This is my space

Friday, May 01, 2009

I enjoy renting my DVD movies from online services. I like how I can automatically get new DVD releases sent right to my door. Every time I go to my mailbox, there might be a surprise waiting for me. It might be a comedy, it could be an action movie or it might be that drama that I had been waiting to see. Every once in a while, when I get my DVD movies from the mailbox, I will get a clunker. Like the most recent Indiana Jones movie. I was so excited to see it on the list of new DVD releases, which I chose to ignore the negative reviews that I had heard about and had read. I held out hope instead, because after all, not everybody will like every movie that I do and I won’t like every movie that other people do. I see the eye roll from my wife when I talk about certain movies and I do the same thing to her. So, maybe I would like this movie even though my best friend, who had seen it in the theater, told me that I wouldn’t. Well, he was half right. I enjoyed the first half of the movie a lot, especially the opening sequence and the first twenty minutes or so. I sat there thinking to myself that this was going to be okay, I was going to like this movie, or at least I wasn’t going to be too disappointed. The early part of the movie was the same kind of Indiana Jones moments that I grew up loving and then the introduced the new guy. I know he had a big hit with the Transformers movie, but I thought that he was the weakest part of that movie as well. I tried to hang with it for awhile, but by the time the whole crew made it to South America and into the Jungle, I had pretty much given up on being satisfied. I see where George Lucas and Spielberg were going, I just didn’t think that they needed to. I understand that the first three movies were tinged in fantasy elements, but they always had a way of feeling more real. They seemed more believable in the whole premise behind the story. You knew what they were going for and didn’t have to wait for the twist that you saw coming the whole time, but hoped against hope that they were not going to pull out of their hats.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Saving Money on College Student Health Insurance

When sons and daughters head off to college and may no longer be covered by their parents’ health insurance plans, many families look to student health insurance plans to protect them.. Thankfully, almost every state in the country offers some sort of low-cost student health insurance plan or plans—with the exceptions being Washington, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. But even in these 4 states, some sort of supplemental low-cost health insurance—usually a single plan--is offered for students to enroll in.

Most universities and colleges provide their student body with a basic (typically bare-bones) health insurance plan with services being provided through their on-campus health services department. But there are many instances in which health care for students through the university may be refused, such as in the case of pre-existing conditions (like asthma).

• So in the absence of appropriate and adequate university-provided student health plans, finding one’s own individual student health insurance is an excellent option.
• In order to get the lowest rates in the student health plan you sign up for there are several factors to consider (and maybe adjust) before choosing which one to go with, such as:
• how much you’re willing (and able) to pay for your own health care--in the way of copayments and deductibles; the more you’re willing to pay out of pocket should a health issue arise, the lower your monthly payments
• your weight, and more specifically your Body Mass Index (or BMI); lose some pounds and trim some fat from your monthly premiums too
• if you’re a smoker, whether or not you’re willing to quit; smokers have higher premiums

Once your get your student health insurance, there are still many ways you can save money on your health care costs from this point on:

• get regular checkups to catch any health concerns early on, avoiding the possibility of paying higher costs later in your health and out of your wallet
• but otherwise don’t make excessive visits to the doctor, as many health plans limit you to the number of covered visits, and almost all of them make you pay some amount for each visit
• live healthily; if you follow a practice of proper nutrition and fitness, the likelihood of developing any health-related problems is significantly reduced

With these factors in mind, you can then start evaluating college student health insurance plans:

• whether or not there are any restrictions on what providers a student can see
• whether or not the student is covered when on vacation or out of state
• whether or not the student is still covered while they’re not taking any classes, such as during summer break
• how easily accessible the best health care services facilities and treatment centers are to where the student lives and attends school
• what health care services the plan provides that isn’t already provided free by the college or university

School is expensive enough, it’s true. But you’ve made the decision that the value it will provide you is worth the costs. So it is with health insurance. But while student health insurance is not something to do without, you can certainly do it for as cheaply as possible.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Saving money is on everyones mind lately, and if you are in business for yourself, then you are probably seeing a decline in sales and are wondering how to bring your sales up, increase your customer base, and keep your customers coming back time and time again. One great idea that I just learned about is using promotional items and logo products to get your business rolling along again.

