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101 Ways To Save Money in Everyday Life

May 15, 2012
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101 Ways To Save Money in Everyday Life

This is a follow-up post from the earlier listing of 80 ways to lose money. This time, I am going to increase the number of tips to 101 because these are about saving money (and not losing). Here are 101 ways to save money which are easy to implement as well. Switch off the fan, air conditioner when you leave a room. Apply various driving techniques to save on gas cost. Use fans which rotate when winds blow as you need no electricity for them. Walk as much as you can and use public transport which cost less and save gas. Close the water faucet while brushing. See – Save water, Save money. Close the shower when applying soap or shampoo. Drink lots of cold water to keep your body temperature cool and reduce the need for air conditioning. Use fans instead of air conditioners when it is not too hot. Wash your car or other things on your lawn so don’t need to water them again. Water the lawn or the plants before sunrise or after sunset, to keep air cool and prevent wastage of water. Instead of washing clothes according to color, separately wash the clothes that lose color and wash

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Carnival of Personal Finance #361 – The Mothers Day Edition

May 14, 2012
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Carnival of Personal Finance #361 – The Mothers Day Edition

Welcome to the 361′st edition of Carnival of Personal Finance. I am honored to be your host for the second time in 12 months of my blogging history. If you are a first time visitor, thanks for your time, do remember the blog name, very easy to remember – I guess and most importantly, keep on visiting. Like every other blogger I talk rubbish sometimes, if you are a regular personal finance blogger or blog reader, you may have been already accustomed to read gibberish and non-sense stuff often anyway. When neo-bloggers (in relative term) starts claiming a beautiful discovery that Dave Ramsey’s methods are mathematically wrong, I feel pity on their ignorance. Coming back to the point, yes I do talk non-sense sometimes, but most of the time my articles get editor’s choice distinctions at carnivals. So keep visiting. I may bore you sometimes, but not always. I forgot that the theme is Mother’s day today. Here’s my tribute to my mother, published yesterday. Once you’re done with that, continue to next paragraph, if not, finish reading it first. The biggest gift you can give to your mother, is your presence, I accept your apology for not being able to be with your

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Mother I Owe my Success to You – Happy Mother’s Day!

May 13, 2012
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Mother I Owe my Success to You – Happy Mother’s Day!

This is a small tribute to my mother on occasion of mother’s day. The lady whom I recall spending entire day to look after us. She never worked to earn a living, she was a housewife, a home maker. Someone who loved to control everything home related and did so efficiently and passionately. She had the final say at every decision we took as family, be it choosing the next vacation destination or deciding if we needed new dresses. She maintained family budget and spending. She kept track of household inventory, she maintained supply needs. She prepared the grocery list. She was on top of everybody’s need, amazingly she knew our needs much before we realized them as our needs. My father is a lucky man to have him as wife. If he taught me the early lessons of investment and money. My mother taught me other human behaviors. My mother taught us how money can be saved by doing things yourself. She sew clothes because getting them ready made was costly. My father had to take care of his elderly parents, his brothers and sisters, along with us. He didn’t have enough money. She took it upon herself to finish things

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Weekly Chit-Chat, Roundup and Gratitude

May 12, 2012
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Weekly Chit-Chat, Roundup and Gratitude

I finally sold off my broken car on Craigslist.  I wasn’t expecting more than $500 for it, but, just to taste the water I put an ad in Miami Craigslist, offering the car for $1,200. I described every problem the car had, including blown head gasket, needs for new radiator and battery. I also mentioned about two of the power windows which don’t work, a service light which needs attention along with a list of scratches and dents. I thought people would get scared off seeing the listing, so, I mentioned that this car is only useful for the mechanics, who can fix and resell for profit. Those words spread like wild-fire. Within next few hours I received nearly 50 calls and text messages. Finally the first guy who came-by to check bought it. It helped in negotiation that while he was inspecting the car, I received two consecutive calls from other interested buyers. The car was sold for $1,200 cash then and there. Why I think this is a good deal? The KBB market value for fair conditioned Hyundai 2002 Hyundai Elantra was $2,600. The head gasket replacement , along with radiator and battery was lowest quoted at $1,700. So, financially I didn’t

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Top Risks for Investing in Oil and Natural Gas

May 11, 2012
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Top Risks for Investing in Oil and Natural Gas

