Best and Worst Cities for Recession Recovery

The best and worst cities for recovering the recession as per Forbes

Progress towards Wiping out debt

In the past week, i have been working on the possibility of wiping out my American express debt and from the looks of it, it might possibly come true, i am hoping that if i can pull it off, that may be the trigger i need to also get rid of my second American express account. I have been dreaming of having the account gone from my debt and also possibly getting rid of my Bank of America line of credit account debt as well as my HSBC credit card account debt which combined for a total of around 24K by the end of this year. I am not exactly sure how i will be able to get rid of 24K by years end but something tells me to work towards it and hopefully get it done.

On another note, i have been thinking of getting into refurbished laptop selling in third world countries in Africa, i was investigating this venture over the weekend and came to the conclusion that the margins on these laptops are worth it as long as you have the necessary selling volume and you definitely keep your shipping cost down to a minimum. I will aggressively look into getting into this venture and i will also need to find a place where i can get these refurbished laptops or net books at a compelling price (average refurbished laptop or net book price is $300). I am open to suggestions of where to get them at an affordable and compelling price.

Weekend Update

The weekends seem to go by so fast, it is already Sunday, this weekend i ended up spending more money than i intended, went in for a routine oil change on my car and before i knew what was happening the bill went from an expected 20 dollars to whopping 63 dollars, i strongly believe that the auto shops are a cartel made out to find ways to screw the ordinary man, i was being told that i probably need this and that and then they recommend i get it today.I knew that i really didn't need it but some thing was telling me to just go along, i need to work on my will power to just say no.
On a more brighter note, today was father's day and i celebrated it with the family, i ended up spending more than 56 dollars at the supermarket and made dinner for the family (should have been the other way around), we had a good meal and everyone had a good time afterwards.
I didn't get a chance to work on my website Bank Homes Direct and look for ways to market as well as promote it some more, i need to seek out other ways to get that done this week, it has been slow going to i need to speed it along.

I stumbled upon a website http://www.yapta.com which lets one track airline tickets in order to make a better priced purchase, i intend to track tickets to Disney world and Las Vegas over a period of time since those two places are where the wife and family wants to vacation next.

Financial Health Update

I finally went through my bills after making some time in between holding down a regular gig and trying to promote the new website anyway i can (still taking solicitations on how to effectively promote the site), for what i can see, i only made little progress last month on whittle down my debt, i was able to pay down close to $1000 dollars but due to interests and some late fees i didn't make much of a dent this month, i need to double up my effort to get to the finish line of DEBT FREEDOM, on another sad note, i have to write checks totalling 1600 between now and Friday to come up to speed on my outstanding bills, this is an ongoing battle because one block on the road sets you back couple of months down the line, at this rate i may reduce my debt substantially but still be stuck with bad credit due to the way i am making the payments, i seriously need to come up with a system that keeps me from paying any bills late each month. I also need to seriously look into making some passive income via the Internet. My current outstanding debt stands at around 52K for Credit card and unsecured loans and 13K (combined) student loans.

Useful Resources - Interesting Reads

Great information on how to guide

Sign of the times

Great resources to help make one a better web designer

100 Plus sites dealing with green living

140 Search engines you might not have all heard off

Bargain hunting resources on the net

Resources to do just about anything online

Making money online resources

Blogging toolbox for ages

85 plus Tools and Resources for Freelancers and Web Workers

I came across this article that provides more than 85 tools that are essential to a freelancer or web worker, pay attention to the job listings section and the miscellaneous tools section

Maintaining and marketing the newsite

Lately i find myself working late nights trying to finetune the new site as well as market it effectively, i am hoping to push it out there and get people's interest on the site going, the first feedback i got was about the company logo which i had since changed, i am working on providing some more items on the site as well as figuring out how to generate revenue to the point that the site is self sufficient. I am definitely open to ideas on how to go about marketing the site effectively.

On another note, my bills for the month are currently coming in and i am yet to open them and compile the balances to see what overall progress i made in the past month. i will update the site with my progress in a day or two, i am hoping that in the next couple of days my work on the site will level off so that i can get back to maintaining the blog and researching other prospects.

