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dimeeasy · 3 years ago

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10 Legit Ways to Build Passive Income Online

Whether you are a student looking to make some extra cash, a working professional wanting to build a side hustle, or a corporate escapee and whosoever who is starting to build an online business need to have some cash inflow for the further smooth flow of your business.

There are many sites out there saying make money like $100 a day with surveys, with google sites, etc. Of course, they may make you money for a certain period of time but are not long-term and passive.

You always need to look out for ways to make money that are passive. You need to earn money every month and double it. Here are my top creative ideas to make money online. These real methods have worked in past and will work now and then too.

Freelancing

You would have heard a lot of this from others. But yes, this is the first best way to earn some cash before starting out your business. It will help to get some extra money into your pocket as well as fund a little for your software if you are starting out. You can start freelancing with no investment upfront. It's FREE. You can make money online freelancing.

Don’t worry if you think you don’t have any skills. You can learn small skills by taking a free trial in skillshare. There are tons of gigs people are looking for to get their work done and with the right process, you can make money as a freelancer.

By the year 2027, freelancers are projected to make up the majority of the workforce in the United States, with 50.9% of the working population. In fact, at the current growth rate, it’s estimated that 67.6 million Americans will be freelancing by the end of 2021. That’s 42% of the American workforce! (Website planet).

What are you waiting for? Search in-demand gigs on google keywords and search trends. And yes, patience is the key. You need to wait a few weeks while you get your first gig. Start promoting your services on social media and find your spot.

Starting a Blog

As of 2021, there are more than 570 million blogs on the internet, based on activities reported by WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Wix, Squarespace, and Medium (and this number is constantly growing) (firstsiteguide).

Now do not get overwhelmed, the one thing is though blogs are growing rapidly, and so are people reading blogs. Of course, blogs are saturated, but when you niche down and find your audience then you can achieve your space in this sea of bloggers.

Starting a blog, yesterday, today, tomorrow, is possible as long as you are using proper rules, like optimizing your SEO, giving unique content to your readers, and more. But, the best day to start blogging for your profit is today and now.

Let us look at some stats on why you should start your blog today

61% of online shoppers in the US say they made a purchase after getting a recommendation from a blog post

Companies that blog actively have 126% better lead growth

80% of bloggers say that they see positive business results from their blogging efforts

Blogs affect customers’ buying decisions as 47% of them go through 3 to 5 blog posts before the buying process (Firstsiteguide)

Give me a better reason why you should not start a blog after these mind-blowing facts.

You can start a niche blog, review blog, cooking blog, gaming blog, parenting blog, and more. Just write what you know or keep an eye on your competitors and outperform them. And blogging is the best for your long-term passive income.

Starting a YouTube channel

Now as we’ve known how YouTube has evolved to be like a video search engine, the platform has grown considerably and is been growing millions of YouTubers.

Again, let’s talk about some statistics about YouTube. YouTube has 2.3 billion users worldwide.

79 percent of Internet users have their own YouTube account.

YouTube viewers watch over a billion hours of video on the platform every day and generate billions of views. (YouTube, 2021)

YouTube is localized in more than 100 countries and is available in 80 languages. (YouTube, 2021)

Every day people watch one billion hours of video on YouTube (source-Oberlo)

Now, the real question is how to make money out of YouTube? Well, there is enough space for you to sink in. Are you a coach, fitness enthusiastic, a person with good communication, or even just an individual with no skills at all? You can make videos, monetize your YouTube account, and earn from AdSense and affiliate marketing.

Umm! Some people may say that YouTube is not for me. I don’t know how to make and produce videos. I don’t have any skills. Well, I have a solution for that. You can make money from YouTube absolutely by not showing your face at all.

Here are some of the niches you can make videos y not showing your face.

If u do not want to record videos, you can head up to free stock videos or images and give a voice-over and start making content.

If you feel shy to start, you will never get ahead. So, the one thing I want to tell to everyone who is shy to make videos and for my younger self, stop doubting yourself. Just do it, don’t care about criticism, success will follow you

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when a person earns a commission for referring a product to others. For eg: You register yourself as an affiliate to promote certain products, when the person you promote the product click on your unique affiliate link and purchases through your link you earn a commission. A commission can range for each and every product.

And the affiliate marketing model is the best, safe model for beginners. You can drive traffic for free and for paid as well. You can be an affiliate marketer if you need a passive income, you don’t need to have any other customer support, you can work from home at your own comfort.

Now, how to register as an affiliate. First, think of what do you like the most. What products do you love using? Type the name in google and see whether there is an affiliate program or just see other affiliate programs in your niche. Choose the one you love so that you don’t feel tired and exhausted in the long run.

There are many other sites where you can choose your products from. You can take products from Click bank, Digistore24, Share a Sale, Jvzoo, and similar other platforms.

Here are the best affiliate platforms for you to choose from

How do you want to promote is the next question?

Well, you can create landing pages in click funnels, kartra, or builderall and promote them through ads. If you are on your budget, you could start a blog and promote it. You can write blogs for free on medium.com. It is a cost-effective way to sell your products. You can create a YouTube channel, talk about how you love using those products, and promote them, you could even use Pinterest to promote your blogs and landing pages.

We all know that Pinterest is a visual search engine and no doubt you can get quite a good sale from affiliate marketing in Pinterest

Once you get your first sale and testimonials you can start your Instagram page and build trust with others to promote the products and scale your business.

Instagram Influencer

Do you love making TikTok videos, always want to be active on social media? Then here is your chance to start earning being an Instagram influencer.

You can start by creating content about the topic you want to talk about the most. If creating a YouTube channel feels a bit challenging, grow your audience and monetize them through Instagram. Feel free to talk about what you feel.

Collect your follower's email IDs. Once you become consistent with the audience and platform, the content you are generating makes a digital course or something you think to monetize your people. Giveaway a lot of freebies, checklists, and many other things to lead your audience to the product you are offering. Build trust with them and try to use all of Instagram's available channels. Use carousals, reels, IGTV, go live to show behind the scenes of your work, and more!.

Staying consistent is the key to grow your audience on Instagram.

Starting a T-Shirt Business

Whether you’re an artist, writer, designer, or entrepreneur, physical products can be the perfect canvas for monetizing your creativity. Yes, you heard that right. You can start your own merch for free. Starting an online T-shirt business is booming in this era an why don’t you be one of them. You do not need to hold any inventory, just design your t-shirt online and publish it.

Let me make it clear. So what is print on demand? How to start your free t-shirt business

Print on demand is a process where you work with a supplier to customize white-label products (like baseball hats or tote bags) with your own designs to sell them on a per-order basis under your own brand.

That means you don’t pay for the product until after you’ve actually sold it, so there’s no need to buy in bulk or hold any inventory yourself.

Plus, with print-on-demand services, everything after the sale, from printing to shipping, is handled by your supplier. Once you’ve set everything up, it takes only a few clicks to fulfill an order once you’ve made a sale.

You can use print-on-demand services to:

Test a business idea or new product line for an existing business without the risks that come with buying inventory.

Monetize an audience you’ve built. Printing on demand is a great option if you’re a YouTuber, cartoonist, or social media influencer who wants to spend your time creating content instead of fulfilling orders.

Create original products for a niche of customers. For example, apparel for people who are passionate about gaming.

Easily print one-off items—t-shirts, books, shoes, bags, wall art, phone cases, clocks, laptop skins, mugs, and so much more. You can send these as gifts or keep them for yourself and your team (source-Shopify)

You can get started with print on demand for almost free with teespring, redbubble, printful . Or you can start your online store on Shopify and sell them as a custom branding.

Do not worry if you are not a pro in graphic designing. You can design your t-shirt on canva and paste the design on your t-shirt too. This is a legitimate and easy business for beginners online. You can promote your merch by using SEO, keywords, and various social platforms.

Let's take a look at the print on demand statistics:

This statistic depicts the market value of the custom t-shirt printing market worldwide from 2016 to 2025. In 2016, the global custom t-shirt printing market was valued at 1.16 billion U.S. dollars, and was forecast to reach a value of 3.1 billion U.S. dollars by 2025.

This is insane amount the industry is making from print-on-demand only.

COVID-19 impact Fabric face mask accounted for 11.14% of all goods sold through Printify in September 2020. (Printify)

A 2020 survey revealed that about 96% of millennials and Gen Z have concerns about how the ongoing pandemic will impact the economy. (BigCommerce)

With more people staying at home and focusing on home improvement projects, the Home & Living category is on the rise, with the first 6 months of 2020 seeing a 243.77% growth. Both canvas gallery wraps (2.19%) and premium vertical posters (1.35%) are in TOP15 products sold by Printify merchants. (Printify)

According to Merkle’s report in 2020, roughly 79% of consumers plan to be more conservative with how much they will spend shopping online during the pandemic. (Merkle)

In the first 6 months of 2020, Printify monthly active users have grown by 69%, with registrations up 39%. (Printify)

62% of sellers in the United Kingdom changed their marketing plan because of the pandemic. Moreover, only 14 percent of businesses have decided to stick with their original marketing strategy for 2020. (Statista) ( All sources- Printify) Read more at: https://printify.com/ecommerce-statistics/ And these are just stats alone. Don’t wait now. Start your print-on-demand business right away.

Online Tutoring

Again, online tutoring is gaining massive demand in this digital age. During the pandemic the online tutoring business was a boom and it will be more in the coming years. Just teach people what you know. There are many people in this world who want to learn and are ready to pay for it.

Whether you know to speak English, or drawing, graphic designing, marketing, business, or anything that matters, turn your own skill into a business

You can tutor in paid platforms like cambly, Oakary, iTutor, or just start teaching in YouTube and create tour own course and sell it. You can create courses and teach in udemy too. People all over the world are searching to learn skills and may be you can teach them what you know and monetize your skills.

Amazon KDP [ Selling E-books and low content books ]

As I told you print on demand is a big thing and so does amazon KDP is too. What is KDP? Amazon KDP is nothing but kindle direct publishing. KDP allows you to self-publish eBooks and paperbacks for free. Amazon gives you direct access to your book on Amazon and allows you to create a product detail page for your book. It also gives you the option to expand your book’s availability on a global scale, making it more accessible for readers around the world. Publishing with KDP gives you full rights to your book, which is not something a traditional publishing house typically allows.

What types of content can I publish through KDP?

KDP allows you to publish eBooks (Kindle) and paperback books. However, KDP does not allow the creation of magazines, periodicals, or spiral-bound books.

Content types typically published using KDP include but are not limited to the following:

Novels

Book Series

Children’s Books

Comics

Cookbooks

Journals

Poetry

Textbooks (source: amazon.com)

Selling Photography

Are you a photographer? Are you making enough money? If no then this will help you , if yes you are gonna make an extra dime.

You can sell your beautiful photos on Getty Images, Pexels, Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and many more sites and earn money whenever your image is downloaded. If it is a subscription-based site then your earnings will be more. You can post your beautiful images on Instagram and become famous. Ultimately you can collaborate with various brands for their product photography.

If your camera is lying there near you, take it and start clicking pictures and sell your photos online.

Selling on Etsy

Etsy is an online market place that works as an intermediary between customers and artists, crafters of handmade items or collectors of vintage products. The company engages in customer to customer (C2C) or peer to peer (P2P) e-commerce in which both the seller and the buyer are private individuals or micro-businesses. This is in contrast to other forms of internet commerce such as B2C or B2B (source: Statista).

