Archive for December, 2008

Merry Christmas!

December 23rd, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Uncategorized

To all my readers: THANK YOU for visiting and reading 15minutestoriches.com (now wealthitself.com) in 2008!

I’ll be out of town and busy celebrating for a few days. In 2009, we’ll get back to a regular posting schedule! See ya soon!

Have a wonderful and safe holiday season!

Gym Expenses: 3 Ways to Save

December 18th, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Save Money

Saving money on gym expenses can be a difficult thing to do. The gym represents a cost that many will say is unnecessary, but for the majority of us, it is probably a good investment. Before you consider quitting your gym habit to save money, read the following tips to see if there is an alternative:

Negotiate. It’s possible to haggle for a lower gym membership fee. Many gyms are willing to negotiate their prices or the length of their contracts, if you just ask. Note: If you are already under contract, you may not have any leverage to negotiate; this works best for prospective members. There is an excellent resource here that you can use as a guideline for negotiating to save on your gym expenses.
If you were unsuccessful in negotiating a lower price, try looking for a cheaper gym. If you don’t need a racquetball or basketball court, a rock wall, pool, or running track, you can probably opt to join one of the smaller gyms around town. These gyms usually offer a complete set of weight-training and cardio equipment, without the bells and whistles, for a much more reasonable price than the larger gyms.

3 Simple Money-Making Ideas

December 12th, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Make Money

In this information age, it seems everyone is looking for simple money-making ideas that he or she can implement from home. While there is certainly no shortage of opportunities out there, there are just as many scams.
Not only that, but many of the legitimate opportunities require more work than the average person is willing to put forth.
In a world literally FILLED with money-making opportunities, it can sometimes seem that there are no legitimate, simple money-making opportunities out there. This is, most definitely, NOT true; yet I have to admit feeling this way in the past.
Never fear. If you are looking for some simple money-making ideas, then today is your lucky day. In this post, I will highlight simple money-making ideas that you can do from the comfort of your own home.
That’s right. Simple money-making ideas DO exist. And many of them are listed below:

eHow – eHow is a mature, highly-ranked, and reputable website that will pay you to write how-to articles for them. This is, by far, the best simple money-making opportunity that I’ve found. As a member of eHow’s Writer’s Compensation Program, you’ll have the opportunity to build a significant passive income in no time at all. I’m averaging about $0.20 per article per day. If I can maintain that pace, a portfolio of one-thousand articles (of similar quality) would be expected to net $73,000 in a year!

Blog Carnivals!

December 6th, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Updates

3 Reasons to Clean Out Your Closet Immediately has been featured on some recent blog carnivals. Please take some time to review these carnivals, as they have aggregated some great info all in one place. I’d like to say thanks to:

Thanks for featuring my article!

Best posts on Wealth Itself from Nov 2008

December 1st, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Uncategorized

Too many posts to handle? If you missed out on a great post from last month, here’s a quick digest of the top posts that you may want to check out:

3 Reasons to Clean Out Your Closet Immediately
Posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 in make money – Comments: (0)

Let’s get straight to the point. If you’re like me, your closet probably needs an overhaul. Well, mine DID need an overhaul, but I took care of that earlier today. I couldn’t believe some of the things I found in there! There were clothes that I literally hadn’t seen in years, because I had decided, long ago (in a galaxy far, far away), that I simply didn’t like to wear them!
How PB&J Saved Me $1,296 This Year
Posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 in save money – Comments: (4)

How I Saved Over a Thousand Dollars This Year By Changing My Eating HabitsEating out is one of the worst things we can do for our finances. While I think everyone should eat out occasionally (it can be very relaxing and socially rewarding), I don’t think eating out for lunch every day is acceptable; although it’s something that many of us do.