Dual Income No Kids: The Best Online Tools For Personal Finance

Dual Income No Kids: The Best Online Tools For Personal Finance

My New Idea website is now live

I worked through the whole weekend and i am glad to say that i finally got the site up and running, i have to say that it is by no means complete and i expect to keep tweaking the site as time goes on. Please feel free to check out the site and i welcome any feedback both good or bad.

http://www.bankhomesdirectlinks.com

I need suggestions on how to market and derive ad revenue from the site.

Interesting Reads

The lifestyles of people who are not doing well financially, am guilty of some of these

Great tutorial on Credit reports

Compare your net worth to other American Families

Uncover business ideas from untapped niche markets

Authentic Work at home jobs out there

niche auction site targeted to Moms

This could be anyone of us, need to diversify my income stream

Being Broke is no fun

Today i find myself broke like i have never being before, i was forced to give my daughter her lunch money with my Collectible silver coins, short of racking up another overdraft charge, i am running a negative 194 in my checking account due to some missed check calculations. I need to do a better job of managing my finances because that 194 can definitely go towards paying down some other bills.

On a different note, i have been worked diligently to get the website up and going, i was hoping it will be up by now but due to my current financial state, i wont be able to pay for the hosting part of it till this weekend so i am hoping that everything goes well and that the site should be up on Monday 6/8/09, keeping my hand crossed. It has been a great learning experience getting back up on HTML and web-designing, i am currently putting finishing touches to the last of the pages and still need to work on a professional looking logo for the site, i have downloaded the opens source program gimp and hope to have something soon. During the whole design and coding process i cam across two valuable tools/site that i will like to recommend to anyone - Firebug (add-on to FireFox), it helps with seeing what parts of the code are linking to what parts of the HTML page especially for updating sections or troubleshooting. The other is the HTML Validator - http://validator.w3.org/ which is an invaluable tool especially to someone like me who hasn't coded in HTML since 2.0, it is a necessary check for any novice HTML coder.

The stock market has been on an uptrend as off late even with the minor pullback a few days back, it has gone up too quick, too fast that even though stocks were really beaten down to start with it, i think that a correction is definitely going to come in the near term, i need to place sell limit orders on my stocks as soon as possible.

New Idea Website almost complete

I have been spending some late nights in the past few days trying to put finishing touches to a website based on an idea that came to me last weekend, i have to tell you that my HTML skills are all but rusted due to lack of usage over this year, it is definitely fun getting my hands dirty again, i cant wait to see what the overall reaction will be on the site.

On the other note, i am a little bit disturbed by the high cost of child care in the country, my wife called me to inform me that the cheapest quotes she was able to get for child care services to watch our two kids will come out to almost 2 thousand dollars amount, that is way too much, i refuse to accept that as the only option, i am going to be looking into different ways that we can cut down on the child care expenses while getting quality service in the process, i am happy to welcome suggestions on how to tackle this issue short of telling the wife to stay home and look after the kids.

Weekend Hustle

This past weekend was a hustle, i worked late into saturday morning on a site for my new idea, most of the body was already done but i still need to get the site registered, figure out how to get the images to display and optimize properly as well as have it up and running, i am really proud of myself for following through on this one and executing right away, i believe that the key to success is seizing the moment and capitalizing, i am hoping that by tuesday at the latest i will work out all the kinks and have the site up and running, please stay tuned!!!!!.

Saturday, didn't really do much except babysit the Kids, the wife went to work for most of the day, we traveled out to Pennsylvania on saturday night and stayed overnight with relatives, the kids had a great time and i had a necessary break, glad i didn't have to spend any money besides Gas especially since i didn't have any to spend from the get go

Sunday night, we got back home, i was going through my new statements and i am glad to say i reached a milestone, for the first time in so many years i have been able to pay down my student loan to ten thousand and change, this is great progress, i am inspired and i hope to get rid of the entire thing in 2 years, My American express blue card statement came and i also saw the balance went down by almost 60 dollars, however the next bill is due in a day, i need to figure out how to get some money to pay it since i don't want to incur any late payments at this time of the game. However to a little bit of bad news, my comcast bill came today and it was 157 dollars for the triple play somehow that seems to be too much, i am thinking right now whether i do need a home phone since i make all my calls on the cell phone and i might get rid of HBO, Showtime and Starz soon, the only thing i really need is actually the broadband connection which come to think of it, i can get cheaper standalone, i really have to look into cheapening my whole triple play package.

So far the weekend turned out really nice and short, back to the daily grind, there has to be a better way of making money, still working on finding it.