Let's head to our facts about how profitable it is to sell on Etsy

Etsy had over 2.5 million sellers at the end of 2019, and we can only expect that this number has increased.

Etsy sellers live all over the world, in 234 countries

62% of Etsy sellers are based in the US.

California is home to the most Etsy sellers with 14% of US-based Etsy shops. (credits: veeqo)

Etsy is a huge commerce platform, with an especially strong US presence. Plus, the fact that most sellers are multi-channel retailers—and also selling their products on marketplaces like Amazon and Shopify sites—suggests that the platform isn’t just for amateur makers. It’s for eCommerce businesses.

So if you’re already selling handmade or vintage products on another platform, it’s worth it to expand and start selling on Etsy.

If you’re starting a business, it’s important to run the numbers before setting up shop—or at least quitting your day job. Etsy does have associated costs, though it’s worth noting that the listing and transaction fees are lower than other platforms, like Amazon and eBay. (cre: veeqo)

So, if you can start your print on demand you can sell it on Etsy too. If you are good at handicrafts Etsy is the best place to promote.

Conclusion

So here are the top 10 ways where in you can make legitimate money online. You can try all these methods one by one. Well, everyone will look for quick methods to make money online, but those won’t suffice for long run.

If you should build a strong business online you need to stay consistent no matter what. Staying consistent will help audience grow along with you on your journey to make money online. For beginners starting out these methods will help you in starting out to make a dime or two.

One thing I need to make particular is you will not see results instantly. You need to try and try, keep on trying. Whether it is 2 weeks, 1 month or 3 months, you should not stop. Keep up that grind and let’s start the digital lifestyle. Start by making money online fore free with these methods and start investing in ads and make the business run for you in long run.

#passive income #makemoney #make money online #remote jobs #jobsearch #building a business #freelance #social media #education #money tips #earnmoneyonline #make money blogging #make money on instagram #make money now

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plush-anon · 3 years ago

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You worked at joanns? 😍 dream job

In all fairness, a large part (and I do mean a LARGE part) of why I enjoyed working at Joanns were the managers.

The store manager was a guy named Richard, one of maybe two or three men who worked there total, and this man was practically a saint as far as retail goes.

This was a man who would, with no hesitation, get on the floor to help customers, or hop on the registers to check customers' purchases out, or pop on to the cutting counter to cut fabric. He remembered the names of regulars, would chat and smile while getting shit done, and was the type of guy to speak slowly and softly when we had shitstains explode at us measly peons for not giving them the full cost of an item back in a return (ex $200) when they used a coupon to purchase an item to begin with and only paid a portion of the cost (ex. $150). No joke, this actually happened to me on Black Friday with a man who stood at about 6 foot with a crewcut and a snarl (the military Karen, if you would)

Richard, of course, stood at about 6 foot 5 inches, and reminded me of a ginger grizzly bear in some ways. Very few customers continued to be assholes when they asked to speak to the manager and Richard came over, smiling wide. He encouraged us to chat with the customers while we worked the cutting counter - it was a good way to learn about what they were making, encouraged general conversation and lent itself to a better environment for everyone, worker and customer alike, so we weren't just awkwardly standing in silence the whole time.

The assistant store manager (aka his second in command - we had two other assistant managers, but she wielded more power than both of them) was Farrah, and she was basically Cool Wine Aunt, but with weed. She was open about smoking it (but not in a pressure-the-underlings kind of way, but more of a 'yeah, it calms me down' kind of way) but never on the clock, and was just really chill in general. She was also a 'jump on the registers' type of manager, and on occasion would take the closing staff out to get a drink from the texmex place next to us in the shopping center, and cover one for each of us - particularly during the Holiday Clusterfuck of October, November, and December (their Frozen Kahlua Mudlslide was my alcoholic drink of choice - they also had these spicy chicken strips that were amazing with it, but I digress).

Both of them were amazing people who would support and back us up without hesitation (if they weren't dealing with corporate or stock trucks coming in), and both routinely worked 15 to 20 hours UNPAID overtime during the Holiday Clusterfuck so that we the underlings could get more hours without Corporate jumping up our ass about going over budget.

They were also refreshingly upfront in our monthly meetings about profits and meeting them, as well as why company policy was the way it was, and how to work within the boundaries so we got more hours. One of my favorite moments was when they said the fabric sales essentially covered their own cost (production and delivery); the rest of the cheap crap in the store was what covered our paycheck and electricity, so hawk it as much as you can if you want extra in the bank (paraphrasing here, but that's not that far off what they actually said tbh).

With some Karen-y exceptions, the customers were honestly pretty chill. There were two women from a nearby church who bought well over 200 yards of cut fleece to make no-sew fleece blankets for children and the poor in December (it took forever to do, but they were so cheerful about it and told some funny anecdotes in between, kept the counter clear as soon as they were cut, etc. Took them three carts to haul everything to the register XD).

There was the slew of quilters making everything from baby blankets to anniversary gifts to quilts for their grandkids attending the local university that they could wear to football games in the colder weather, while still showing team pride. They always bought quarters and eighths and the end of the bolt for half price, digging thru our remnants bin for something they might have missed they could get for half price. They always talked about what they were working on, and spoke in great detail on their kids or cousins or niblings or grandkids. I saw so many pictures on phones, in wallets, and they loved them to absolute pieces.

There were cosplayers making their first costume to comicon, halloween goers trying their hand at making their own outfits, and a few furries making custom suits for order or just updating their own personal outfit. There were the usual school and church Christmas plays that needed costumes, and folks making custom table runners and place settings for family holiday meals.

One notable young man bought out 30+ yards of our 65" inch wide bolt felt for JEWELRY projects he was making as a part of his business and as a part of his art program (you can major in art with a concentration in jewelry making, and he was using it for that). He didn't leave a card, but the pictures he showed us were STUNNING.

We had a few elderly mothers come in with their daughters, to pick out fabrics so they could make their own wedding dresses, or quinceanera outfits, or veils; they showed us the patterns they had, or the pictures they were basing the designs off of, and all of them were STUNNING. (One came back in with the finished dress in the bag, this intricately beaded poofy dress that had to have taken days, hot pink and shiny).

We had local restaurant owners pop in for re-upholstery projects and curtains and vinyl; same with teachers and deck dads and furniture restoration workers that would gush about the design, what they had planned. Some would bicker with their spouses on the pattern, but it felt good-natured on the whole.

We had some elderly men come in to peer over our sewing machines - "How much it run for? My wife's birthday is coming up and her old machine's about done, and I want to surprise her. She had a Singer, but she hates the electronic screens on some of these newer ones, they hurt her eyes." - and moms coming in to sew some custom bed sheets for their kids - "My son really likes the new My Little Pony show, but he's a little shy about it. Do you think the blue's okay? Only he like yellow more, but they don't have any back there and he doesn't MIND blue really but - Actually scratch that, how wide is the fabric? My pattern says it needs to be at LEAST 22 inches wide, does it say on the box?" - and people coming up with some WILD craft ideas that were always a delight to hear them gush about - "So this MAY seem crazy, but I can turn these plastic pumpkin trick-or-treat pails into SNOWMEN heads with felt like this. We fill them with treats for the kids since we don't have a fireplace and they like it fine, but someone said I should sell these on Etsy and people really like them! But I've run out of pumpkins, and you have NO idea how happy I am that you guys still have some left."

The group we had to work with was also pretty crafty; a few were chronic call-outs, some a bit lazy, some perpetually done-with-this-nonsense, but we were mostly on the same page on shift, and all of us were crafty as heck. The employee discount was a blessing AND a curse, lemme tell you.

Stock was the best part, for me. Hours before the store opened at 9 AM, we would rip open the boxes and stuff everything onto the shelves, organizing anything the closing shift missed the night before along the way, updating new stickers or shuffling pegs over for new product arrangement, etc. We could listen to music or podcasts as we worked, and I ended up impressing some of them bc of how fast I tore through everything some mornings (the music definitely helped out there).

I was actually about to be promoted to assistant manager after 6 months, but then I got my job with the university, and they had federal health benefits AND dental, so... yeah, no contest there. Richard actually laughed when I told him I'd been hired at the university and was giving my two week notice, since it meant he didn't have to do the slew of paperwork that accompanied new assistant manager hires. He congratulated me on the job, especially the health benefits - he said that was a perk worth leaving any job here for. I nearly cried with relief that he wasn't mad.

He and Farrah chipped in and got me a small music box that plays Man of La Mancha's Dream the Impossible Dream on my last day. It still sits on my desk at work.

It was honestly my favorite retail job out of the bunch I've suffered through. Surprising at first, since I initially received a rejection email bare HOURS after my interview with Farrah, but about a month later (as I trawled endlessly through interview after interview, desperate for anything those first few months ), I got a call back from them asking if I was still interested (which I was, bc hey a job!). They remembered me specifically bc I had missed my bus to the interview, called ahead to let them know I would be late, then walked the whole way there in the rain to get there. (It was only about a mile and a half away, so not a terrible journey, but flooding is an issue in our flat-ass city; I looked like a drenched afghan hound holding a useless umbrella, so enjoy that imagery).

They were particularly impressed by the calling-ahead part.

Unfortunately, both of them ended up moving on to different paths over the year after I left - apparently they had been friends with benefits (? I say hesitantly, since I ran into one of my coworkers at an art show later on and she spilled the beans there - she was a bit flighty in nature though, and got caught up in gossip a LOT, so who knows. Lovely brocade custom projects though), and his ex girlfriend had called corporate on them and got both fired.

I think Farrah came back some time later, but the damage was done after that - the new manager came in and operated SOLELY to corporate policy. A LOT went to pieces in terms of store cleanliness, order, and general camaraderie after that - the new fabric counter folks look and sound dead inside, and barely interact with customers (not even a 'whatcha making' in passing, which is kind of sad - the stories I got helped to pass the time, and kept me from using up all of my Set Conversation Phrases for customers that actually WOULD leave us standing in silence). Corporate also stopped some of the smaller store policies that made our job easier and gave the customers a little something extra (the 'end-of-the-bolt' discount - if, after the customer orders say, 2 yards of fabric on the bolt, and there's say, a half yard "remnant" left on the bolt, we can sell them the remnant for half-price. A LOT of quilters LOVED this, and we did too, since it saved us from filling out the remnant tag and printing a sticker later on).

Just goes to show how important good management is in a business; especially when it can kick a store previously part of the top 50 stores in the NATION (while being a medium store at that - smaller place, NOT Hobby Lobby size like the Large stores) to something much less pleasant. I could be rose-goggling the situation thought - retail is still retail, no matter how nice some aspects are - but it still sticks with me as to how good he experience was even taking into account that it WAS minimum wage retail.

Food for thought, lads, food for thought.

#plush gets personal #joanns #joann fabrics #employment #retail hell #or well #not so much hell for this one #retail... purgatory? yeah that'll work

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courtneyyharper · 4 years ago

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10 Christmas Gifts ‘for her’ if you’re completely clueless

Since it's apparently time to start thinking about that time of year I thought I'd jump on and attempt to give you some help in an attempt to spark some ideas. Whether you're using this list for ideas for your other half, your mum or sister, or even if you are that person that likes something on this list why don't you send it over as a wee hint... the irony of this is that I've banned my boyfriend from looking at this list as there's a few spoilers on here for his gifts! (Hope he enjoys a wee eyeshadow palette😬).

