That my Dad got a Keurig coffee maker is actually great news, as now I can use my keurig coupons to save money on buying him different flavors of K-cups coffees for all the special occasions, like his birthday, Father’s Day, and Christmas. The K-cups have come out with several different major brands and dozens of different flavors. There are also K-cups with hot tea, apple cider and hot chocolate available for those who aren’t coffee drinkers or those who want something different.

I didn’t even realize that they needed a new coffeemaker, or I would have bought one for them at Christmas. When I was up there over the summer I noticed that had a big Mr. Coffee coffee maker on the kitchen counter, and that is what they used for breakfast during my visit. I guess my Mother just decided that it would be the perfect gift from her to my Dad and she didn’t want anyone else to buy it for him.

To be honest, I didn’t even know that they knew anything about the Keurig single cup brewing systems. I’ve known about them for years because we had them at work. To the best of my recollection, they have always used a nice 12-cup Mr. Coffee machine and made a pot full of coffee every morning at home before breakfast and then leaving for work. The pot always seemed to be empty by the time they were ready to leave, as I had considered buy them thermal mugs for the hour long drive to their store. But my Mother politely declined when I suggested that.

I wonder if they have a Keurig coffee maker in the store, too? If not, I could buy them one for their anniversary and then they can have one in the store and one at home. That would make it very convenient and practical for buying different flavors of K-Cups for them to keep on hand in the kitchen and in the break room of the store. Of course, buying them a coffeemaker would not be a surprise, as I know that they read my blog. LOL

Thankfully, we citizens do have the ability to get help with our taxes. There are people who are trained and licensed to help us prepare taxes, and they have to stand behind their work. If someone other than the taxpayer prepares the tax forms, that person has to sign the form along with the taxpayer. If you were smart and hired an enrolled agent to help you prepare your taxes, the enrolled agent can appear before the IRS if you get audited, and they can even negotiate with the IRS on your behalf.

Becoming an enrolled agent requires formal training, which is available online now. You have a variety of courses that you have to take, such as the enrolled agent ethics course and about 50 hours of study on a list of required courses.

A lot of people like to file their taxes as soon as they receive their W-2s in the mail, around the end of January. These are usually the people who are expecting a refund. However, a lot of other people wait until the first or second week of April to even look at a tax form and try to figure out whether they will get a refund or have to pay in. I know that I need to get busy organizing my home filing system and get the receipts sorted so that when my W-2 comes in the mail I can do a rough estimate and find out if I need to start saving up to pay in, or if I can expect some money back for a change.

There are challenges for a lot of reasons. Some people are getting married and need a starter home. Other people are retiring and need to downsize from a large home that requires a lot of maintenance and high utility bills to something much smaller and easier to manage. Others have to move because of employment, like my friend, Wes.

Wes is a DJ and if you know about the entertainment industry, DJs tend to change jobs frequently. They are subjected to ratings changes, format changes, and flaky management at the corporate radio stations of today. Wes was let go from a large market radio station changing format and he found a job in middle Illinois. He needs to find affordable housing in Rockford and if he can’t find what he needs available now, he will have to find temporary housing and build his own house.

Wes already knows about manufactured homes in Chicago from living and working in the Windy City the past 6 years. Now that he is moving to Rockford, he doesn’t have a lot of money from the sale of his house. Six years is not usually long enough to build up any equity at all, and with the depressed real estate market, many people are underwater with their mortgages instead of having the equity they were expecting.

So many online retailers are offering free shipping that it is much cheaper to buy the items online and have them shipped for free by the retailer directly to the recipient, instead of shipping the items to my house for wrapping and then me taking the items to the post office to pay a small fortune for shipping charges.

As a rule of thumb, for every pound your package weighs, it will cost you about $4 to ship it. So a 4 pound package will cost about $16 to ship, unless it is books, which can go at a reduced book rate.

They work with you as partners in finding leads for advertisers. It is as simple as that. There are different ways to find those leads, from running banner ads on the sidebar of your blog, to dedicating your entire web site to being a catalogue of products for rent or sale.

This is easy to get started. All you need is an established web site and an idea of what type of products will be attractive to the people who visit your web site. Then search the top affiliate networks to find out who is making money and who is successful.

A popular affiliate concept is the cash advance affiliate program . This industry is relatively new and using a variety of advertising methods. Some people respond well to an online transaction, for convenience and privacy. Other people prefer to use the internet for research before they make a decision. Either way, if they click though as a result of something they found on your website, then it is your lead and you will get paid for a portion of the business that results from their click through.

About 10 years ago we both got involved with a charity here. We served as volunteers on the Board of Directors and she also worked on the fund raising committee. I believe that fund raising is a critical part of most paid nonprofit jobs, like Executive Director positions.

We enjoyed the volunteer work for the most part. There were a lot of different personalities involved in the Board. It was challenging to try to make your feelings known to the rest of the group without any formal credentials. For example, the Treasurer was a stock broker at a big established brokerage. The brokerage requires all their brokers to do some community service work. But I happen to know quite a bit about stocks and mutual funds and I had some valid points to make about the non-profit’s investments. However, since I am not a stockbroker, the rest of the board pretty much ignored what I had to say. And, sadly, hat I had said proved to be 100% correct less than two years after my motion was overturned in favor of the stock broker’s recommendations.

