because......
• Lessons learned from struggling entrepreneurs in other countries I've never been a fan of traditional charities, because you can never be sure where the money is going. Kiva is an organization working with micro lenders world wide to help people better themselves. All of these hopeful business people are quite inspiring, and may have you wondering what's......
• Review - Sharebuilder So, you've heard from everyone that you need to get into stocks, but you have no idea what a broker is or why you need one? Share builder is a great start for you to get into the world of trading! If you want to buy stocks then you......

• Sick and Spendy - and Personal Finance Links I've had a bad cold the last few days. Then again, I can't remember when I've had a good cold. Either way, it's sucked out my desire to do much of anything. Ever be really bored, but at the same time not feeling like doing something? That's me over the......
• Picking the Right Acoustic Instrument For Your Child Picking the right acoustic instrument from your child is important, because the wrong instrument will not inspire your child to learn how to master the concept of playing music. Research has shown that it is extremely beneficial for children to learn a musical instrument. Choosing an instrument that suits them......
• Useful Tips For New Forex Traders With the help of forex market you are going to change your life and to become one of the happiest persons. There is nothing extremely difficult but you also need to be careful and do not think that the money will come to you without any effort. If you would......
• Fighting Back Against the 'Too Big to Fail' Banks I'm convinced that the current administration will fail to significantly alter the regulatory framework that governs the investment banking community, as well as the fee based business model practiced by the institutional mega-banks. Regardless of the new regulations that will be drafted, or the old regulations that might be......
• Total Self The first knowledge is "I don't know". The second knowledge is "I can observe". I don’t like my state. I want to acquire so much knowledge in life and its never-ending. How will this knowledge help you after you die? By knowing I lived a happy life with my knowledge.......

If you’re grumbling about the fact of roaming charges on your phone - don’t fear! There is help available. While many people are well aware of VOIP protocal to make calls they aren’t very aware of how to answer their voicemails to see if anybody has called them in the first place!

I found these great iphone solutions online, but there should be similar methods for other phones, and carriers. So, first on our list is how to actually make calls without losing a bundle of cash! Let’s say we’re in a place like oh, say London. Wireless internet is everywhere in countries like this, your hotel probably even has it.

Now, be sure you turn off your data network service! Even if you are connected to wifi it could be working in the background, and costing you cash. Many services allow you to enable airplane mode which will shut down your network, but still allow wifi. You may also have options for this in your settings interface, or may simply be able to ‘turn off data roaming’.

Making calls for cheap over VOIP

VOIP for those who don’t know, is voice over internet protocol. The iphone, and pretty much every other smart phone has many options for this feature. It’s not free, but it is dirt cheap. International calling can happen for about six cents a minute. Many carriers such as Skype even have flat rate packages where you call all you want for one monthly fee. If you don’t have a smart phone, you can also make calls with a laptop, and a microphone.

Fring

Fring is an all in one tool. It allows you to use a multitude of popular IM services, and make calls with your skype account! Pretty nifty, but not as flashy as some of the other apps.

Skype

No surprise, skype allows you to do anything, and everything with your Skype account. While it’s not a swiss army knife type of app like Fring, it is much better looking. The interface is much more streamlined.

iCall

This app has the interesting ability to select to answer an incoming call with wifi, or switch an already in progress call to wifi!

Checking your voicemail

Now, the next problem is checking our voicemail. This doesn’t work over only wifi, because it requires your carrier’s network to access information. Even if you are connected to wifi your edge or 3g network is hard at work in the background fetching voicemail for you.

This step is totally free with an account from You Mail. This service allows you to check your visual voicemail via e-mail. You can also opt for text messages, but this won’t help us since we don’t want to use any data services! It also includes many other useful services like forwarding voicemails, leaving custom messages, and more. You can even get called ID on any caller, even if they aren’t in your contacts. You can also block callers too, and leave them a message to let them know their call is not welcome.

The only thing to note is this service will only send voicemail to your You Mail account. Your provider will not recieve it so it will not appear in your phone’s voicemail. If you only want to use this service while travelling you can easily turn it off again when you get home!

• Make extra income as an affiliate marketer! How to make money online is always a hot subject with search engines. There's a million get rich quick schemes on the internet that leave many people feeling frustrated, and down. While, it may seem like the only people making a buck are the no good scammers there are......
• Some of my favorite articles from other bloggers Today, is networking day. I've spent some time reading other people's blogs, learning, commenting, updating social profiles, ect. So, I thought I'd share what I've been reading today! Here's some track backs to some great finance blogs I've been checking out. Also, if you'd like to follow me on any......
• Refer yourself to cheap hosting for your website! Are you an aspiring webmaster, but the economic downturn is leaving you a little pressed for cash? If you refer yourself to a company's affiliate program you can save a nice chunk of money. If you want to operate a website then you need hosting - bottom line. There's......
• Review - Sharebuilder So, you've heard from everyone that you need to get into stocks, but you have no idea what a broker is or why you need one? Share builder is a great start for you to get into the world of trading! If you want to buy stocks then you......
• Download money saving coupons, and clean up at the grocery store! I was reading Money Ning recently, and they had an article on 'The coupon Lady'. Now, my mom was a massive bargain shopper. She took Winn Dixie for everything they had on triple coupon day. However, this lead her to purchase a lot of items we normally would not need......

• EcoSnoop: Environmental Activism With Your iPhone. Got an iPhone? Care about the environment? Well, a new social networking app for us environmentalists will allow us to post environmental concerns as we see them and to find green businesses in our area - one picture at a time. The app is called EcoSnoop and it blends environmental......
• Use An Autoresponder Email Service   Hi everyone and welcome, If you have just started an online business, you will need to seriously think about whether or not to use an autoresponder email service to build a relationship with visitors to your website. You will want to keep in touch with visitors who request more......
• AT&T Set To Raise Home Telephone Prices; Time To Switch To VOIP? I am curious as to why AT&T would think it was a good idea to raise home phone prices in California when you can get VOIP from dozens of companies, or use Skype for mere pennies, or just use your cell phone for all your calling needs. Does it make......
• How to set a default font in Gmail Gmail is one of the most popular free email systems in the world, used by many companies stoves face alone the daily struggle against spam. Although very popular Webmail but this is still suffering from some defect and slight complication due to young age. One problem that bothers me......
• Saving Money with your Phone There are a lot of different ways that you can cut down on what you spend in your household budget every month, and one such example is by saving money through how you communicate on the phone. Telephone services are easily capable of costing a typical family as many as......