So let’s start...

1. AIRPODS

I'm sure this will be a big gift this year and a perfect gift if you know they'll be getting a new phone or laptop! Perfect for a music lover or just the person that always needs to have the next big thing! I'd recommend planning to get a pair of these bad boys from Amazon or Currys during the Black Friday sale.

2. STUDIO LIGHT

A gift my mum got me unexpectedly a few years back and I haven't looked back. Not just for the MUA or photography student in your life but even just for every day make up application and I know my friends always use mine for checking their outfits or taking selfies before a night out! I've shown in the product photo how you can get a full sized one or a desk sized one easily on Amazon, your choice. Along this line would also be a Hollywood mirror, the big vanity mirrors with the bright lights installed but they can be hard to source as they're so popular and you need to make sure they're the bright studio lights. Top tip would just be to check the dimensions so you know what you're getting.

3. POLAROID CAMERA

I wanna say this is a cult favourite. I don't know many girls who don't have one of these now but if your gift recipient is one of them then it'd be a great gift! They're a great idea for Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries because it means you can capture the memories and of course ironically take a photo of the polaroid with your phone and post it to Instagram!! They come in a variety of colours and you can purchase accessories and refillable polaroid packs for other special occasions after, making it the gift that keeps on giving.

4. VINYL PLAYERS

Another gift that keeps on giving. If they're a real music lover and always have Spotify going in their room, and with the lack of concerts this year, this would be a very thoughtful gift. You can get these lads pretty cheap on Amazon or fork out for the pricey ones from UO. The only downside is that the actual Vinyl records themselves is where this gifts will cost you the most, but at least you'll always have an idea for next years present.

5. FOREVER ROSES

Now these guys can be quite boujee and I remember them being really popular a few years ago. If you type 'forever roses' into google or, probably better yet, Instagram you'll get a lot of companies selling gift sets of these specially preserved roses that can last for years. An incredibly romantic and surprising gift, this one can cost you big bucks but if you shop around enough you can get single roses for around £20 or major bunches for a few hundred but it's sure to win you major brownie points.

6. LUSH

This is the standard gift and perfect for a Christmas Eve bath. If you couldn't come up with this present on your own then please pay close attention to this blog because oh buddy you will need it! There are so many gift boxes to choose from at Lush and the great thing is you can't go wrong with any of them. Not to worry if you don't have a bath too because I also have you covered with these Lush sprays which are sooo good that you won't need to work out what their favourite perfume is for the third year in a row. (Also a great brand to support for its morals which is a bonus!!)

7. BLANKETS

Not only perfect for those cosy Winter and lockdown nights but also a great home decor item that is so popular on Instagram! These massive knit blankets can get incredibly pricey online, ranging from 20ish quid for a tiny one to a few hundred for the massive ones, so if you're willing to pay that then go ahead but top tip is to have a look in Home Bargains because they had these guys in all year for £25 and even Primark Home had a few in recently but I'd get ahead of the game for this one before they sell out...

8. JEWELLERY

Now I'm not a massive jewellery fan myself but some girls just go ga-ga for a princess ring. If you're wondering if your girlfriend/sister/daughter is one of them you can identify these people by their less-than-subtle 'just gonna post this here xx' social media posts sharing the Pandora sales. I know most boys get scared to choose jewellery in case the person 'doesn't like it' blah blah but chances are unless they've told you somethng they specifically want or you've been missing some massive hints (ie. ring photos 'accidentally' sent to you) then they'll appreciate literally anything you choose. It's the idea you've went and chosen something specifically for them more than the item itself that matters. If you like it, they'll like it more. The big site is Pandora and many sites like it will have 'Christmas Gift Guide' sections to make it super easy for you. Top tip: you could do a wee price low-high if this is just an add-on gift and although it's horrible to say they will most likely look it up and check how much you spent on it... sorry about that!

9. EYESHADOW PALETTE

Now this is one you will most likely skip over because it feels like delving into a massive jungle with no map and no water and actually no shoes and no clue whatsoever of where to start. That's what boys feel like trying to buy girls make up and I really can't blame you. In fact, if you haven't been told exactly what to buy then who could blame you but if you're really looking to impress and go the extra mile and know they like make up then I'm going to attempt to help you as best I can and try and keep it really simple! So, first of all you'll need to somehow have a look at their collection when they're getting ready or be super stealthy and just double check they don't have the palette you're going to get them.

This is important. Right, so question one is do they watch YouTubers do make up? Because if they do then simply find out who they watch and check if that influencer has a palette or collab with a makeup brand because then your job is done for you!! If they've told you all about the James Charles/Tatti/Jefree Starr drama that encapsulated YouTube in the past then find out who's side they support because all three of those guys have palettes! James Charles x Morphe Artistry palette, Tatti has her own brand, or if they came out supporting Jeffree Starr and Shane Dawson in the whole fiasco then the Jeffree Starr 'Conspiracy palette' is for you. To each their own. These two main palettes I've featured on the left below for you to have a look at.

The top right palette is the new HUDA Beauty Naughty Nude palette and it's the one I'd go for if you're really unsure still! It's a new release so doubtful they have it and there's no crazy colours so can be used by everyone. It would be my top recommendation for make up this Christmas.

The three below that are all YouTuber/Influencer collabs with makeup brands that have been pretty popular this year. From the left: BPerfect x Stacey Marie Carnival III Love Tahiti Palette is one to get if you know they love doing colourful and adventurous looks, middle: Carli Bybel Palette x Anastasia Beverly Hills and far right: BPerfect x Jah Makeup Artist Clientele Palette are both perfect for more simple looks or if they don't go wild with colour and are both from big brands so will be very much appreciated!

God, this really could have been its own post where I explained it a bit better but alas...

10. HAIR CURLERS/WAVER

Maybe they're not as into makeup and prefer hair, or maybe they just love both? Then a Beauty Works hair styler would be a boujee gift for them. So, for this you can do the standard version of the products (gold) or you can do the newer versions in the collab with Molly Mae (pink). It's up to you. These products are pricey but great quality. First is the hair curler (Professional styler) which is great if both you and they love their hair curly, and you can't go wrong with Molly Mae's signature bouncy curls. The second option is a new trend in hair his year, The Waver, which creates the mermaid waves that I've pictured Molly Mae wearing below (and yes boys they’re different than curls) and a great gift if they already have the curler. Top tip: is to get these lads while ASOS have 20% off because you're grabbing yourself a bargain or if you're really on a budget many brands do these products without the hefty price tag.

BONUS: GIFT ADVENT CALENDER

This year there is a major boom in the idea of gift advent calendars, so behind every door is a small gift instead of chocolate. Now what would be super adorable is to buy advent boxes online and fill them yourself with personalised gifts but luckily many brands have brought out their own versions! The best one I have saw so far this year is this PrettyLittleThing beauty calendar but it has been sold out for some time now! ASOS etc. are doing their own versions and there have even been adorable versions in the likes of HomeBargains and B&Ms where you can get candle or even alcohol versions.

Well, I hope this helped even a little bit! If you're really on the ball you'll have noticed I haven't included anything like the staple Primark pyjamas or everything seems catered towards girlfriends or 'for her' but not to worry I've many more versions planned, including 'for him', 'on a budget', and 'how to dress up your present'!

Happy (very early) Christmas!🎁🎄

#giftguide #gifts for men #gifts for her #christmas gift #Christmas #presents

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anaspiringalice · 4 years ago

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Starting The Magic: How to Start Planning for Disneyland!

Disclaimer: I'm not a travel agent, Annual Passholder, cast member or associated with the Disney company in any way. The views, as with everything on my blog, expressed here are my own and how I personally begin to plan and will follow through planning. This is to help those who have no idea where to start. Planning is overwhelming. I go into far too much detail with planning, starting a year or more in advance as it's entertaining for me and take a lot of the anxiety out of the trip. I enjoy it and thus spend too much time doing it. I hope that what I have found will help others and reduce the stress of planning their own Disneyland vacations.

You've gone ahead and chosen Walt's original park to have your next vacation - Disneyland in California! An excellent choice and one you won't regret (but who would regret a Disney vacation? Perhaps those who don't plan it properly!) That begs the question: now that you've chosen your destination, where do you begin?

Hi, I'm Aspi! I'm an avid Disneyland fanatic and the purpose of my blog is to share my own knowledge, experiences and mistakes so that you can learn from them and plan your own trip. I want to compile Disneyland tips, tricks, how-to's, suggestions and little bits of magic .. all while removing as much of the stress as possible to help your own trip. Please read my blog disclaimer before continuing!

WHO'S COMING?

One of the most important things is to figure out who is coming, as the people you bring (as well as the number of them) will have the largest impact on the rest of the planning. They present the most variables you need to account for: scheduling, rides, food, budget and more. Everybody has their own way of doing things, so by planning and allowing for that, the process becomes that much easier. Far less meltdowns and stress and much more fun ahead!

When I planned for my sister and I back in 2018, I had no problem getting a rough draft of what to expect. Not only did we grow up together, we share many of the same interests and opinions on Disney and how we prefer our days to go. We know each other's strengths and weaknesses and what would be tough in the park, our sleeping and eating habits, staying all day, remaining in the "disney bubble" and the like! She's been to the park several times before, so it was easy for her to communicate what she did and didn't enjoy about her previous trips. With a year for me to plan, it was more than enough time to figure out what we didn't see eye to eye on and plan a vacation that would be magical - for the both of us! I'm happy to say it was a success, and it meant so much to me when she said I'd been her favourite to visit with and that our trip had been the most magical of all the others she'd been on. In fact, she was even bored of Disneyland and didn't want to go, she just wanted to spend time with me! Now she can't wait to go back.

This time around, I was in more of a pickle as I don't have that experience with the group I'm going with. I want to do for them what I did for my sister; make it magical and memorable. While I've known two of the people I'm travelling with for almost fifteen years, having gone with them to many anime conventions, I know Disneyland puts even the largest con to shame and poses bigger and different problems than struggling to put contacts in or staying up until 3AM to paint scales on a dress. The third person I'm friends with, but I've only known for about three years and haven't had the pleasure of going on a trip with or getting to know as well as I'd like to! I don't know the fourth at all and really wanted for us to connect and get a sense of how well everyone worked together and what their preferences were. More on this in a moment!

WHEN TO GO?

Fortunately for us, the time of year or the amount of days wasn't even a question! It was without hesitation that we wanted to experience the Halloween season and attend Oogie Boogie's Bash on the 31st, with 5 Day Park-Hoppers. Unfortunately, life goes as it does, and several factors such as COVID-19 and a wedding just made those dates not work for us. We've adjusted our dates and will now be visiting in early November, hopefully enjoying the first few days of the Christmas season.

In any other situation, the way I narrow down when to go is factored in by all of the following points, which makes it easy to choose the month and year. I don't tackle these things in specific order or worry about hte exact day, unless there's a specific celebration, as that is narrowed naturally by things like days off of work, openings in hotels, crowd levels, flight prices, Disney tickets, etc.

