Clean Energy Jobs, Tax Credits & Investing

The US Map above graphically illustrates the 43 states whose companies received tax credits to support clean energy projects . If you are an investor, consider researching some of the companies that received the grants in order to see if these grants could materially benefit these companies and thus the share price. I looked at a few companies on the list (see the bottom of this page for an excel spreadsheet) and found that each one of the company’s share price increased after the announcement.

Wall St. Bank Stock Recommendations

Are you thinking about investing in the major US banks? Zero Hedge put together the above graphic to show the cozy relationship between the major US banks.   Each of the green arrows shows one bank recommending the stock of another bank.   Most of the red arrows come from an analyst at a European bank.   Go to Zero Hedge to read the post and see the graphic in more detail.  What I want to know is how much of each of these bank’s assets include stock in the banks that they are recommending.  I also want to know if they were buyers or sellers after their recommendations came out.  Buying stock solely on the basis of a recommendation is a loser’s strategy.  You should have a basis for the investment (fundamental and/or technical) that you understand and a target price or plan to sell.  This is not a time to buy and hold. Stock downgrades typically come out too late and/or after the institutional stock owners have sold.

New Edition of the Carnival of Debt Reduction

The new edition of the Carnival of Debt Reduction is out and one of my articles has been featured: 5 Reasons to Track Your Expenses.  Go check it out!

This carnival really featured some great articles.  Here are some of my favorites:

• Make Your Own Debt Reduction Plan from Destroy Debt
• What to Do When Relatives Ask for Loans from Free Money Finance
• How to Eliminate Your Debt (Without Spending More) from Words of the Shadow’s Kin
• A Penny Saved is More Than a Penny Earned from Little People Wealth

I hope you enjoy the content from this carnival.  It’s one of the best I’ve seen in a while!

3 Simple Money-Making Ideas

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:

1. 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!

3 Reasons to Clean Out Your Closet Immediately

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! It was time, I decided, to do something about this mess. You may ask, “What is the problem with having old, outdated clothes in your closet? Sure, they take up space, but they aren’t hurting anything…?” Well, my answer would be, “That’s exactly what the problem is… they are taking up space–and doing nothing else–serving no other purpose but to take up space.” But that’s not really all there is to it. Check out my 3 reasons to clean out your closet immediately below:

1. To save space. Okay, this one is obvious.  The more crap you clean out of your closet, the more room you’ll have for other stuff.  You’ll have room for new clothes (maybe some that you actually like), new sports equipment, new books, or maybe just more junk that you just can’t let yourself get rid of yet (like that old X-Box that you never play anymore).  Or, better yet, maybe you just want some extra empty space.  After all, clutter contributes to higher stress levels, and nobody likes stress.

How PB&J Saved Me $1,296 This Year

How I Saved Over a Thousand Dollars This Year By Changing My Eating Habits

Eating 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.  I used to eat lunch out five times per week at about $8 a pop.  Putting that in perspective, that’s about $40 per week, or $160 per month, or worse yet, $1,920 per year!

Now let’s fast-forward to today, at which point I find myself eating out only once per week.  At $8 a pop, that’s only about $32 per month.  So, what do I eat instead?  I find that Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches with a side of fruit is an excellent replacement for those $8 meals I had been partaking of.  Later in this post, I’ll explain how to make PB&J sandwiches quickly, economically, and efficiently; but for now, let’s do the math.  I can buy a loaf of bread for $2 and some peanut butter and jelly for about $5.  This makes 10 sandwiches, which, at 4 sandwiches per week, equates to about $12 per month.  This, along with a banana per day at about $1 per pound (organic, ~3 bananas per pound), comes out to about $20 per month or $240 per year.  Adding in our one day per week of eating out, we get $240 + $32*$12 = $240 + $384 = $624 per year.  Subtracting this from $1,920, we get a whopping $1,296 in savings for the year!

How to Build a Blog for Residual Income – Part 3 (Choosing a WordPress Theme)

This is Part 3 of the series How to Build a Blog for Residual Income.

Perhaps the most critical decision you will make in the initial stages of setting up your blog, is which WordPress theme to use.  The good news is that there are literally THOUSANDS of free WordPress themes available for use…

The bad news is that the best themes can be very popular, and are therefore already in use by a number of more popular blogs than your own (assuming you are just starting out).  However, I think it’s important to use a free theme in the beginning, so you don’t get bogged down by the details of creating your own theme, and so you don’t have to worry about forking out the money for someone else to create one for you.  Once your blog becomes successful, then it may be a good idea to go with an original theme, but I don’t think it’s as important for generating traffic in the beginning.  Your focus needs to be elsewhere for now, so I recommend choosing a free, Adsense-optimized template and modifying it slightly to fit your needs.  Two of my favorites are:

How to Build a Blog for Residual Income – Part 2

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: