Sowing Wealth

Thinking About Using Constant Contact?

If you own a small business like me, then you probably would like to start sending out a monthly newsletter as a way of staying in touch with your customers and interested prospects. Constant Contact is a great way to simplify this process. For my last business I used Microsoft Publisher to create a template, then 1ShoppingCart to send out the newsletter.

Constant Contact is easier and cheaper to do the same thing. They have 300 templates you can choose from and each one is customizable to a great extent. They also help you to make a coupon for your newsletter, create sign up boxes for your website and even have an auto-responder. These features along with detailed analytics are yours for just $15 a month. It's a very good deal considering the impact it could have on your business.

To start they'll let you try it for free for 60 days. If you're even thinking about it, go for it. If you decide to sign up, then come back to me for a referral. Why? If I refer you and you pay for an account, we both get a $30 credit. That's good for two more free months for you. That means you get your first four months of service for zilch. I think this qualifies as a no-brainer if it's right for your business.

What if you don't have a business? Then you could use their templates to create family newsletters with pics of the kids and news about what's happening with everybody that you send to friends and family once a month. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? You could even do this around a big party or vacation, then quit the trial. Or, sign up with me as your referral partner and use the tool for free for four months before every paying a dime. Keep this idea in mind around Christmas time for all of you that like to send out the Christmas letter as opposed to the generic photo card.

Get Serious About Saving Electricity

I get Consumer Reports every month. It's a magazine worth much more than the subscription price. This latest issue has a little sidebar about two different electricity meters. One of them is called the Kill A Watt and it costs just $23 on Amazon.

What you do with this thing is you plug an appliance into it and then plug it into the wall. It will then tell you how much electricity that appliance is using. You'll need a copy of your latest electric bill to really understand how much the appliance is costing you since the Kill A Watt doesn't know how much you pay for electricity.

With this unit you can tell what appliances in your home are the real electricity hogs and you can then replace them with more economical models. This reminds me of when I replaced my electric water heater last summer and I started saving a hundred dollars a month on my electric bill. I can easily see this device paying for itself many times over as you find new ways to lower your consumption all around your home. I'll be getting one real soon. The first thing I"ll check is how much the space heaters in my house cost to operate.

The Kill A Watt is today's solution. Tomorrow's is the Greenbox web based solution. I just read about this Bay Area company in Forbes magazine. They are coming out with a new product that will measure your power consumption all around your home, and then display the information on your computer. This will enable you to get a much more holistic view of your consumption than the Kill A Watt device can provide. Having this kind of informaiton would really be terrific. I can't wait to get this. I've added myself to their mailing list to find out when it's available. 

Credit Card Companies are Changing the Rules

I received a letter from Citibank on Saturday just after I heard on a radio show that they and some other companies are sending out such missives to clients. Lo and behold, I got one. It seems they're upping the rates and fees on my account with them. Now I pay off my balance with them each and every month so I'm not too concerned, but it is a warning to us all that times change.

If you get such a letter and you are carrying a balance, then you're not as ambivalent as I am. I understand since there's money on the line. Here's how you can handle this. If you have a balance and the issuer wants to raise your rate to a level that will hurt you, then you have the right to opt out of the new terms and conditions. What does that mean? It means you don't have to play ball with them. They can't force you to accept the new terms.

But, what they can do is cancel your account as soon as your current term expires. That's specified by whatever the expiration date is on your card. If it expires in a month or two, you're toast. If it expires in a year, you're golden.

If you're on the toast side you can try to move the balance to another card at another bank, but chances are you'll pay a 4% transfer fee (used to be 3%) and your rate might not be all that good, but if it's less at all, then you might make out for a while. Until that bank changes their terms. Look at Discover for favorable terms on a balance transfer.

If you're on the golden side, you can opt out and decide what's your best move as your card nears expiration, or do nothing like me. One thing you should do for sure is avoid carrying a balance if at all possible. You are totally a sitting duck if you're carrying a big balance on the bank's books.

No Cash? Barter for What You Want

It's such an ingrained mentality in most of us that we should pay cash for all our products and services. Adding to that we think that if we have stuff we don't want we should either sell it on Craig's List, in the paper, or give it away to a charity. Well, there's a whole other world populated with people who think differently. It's the world of bartering.

Lately I've started taking bartering more seriously since I own my own business. Since I own the service I provide, I have the right to sell it for cash or in trade for goods or services. I also saw a presentation by a business owner last week where he recounted bartering quite heavily in the early days of his business and that made me think about it even more.