» Budgeting. Of course, this is a rough ballpark of what you want to spend. I take into account items to purchase as well such as clothes or shoes for the trip, food, tours, character dining, flights, hotel, transportation, gifts and merchandise. I find around $5,000 is my ideal budget without having to worry about money while I'm there and to be more than enough extra, including for emergencies or if something doesn't go as planned. Plus, it feels good to come home realizing you spent $1,500+ less than what you budgeted for! You want to find out what works for you. Take the time to browse prices, what interests you in the parks and how long it takes to raise what you can comfortably afford. It might be a few months, or even a few years. Keep in mind your budget may look different, as I may be interested in different things or you may be driving/have cheaper flights and may not need to factor in conversion rates if Disneyland isn't an international park for you. I'm Canadian, so this is something I need to keep in mind!

» Celebrations/Holidays. These are things that you would like to be, or not to be, in the park for. Consider birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, new ride or land openings, special parades and shows, park events such as Dapper Day, holidays and the like. One of our members comes from a military family, so wasn't wanting to be in the parks on Remembrance Day as it's an important day for her family if we could help it!

» Refurbishments. Consider attractions that would completely ruin your trip if they were unable to be ridden while you were there. I personally have six that I couldn't imagine not riding, but the only ones that would completely ruin my trip would be Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Carribbean. Indiana was originally planned for refurb in 2020, but due to COVID, I'm not expecting that to happen this year; if it did, I would re-schedule in a heartbeat. This happened to me with the Matterhorn in 2018, as I'd never ridden it before and wanted to! I also missed seeing Fantasmic as the last day it was available was our first day there. Make sure to check the schedules!

» Crowd Levels. This, I’m sure, is the major factor for most people. Nobody wants to be elbow-to-elbow walking from point A to point B; but it’s hard to say for sure what the park will be like on any given day. Fortunately for us, there’s plenty of tools out there to help you make educated estimates on levels. While my personal favourite is IsItPacked, you do need to take into account Public Holidays as well as thing like Events or Refurbishments and seasonal holidays such as spring break. There are many websites that have articles on the best and worst times to go, some of them being MouseSavers, IsItPacked, GetAwayToday and DisneyTouristBlog.

» Weather. I will likely lose a lot of you on this one as I don’t mind a rainy day or two or the colder weather and I find it much more comfortable than any amount of heat, but of course nobody likes to be out in line for two hours when it’s sweltering. Take the time to check historical averages and some information on Disneyland during different times of the year. Weather also affects what rides are operating and how long the parks are open, so do take that into account too!

WHERE TO STAY?

Disneyland currently offers three official hotels; Disneyland Hotel, Paradise Pier & the Grand Californian. However, there are many places to stay right across the street for just a fraction of the cost, some being even closer than the official hotels! With that, I think my opinion on the matter is pretty clear: I don't think it's worth it to stay on-property at Disneyland. Some say the benefits aren't worth losing, but other hotels offer similar amenities for a little extra (but still remain lower than the average night at a Disney hotel.) Some things may be done yourself in "DIY" fashion, or made up for in other areas!

» Extra Magic Hour. The perk of entering earlier every single day of your stay compared to entering early only once is easily made up for with a good itinerary and time management. If you are willing to fork over the extra money just for this, then I recommend the Max Pass as a still-cheaper and even better solution as you have access to all PhotoPass photos, including ride photos.

» Proximity. With the exception of the Grand Californian, several hotels are actually much closer to the parks. Those that aren't are only a few minutes more walking distance, may offer free or low-charge shuttles to and from the parks, or are only a $5-7 Uber ride away; all of which are cheaper than the average nightly rate.

» Theme. Personally, I was less than impressed with the Disneyland Hotel when I visited in 2018. After a meltdown where my sister ducked me into the nearest bathroom to calm down, I was a little disorientated and had to ask where we were.. because the themeing was just so minimal. Apart from the teacup-chairs and headboards in the rooms, the dark carpet and odd texures mixed with historical elements that I feel would be better off highlighted in a tour.. it just felt far too dirty, focusing on quantity rather than quality with no privacy in areas like the pool. It was disenchanting and unwelcoming in comparison to the gorgeous Majestic Garden, offering full-out castle themeing with a rose garden and koi pond, not to mention a fairytale surrounding the hotel with its own Princesses who wanders the halls and tells her story nightly by the fireside and even responds to letters. The Grand Californian was beautiful, but I feel the cost of staying is better put to use with more days in the park at an off-property hotel. We never visited Paradise Pier, though it was almost our hotel of choice, but the cons outweighed the pros. With so many hotels much more beautiful than Disney's, as well as AirBNB's in the area, offering so much more private space and even full kitchens... it's just not worth it, to me. I do think it is more than worth it to take half a day or so to tour the hotels and the lobby, especially during holidays, but I’m not fond of the themes otherwise.

» Character Dining. This is offered in other locations, my favourite being the in-park Minnie's Breakfast At The Plaza Inn.

» Reservation Priority. For most everything you would want to reserve, they may typically be made up to 60 days in advance for non-hotel guests and there is generally no issue with booking if you're early enough.

» In-Room Celebrations. As far as this goes, I will be making a post at a later time in my AddALittleMagic section which presents a DIY Method to bring in a cheaper celebration. Part of what this will mention is various Princess Party businesses, which bring in characters who will do a series of activities. I'm sure if you phone those companies, they'd be more than willing to offer specialized wake-up calls as well, just like the Disney property hotels.

The only benefit I see as worthwhile for staying on Disney property is the Package Express, which delivers items directly to your room for you. Even then, there is something so special to me about choosing a particular item in a store with friends and family. Some of my strongest memories in the parks, including one of my very few memories of my 2004 trip, were choosing items in the store and carrying it around the rest of the day. There are locker rentals for larger and more cumbersome purchases, but I also recommend midday breaks back at your hotel.. which just trumps the benefits of the Package Express. The decision of staying on or off property is completely up to you, but I would much rather buy an extra day or two in the park!

How do I choose where to stay?

I don’t have a fancy way of narrowing down the options which I use, but I am thorough in choosing where to spend the night. The method I use is meticulous, but well worth it. I consider the amenities the people I travel with would like or need, ranging anywhere from free breakfast, pool, gym, suite, connecting rooms as well as a their overall budget.

From there, I search on Google Maps for “Disneyland Hotels” and keep within a few blocks of the park itself to make sure everything is in walking distance or only a short Uber ride away. I use the options to narrow down guests staying, the dates and the price per night. I visit the websites of these hotels and view the rooms, listing pro’s and con’s. I then do similar on the AirBNB website and compare amenities and price! When I’ve narrowed it down to the top 5, I take the list to those I’m staying with and ask them their opinions - voicing what I think the best option for us is.

The most beautiful hotel I found in the area, offering so much for such a ridiculously low price, is the Majestic Garden Hotel where my sister and I stayed in 2018. I have stayed in many a hotel and AirBNB and the service and quality offered here is completely unmatched.

For 2020, my group and I will be staying at the Hyatt House. I was sad to compromise with this, but we would have needed two rooms at the Majestic Garden - which doesn’t offer free breakfast either, so it made more sense costwise and it was important for us to all be in one room. We’ll still be visiting the Majestic Garden during our trip, to tour the hotel and eat the amazing sliders at their bar!

Other places which I haven’t had the pleasure of staying at, but I would have stayed in a heartbeat, is this gorgeous Peter-Pan themed AirBNB. The host also offers several other spaces themed to Disney movies, but I’m a sucker for Peter! There was also this stunning muted pink-and-grey townhouse!

I sincerely hope that this post helped you in some way and would appreciate a follow if you would like to see more! I’ll be making plenty of posts about Disneyland and my planning process. *No affilliate links are featured in this post. All opinions are my own.

#disneyland #disneyland planning #disney vacation #tripplanning #startingmagic #novtrip

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iridessence · 5 years ago

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Are you rich?

Okay lmaoooo loaded question that will need some unpacking.

Short answer: Not at all. “Rich” is subjective, but in any case if you (or a person from a finance background) took note of my life’s expenses versus my income on and off paper, it would be clear that I am nowhere near rich at all. I’m just very resourceful, creative and selective about what I show/curate online.

Long answer: I have been low to low-ish income for years (part of why I am so resourceful) and in 2017/2018 I worked an office job for under $15/hr which is not much if you live in a major city like me, but thankfully I have no dependents I must support nor any serious medical debt. I left the job because it was a hellish soul-suck.

I was savvy when I had steady income. now I’m living off savings and before COVID, I was supplementing with income from burlesque and modeling gigs, and help from my mom here or there. Right around the time I planned to return to the 9-5 workforce was when Covid hit, it’s left the world in financial shambles so I’m biding my time until it’s safe and I’ve been looking for jobs, outside of a few paid influencer opportunities here and there. in the meantime, personal loans, government assistance, selling some of my stuff I don’t use on depop and whatever my mom helps me out with, keep me afloat.

Not that it has to be public knowledge but when my father passed away in 2017, I got a little bit of insurance money which had been supplemental. It bumped me up to about the equivalent of someone working an actual livable wage (meaning NOT the minimum) in Chicago for about a year and a half, and ultimately came at the expense of, well, my father being dead. It basically meant that I could pay all of my bills, donate a little bit to help others when needed, buy some new (but still cheaper) clothes, finance a few costumes for burlesque (more expensive but still i did a lot of the work/research to make them a fraction of what they would cost if made by others) and put away a little bit to travel/wine & dine on a budget which I did here and there, not rich. Since sometime in 2019 the remainder of my savings ended up being used mainly for rent and such.

While I don’t think people should be straight up asking questions like this to strangers, I personally do want to be transparent because I don’t want people to think they absolutely have to be rich to enjoy a certain kind of aesthetic lifestyle for a moment here and there. Sure— if you’re not rich, it’s not luxurious most of the time and it’s more difficult, taking more planning and thought, but it’s not entirely impossible.

Some examples on how else I save money. These are some helpful guidelines, but I understand it may not be applicable for everyone's situation:

I have dietary restrictions anyway so I make a lot of my own food at home, I rarely get takeout or eat out.

I use a little bit of extra gas money to go to more affordable grocery stores and try to buy in bulk/on sale items.

I fixed up my space as much as I can but I do live in a somewhat rundown building where rent is not the highest for the amount of space there is.

most of my furniture and appliances, even a few electronics, and other things that populate my home are secondhand. I try to get a lot of things that are safe to get used, second hand.

i save a lot on toiletries and personal care products because my hair regimen is mainly coconut oil, leave-in and water. due to protective styling, I shampoo/condition less than average for most people as washing more frequently did not give me the results I was looking for. in regard to hygiene I use a lot of natural items, i mostly use apple cider vinegar in lieu of soap (the main perk of having sensitive skin that doesn’t like detergents lmao) and coconut oil or whipped Shea butter for skin moisturizing, Much of the stuff is not fancy and you can usually get it at a grocery store for cheap. The only skincare products i use aside from coconut oil is retinol serum and rose aloe spray which i buy a couple times a year for <$30

I typically only style myself hair and makeup wise, mainly use palettes that if name brand, were gifted, or they were drugstore and wholesale prices.

When i would go out for a "fancy night out," i most likely pregamed at home or a friend’s with free/cheap booze, and took a short uber or public transportation to a fancy-looking destination and only bought one or two drinks/appetizers there and tipped accordingly. Looking fabulous is the bulk of it and the fun part, but I’m certainly not on a bottle service budget.

When I travel for any destination, especially burlesque, I’ve tried to save on out of town housing by staying with family/friends, trusted community members, long-standing and/or trusted mutuals from tumblr/Instagram and as a last resort, a HomeAway booking. Hotels cost a lot and I’d rather have an opportunity to get to know someone who operates in the same circles I do if possible.