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Snowballing Your Debt Into Oblivion

By Matt on October 11, 2008

If you’re like me, at one point in your life, you’ve found yourself in more debt than you could reasonably handle. One of the most popular strategies for getting out of this mess is consulting with a debt consolidation company. While this is not always necessarily a bad idea, it will negatively affect your credit score for a time, and it won’t always fix your problems in the long-term. A better solution is often to apply a technique called snowballing. In the past year, I’ve managed to pay off 3 bills that have been plaguing me for years using this technique. And I haven’t had to change my lifestyle to do it! Here is how I’ve applied the technique:

Arrange your bills in order from highest to lowest interest rate
Look at the top 3 bills and choose the one with the lowest balance
Now focus all your efforts (and excess money) on paying this bill off until it has been paid in full
Rinse and Repeat, taking your old monthly payment you were applying to the previous bill, and applying it to the next bill

Posted in Debt Management | Tagged bills, credit, credit card, credit score, debt, debt consolidation, snowballing | 2 Responses

How to Build a Blog for Residual Income – Part 1

By Matt on October 19, 2008

G’day, folks! Today, I’m going to begin a series of posts centered around setting up a blog for bringing in some residual income. I’ll begin by answering the question of why one would want to go through the trouble of doing this… residual income offers us the promise of a maximum return on our investment. In this case, our investment is our time, and our return is financial freedom! This isn’t a foreign concept–most of us are used to the idea of getting paid for our time. The only problem is, many of us are spending 60 hours per week or more working for a fixed income. Residual income gives us a better way–it gives us a way to make money while we do nothing! Sure, you have to do some work up-front… but once that work is done, you can sit back and watch the money roll in. For more information on this topic, I’d suggest reading The 4-Hour Workweek. It’s really a great read! (I do receive a small amount of affiliate income from purchases made through this site, but I will NOT promote products that I do not believe are quality and worthwhile). This book covers the essentials of what residual income is all about and how to attain financial freedom in today’s economy. If you don’t trust my recommendation, check out this thorough review of The 4-Hour Workweek from one of my favorite blogs, Get Rich Slowly. Decide for yourself. Once you’re convinced it’s worth your time to pursue one or more avenues of residual income (you’re probably already pursuing some of them, i.e. investing in the stock market, interest earned through your savings account, etc.), come back to my blog and check out Part 2 of this post, where I’ll begin to explain how you can set up your own blog and get paid a residual income for simply expressing your own opinions on a subject of your choosing. Thanks for reading!

Posted in Blogging, Link Love | Tagged 4-hour workweek, blog, Blogging, financial freedom, get rich slowly, Make Money, residual income | 5 Responses

How to Build a Blog for Residual Income – Part 2

By Matt on October 21, 2008

This is Part 2 of the series How to Build a Blog for Residual Income.

In Part 1 of this post, I explained why residual income is a worthy goal, and presented one of my favorite books, The 4-Hour Workweek, which goes to great lengths to explain different ways in which you can create a sustainable flow of residual income for yourself. In this post, I’ll begin the process of showing you how to create a blog for one of these channels of residual income. Please keep in mind that blogs offer only one possibility for residual income in your life, and that to be most effective, you should strive to create other channels of residual income for yourself. When you do this, even if each stream of income is only bringing in small amounts of money, when you add them all up, the results can be overwhelming!

For my blogs, I tend to use either Blogger or Wordpress, so my experience with other platforms is limited. For this series of articles, I’ll be focusing mostly on Wordpress, but may mention Blogger in passing if I feel I can contribute something important. Now, without further ado, here’s a rundown of some of the things I’m planning to discuss in this series of articles:

Posted in Blogging | Tagged 4-hour workweek, blog, blogger, Blogging, blogspot, financial freedom, get rich slowly, Make Money, residual income, wordpress | 2 Responses

Save Money — Ride a Motorcycle

By Matt on October 21, 2008

In a previous post, I mentioned one of my favorite blogs, Get Rich Slowly. There is always some good content there, and the author is at it again. Recently, he’s posted an article on saving money by riding a scooter. I really enjoyed this article and I think it’s a great idea. In fact, for the past two years, I’ve been riding motorcycles to and from work, as well as recreationally. While I can’t get rid of my car, since the winter months do not offer a very pleasant riding experience where I live, I do save quite a bit of money on gas by riding my motorcycle during the warmer months of the year. If you’ve got a thirst for adventure (and frugality), I’d urge you to do the math and determine whether riding a motorcycle is for you. There are several bikes out there that will get 50-70 mpg (some will do much better than even this). Whatever you do, remember: SAFETY FIRST. I won’t get on a motorcycle without, at the very least, wearing a helmet. Additional safety gear, such as padded jackets, boots, pants, and gloves are recommended.

Posted in Link Love, Save Money | Tagged frugal, gas money, get rich slowly, money, motorcycles, Save Money, scooters | Leave a response

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