Why is it Necessary to Budget? Download your FREE Spreadsheet.

Having a budget or living with a budget does not have to be as scary as it sounds. Neither does it mean taking the cheaper option, having to make do with lower quality things. It only means knowing how much money you have available to spend and this can only be a good thing.

A budget can be for a day if you are out for the day and have a certain amount of cash to spend. It can be for a week, or however long you want to make it.

The best thing about a long term budget is that you are not only in control of how much money you have now, but you are able to forecast how much money you will have in a year’s time, or five year’s time or longer, assuming that things stay the same.

The magic of this is that it allows you to see exactly what goes where. You can see where the little wormholes which suck up the cash for no reason and you can see work out your minimum monthly amount. That is what is the absolute minimum income you need to have to keep everything ticking along.

Then with the rest of the income, you are free to spend it however you like. You can pay off debts, you can save up to buy that special thing you have always wanted or go on that holiday of a lifetime.

Having a budget can actually free you to do more with your income.

And it is much better than living in the dark, not knowing how much money comes in, how much goes out.

I have put together an excel spreadsheet which can let someone manage their monthly budget over a year.
It is available as a FREE DOWNLOAD for anyone who wants to use it.

It can be downloaded from this page.

If you find it useful then please feel free to click one of the adverts on the right of this page.

There is a Microsoft Word document which explains how to use it.

To use it you will need to have Microsoft Excel.

 

How to Survive Google’s New Privacy Policy

From the 1st of March, Google will implement a new privacy policy across many of its products.
The aim is to give you a more personalised searching experience – whether you want one or not!

Every time you perform any search through Google’s search engine, and click on any of the results, Google will keep a track of your search clicking activities and will tailor the results it gives you next time to suit your interests mores.

This is already annoying, if, for example you have bought a pair of trousers from M&S and then every single web site you go on for the next few days shows you nothing but adverts for trousers from M&S. But you already have bought trousers, so why would you want to see them everywhere you go?

The way to stop this is to log in to your Google account and go to ‘Account Settings’.

Find ‘Services’ and you will see a link whick lets you ‘Go to web history’.

From this page it is possible to click on ‘Remove all web history’

You can also ‘Pause’ your web history on the same page. This stops it from gathering any more information about you.

This should stop any more information being kept about your internet activity.

 

How to Survive Being Ginger

Picture attribution Melbourne Weekly Eastern

There have been a number of news articles recently about people with ginger hair suffering because of their hair colour.

There has been someone teased so badly that his parents removed him from school and a poor woman who has had a childhood photograph circulated and has received actual hate messages on her facebook page.

At first I did not understand this at all. It is hair. In many cases, ginger people have thicker hair per cm than other hair colours, and it looks much shinier than normal. So, in essence, what we are talking about is a beautiful, thick shiny head of gorgeous colour hair.

But of course, people are ignorant and lazy and stupid and it is ‘fun’ to mock something which is different or strange or in the minority, so it is very easy to believe that some people are mercilessly taunted for nothing but their hair colour. Even reading that sentence back seems ridiculous, but it happens everyday, so it is something that many have to live with.

A search through Google is not very enlightening either. The first four pages of a search have websites which seem to do nothing but make fun of ginger locks. They are in this category : the ginger survival guide. This page amounts to nothing more than race hate and should, in my opinion, be removed from the internet. It is a treatise on how to ‘cope’ in the presence of Ginger kids and ends with a chapter on how to kill a ginger person. Reading this drivel made me realise that this is a serious problem.

What about in the past? How much did Boticelli love ginger hair? A lot. As did many of the Renaissance painters. Ginger angels, women, men and gods are perfectly common in hundreds of paintings. Why? Was ginger hair more valued perhaps, because it was rarer? Like gold? In fact, the ancient Greeks died their hair ginger to denote courage.

Muslims are not allowed to dye their hair back to its original colour, but are allowed to use Henna. So many older muslim men, especially in India have red hair and beards.

Many famous and influential people in the past have had red hair. Queen Elizabeth I, Winston Churchill, Boudicca of the Iceni, Vincent van Gough – there are many long lists on the internet.

Recently, Prince Harry, Nicole Kidman, Geri Halliwell, Lindsay Lohan, Rupert Grint, Emma Stone, Lily Cole and a host of other people have flaming red locks. Marilyn Monroe was a red-head!

And many people dye their hair in various shades of red every day.

So it is really difficult to know what to say to people who are undoubtedly suffering.