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critrolecloset · 6 years ago

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if you’re trying to get your #jocksmachina on with travis’ retro fitness outfit, i have good news! i consider this one of the easier campaign 2 opening looks and majority of these pieces are quick online buys. for those who may not have a wide variety of local thrifting options, travis’ ensemble may be the right cosplay choice for you.

with this guide, i also decided to go with the less-is-more approach, but don’t hesitate to message me if you would like to see more options added to the list.

final note: most of these are items found through amazon. here is a quick link of my storefront to save you a few clicks! and if you haven’t already, check out taliesin’s guide posted a couple weeks ago.

1. red bandana

chances are you can find a pack of bandanas at your nearest gas station, but here is one available on amazon for just $5.

2. chain necklace

one of the smaller details in travis’ outfit is a thin, silver chain necklace. i think this is one that could be overlooked for those who are on a budget, otherwise i do think this one for $9 by laimala on amazon is a good choice. length wise, you will want to get a chain around 14 or 15 inches.

3. grey sleeveless hoodie

this will be the most important part of the look. travis’ vintage sweater is by aviator nation in the “disco stitch” style (the sleeves were later removed), but unfortunately i can’t find any reference photos. here is a modern example of the hoodie by the same brand.

thankfully, you have options to recreate your own hoodie and not pay $200 for a modern version. the “mens casual lightweight sleeveless zip-up vest tank hoodie” by h2h is $13-$34 and is a fantastic, simple base to add on to. (thank you to skeikahsforge on instagram for the recommendation. he also shared a photo of his final version of the altered hoodie with added stripes, so feel free to use this as inspiration.)

if you have access to a sewing machine, attaching strips of light blue, dark blue, and pink wrapping around the sweater can be done in less than a day. for those who don’t have access to a machine or aren’t skilled with a needle, you can always apply the strips using fabric glue. this process will be a little more tedious, but it’s better than having no stripes at all.

4. watch

with the watch, there are a few things to consider. are you on a budget? is accuracy your priority? will this is be a one-time wear, or something you want to actually invest in? genuine vintage watches can cost hundreds of dollars, so the options i’m listing here are on the more affordable side. (if anyone wants to see pricier options, let me know!) personally, i think as long as you have something bulky with a black or blue color, you’re good to go.

jennifer newman, the costume designer for the opening, did share a close-up photo of travis’ watch in this critical cosplay thread. the sports watch seems to be a membership gift from the humane society of the united states, but the year is unknown.

although it’s not vintage, this 2008 membership watch is only $4 on ebay and would be an affordable and similar option.

this “casio men’s quartz resin sports watch” is $12 on amazon and may not have the same circular shape as travis’, but it’s on the cheaper end and still gives off that effortless 80′s vibe.

a solid middle-of-the-road option is the “marathon by timex full-size watch” in blue/black, available for $24 on amazon. this one will pop out the most and is good for anyone who would actually like a practical watch and not just a prop.

5. sweatpants

the sweatpants here are likely the “hanes men’s eco smart open leg fleece pant with pockets” in navy, available for $8 on amazon.

6. converse shoes

travis’ exact shoes are the “converse chuck taylor all star II” in thunder/white, which are available on amazon. for whatever reason, the price on these are extremely varied, but they typically go for $25-$50. before buying a new set, i recommend checking out sites like poshmark and ebay. you can often find gently used or even unworn pairs for around the $30 mark.

#critical role #campaign 2 opening #travis willingham #travis willingham closet

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pleasinglytherandom · 5 years ago

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A Guide to how to make Wedding Planning Easy!

Can’t afford a planner or don’t trust people to do things right for you? Then look no further! (Or if you want inspiration for your writing, that’s cool too.) Okay, first and foremost... Step 1! Define your budget. -Literally everything about your wedding is going to be whether you can afford to or not. It will make the difference of having a courthouse wedding or having a far off destination wedding with the best beach on the island. -Budgeting also makes it easier to be organized and figure out what is more important to spend that money on.

Step 2! Figure out what you value most. -Money aside, don’t let people tell you what to do with you and your partner’s special day. Some want it more grandiose and big and fancy, and some want it small, simple, and short. Do you care more about the people there or do you care more about how it looks aesthetic wise? Who cares? That’s up to you. What you value is where you will put your money to. Seriously. -What you value is also most likely what you will remember most about your wedding.

Step 3! Make a checklist. -Organization is key to planning. You don’t want to have forgotten something major a month before your wedding. What I personally do is use Wedding Wire, an app that helps keep track of what I need to do month by month. Don’t like using apps? Go ahead and start writing down what you know for a fact you want/need for your wedding. Hell, look up online what other people have done and cross-check what you want and don’t want. Seeing what other people have done and how they managed to plan their wedding (even in different time spans) is not only inspiring but also helpful. Prioritize what is most important and check off each item one at a time. It is easy to feel overwhelmed when it’s all in your head, but seeing it physically on a timely basis makes it easier to manage.

Step 4! Communicate with your partner. -I do not care how much your partner insists that they don’t care. You tell them what you want to do and see if they agree. It might not even by the idea itself, it could be the amount of money it costs, it could be the people involved, it could be the many other things that will make them upset. And whether you like it or not, the wedding is a two-person ordeal. It’s not just you that is part of this, it is the person you chose to be with for the rest of your life. And who knows, they can make the wedding even better with their ideas?

Step 5! Don’t sweat the details. -I am serious, don’t focus on the teeny tiny things that won’t matter in the end. I can guarantee you, you aren’t going to remember whether the table cloth matched the plates and your color scheme. Leave the small details for the very end to tidy up what is missing. The venue, the food, the people, and many other things before that are more important than if you want something embroidered on your napkins. Not only will you stress yourself out more, you will end up spending more if you consider those things. Companies purposely upcharge and ask those questions to get more money out of you. - Just don’t do it.

Step 6! Don’t procrastinate. -This should be a given, but I will emphasize it. Time is money, and if you have less time to plan, you will not care how much you spend, you will do what you have to to make sure your wedding day not only succeeds but that it happens at all. Yes, your wedding is a once in a lifetime event, but don’t spend more than you have to because you decided not to book anything for 6 months. On top of that, most contracts upcharge you for last-minute bookings and stress them out. Don’t be that person and think you have plenty of time. No, you don’t. Stay on top of that shit. Time flies and before you know it, you will be walking down the aisle.

Step 7! Legal shit. -Weddings are glamourous and fantastical and a whirlpool of stress, but don’t forget to look into the legal part of what it means to be married. Some states require a certain time limit of when you get your marriage license before the ceremony! You will need witnesses to oversee your marriage! You will need to get a whole different social security number since you are technically becoming a new identity if you are taking your partner’s last name! And since you are changing your name, you will need to change accounts, update information, etc, etc. It’s the boring-ass part, but it is an important part. Research your state’s legal requirements!

Step 8! Last but not least, enjoy the process. -Uh, hello, it’s your wedding. Have fun and be creative! -People make wedding planning out to be this whole monster that needs to be slain but simplify it. Break it down where you can enjoy going out and looking at venues, trying delicious food, trying on dresses/suits, etc. It really isn’t that big of a deal. Even if you hate planning and needing to be organized, the fact it is your wedding makes it personal and important to you. And hey, even if you do hire a wedding planner, still take the time to enjoy making decisions and going out to do these things. The wedding planner just does the hard part for you-research.

Examples! I may have given all these tips and advice, but if you are the person that needs the basic information to compare what to do, I will show you my thought process and what I did first.

Top priority: Setting wedding date, finding a venue, colors and theme, designating a budget, designating roles to family and friends on who helps with what Second priority: Catering/food, buying decorations when they are on sale, researching, downloading Wedding Wire to help organize my thoughts and finding what’s important to me, creating guest list and seating chart, using pintrest to get ideas of what I like Third priority: Find photographer/videographer, find dress/suits, find dj/band, find officiant, create wedding invites/announcements/etc, adding/find gift registries, wedding insurance, transportation Fourth priority: Hair and makeup stylist, accessories, accommodations, setting rehearsal if need be, wedding bands/rings, gifts and favors, writing vows if need be Some things like alcohol and food and if things are disposable kinda went together with other priorities like alcohol going with a venue, and so did insurance, a catering company does the set up for us, dj helped with the theme, and so on. You want to look into things and ask questions and see if there are discounts or bundles that will help make your day enjoyable and less stressful. If you have questions for me, please leave them in comments or ask on my blog and I will add onto this thread for those! I hope this helped!

#wedding guide #advice #organization #planning #inspiration

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kitto-toberu-sa · 6 years ago

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Sailor Moon The Super Live Report - September 3rd (last performance, heart team)

Place: Aiia Theatre Placement: Row 2, Seat 5 (Front, far left)

Performance I bought another ticket after the first show… And lost it.

After a lot of debating, I decided to buy one at the door. I got a side seat, so I was worried about my view, but it was row 2, seat 5. A lot smoother than the last show. I felt like they had nailed everything and were able to bring more of themselves into the character, and build upon what they’d started. For example, Sena was a lot more idol-y and winked a lot more, while Jupiter had a more confident aura around her. The only one who I didn’t really feel it from was Mercury, who seemed to struggle with keeping the right amount of spacing around her.

I’m not sure if this was a mic issue, but it looks like it was just cut. In the school scene, when the fight is over, a few characters said goodbye to Usagi, but it seems like it was just replaced with waving. I really don’t like that. It robs the class of personality, Usagi of friends and honestly costs nothing to add? If you hadn’t seen it with the dialogue, it probably isn’t a big deal, but I personally think the scene lost a human touch, and did look more like a production because of it.

In the Harajuku scene (just after it), there’s a bit where Usagi paints the screens. However, tonight the crew turned on the paint too early. It was for a brief second, but turning it on, then off and then on a moment later kind of took me out of the play. I know how hard stage work is from my own experience, so I don’t judge them, but as a consumer you also want a perfect product.

We start to see Kunzite/Venus happening in the fight scene. I’m honestly not a major fan of this ship, (and that whole subplot in all honesty), but it was done subtly so I didn’t mind it.

Being so much closer to the stage was great. I was able to see the details on everyone’s faces so much more clearly. When Beryl dances with Tux, it was nice the first time, but DAMN. This time? Was AMAZING! She was very much a woman in control, who knew she was strong, who had everything she wished for. She knew she was hot, she knew she was practically unstoppable and had taken everything from her enemies and got everything she wanted. Girl can MOVE. She was having a great time and the whole dance was a great show off of her as a character and was just fantastic! She was honestly just sexy. Her confidence and aura was amazing!

During the fight scene against Mask, I was able to see a lot more details. For example, Mercury using her items to assess the enemy properly. It’s definitely worth seeing shows a second time and from a different seat if possible, especially ones that have so much movement and so many characters everywhere like this one.

Venus’ looks towards Kunzite were also amazing. At one point he held her and it was wonderful. Also the strong expressions on Jupiter’s face~

One big problem was the final scene where Usagi fights Beryl. She goes under the stage as she’s enveloped by Beryl’s darkness (a giant sheet). However, whoever was pulling it back didn’t pull it back properly, so she couldn’t get out. It… didn’t look professional. Her mic might have also been on and a few words were caught before it was turned off or they realised and stopped talking.