Then I came to wonder if there's any sort of formal bartering platform around here. Well, of course there is in Silicon Valley. By doing a simple search I uncovered the SF Bay Area Barter site.

There's a big announcement on the home page about a clothing swap event going on in Oakland tomorrow. They say for under $15 bucks you can get a bunch of clothes, munchies and have a good time if you bring a bag of clothes with you. I didn't even know such events existed. Now I do.

Deeper on the page are individual listings for people who list out what they have to trade and what they want. I didn't see anything I want, but I did see people asking for services I could give. I can imagine on other days finding goods I'd like to have. 

Have Credit Card Companies Carry Your Debt at 0.0 While You Collect Interest

Even now there are credit card companies that are offering periods of 0.0% interest. Amex, Discover and Citi still are. Here's a way to make money off of such cards if you have at least $5,000 in cash. First, open up such an account. The Amex Blue Cash card will give you 12 months at 0.0 if you have great credit and a decent income. Then, start charging everything you would normally buy to the card. Instead of paying off the card each month as you normally would, put the money in to an online account that pays 3% interest such as with Capital One through Costco.

Let's say you will charge up about $10,000 to the Amex card throughout 2009. In that case you'll earn $300 by letting Amex carry the debt for you. Before your 12 months are up, you withdraw the 10k and pay the card off. Now this strategy takes discipline to be sure. If you have such discipline, as I do, then go for it and get some money from these big companies that are still offering these plans. Free money is nice.

To make it a little bit sweeter, get a bonus for opening the account, too. ING Direct offers a $25 bonus and Capital One offers one plus a better interest rate when you open it up by way of your Costco membership.

You Are Using Goog 411, Aren't You?

I'm not the biggest Google fan, but they do get certain things right. Goog 411 is one of them. This is a free directory service you can use from your cell phone. You call in, say the business name, city and state you're looking for and the service will come back with the top matches. Sometimes Goog will only come back with one match because it's a perfect hit on the business you're looking for.

Anyway, you pick the business you're looking for out of the top matches, then Goog will connect you to that business. It's really useful while out and about. The voice recognition system they have is quite good, and especially for free. I've used this service countless times and many of my friends and family are using it, too. If you're not hip to it yet I recommend you give it a try. You'll save time and money and that's as good as it gets.

Brian Tracy's Formula for Financial Independence

Happy New Year! It seems fitting for the first post of the year to give you a very simple formula for Sowing Wealth in your future. I learned this from Brian Tracy's audio program, Focal Point, which I highly recommend. You can purchase the book for just $10.20 through the amazon.com box on my blog.

Here's the formula in six steps.

First, spend less than you earn. If you think about it the US would probably not be in the recession we're in right now if we could heed this simple rule. Americans used to be savers. Now, we're spenders. Most of us anyway. If you can't handle this first rule, then you may as well skip the rest of today's post.

Second, learn to live on 70% of your income. You'll see why in a second. This will probably be very hard for you if you're not saving anything right now. But, you know what? You've gotta get there for this formula to really work. Rick Warren, who wrote the best selling non-fiction hardcover book of all time supposedly lives on 10% of his income. Use him for inspiration on this rule.

Third, save 10% for retirement. This would be in an IRA or 401k. Invest for the long-term with a financial adviser you trust.

Fourth, invest 10% in something that's more short-term, growth oriented. For some this may mean a business. For others, property. And for others, precious metals. Whatever your vehicle of choice invest 10% of your income apart from what you save for retirement. You can be a little less conservative with this money.

Fifth, give 10% to charity. This one's become a habit for me because of my Christian faith. For you it may be hard to start if you're only giving 1% or 2% or, nothing. If you need to, start small and work your way up. By the way, I've heard this rule from many others beyond Brian Tracy. It's rare to find a wealthy person who doesn't believe in helping the less fortunate with a portion of what they earn. Bill Gates is a great example.

Sixth, when you earn more, don't spend all of the additional income. Exercise discipline and spend just half of the extra income and put the other half towards steps 3, 4 and 5. By doing this faithfully you'll save and invest more than 20% of your income and your financial independence will be all but assured.

May 2009 be a wonderful year for you in so many ways. If you like this blog please share it with others. 