Some people find it easy to embrace their looks in general no matter whether they fit stereotypical, media-depicted versions of normalcy. Others struggle with their self image no matter what others tell them or however realistically they fit the mold of good looks.

So, How to Survive Being Ginger?


I do not think it is a good idea to hide from something as fundamental to your identity as your hair colour. It may be a solution for a few years, but surely not for the rest of your life. If people are teasing you, just imagine how much satisfaction they would derive to know that their teasing is working.

There is a story where two people with ginger hair who lived in a house together found out that their house was being called the Ginger Palace. Instead of being upset, or lashing out, or hiding from this, they decided to hold a party where only people with red hair were invited and this has become a major tradition for them.

The fact is that bullies and idiots will always pick on difference. But the important thing is to hold your head up high and be the person you are and show all the idiots that they are the losers.

But just learn to live with the nicknames about your hair and your skin and your freckles. You know that everyone you meet will have some comment to make about your hair so next time someone says ‘Carrot top’, just laugh. Carrots are green on top anyway!

 

Case Study One: Extremely Taken for Granted

My new consultancy service was launched last week and the first person has given permission for me to write up their case study here.

Simply book a time slot and briefly tell me the problem and I will call you for one hour to discuss whatever issue you may have.

Extremely Taken For Granted

I will call the first person ‘Sam’. And this is Sam’s story.
Sam owns three houses. The plan was to let them out and build up enough income and savings to buy more houses and to set up a property business buying and selling property. The problem is that Sam’s family have been living in the houses instead! So there is little or no rent coming in and Sam is paying three mortgages as well as rent on the family home. This has been going on for over ten years which means that Sam has paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds, literally in mortgages with very little return.

To top it all, Sam has been unemployed for the past three years and has now built up a large credit card debt just to pay for everything. The family do not offer to help with anything and do not offer to pay their share of the money and do not even question how Sam pays thousands of pounds each month in property bills alone.

I asked what Sam has done to try to get the family to pay their share. Sam said: given deadlines for them to move out, threatened to stop paying the mortgages, given ultimatums but nothing ever happens.

I asked what happens when the deadlines come?

Sam said: Everything goes quiet for a bit and then it all carries on like before.

Is there a Solution To This Problem?
It is so difficult when family members take you for granted like this. At the beginning, Sam was wanting to show that Sam could cope with the extra payments. Trying not to reveal a vulnerable side, especially to family members has cost Sam greatly in financial terms.

Then, as the years roll by, and everyone settles in to the new way of life, the roles are reinforced by repetition. the dependants become more needy and it becomes harder and harder to find a way to get them to move. Now, they maybe do not even think about how much money it is costing because they just take it completely for granted that it will be taken care of.

Giving weak deadlines and not sticking to them or following through with the threats meant that all credibility was lost and everyone knows that they are empty threats. But also, how could Sam stop paying the mortgages on the property since that would be self-destructive and would result in all the property being lost as well.

I wondered how Sam would feel about now laying all the cards on the table and sitting down with the family members and showing them exactly how much money was going down the drain each month. they might be shocked into action. But once again, Sam said that it would be difficult to show a weakness like that.

We discussed whether Sam could stop paying an extra, expensive rent each month and start to live in one of the other houses as well. That sounded like a possibility which would save some money.

Or tell the family that one of the houses was being sold and actually follow through by registering with an estate agent. There is enough room in the remaining houses for everyone to have rooms. The sale could let Sam start fresh and pay off those debts.

It is clear where Sam stands legally, but family matters always prove a lot more delicate if harmony is to be maintained, but it is completely unfair if one person has to carry everyone else like that, especially if that person is not able to cope themselves.

Sam is going to try some of the suggestions we discussed and book another call next month. I sincerely wish Sam luck.

 

Budget Food: Tortilla – Spanish Omelette

Ingredients:
1       medium onion          6.5p
1       medium potatoes     10p
3       eggs                        39p
1       knob of butter           20p
seasoning to taste

Preparation:
Finely chop a medium onion and gently fry it in a frying pan. We want it to soften and not go brown.
Peel two small or one medium potato and slice it as thinly as possible. Add this to the onion in the pan and cook both of them gently until soft. Depending on the potato, this should take between 10-20 minutes. If the potato is not cooking, then add a splash of water and simmer with a cover until done.

In a bowl, break three eggs and beat together. Add seasoning to taste.