The following is a guest post from  Lynn Jackson Every investment opportunity has its share of risks. Whether you’re putting your money in real estate, buying and selling gold, or trading stocks, you are bound to face, not only general management risks, but industry-specific threats. In the following post, we will take a look at investing in oil and natural gas, to see what you are putting on the line while investing in this specific industry. Politics If you are at all interested in oil and natural gas, you’ve probably read quite a bit about government regulations on this investing industry. All oil and natural gas companies are limited by governmental regulations, concerning the locations, times, and processes for oil and gas extractions. These regulations typically vary from state to state and are known for increasing considerably with governing oil and natural gas deposits outside of the country. In an ideal investing world, oil and natural gas companies would mine exclusively from politically stable nations, which would adhere to long-term leases. Unfortunately, oil and gas is a limited resource, and those looking to invest in either or both must often deal with the politics of less structured nations. This is where the bulk of politic risk stems from, as these unstable

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2012 Tax Rates and Tax Brackets for Filing Taxes in 2013

May 9, 2012
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It’s April and 2011 regular tax filing window is closed. I did my taxes in February this year and started looking at various changes for the 2012 tax year. I thought of documenting the ‘must to know’ things for 2012 tax filing here. We will have a discussion around the 2012 tax brackets, tax rates and standard deduction. Fortunately  this year there were no increase in taxes as such, perhaps it’s due to presidential election year. The (in)famous ‘Bush era tax cut’ still continues. But, the ultra rich, watch out for next year though. Note: This article covers tax information for 2012 tax year. which will apply to the returns due Monday, April 15, 2013.  2012 Tax Brackets Hope this helps determining your tax bracket for 2012 Tax Bracket Single Married Filing Jointly Head of Household 10% $0 – $8,700 $0 – $17,400 $0 – $12,400 15% $8,700 – $35,350 $17,400 – $70,700 $12,400 – $47,350 25% $35,350 – $85,650 $70,700 – $142,700 $47,350 – $122,300 28% $85,650 – $178,650 $142,700 – $217,450 $122,300 – $198,050 33% $178,650 – $388,350 $217,450 – $388,350 $198,050 – $388,350 35% Over $388,350 Over $388,350 Over $388,350 A guide to help you determine your correct filing status is here.

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How Smart Phones Can Help Manage Finances

May 7, 2012
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How Smart Phones Can Help Manage Finances

Last month, my wife and I had dinner with our friends who came down from San Francisco. We talked about a lot of things, including new technologies. My friend mentioned how important Blackberry was for him because he’s able to accomplish so many tasks with such a handy device. I also commented about my iPhone. Then it hit me. What could happen to the world without these smart phones? I don’t want to exaggerate things, but I think it’s time we admit to ourselves we owe so many things to these diminutive devices. For me, one of their biggest uses is helping you manage finances well, wherever you are at. You can keep track of your expenses We have Mint app installed on both our iPhone, she likes it very much. After all, she can keep track of her expenses. The app allows her to send alerts whenever she needs to pay some bills, as well as schedule them beforehand (such as monthly, daily, or weekly). I also liked it because we can both keep track of our credit cards and my investments on the go. Some of my friends are also using other apps such as Yodlee and Easy Bills. They

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Yakezie Carnival – the Facebook IPO Edition

May 6, 2012
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Yakezie Carnival – the Facebook IPO Edition

Welcome to the Facebook IPO edition of Yakezie Carnival. If a biggest IPO of the history is just a few days away how does the financial blogging community sit silent? Let’s discuss the IPO briefly. In order to surpass Industrial and Commercial bank of China, Facebook needs to sell only 500 million share at $45 per share to become the biggest IPO of the history. I strongly feel this should be a cake walk. Now let’s come to the pure mathematics, as per S -1 filing, Facebook receives 850 million monthly visitors and the consensus is towards a valuation of $100 billion for the company. Thus, roughly each visitor is valued at $118. That means with almost 20,000 monthly visitors I can dream of becoming a millionaire post OCAAT IPO! All right, jokes apart, if you’re like me, you’ll never get a chance to participate in the IPO. You’ll have to buy from open market following listing of Facebook (FB – symbol). Let’s see what happened to the last mega social media IPO of LinkedIn. LNKD opened at $83 on NYSE, up 84% from its IPO price of $45. The stock quickly spiked to $90 and climbed as high as $122.70 before closing at $94.25,

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