Many people know about promotional items, but do you know how to use these to the best benefit of your business? Chances are probably not. Logo products, such as pens, for instance, are used by many different companies and businesses around the globe, but using these promotional products to bring in and retain customers takes a little more effort then just putting the pens out on the counter and refilling the bin time and time again.

First thing you should do is make sure that the promotional items you are using are exciting and different. Having your logo products stand out means that more people will notice them and look at them to see where they are from. If they are a basic color like dark blue, black or white, then your logo will probably not even be seen. We expect a pen to come in these colors and we could very simply pick up this type of average pen and never even see that it is a promotional product. Using color and style to jazz up your logo products is a great way to get noticed. If a pen or other promotional item is different looking and unique or special then more people will look more closely at the pen. If you dont believe me, then try it, and you will see this really does work

The next thing is how you use these great promotional items. A great thing to do is give them out to customers for referrals and for their birthdays. This way they dont think of them as promotional products but as gifts and then they will be more apt to use them. Make sure they are common items that people will use on a regular basis to get your business name out there. Also, hand out promotional items to your suppliers and other people related to your business. Logo products and promotional items make great Christmas gifts to give to local business owners and even the post man. And remember the more unique and useful they are the more attention your business will get from them.

A third idea to get your company more advertising from promotional products and promotional gifts is to give them as rewards to your employees. Give them tee shirts with your company name and logo and phone number on them. Give them other useful items like water bottles, coffee mugs, gym bags. You can give them these items as rewards for a job well done, for referrals, birthday presents and even holidays gifts. Over all, promotional items can serve many purposes in your business and getting them out there is just a matter of handing out free gifts, you don?t have to be a salesman, you just have to be willing to give, give, give.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Well, as I told you before, Lynne and I decided to hire an SEO company to improve our site ranking and get things rolling on our new business venture. At first we looked up a bunch of different companies and I did most of the leg work on this, Lynne is just overextended right now, so I offered to start screening the companies to come up with the best search engine optimization companies in our price range. At first I contacted a few companies, but they wanted a lot of money to take care of the things that we wanted done. Don’t get me wrong, I knew that this service was going to cost us, but some of these prices were way over our heads. Then I came across a few local companies that could handle our business and marketing for less money so I thought that these would be a better choice, since we were just getting off the ground.

After contacting about 15 companies and talking to most of them about the services they would perform, I narrowed it down to 4 companies that I thought were in our price range and that offered us the best options. They all claimed to be able to build web traffic and improve search results and worked with the major search engines like Google and Yahoo. I thought these were our best options to improve our web site marketing.

I left the final decision to Lynne and she contacted all the companies directly and spoke to the SEO expert and determined which company was right for our needs. Now they will begin working on our website links and page ranking. Lynne says it will be quite a few weeks before we can see what they are doing and feel the results of that, but I think that we are probably on the right track. I am really hoping that business starts picking up in the New Year. As I told Lynne I have projected that we will make about $20,000 in our first year of business, and who knows, if it works as I anticipate, we could be independent business owners for the rest of our lives.

With this economy, you can never be sure, but I think that we are on to something big here and I know that it would be really great to be able to make this kind of money on a side business while we both still pursue our careers.

Friday, October 03, 2008

Now honestly Lynne and I really don’t fight. We agree on most things, and even when we don’t we find a way to talk things through and get to the bottom of the issues and resolve them. Money is always a difficult matter, especially when one partner has more than the other. You see, I live like I don’t have money, but the truth is that I do. Not that Lynne is not aware of it, because she is, but I don’t really bring it up too much. I work and I go to school and I budget and pay my bills and live a modest life. I have done a little stock market investing and have been more recently considering buying foreclosures as a way to make some money. I don’t want to put too much money in the market, because it is not looking real good right now and I am thinking that my money might be better served in an item that is tangible. Anyway, at dinner the other night we were talking and I was asking her opinion about doing some investing in real estate as a way to put a little bit of money aside for our futures. She just totally went off. I am not sure exactly why, except that she really felt that this was a terrible idea. I didn’t know what to do. I really didn’t think that anything I said was all that bad, but apparently I must have said something that got her worked up. I didn’t know which way was up, I had never seen her over react like this before. She went into the bedroom, and I knew it was probably best to just leave it alone for a little while. I cleaned the dinner dishes and brewed her a cup of chamomile tea, which is her favorite and I brought it to the bedroom door and knocked and asked if it was safe to come in. She giggled and so I went in. I gave her the cup of tea and sat on the bed next to her. She started telling me that she had a gotten a call from her mother and that things there were not going well. She said they were having trouble paying the bills and that she was afraid that her parents were going to have their house foreclosed on. She said all my talk of buying investment real estate just hit a subject that was very upsetting and she lost it. She apologized for getting so worked up. I asked her if she thought that we could help her parents in some way. She said no, that her father is too proud to accept help. I think that she is right, but you know sometimes you can help someone without them knowing that it is you who helped and sometimes things get paid off and no one knows how or why. You just can’t tell with these things.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