When the onions and potatoes are done, and slightly cool, transfer them to the egg and mix.

Wipe the pan and add some butter or oil. Add the whole egg, onion and potato mixture and cook gently for around 20 minutes. Turn the mixture over and cook on both sides until the egg is completely cooked.

Total cost 75.5p

 

Budget Food: Chewy Cookies

The first budget food recipe I have researched is those big fat chewy cookies which you can buy in supermarkets and from stalls. These can cost up to £1 each in some places, so I was wondering how much it costs to make them. The prices are from Aldi and are correct on the 10th of February 2012.

This is the recipe:
250g    self raising flour                     9p
125g    butter                                 59.5p
200g    sugar                                  47.5p
1         egg                                     13p

plus anything else you like such as chocolate chips, raisins, dried fruit, etc.

Preparation:
Preheat the oven to Gas mark 3/170 degrees C. Grease a baking sheet lightly.
Melt the butter and add the sugar. Stir until it is well mixed and begins to be a little lighter in colour. Wait until it is cool then add the egg and mix again until it is creamy and light. It does not look like cake mixture, just a little lighter. Then mix in all the flour until it is a smooth consistency.

Drop largeish amounts of the mixture onto the baking sheet with a tablespoon taking care to keep them around 5-6cm apart because they will spread out in the oven.

Bake for 15 minutes. The chewy, soft consistency comes from underbaking them slightly. They will be large, flat slightly sticky cookies when they come out, but when cool, they are fine.

Using this recipe, I made 17 medium sized cookies for £1.29.

That is 7.6p per cookie.
(Include energy costs if you can work them out for the length of time that the oven is switched on).

 

Budget Food

These times are very hard for a lot of people. Someone who is living on benefits must survive on around £60 a week. So, in this series on budget food, I have decided to see how to live on less.

All my prices are based on shopping at Aldi, which is the cheapest supermarket in this area. Once in a while I will also do a comparison with other supermarket prices.

The objective is to make more things at home, rather than buying things which have been ready made, like pre cooked meals, and just to see whether it is possible to have a happy variety of foods and how much they cost us to eat.

I don’t plan to preach about healthy eating or what you should or should not be giving to children. There are a lot of other websites like that around. We all live in the real world and do the best we can. We all eat chocolate and cake and unhealthy snacks from time to time because we enjoy them. This is meant to be purely an exercise in the cost of the food.

 

6 Reasons Why People Do Not Write

Fear:
The main reason that people do not write is fear of one sort or another.

They have various thoughts running through their brains such as : will my writing be good enough? Will people want to read it? Will people laugh at me?

It is the fear of exposing the workings of their private mind to the world at large, to friends and family and to all comers old and new.

Work:Reward Ratio.
When people want to write, one of the first things they do is to start to google various questions. just like when you want to change careers, you ask your faithful computer/Internet some basic and fundamental questions:

How do people write?
How do writers earn their living?
How much money do writers make?

Etc. etc.

And the results of these searches are often page after page of writers explaining just how little they actually earn. Warning others off trying to do the same and saying that not everyone can be like J.K. Rowling. This is an immediate dis-incentive. Why would anyone want to put themselves through that anyway?

Not Having Any Ideas:
The thing is, that most people do not have any ideas if put on the spot, and the thing also is that, most people would be able to come up with some amazing ideas if they were given half an hour and asked to come up with the most outrageous thing they can think of. Admitedly, there are some people who, after half an hour of thinking would imagine that it is outrageous to put paper in the normal bin and not the recycling bin (oh the terror!) but they would be few and far between.

Having an important career and other life.
Is it always a shock to find out that a respected High Court judge writes fluffy romances, or the Police Metropolitan Commisionner writes children’s stories? I don’t know. But it is possibly enough of a put off for these people to think to embark on a second career as a writer.

Having a silly name:
There are many people in all walks of life whose names now trip off the tongue because of the different things they now stand for. Donald Trump, something which obviously means a greatly different thing in the UK than in the States, is a prime example. How about Audrey Niffeneger, or Arnold Schwarzenegger? And a writer is at an advantage from the start because they can take a nom de plume.

Just Realising How Much Sheer Hard Work is Involved.
Many writers or would-be writers baulk at the idea of producing a certain numbers of coherently flowing words. Then, having written them, the idea of sitting down to edit them is also a huge put off!

