Ben Edwards's Blog: Money Smart Life, page 22

How to Start a Business Without Quitting Your Job

A lot of people would like to start a business, but not if it means quitting their job. If you’ve never been an entrepreneur, it can be scary. While a job promises a steady paycheck and usually benefits too, being self-employed promises neither. But that fear disappears if you can start a business without quitting your job. You can start and grow your business, all while having the reliability of the steady cash flow that your job provides.

But how do you handle both a full-time job and a new...

5 Career Moves that Will Earn You More Money

If you’re looking to super-charge your career, opening the door to more money, it makes sense to improve yourself. If you want to boost your career – and your income – here are some moves that can help:

1. Read a relevant book.

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to read a relevant book. An autobiography or biography of someone you admire can give you pointers on how to conduct yourself. You can also read a book related to your industry to gain deeper knowledge of your career fiel...

How to Pay Less for Food on Vacation

Vacations are expensive, and even though you want to have a good time, there are still ways to save money, many of which that won’t hurt the quality of your trip. One of the biggest areas of potential savings is with food. You need to eat while you are away, but there are ways to pay less for food.

1. Stay at hotels with free breakfasts.

Staying at hotels that provide a free breakfast is a way of eliminating the need to pay for at least one meal a day. Though it’s often thought that a “free” br...

The Finances of Homeschooling

When it comes to my son’s education, I’ve never considered homeschooling. Our personalities are such that it probably wouldn’t work out very well. I don’t like the idea of having to keep him on task with his education, and he just doesn’t like learning anything from me (it’s why someone else teaches him piano – even though I am capable).

However, I know several families that homeschool, and it works for them. And, there are times that I think homeschooling would be a little more convenient tha...

How to Get a Good Paying Job Without Going to College

Millions of young people go off to college each fall, convinced that it is the only way to enter a career-type field. That is no longer the case, if in fact it ever was. There are plenty of career fields available that do not require college, or at least not a four-year undergraduate degree.

The Trades

One of the unexpected outcomes of the flood of high school graduates into college was the decline of young people entering the trades. This has created an imbalance in which college norm jobs are...

Whole Life Insurance Pros and Cons

There’s an ongoing debate between whole life insurance and term life insurance. The pro-term life insurance opinions practically consider whole life to be a useless option. Is that really the case?

In truth, there are both pros and cons when it comes to whole life insurance. In general, it’s true that you’re better off to “buy term and investment difference,” but what if you don’t actually invest the difference? It opens up the possibility that whole life will be the right choice for you.

Argum...

How to Negotiate Your Rent Payment

The lease on your home or apartment is coming up for renewal and you’re wondering about negotiating a lower rent payment, or at least to avoid an increase – how do you do that? After all, in many rental markets, an annual increase in rent is practically the norm. How can you fight the trend and get a better deal on your rent?

1. Know the rental market in your area.

Any time you negotiate anything you first need to know what the options are. When it comes to rents, that means knowing what the re...

The 7 Qualities of an Effective Leader

If you were to sit down and analyze effective leaders, you would find certain qualities that they each have and use effectively to be the person in charge that they are. Let’s take a look at what those qualities are . . . .

1. Passion

An effective leader, whether it is in sports, the military, religion or business, is someone who has a passion for their cause. To them, it is bigger than they are and they believe that this cause will make society, or at least some part of it, better. A passionat...

Sometimes All You Need is Time Management

Time. It is a dwindling resource. There is never enough of it. It’s gone immediately and can never be retrieved. It is one of those things we all want more of, but in many cases, it is a problem of time mis-management.

Some people get it and have everything organized and planned down to exactly how many brushes on their teeth and how long it takes to do it. For others, effectively planning and organizing themselves is as simple as herding billy goats. Time management skills just do not come na...

How to Save Money on Groceries

If you have a family, grocery shopping is probably one of your top two or three monthly expenses, right behind your house payment and health insurance. But the good news is that, unlike the other two, you have a strong measure of control over the size of your grocery bill. There are ways to save money on groceries and to take a big chunk out of your food budget.

1. Set a budget and stick to it!

One of the tactics that I found to work best is to set a budget before you even go shopping, and stic...