I had been so looking forward to Lanie’s arrival it is hard to believe that she left today. I really enjoyed her visit, but it seems like just yesterday that she got here but really she was here for 10 days, so I guess the mind is going more quickly than I expected. As a matter of fact, I think I enjoyed this visit more than any other we have had in the past, probably because now with Lynne and I living together we were all together for the whole visit. Don’t get me wrong, I gave the sisters some space, but they did include me in quite a lot of the time. I guess I feel that this time around Lanie’s visit was a learning experience for me, and I think it is safe to say it was for Lynne too. We spent a lot of time getting information from her sister about natural healing. Apparently on a trip for 10 days to China, she met a Chinese medicine man and began learning a lot about healthy eating, diets and natural health. She said that she now takes vitamins and nutritional supplements and I can really see how eating right has really agreed with her. Her skin looks so healthy it glows and she looks about 5 lbs lighter, but yet very well toned. She says that she has been doing Pilates and Yoga and is really watching her diet. She helped Lynne and I set up health programs for ourselves and I don’t know if we can pull it off, but we are really working at it together. After all, Lanie looks great and she says that she feels great too, so it is definitely worth a try. Especially with going to class, sometimes we rank diet and exercise very low on our list of things to do. We are going to work together, and have even agreed to take turns preparing the meals for each other, so we each only have to cook every other night. I think it is going to be great fun, and Lanie even gave us a new healthy living cookbook with simple and quick recipes to help us get started. That one is a real trip!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

When Lynne told me that her sister was coming for a visit, I was honestly really excited about it. She has always been one of my favorite people and I really do enjoy her. Lynne and her sister are best friends and so we make an awesome threesome, or so I believe. She travels a lot and tells some of the most amazing stories about her trips. She has done the whole backpacking through Europe thing, well not exactly backpacking but you get my drift. She loves to talk about the villas Italy and the villas France and all the things that she did and saw on her England tour. I do enjoy her Europe tour stories, but not nearly as much as I have enjoyed some of her other travel stories.

For instance on her last visit we all went out to dinner and she told us about a Florida vacation rental that she and a friend had gotten a few years ago. It was a beachfront rental, and they got some cheap airfare, which was odd at the time it was Spring Break, so they just figured it was meant to be. When they arrived, the weather was great and the sun was shinning. They got a rental car and headed to their hotel which was only supposed to be about an hour away, well I guess they had made a mistake along the way because their hour drive to their hotel wound up being about an 8 hour drive. Her friend didn’t realize that the Tampa airport was so far away from Pensacola and Lanie swears that she will make all her own reservations from now on. She does tell of how much fun they had on the ride, but she was a little frustrated with the fact that it cut two whole days off their 6 day trip. She says that was the worst part about it.