This isn’t something to get mad about, but it is bad design. In the first show I saw, there wasn’t a problem but at points the sheet was on stage, instead of being dragged in enough, so it just kinda looked ugly. It’s understandable – this show needs to be easy to perform and easy enough to understand, but also easy enough to travel overseas on a relatively small budget.

Song Everyone had improved a lot. Mics seemed to be in better positions and everyone seemed more confident.

When Beryl and Kunzite sang, it sounded a lot better than it did the other night. I think this was partly due to mic position and timing, but also confidence and practice. They sounded soooo good.

Interestingly, the cast didn’t seem to be into high fives as much tonight? I guess with a high touch event straight after I can see why. I made a lot of eye contact with the cast this time around, since I was so close to the stage. I stick out a lot too, which helps in situations like these lol. Beryl and Kunzite were both very cool and responded in character. Honestly fam, Beryl can step on me any day of the week (and yes, I said that for the live action Beryl too).

(I think that says a lot more about me than I care to admit ;;;)

Mercury didn’t seem to make as much eye contact with people (though looking into it, she seems to be just making her way into the world of entertainment, so this is possibly her first time in such a big show), while Venus was trying to impress as much of the audience as she could. She had a LOT of fans tonight. The crowd as a whole was much more into it than opening night. (It seems the diamond team came to support them, so it could have been them making all the noise lol)

It’s really nice when the fans get into it. I never want to get too into it unless other people are, because being foreign, you stick out. But I feel like someone needs to start it too…. But tonight’s crowd was cheering like mad, so I’m glad~

After Venus came in through the crowd back onto the stage, she ran up to Kunzite and he hugged her. It looked completely unplanned, but it was gorgeous. As I said, I don’t ship them, but half the audience, myself included, squealed. This whole performance felt a lot more polished, and you could see how each actress brought her character to life a lot more clearly.

I noticed at Moonlight Densetsu, when the streamers were released, there were smaller ones in the mix, as well as bubbles maybe?

High Touch This session came with a high touch (high five) session after the show! You basically line up, high five and leave. Some people left beforehand, which I find weird. Why not get the most bang for your buck?

The line up was: Jupiter, Mercury, Tuxedo, Moon, Mars, Venus.

Out of the five scouts, I feel Jupiter improved the most from the other day. She was very smiley and just had a nice amount of confidence around her, both on and off the stage. She’s very pretty too~

But, my fave interaction was with Tuxedo Mask~ As I said, I’m pretty much here for Sena, despite being a Mars fans. But I saw last year’s musical in Nagoya. So seeing someone on a big stage and in a bigger production compared to a small stage and small production was interesting. She made a really good Tuxedo Mask, and if they continue to make musicals (I say if, since we don’t have full information on next year’s project yet and there’s no promise it won’t be cancelled), I hope they keep her on as a cast member!

My hair is currently bright blue, and she said it was wonderful~ I’m not going to lie, getting a compliment alone was worth the ticket price haha!

I also told Sena that I like her a lot and thanked her for her work, which she responded well to. But… Tuxedo Mask stole the show, sorry Sena~ It’s always nice when the cast call out to you instead of reacting to what you said. I’ll treasure this moment forever~ <3

Today the gift I received was Venus! So I’m super happy~

And…. I have a confession….

I brought another ticket for Friday’s show…

It’s also a high touch session. It’s the blue note team, which has Kasai Tomomi as Sailor Moon. I used to be a big AKB48 fan, and while I’m not as much of a fan anymore, and wasn’t a fan of her when she was in the group, I’ve started liking her since she released her last album. I’m curious to see how her team goes! But I swear, that will be my last ticket haha!

Summary Enjoyable: 5/5 Worth the ticket price: 5/5 Re-watchable: 4/5 If this was sold on dvd, would I buy it: 4/5

#Sailor Moon #Sailor Myu #Sailor Moon The Super Live #The Hoopers #Kasai Tomomi

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blogsteveclark12 · 3 years ago

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12 Things to Buy Used If You Want to Save Money

1) Clothes

Buying used clothes in one of the easiest ways to save money. I’ve found thrift and second-hand stores to be great for finding casual weekend wear and business casual clothes.

I can’t tell you how many Banana Republic and J. Crew items I see every time I browse the racks. Some people might think that only old, worn, unfashionable clothes are found second-hand but that’s not true.

Related items worth buying second-hand:

Designer clothes and purses – Designer clothes are expensive. Let someone else pay the bulk of the cost by buying them retail first. Then you can save by buying second-hand. Just be sure to read up on the difference between counterfeit and authentic products to ensure you get the real thing.

School uniforms – Some schools that require uniforms (e.g., Catholic schools with plaid skirts), have programs for parents to sell their children’s old uniforms. Many children will outgrow their clothes while they’re still in good condition.

2) Wedding dresses

Most women wear their wedding dress for one day and maybe only a few hours at that, so it might not make sense to spend a few thousand on a dress.

You can get one for much less than retail if you’re open to wearing a used one. Most sellers are willing to negotiate too because they really want to sell, so negotiations favor the buyer.

Take a good look at the website’s and seller’s return policies before purchasing. Many times there are no refunds.

Ask lots of questions and ask for more pictures if needed. If you can, try on the style in a store first to be sure it’s the one and then buy it second-hand.

3) Jewelry

Fine jewelry is another area where resale prices are often much lower than retail. You can even buy an affordable engagement ring second-hand.

If you’re a fan of vintage or antique pieces, you can find beautiful pieces in styles that aren’t even made anymore. Shop at local jewelers, estate sales, and online for the best finds.

4) Baby items

Babies grow quickly and often outgrow their clothes and toys before they’ve gotten much or any use. I’ve seen lots of children and baby clothes still with tags on them at the thrift stores.

And it’s not just clothes too. Toys like play mats are quickly outgrown too. Check out online parent groups for listings.

5) Toys & Games

Having stepped into the houses of friends and family with young children recently, I’ve been blown away by the number of toys they have. Livings rooms and bedrooms full of toys, more than the children can reasonably play with. Those toys and games end up as donations to the thrift store or offered at garage sales.

My favorite thing to buy is puzzles, but I’ve seen plenty of games like Operation and Chutes and Ladders on shelves too.

I avoid plush animals because goodness knows what’s on them. Anything that looks in good condition and can be wiped down with sanitizer wipes is fair game

6) Books & Textbooks

Anyone who has been in school and had to buy their own books knows that textbooks are expensive. I remember having to budget several hundred dollars each semester in college just to be sure I bought all the books I needed.

I bought second-hand where I could, rented, and even borrowed a few. I didn’t matter if a book was a slightly older version as long as I could get the same information and do the homework.

If you need the book in your profession, it might be worth buying a new copy to keep. Otherwise, go second-hand and sell it when you’re done using it.

For other books, try the public library. You can borrow books for free or buy used books there for cheap. I borrow everything and only buy a book when I know I’m going to read it over and over again.

7) Furniture

If you’ve tried to furnish a home with furniture bought at retail, you know how expensive it can be. Thankfully, some people barely use the furniture they buy.

Maybe they decide to redecorate or they are moving and have to sell. I once came across computer chairs from an office that was closing.

Another easy way to get second-hand furniture is to ask friends and family for whatever extra they have. I’ve always tried to get furniture with fabric like sofas from people I know.

If you’re getting furniture from strangers, take a look at the item and make sure the person’s place is clean. You can’t be too careful about bedbugs and pet dander.

8) Bicycles

Like with many of the other items on this list, bikes are expensive new and depreciate in value once out the door. Many people buy bikes with the intention to ride them for exercise or fun and don’t use them much at all.

My partner got his used bike on Craigslist and loves it. I got mine as a hand-me-down from family. Unless you’re a serious bike enthusiast, a used one may work just fine for you.

As sad as this sounds, bikes are a major target for thieves in San Francisco. Save yourself the headache of being a more obvious target and having a new bike stolen by getting one that’s second-hand. If you want to save even more money, try biking instead of driving to work or for running errands.

9) Cars

We’ve all heard that cars depreciate significantly once off the lot and most of all in their first year. Buying a used car makes sense then, especially one that’s been well-maintained. Just make sure to do your research by checking a car’s value and having it inspected before purchasing.

10) Kitchen items

There are a lot of kitchen gadgets out there that people don’t use. The mixer that was a wedding gift but now sits at the back of the cabinet. Or the blender or crock pot that goes unused. My nearby Goodwill is full of plates and cups. Sometimes are pretty and come in full sets too.

11) Seasonal decorations

Seasonal decorations are just that, seasonal. How much do you want to spend on things that are on display for about 4 months of the year (or packed away for the other 8)? And while decorations are pretty, they don’t do much but sit around the house and look pretty.

So when I want to decorate my place, I shop thrift stores or ask family for items they’ve collected but don’t use anymore. It’s easy to replace decorations yearly too when they cost only a few dollars.

12) Athletic gear & workout equipment

Many of those items were still in good condition by the time we stopped playing a sport or outgrew the equipment. We’ve also known people with treadmills and stationary bikes that went unused.

Some final tips:

Do your research before purchasing. Sometimes second-hand isn’t cheaper than new.

Negotiate on price. Buying second-hand usually favors the buyer unless it’s a hot item. A potential buyer can always walk away if the price is not right, but a lot of sellers will agree to a lower price because they want to get rid of an item.

If you’re meeting someone in person off Craigslist or a similar site, meet in the daytime in a public place.

The more specific you are about something that you want, the longer you’ll have to wait for it. There may be a lot of black dresses out there, but you’ll have to wait or search more to find a fit-and-flare black dress with a waist tie and lace detail in your exact size.

If a deal is too good to be true, it probably is.

Nowadays, when I come across something I want, my first thought is whether or not it’s available and worth it to buy second-hand. I’m always happy when I do buy something used and it perfectly fits my needs.

I’ve saved hundreds if not thousands of dollars over the years by buying second-hand items. I can’t wait to save more in the future by doing the same and hope you do too! Check out the thrift store in panama City Beach, FL if you want to purchase gently used items.

#thrift stores #secondhand #thrifting #shopping

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samuelfields · 3 years ago

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Budget help: How to build a bulletproof budget

Even after 10+ years of spreading the Rich Life gospel, our founder Ramit Sethi still runs into people who need budget help. They typically:

(A) Don’t know how to build a budget.

(B) Don’t know how much they’re spending each month.

For example, this tweet:

The answers he got back were fascinating:

What do you notice about the responses?

Some common themes are fear, laziness, confusion, and even anger.

If that sounds familiar to you, that’s okay! We want to be there to help.

That’s why we’re going to break it down to the basics today on how you can build a budget.

Bonus: Want to know how to make as much money as you want and live life on your terms? Download my FREE Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Why you need budget help

When people think budgeting, images of their parents studiously going over receipts, writing down expenses in a notebook, and screaming, “HOW DID WE SPEND SO MUCH ON GAS LAST WEEK?” come to mind.

That might have worked for them … but it sure doesn’t work now.

How many times have you opened your bills, winced, then shrugged and said, “I guess I spent that much”?

How often do you feel guilty about buying something — but then do it anyway?

This is unconscious spending (aka “spreadsheet budgeting”). The main issue with it is simple: Human willpower.

Who wants to track their spending? The few people who actually try it find that their budgets completely fail after two days because tracking every penny is overwhelming.

Alternative budget building tips

Instead, we’re going to gently create a new, simple way of spending.

We’re going to help you redirect it to the places you choose, like investing, saving, and even spending more on the things you love (but less on the things you don’t).