Carrying Credit Card Balances Soon to Cost More

If you have credit cards (and who doesn't), then you have probably already received a notice or two from your issuer about new rate and fee structures coming your way. What this is all about is that these financial institutions are hurting big time and they need to find new sources of revenue.

Guess where the low-hanging fruit is? Customers carrying balances. Think about it, if you have a $5,000 balance on a Citibank MasterCard and they say they're raising your interest rate by two points in the next 60 days, what are you going to do about it? Pay it off? Unlikely. Transfer it to a new issuer? Also unlikely since you'll likely pay a 3% transfer fee, which actually will cost you 1% more unless their standard rate will be at least 1% less than what your new rate's going to be.

Now if you can transfer your balance right away to a card with a zero interest for 6 or 12 month plan or to a card with no transfer fee, then you might want to jump on that immediately before your new higher rate kicks in with your existing issuer. If your credit's not so hot, then this won't be an option for you since even if you can transfer the balance the new terms won't be any better than the ones you're facing.

So, chances are you'll just take it and start paying more interest on your card. If you have multiple cards and this happens on each account you could really see your monthly cash flow start heading south. Ouch.

May this be another reminder that it just doesn't pay to carry balances on credit cards. If that means you, here's what to do: Stop buying anything unnecessary and start paying down those cards with every extra dime you have. Make next year the year you seriously start becoming debt free.

Gas Prices Have Come Way Down. Now what?

Driving home today I noticed that regular gas had dropped to $2.95 a gallon in my neighborhood. What a great feeling! We were so pinched not too many months ago and now gas prices have dropped about 40% and may have a bit more to go before finding a bottom. Hopefully, it's two bucks, but I'm not holding my breath.

When gas prices were on their way up to $5.00 a gallon I heard that people were actually making changes to cut back. Here are just a few of the ways I can recall:

- Sales of big SUVs were down

- Carpooling was up

- Driving speed was being reduced

- Employers were being pushed for more work at home days

- Errands around town were being thoughtfully considered, then bunched up to make for efficient trips.

The nation actually decreased its gas useage, which was remarkable. If you're one of the people that made changes to reduce gas useage, don't stop now that gas prices have retreated to more normal levels. Look, you might think you don't need to continue the changes you made during the painful period because some of them were actually inconvenient. Instead of thinking this way change your thinking to this is a great opportunity to continue to save gas and put my extra resources elsewhere.

It reminds me of Brian Tracy's way to wealth: Always spend less than you make and invest 20% of your income. 10% in to retirement and 10% in to investments outside of a retirement plan. When you make more money, you actually save more and increase spending just a tad. If you'll do this all through your career you'll end up rich. It's this last part that applies to my topic today. You now have a few more bucks in your pocket - don't squander it all on useless things, put most of it in to some sort of investment for the future. Every little bit adds up marvelously over the decades. Try it and see.

Stock Market Explodes to the Upside

The Dow was up over 900 points today. If you weren't fully invested, it makes you think you just missed the boat, doesn't it? But then again the Dow's been up big more than a few times these past few crazy months. Even more than up it's been ferociously down. What to do?

Let me begin by saying as I usually do that I am NOT a Certified Financial Planner and you should seek the advice of one before making any major moves in the markets. That is unless you're a seasoned investor in which case you'd better talk to at least two CFPs. To put my money where my mouth is I'm talking to a Fidelity investment advisor tomorrow afternoon.

So, here's what I still think. I think one should consider this to be a market worthy of careful examination so as to find stocks of good companies to invest in for the long haul - 5-10 years. I really don't know how you could lose picking a few stocks this way unless capitalism as we know it is over. According to the latest Forbes, it isn't. In fact the latest Forbes says the only thing left to really move this fix of the financial markets along is to eliminate the mark to market method of valuation. And this is a real possibility.

It seems to me that governments everywhere are doing what they can to prop up the markets. A recent article in the Wall St. Journal said that even middle eastern countries are propping up banks. There hasn't been much reported about that region of the world, but it seems they're not shielded from what's going on elsewhere. At any rate, with all this propping up all over the globe it's just a matter of time before things start to get steady. What will drag this recovery out is the recession we're probably in right now. 

Jobs are starting to get cut in fairly big numbers and it's unusual to see this at the beginning of the recession. It usually happens at the end or even after the recession. That means, in case you didn't already know, this time it's different. So, read, think, then act with care and with an eye toward the next decade for ROI. It's going to be the only way to play this market without losing your mind.