The Real Finances Of The Real Housewives

Like many people, I was shocked at the death of Russell Armstrong, husband of Tyler Armstrong of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. (I am an ardent watcher of these shows.) I don't think all of the details about why he did this are known yet. He left no note. But he and Tyler were getting divorced, but more in line with why men usually commit suicide where the sad state of their financial affairs. Totally over their head in debt and being sued to boot. He was an investment banker, so I would think that he would know better than most of us how to manage his money. But as the link below suggests, this financial mess is not contained to the Armstrongs, but applies to many of the housewives in many of the shows. Just goes to show you that financial worries knows no zipcode.

http://wonderwall.msn.com/tv/the-secret-reality-of-real-housewives-14481.gallery?gt1=28135

Ginger Lemonade To Cool Off In The Summer Heat

Guest post written by Tom Abrams
Like my wife says, there's nothing like burning up in the heat and trying to keep your power bill low. It requires a whole lot of sitting on our front porch in the early evenings when it cools off outside so that we don't have to run our air conditioning units nearly as much. Well, it also helps to eat or drink something really cold while we're doing that, but we were in the mood to try out something special a few nights ago.

Being retired, we had time to do this and go to the grocery store to get the ingredients. So I used our internet to look up recipes and while I was looking around, I saw the site http://www.cleartvbundle.com/. I read it and after that I chose to change over our home internet service to it, so we did.

We found this recipe for ginger lemonade and it sounded so interesting that I couldn't resist trying to fix it. It tasted really interesting, but once you got over the initial weirdness, it was pretty delicious.

Target Savings Accounts

I read an article today about having multiple savings accounts to boost your savings. The article said you need three types of savings accounts: 1) emergency fund, 2) retirement fund, and 3) for some intermediate goal, such as travel.

Right now, I have such accounts in place. My emergency fund account is at my credit union. My retirement fund is in two different 401Ks, and my intermediate goal fund, for travel or downpayment on a house is in a mutual fund.

So, my accounts are in place. Now I just need to put more money in them!

Get More Business Through Customer Contact

One thing I am learning is that to make money in your business, you have to have regular contact with your customers. You can do that in multiple ways: direct mailings or email. If you do email markeing, you probably need some kind of email list management tool.

I am not at that point in any of businesses yet, but I hope to at some point. I am still small potatoes, lol, but one of these days I hope to really hit the road running.

And then I want to make money quickly! Get out of debt and save money--buy a house. Live well and enjoy my life. Thatis definitely the plan.

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Use Coupons To Save Money

I have not gotten full steam into using coupons, but I am starting to cut them out of the paper and also add electronic coupons to my grocery store cards. I will start organizing the paper coupons, so I know exactly what I have and can use it when I need to. Every little bit adds up, and I need every little bit!

One thing I need to do is look for ways to cut down on my entertainment costs, which includes going out to eat. I do that a lot, and it adds up. I am going to start looking for restaurant and entertainment coupons that would help cut down on the costs. I have heard of Groupon, which offers coupons for restaurants and entertainment in different cities. I have signed up for Groupon, and have started receiving their emails with local offers and discounts.

Like any other coupon though, you have to make sure that restaurant and entertainment coupons don't end up making you spend even more money. Just because it is a bargain, don't use it. Only use it if you were going to do it anyway and want to save some money.

Wanting To Make Money Online

I am more and more interested in making money online. I do a little bit already, but I want to ramp it up! I want to work a 4 hour work week, and you can do that online. I am going to a bunch of local meetups dedicated to wordpress, seo, podcasting, and such. I am hoping to learn how to create my own website, but if it proves too difficult for me, I will look for a professional web design company. I am really into the writing side of the web and want to do it as much as possible, but the technical aspects of setting one up and the design are a little bit out of my league and interest level. Plus, such a company could help guide me along the path and point out things I might not think about.

A lot of print journalists don't feel comfortable writing and working for online publications, but not me. I am getting to love it more and more, and it makes it so easy to work from home and make money. Hard to do that in print journalism. Plus, with online you get that instant gratification--you can see your article  published immediately! You just hit publish, and wala, there it is! No waiting for the printing press to roll to see your byline.