This is going to be the foundation of your Conscious Spending Plan.

1. Know where your money is going

You know your money matters are out of whack when it feels like you’re starring in Macklemore’s Thrift Shop music video. When there is simply too much month for your paycheck, there’s a good chance you’re not aware of what your lifestyle actually costs.

It’s time to sit down and categorize your spending into four buckets.

Fixed costs

Investments

Savings

Guilt-free spending

Now, you’re going to see these four categories a lot throughout our personal finance articles and that is because all your expenses are contained in these categories. When you can pinpoint what belongs where you’ll quickly start understanding where the gaps in your financial plan are.

For instance, if you’re spending $500 per month on guilt-free spending and nothing on savings or investments, is it really guilt-free spending? Or if you have a fixed costs bill of $5,000, but your net income is $5,000, you might have a lifestyle you can’t afford.

Bonus: Ready to ditch debt, save money, and build real wealth? Download my FREE Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance.

Investments and savings are easy enough to tally up, but it’s worth going through your fixed costs and guilt-free spending categories to see whether you’re overspending.

Fixed costs examples

To make sure the money goes where it needs to, you need to complete your fixed costs category first. You also need to allocate funds to this category first.

If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, this is also the area you want to comb through to make sure you’re not paying for things you don’t actually need or want. You may find moving to a cheaper apartment or selling a car might allow you to breathe a little easier month-to-month, but the culling needs to make sense to you. What does it help to save $100 on rent every month only to spend $100 extra on traveling?

There are four major components that you simply can’t eliminate completely, or most people anyway. They’re housing, utilities, food, and transport. Other items in this category include internet costs, education, healthcare, debt repayments, insurances, and other expenses that pop up every month without fail.

Guilt-free spending examples

These are your subscription services, endless cups of Starbucks, expensive shoes, dining out, you get the picture? Now, just to be clear, just because we have this as a category, doesn’t mean we’re saying you need to allocate money to it. If you’re scraping the peanut butter jar so badly you’re starting to get plastic shavings on your sandwich, you may want to clear up some fixed expenses first.

2. Build your budgeting systems

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I’ll get that on payday” or “We’ll go there on payday” or my personal favorite, “Your birthday is so inconvenient. It’s smack bang in the middle of the month, who has money at that time?”. I’ll tell you who has money. People who know where their money goes.

That may seem a little, eh, harsh, but it’s not meant to be. You can be that person who doesn’t care whether someone has an event on the 1st or any other day for that matter. The only difference payday makes, is that it’s the day a new salary payment lands in your account. If that money isn’t carefully allocated into different categories, you’ll eat into money meant for savings and investments.

So how do you get off this slippery slope?

Allocate sub-accounts in your savings

While we’re big on investments, we also know the value of saving for short term goals. Chucking everything into one account with no clear direction is like throwing a mixed laundry load into the washing machine on a hot cycle. You just never know when your whites are going to turn pink.

Your savings account should have sub-categories that allow you to save up for your various needs. For instance:

Emergency fund: Ideally, you’ll have at least 3-6 months worth of fixed cost expenses saved in an emergency fund. But if you’re really ambitious, go for one year. The pandemic taught us many things, one of which is that a solid emergency fund can ease potential hardship.

Gifting and birthdays: If your budget is tight, it’s important that you budget birthdays and gifting ahead of time.

Car service and maintenance: If you don’t have a motor plan, you need to put money away for services, maintenance matters such as tires, and car-related things that might pop up. You don’t want to dip into emergency savings for predictable expenses.

Big deposits: Vacations, a wedding, downpayment on property or car, this is the category where that goes.

If you’re with a bank worth their weight in, uhm gold, they’ll allow you to open these sub-accounts at no extra charge and still offer to pay some interest on it. It might take you half an hour to set this up, but guess what, when it’s done, you don’t have to think about it again until you need to use it. Here are the savings accounts that we recommend – we are not affiliated with them in any way, but we use them and like them.

Automate your finances

We’re really, really big on this. Automating your personal finances is a game-changer.

It takes the fear of the unknown out of your finances

You don’t have to spend a ton of time on your finances (increasing the chances that you’ll actually stick to a system)

You’re able to identify holes or money traps in your budget

It helps you build good financial habits

You can automate your finances to such an extent that you simply have to give your bank accounts a glance over once in a while to make sure things are still running as they should.

Every single thing that needs to be paid, can be automated. Let’s have a look:

Credit cards: Set up your credit card to have the balance auto-paid every month from your checking account. Settling the balance in full every month is an important step in money management and will do wonders for your budget. Not only will you save on interest, but it also boosts your credit score if you manage to keep your usage to no more than 30%. Automatic payments also ensure that the card is paid on time, every time. The importance of this extends beyond your relationship with the credit card, it can also influence future financial products such as buying a house.

Investments: Instruct your company or investment firm to automatically withdraw a certain amount from your bank or every paycheck for your retirement accounts. Your goal is to automate your finances to such an extent that you’ve maxed out your allowable contributions to these accounts before moving on to other investment types such as index funds.

Savings: Predetermining your savings and setting up an auto-transfer to your savings pockets will free up time and will make you less inclined to spend the money before you save it. There will always be something to save for, even if you’ve reached the limit to your emergency savings. Think home upgrades, new tech, a wardrobe revamp.

Utilities: You can set up direct debit with most utility companies online. You know your utilities are up to date, you simply need to check the statement to make sure the amounts don’t differ. Other than that, there’s nothing else for you to do.

Bonus: Learn more about automating your finances with our FREE Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance. It’ll show you step-by-step how to set up your accounts.

3. Cut mercilessly on things you don’t love or need

Don’t like watching TV? Cancel the Netflix subscription. What about the gym subscription? Is it possible for you to get the same results at home?

Now move on to things that are a little more serious. Let’s talk about your property, for instance. There is a truckload of other expenses that you need to consider when buying a property. You’re not just going to have a long-term mortgage.

Before you even own the house, you need to have the downpayment, closing costs, and reserves on hand. While the downpayment and reserves are in your best interest, it may take time to build it up.

Ongoing costs to consider include HOA costs, insurances, property taxes, maintenance, and utilities. Now, ask yourself whether you’re still okay with it, or whether you might just be better off renting for a couple of years until you’re 100% sure you want to settle in a specific location.

Now, this might be an unpopular opinion, but owning a house is not the be-all and end-all our parents made it out to be. It’s damn expensive and you need to be financially secure enough to take it on. It’s not for everyone, especially those who consider themselves modern nomads.

You may not want to cut out every day items that you love, like lattes and dinners out with friends, but if you can make cuts on major expenses like housing, that’s a huge win.

4. Increase spending on the stuff that matters

Don’t let anyone tell you you’re wasting money when you’re spending it on the things that matter to you.

When you’ve done your bit and allocated money to all the other categories and you have money leftover, it’s your prerogative to spend it how you want. So what if you like $1,000 shoes? If you can afford it and it matters to you, then it belongs in your guilt-free spending category.

When you’re doing this right and you’ve allocated what you need to in the other categories, imagine getting the figure up to 30% or even 40% of your take-home pay?

5. Boost your income

Money isn’t everything, but if you like to live a life of experiences, being broke sucks. So how do you strike a balance between your top-heavy budget and some fun money? If you’ve already gone through the culling discussed in step 3, don’t reduce your savings or investments. Instead, look for ways to boost your income. Knowing how to make a budget is knowing how to make your money work.

Your salary might have potential

When was the last time you had a raise? If it was last year after a performance review and didn’t even compete with inflation, it’s time to take out your calculator and start doing the math. A raise today could lead to more retirement savings, higher future salaries, a bigger dent in your debt, and more fun money.

It’s worth the discussion and if you follow our founder Ramit Sethi’s negotiation steps, you might just be looking at a dream salary.

If you can’t increase your salary at your current job, why not put your feelers out and use those very same steps on your interviewer? Who knows, instead of a tiny increase, you might be looking at a salary hop of a couple of thousand dollars per year. It’s worth a look.

Negotiate your financial and non-financial products

You can reduce that fixed costs spending category in a matter of minutes simply by picking up the phone and reminding your service providers what a good customer you are.

Let’s start with banks. There is a smorgasbord of products they offer and each one is either designed to keep their liquidity high (savings accounts) or earn them the big dollars (by offering credit with interest).

You can either spend time negotiating half a percentage on your small savings account, or you can tackle the big-ticket items. For starters, if your mortgage is at a higher interest rate than it needs to be, check out the pros and cons of refinancing. Just make sure that if you go down this route, that the lender doesn’t hit you with a nasty processing fee.

Checking accounts and credit cards are two other products that can do with a price check. If you’re paying monthly or annual fees, it’s time to call them up and bring that figure down.

But there are other areas you can save.

Internet service providers that onboard new customers at a lower rate. Get them to lower yours too in order to keep your business.

Gym membership fees. Depending on the club and the length of time you’ve been with them, ask them to see if there’s a way to cut down on the fees.

Start a side hustle

A side hustle can be a great way to boost your income, especially if you start out with as few overheads as possible, for instance, an online business. It might take you a couple of months to start making money, but those months are going to pass anyway so why not do something anyway?

Now, figuring out which side hustle to start is easier than you think. If you know how to play an online game or order something online, you already have enough internet savvy to start your own thing. Yep.

Side hustles that require very little startup cash, if any, include freelance writing, stock photography (you probably have a better camera on your phone than the photographer next door with his 90’s lenses), or a dropshipping store.

Budgeting FAQs

How should a beginner budget?

It all starts with the basics. Know exactly how much is coming in and how much is going out. You may have to write it down until it becomes second nature. Then, you follow the steps above which include financial automation and conscious spending.

What are the 50/20/30 and 70/20/10 budget rules?

The 50/20/30 rule is a budget guideline that states 50% of your after-tax income should go towards commitments and obligatory expenses. Then 20% on savings and debt repayments and the remaining 30% on everything else.

The 70/20/10 states that 70% should go towards expenses, 20% on savings, and 10% on giving.

While these are handy when you’re still trying to figure things out, it’s important that you find a ratio that works for you. The goal is simple, decrease your debt, increase your savings and investments, and allow yourself some guilt-free spending.

What is the envelope system?

The idea is that you have an envelope for each payment category. So you’d have one for your housing, one for utilities, another for food, and so on. Great envelope systems include investments and savings too.

However, technology has shown us that everything’s easier when you automate it. Apps such as Fudget and Monefy are great for those who wish to use the envelope system. This allows you to stay on top of your obligations, have a proactive approach to budgeting, and not overspend.

Summary

A budget is not a spreadsheet. It’s a proactive approach to your finances and allows you the financial freedom to meet your financial obligations and commitments. It also allows your money to work for you and buy you great life experiences and the rich life you desire, all while building up the financial foundation for future you.

Get the ultimate guide to making money

The best way to ensure flexibility in your budget is to earn more money.

And there are a few different ways you can do this:

Negotiate a raise. If you have a job, this is a no-brainer … but it takes a lot of planning and study.

Tap into hidden income. With a few 5-minute phone calls you can save yourself THOUSANDS every year. Find out how with this free PDF.

Do freelance work. Starting a side hustle is one of my favorite ways to make money. Using the skills you already have, you can start fuel-injecting your income. Here’s how to find the best side hustle ideas today.

If you apply the right systems you can find the money to make expensive purchases AND earn money at the same time.