But it is like playing the lottery. Why do people play for that one in fourteen million chance of winning? Someone has to win. Someone has to be the Rowling, the Tolkein, the Fleming, the Cartland, The Clarke… This list is endless!

The question should not be ‘why Do people not write’, but what on earth is stopping them?

 

How To Get More Traffic for Your Blog Through Linkreferral

Linkreferral is a great website for generating traffic to your blog, e-commerce website, or any other website that you may have.

 It is basically a links directory where you can add the link for your own website into one of the many categories that they have after registering for their service.

After that they require you to do your share of visiting people’s websites which in turn makes people visit yours.

If you go to 30 websites from their directory, from any category, and review 5 sites, choosing one of them to be your favourite, and make one comment on the forum, then you have done your maximum daily amount.

Bad Points

• It takes ages to visit 30 websites. It is not possible to just click through quickly, linkreferral only registers your visit once the whole website home page has loaded.

• It also takes ages to leave 5 reviews on other people’s sites which are helpful and meaningful.

• Because the forum comments are perfunctory, the forum is full of thousands of comments, but does not have the feeling of a proper community. A bit like a dance for shop dummies. They are dancing, but they don’t know why they are there or whether they are having fun or not.

• From time to time, someone visits your site who just ‘doesn’t get’ what you do and what you are all about. This person just leaves a low score or a poor review and this can knock your ego a bit.

• Another bad point is that sometimes you come across a website which is so interesting that you find yourself so absorbed with reading it and forget to visit the other 29 and one link leads to another and…

Good Points

Linkreferral leads you to discover hundreds of other websites. These are often other blogs, or money-making websites, or anything you can imagine. You can leave comments on their sites and so build up your backlinks and they in turn visit yours.

• You do not have to do every part of the requirements, just surfing a few of the sites lets you work your way up the list of sites in your category. The secret is little and often. Since people have to visit 30 sites, if you are on the first page, then the chance are higher that you will get a visit.

• You start getting visitors almost immediately you join. 

• People come to your site and leave a review. This means that they can spot something obvious that you may have missed, and it also gets tested out by lots of different browsers and computers who can comment on how fast your images load etc.

Link Building
A directory website like this is very useful for making contacts and link building because you are able to send direct emails to the website owners.

Referral Programme
Unfortunately, the actual referral programme is not that great. They ask $50 to join and pay $0.15 cents per referral, so you need to refer at least 334 people before you even get your $50 back.

But on the whole, it is a great way to generate a steady stream of traffic to your site, who are interested to see what your site is like and can review it for you.

 

How to Write

When I was young, I bought a coach ticket for the first time. I simply went to the coach station ticket office and paid for it and brought this very important piece of card home.

Now, as the day approached for my coach journey, I wondered how it was that I would be told to get on the coach. I checked the post everyday to see whether an invitation had arrived telling me that my presence was requested to attend the launch. Or maybe a phone call would inform me that my seat was confirmed. I was expecting at least a gold-edged envelope. Because this was a journey from out of the city, it seemed to be more important.

But no, to my amazement, it was nothing like that at all. You make your way to the coach station on the day and at the time that the coach is supposed to leave, show the driver your ticket and go and find a seat – any seat you like. The coach goes whether you are on it or not.

This childish scene reoccurs to me now because if someone wants to be a writer, they must just write! There is not going to be a gilt-edged invitation, or actually even a ticket. For a first time, unpublished author, there are no looming deadlines, only the vague intention of somehow ending up with a publication one day.

Barbara Cartland, was one of England’s most prolific writers. She wrote for nearly eighty years and is thought to have sold over a billion books. She wrote over 700 books in total, writing 23 novels in one year alone – leading to an entry in the Guinness book of Records.

For her, writing was purely a matter of discipline. She used to sit down to dictate her books at 1.30pm she said, (not 1.35, and not 1.40), and she would write for two hours every single day. She said that there was no use waiting for the muse to arrive, you had to write, and it was mainly a matter of controlling yourself. When she died, she left 162 still unpublished books.


How to Write

• Set aside a certain amount of time everyday 
• Write
• For the first draft, think of quantity, not quality, if that helps. Have a daily word count goal and stick to it everyday.
• Write!
• Take part in an online challenge. NaNoWriMo is an excellent one with wonderful support and regional groups set up all over the world.
• Join a writers’ group or a creative writing course 
• Write

The best way to be a writer is to write. Don’t worry how you will handle all the fame and publicity. The theme park design can wait, it really can. First work towards producing a complete document.