Anyway, she has still been doing a lot of traveling and I am sure that when she arrives she will have her bag full not only of stuff, but of traveling adventures and stories from around the globe. I can’t wait to see her and hear all about what life has been like on the open road.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Lately the topic of conversation between Lynne and I has been about what I am going to do with the rest of my life. As you know, my true aspiration is to be a writer, but since that is a very iffy profession I feel that I need to major in something and get a full degree and although writing is my passion I am trying to think of a more grown up aspiration for myself. I have been recently considering becoming a lawyer. I feel that I could use my understanding of the written word to help me in this career and Lynne says if anyone can argue a point it is me. I guess I have always been an excellent debater, even back in high school, but I just never really thought of it as a career path. I know that I could never handle being a car accident attorney, but I could definitely see being a divorce lawyer and working for a top law firm. I don’t settle, I wouldn’t settle. If I am going to do this, then I am going to be an attorney who works for a well known law firm. I might go into personal injury but I am not sure. I want to do something where I feel that I can do the most good for people. Really help them, and really make a difference in their lives and in the world. I guess I could consider criminal law and defending the innocent, but I think that sometimes it would weigh on my mind whether or not a person was innocent or guilty and whether or not they were lying to me. I still want to be able to sleep at night that is very important to me. I just think that too many people turn to law as a profession just to make a lot of money. There are so many people who could use some real assistance, that although I aspire to be one of the best attorneys, I am not worried about the money, that is just a bonus for a job well done. I am really leaning in this direction for now, but there is no way I will tell my family until I am absolutely sure. I know that they would love the idea, but I don’t want them to think that I am just going to be a mainstream person or anything like that. I am not going to wear a suit except in court, and I am still going to be me, trying to right the wrongs of the world as I see it. If I can’t do it my way, I can’t do it at all.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Lynne and I have several of our own credit cards each and we share the expenses and just take the money out of our joint account to pay for everything. This is the way we have decided is best to do it. Well, the other morning when she left for school she left a pile of bills on the table and while I was having my morning cup of coffee I decided to thumb through them. I picked up one of the bills, Lynne’s Visa and it was over $3000 and I almost fell over. I know we had some additional expenses with moving in together and all, but I never realized that she was putting all this stuff on credit. Needless to say, we had a long discussion about this over dinner. I didn’t start a fight about it or anything, but I told her she needs to let me know when we get in over our heads or when we can’t afford something. I told her I didn’t have any problems turning over my credit cards to her, I only have an American Express and a Master Card, but I assured her I would be fine with using our debit cards and paying cash for everything until we get on a little more solid ground, I also told her that I could pick up a little bit of extra work with my friend on the weekends to help pay the bills down quicker.

She thanked me and said that she was afraid that I would be upset with her for spending so much. She said the excitement of the new place took hold of her, and she just kept swiping her card and when the bill came she almost flipped herself. After reviewing all the charges thinking that it must be a mistake, she realized that she had spent that much when we were setting up the new place. We both decided that it would be better to put our credit cards in the safe deposit at the bank for now and only use them for emergencies. We will start working to pay down debt and saving money again. I guess for now we will have more quite dinners in and less nights out on the town, but that is fine by me. I am really glad that I took a look at the bills on the table, and told Lynne never to worry about my reaction to anything, we are a couple and every problem we have we will face as a couple together.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

A New Business Venture

As part of my branching into independence and to strengthen my bond further with Lynne, we are starting our own online business. I don't really know much about the online world, but Lynne is a near expert. She can do anything on her computer and she has an amazing mind. We will be starting our own website to sell prints. We found a place to get them at a really good price and Lynne has a real eye for the good stuff.

She has already taken care of coming up with a purchasing a domain name and she has begun working on the web design. She knows about programming code and has to be one of the top web designers I have ever seen. She is so far creating the perfect site and she is constantly trying to get me involved which is one of the things I really love about her. Even though I can't really do much at this stage of the game, she is always asking me my opinions about what she is doing and she tries to show me how to do some things, but I just don't really follow what she wants me to do.

She says that her job will be the setting up of the website and mine will be to run the site once it gets up and running. I have an excellent business sense and Lynne knows that I can handle running the business while she maintains and improves the technical end of things. We really do make quite a team and that helps. It is nice to finally have a relationship where we are both equals and one doesn't have to out do the other. Balance is one of the things that suits me best about this relationship. We each have our strengths and our weaknesses and we are both good with letting the other pick up where we fall short.

Lynne says it will probably take us a few months to get this site running the way we want it and to build web traffic the way we want, but like I said Lynne is the genius and if anyone can get our site to improve search results and page ranking, it is Lynne.

Lynne has assigned me the ever important job of writing the mission statement for our company and writing out all the policies and other customer service statements for the site. I am glad that there is something I can do to help while Lynne gets the other work for the site done.