If I was to consider a nonprofit career for myself, I would be very picky about interviewing the paid staff and also the Board members to make sure everyone was dedicated to the cause of the charity and not just there in a self serving interest. And that is what I talked about with my wife tonight.

I picked up a small box and it will cost about $12 for everything I can cram into this sized box. I know that if I was paying by weight it would cost a lot more than $12. And if I took it to UP they would charge me at least $22 to ship the same box. So this is a bargain.

I had to listen to what he was talking about, as I don’t really know much about that and he was explaining how he found a cash advance affiliate program to make some extra money. In today’s economy, who isn’t interested in ways to earn some extra cash? I actually own and maintain eight different web sites, so if this idea of monetizing is easy and lucrative, I might be interested in doing it.

Carl told me to check out a company called Blue Global Media and read through the information on their web site to learn the facts. I had never heard of this company before and asked him how he found out about them. He said he was doing research on the top affiliate networks and that their program made the most sense to him.

I’m the first to admit that all of this is new to me, but Carl is a smart guy and if he says it works, then I owe it to myslef to check it out.

I worked with and talked to a lot of different financial experts over the years. I am by no means qualified to give anyone financial advice over the internet. You have to be licensed and accept a fiduciary responsibility when you do that. And professionals get paid well for doing that.

That is part of the whole point of using this Online Portfolio Manager that I found. It seems to be a better way to manage your investment than using a money manager who charges you a fee.

Once you set up the Portfolio rebalancing software for your current investments and learn how to use the program, you don’t really need a commissioned money manager to hep you. Everything you need is online. The information that I found most helpful was introducing the concept of a core portfolio dedicated strictly to your retirement goals, and then another allocation for emergency cash and the last allocation for speculative investments. You set up the parameters and then make your trades based on keeping that balance.

Do It Yourself portfolio management is obviously not for everybody, but if you have some financial savvy and want to avoid the management fees by using an easy to learn and easy to use software, now you know that you do have options.

I decided to read up on gold as much as possible on the internet and dig deep into historical data and graphs as far back as possible. There is always a disclaimer that says something along the lines of, “just because this investment did extremely well in the past, that does not guarantee that it will continue to yo extremely well in the future.” Well, people, if past performance is not an indication of expected performance in the future, why do all the web sites brag so much about the past performance? Why even make charts that show what an investment has done over the years?

Frankly, it is extremely hard to find any investment that has never lost money. And if you wanted to prove your case against or for any investment, you can easily throw in variables such as adjustments for the cost of living or inflation. What it comes down to, take advice from the professionals who are licensed and regulated, not from your barber or your next door neighbor or some guy who writes a blog. And if you are thinking about a gold 401k for your retirement plan, check out the facts and make an informed decision.

The problem with buying a used car is that you don’t know it’s history and you take a chance that there will be no serious repairs needed right away. After all the cars I’ve owned, I can say that none of them have been lemons but none of them have run trouble free forever, either.

Part of owning a car is deciding when the maintenance and repairs get to be too expensive to warrant keeping the car. I’m trying to make that decision right now on my Mazda. I just spent $2,000 on a rebuilt engine in January and don’t feel that I’ve gotten my money out of that yet. But now the brakes are acting up and the muffler is starting to rattle. So, I’m looking for repair estimates and trying to decide if I should get rid of the Mazda now or spend more money on it d try to make it last another year or two?

Of course, I don’t smoke, so the car’s ashtray seems like a good place to toss the change when I pay for food at a drive through window. Somehow the change never stay in just the ashtray – there is change under the seat, change in the door wells, even loose change in the trunk. So today I will put someone to work sorting through all this loose change and rolling it up so I can take it t the bank.

When I bought the last dealership car, I told the salesman that I wanted a Car Warranty that gave me bumper to bumper protection for 3 years. I thought that was fair and was willing to pay extra for the peace of mind that my car was going to give me no problems. The only payment I wanted to deal with was the car note. I didn’t want to pay for any major car repairs while I was still paying on the note.

We ended up getting a great Extended Warranty that covered my car for any and everything that could possibly go wrong. The only trouble I’ve had with that car since I bought it 12 years ago is the transmission has now gone out. So it’s sitting in the driveway waiting on me to save up enough for a new tranny. After that, I expect to get another 12 years out of it.

Most people think that some conservative bonds and a few stocks or bank investments are all they need. After all, a banker is not going to tell you about IRA gold or other investment possibilities. A bank is going to tell you about bank investment vehicles so they can get your money.

The non profit that I worked with had a stock broker with a reputable national investment company work with us as a volunteer. His company actually required all their brokers to do volunteer work, as do all the music business labels. Each artist has to choose a charity that they are willing to support when they sign their contract with the label, and most of them will donate a small percent of the sales from an album or a show to that charity.

The stock broker served our non profit as Treasurer for 2 years and he is the one o told me about gold 401k plans. Thanks to him, I was able to get educated on investment alternatives and put some of his good ideas to use.