That’s why we want to offer you something:

The Ultimate Guide to Making Money

In it, Ramit has included his best strategies to:

Create multiple income streams so you always have a consistent source of revenue.

Start your own business and escape the 9-to-5 for good.

Increase your income by thousands of dollars a year through side hustles like freelancing.

Download a FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide today by entering your name and email below — and start earning more money today.

Yes, send me the Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Name *

Email *

Give me instant access!

100% privacy. No games, no B.S., no spam. When you sign up, we’ll keep you posted

Budget help: How to build a bulletproof budget is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/budget-help/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes

kennethherrerablog · 3 years ago

Text

Budget help: How to build a bulletproof budget

Even after 10+ years of spreading the Rich Life gospel, our founder Ramit Sethi still runs into people who need budget help. They typically:

(A) Don’t know how to build a budget.

(B) Don’t know how much they’re spending each month.

For example, this tweet:

The answers he got back were fascinating:

What do you notice about the responses?

Some common themes are fear, laziness, confusion, and even anger.

If that sounds familiar to you, that’s okay! We want to be there to help.

That’s why we’re going to break it down to the basics today on how you can build a budget.

Bonus: Want to know how to make as much money as you want and live life on your terms? Download my FREE Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Why you need budget help

When people think budgeting, images of their parents studiously going over receipts, writing down expenses in a notebook, and screaming, “HOW DID WE SPEND SO MUCH ON GAS LAST WEEK?” come to mind.

That might have worked for them … but it sure doesn’t work now.

How many times have you opened your bills, winced, then shrugged and said, “I guess I spent that much”?

How often do you feel guilty about buying something — but then do it anyway?

This is unconscious spending (aka “spreadsheet budgeting”). The main issue with it is simple: Human willpower.

Who wants to track their spending? The few people who actually try it find that their budgets completely fail after two days because tracking every penny is overwhelming.

Alternative budget building tips

Instead, we’re going to gently create a new, simple way of spending.

We’re going to help you redirect it to the places you choose, like investing, saving, and even spending more on the things you love (but less on the things you don’t).

This is going to be the foundation of your Conscious Spending Plan.

1. Know where your money is going

It’s time to sit down and categorize your spending into four buckets.

Fixed costs

Investments

Savings

Guilt-free spending

Bonus: Ready to ditch debt, save money, and build real wealth? Download my FREE Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance.

Investments and savings are easy enough to tally up, but it’s worth going through your fixed costs and guilt-free spending categories to see whether you’re overspending.

Fixed costs examples

To make sure the money goes where it needs to, you need to complete your fixed costs category first. You also need to allocate funds to this category first.

Guilt-free spending examples

2. Build your budgeting systems

So how do you get off this slippery slope?

Allocate sub-accounts in your savings

Your savings account should have sub-categories that allow you to save up for your various needs. For instance:

Gifting and birthdays: If your budget is tight, it’s important that you budget birthdays and gifting ahead of time.

Big deposits: Vacations, a wedding, downpayment on property or car, this is the category where that goes.

Automate your finances

We’re really, really big on this. Automating your personal finances is a game-changer.

It takes the fear of the unknown out of your finances

You don’t have to spend a ton of time on your finances (increasing the chances that you’ll actually stick to a system)

You’re able to identify holes or money traps in your budget

It helps you build good financial habits

You can automate your finances to such an extent that you simply have to give your bank accounts a glance over once in a while to make sure things are still running as they should.

Every single thing that needs to be paid, can be automated. Let’s have a look:

Bonus: Learn more about automating your finances with our FREE Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance. It’ll show you step-by-step how to set up your accounts.

3. Cut mercilessly on things you don’t love or need

Don’t like watching TV? Cancel the Netflix subscription. What about the gym subscription? Is it possible for you to get the same results at home?

Before you even own the house, you need to have the downpayment, closing costs, and reserves on hand. While the downpayment and reserves are in your best interest, it may take time to build it up.

You may not want to cut out every day items that you love, like lattes and dinners out with friends, but if you can make cuts on major expenses like housing, that’s a huge win.

4. Increase spending on the stuff that matters

Don’t let anyone tell you you’re wasting money when you’re spending it on the things that matter to you.

When you’re doing this right and you’ve allocated what you need to in the other categories, imagine getting the figure up to 30% or even 40% of your take-home pay?

5. Boost your income

Your salary might have potential

It’s worth the discussion and if you follow our founder Ramit Sethi’s negotiation steps, you might just be looking at a dream salary.

Negotiate your financial and non-financial products

You can reduce that fixed costs spending category in a matter of minutes simply by picking up the phone and reminding your service providers what a good customer you are.

Checking accounts and credit cards are two other products that can do with a price check. If you’re paying monthly or annual fees, it’s time to call them up and bring that figure down.

But there are other areas you can save.

Internet service providers that onboard new customers at a lower rate. Get them to lower yours too in order to keep your business.

Gym membership fees. Depending on the club and the length of time you’ve been with them, ask them to see if there’s a way to cut down on the fees.

Start a side hustle

Budgeting FAQs

How should a beginner budget?

What are the 50/20/30 and 70/20/10 budget rules?

The 70/20/10 states that 70% should go towards expenses, 20% on savings, and 10% on giving.

What is the envelope system?

Summary

Get the ultimate guide to making money

The best way to ensure flexibility in your budget is to earn more money.

And there are a few different ways you can do this:

Negotiate a raise. If you have a job, this is a no-brainer … but it takes a lot of planning and study.

Tap into hidden income. With a few 5-minute phone calls you can save yourself THOUSANDS every year. Find out how with this free PDF.

If you apply the right systems you can find the money to make expensive purchases AND earn money at the same time.

That’s why we want to offer you something:

The Ultimate Guide to Making Money

In it, Ramit has included his best strategies to:

Create multiple income streams so you always have a consistent source of revenue.

Start your own business and escape the 9-to-5 for good.

Increase your income by thousands of dollars a year through side hustles like freelancing.

Download a FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide today by entering your name and email below — and start earning more money today.

Yes, send me the Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Name *

Email *

Give me instant access!

100% privacy. No games, no B.S., no spam. When you sign up, we’ll keep you posted

Budget help: How to build a bulletproof budget is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

Budget help: How to build a bulletproof budget published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

0 notes

andrewdburton · 3 years ago

Text

Budget help: How to build a bulletproof budget

Even after 10+ years of spreading the Rich Life gospel, our founder Ramit Sethi still runs into people who need budget help. They typically:

(A) Don’t know how to build a budget.

(B) Don’t know how much they’re spending each month.

For example, this tweet:

The answers he got back were fascinating:

What do you notice about the responses?

Some common themes are fear, laziness, confusion, and even anger.

If that sounds familiar to you, that’s okay! We want to be there to help.

That’s why we’re going to break it down to the basics today on how you can build a budget.

Bonus: Want to know how to make as much money as you want and live life on your terms? Download my FREE Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Why you need budget help

When people think budgeting, images of their parents studiously going over receipts, writing down expenses in a notebook, and screaming, “HOW DID WE SPEND SO MUCH ON GAS LAST WEEK?” come to mind.

That might have worked for them … but it sure doesn’t work now.

How many times have you opened your bills, winced, then shrugged and said, “I guess I spent that much”?

How often do you feel guilty about buying something — but then do it anyway?

This is unconscious spending (aka “spreadsheet budgeting”). The main issue with it is simple: Human willpower.

Who wants to track their spending? The few people who actually try it find that their budgets completely fail after two days because tracking every penny is overwhelming.

Alternative budget building tips

Instead, we’re going to gently create a new, simple way of spending.

We’re going to help you redirect it to the places you choose, like investing, saving, and even spending more on the things you love (but less on the things you don’t).

This is going to be the foundation of your Conscious Spending Plan.

1. Know where your money is going

It’s time to sit down and categorize your spending into four buckets.

Fixed costs

Investments

Savings

Guilt-free spending

Bonus: Ready to ditch debt, save money, and build real wealth? Download my FREE Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance.

Investments and savings are easy enough to tally up, but it’s worth going through your fixed costs and guilt-free spending categories to see whether you’re overspending.

Fixed costs examples

To make sure the money goes where it needs to, you need to complete your fixed costs category first. You also need to allocate funds to this category first.

Guilt-free spending examples

2. Build your budgeting systems

So how do you get off this slippery slope?

Allocate sub-accounts in your savings

Your savings account should have sub-categories that allow you to save up for your various needs. For instance:

Gifting and birthdays: If your budget is tight, it’s important that you budget birthdays and gifting ahead of time.

Big deposits: Vacations, a wedding, downpayment on property or car, this is the category where that goes.

Automate your finances

We’re really, really big on this. Automating your personal finances is a game-changer.

It takes the fear of the unknown out of your finances

You don’t have to spend a ton of time on your finances (increasing the chances that you’ll actually stick to a system)

You’re able to identify holes or money traps in your budget

It helps you build good financial habits

You can automate your finances to such an extent that you simply have to give your bank accounts a glance over once in a while to make sure things are still running as they should.

Every single thing that needs to be paid, can be automated. Let’s have a look:

Bonus: Learn more about automating your finances with our FREE Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance. It’ll show you step-by-step how to set up your accounts.

3. Cut mercilessly on things you don’t love or need

Don’t like watching TV? Cancel the Netflix subscription. What about the gym subscription? Is it possible for you to get the same results at home?

Before you even own the house, you need to have the downpayment, closing costs, and reserves on hand. While the downpayment and reserves are in your best interest, it may take time to build it up.

You may not want to cut out every day items that you love, like lattes and dinners out with friends, but if you can make cuts on major expenses like housing, that’s a huge win.

4. Increase spending on the stuff that matters

Don’t let anyone tell you you’re wasting money when you’re spending it on the things that matter to you.

When you’re doing this right and you’ve allocated what you need to in the other categories, imagine getting the figure up to 30% or even 40% of your take-home pay?

5. Boost your income

Your salary might have potential

It’s worth the discussion and if you follow our founder Ramit Sethi’s negotiation steps, you might just be looking at a dream salary.

Negotiate your financial and non-financial products

You can reduce that fixed costs spending category in a matter of minutes simply by picking up the phone and reminding your service providers what a good customer you are.

Checking accounts and credit cards are two other products that can do with a price check. If you’re paying monthly or annual fees, it’s time to call them up and bring that figure down.

But there are other areas you can save.

Internet service providers that onboard new customers at a lower rate. Get them to lower yours too in order to keep your business.

Gym membership fees. Depending on the club and the length of time you’ve been with them, ask them to see if there’s a way to cut down on the fees.

Start a side hustle

Budgeting FAQs

How should a beginner budget?

What are the 50/20/30 and 70/20/10 budget rules?

The 70/20/10 states that 70% should go towards expenses, 20% on savings, and 10% on giving.

What is the envelope system?

Summary

Get the ultimate guide to making money

The best way to ensure flexibility in your budget is to earn more money.

And there are a few different ways you can do this:

Negotiate a raise. If you have a job, this is a no-brainer … but it takes a lot of planning and study.

Tap into hidden income. With a few 5-minute phone calls you can save yourself THOUSANDS every year. Find out how with this free PDF.

If you apply the right systems you can find the money to make expensive purchases AND earn money at the same time.

That’s why we want to offer you something:

The Ultimate Guide to Making Money

In it, Ramit has included his best strategies to:

Create multiple income streams so you always have a consistent source of revenue.

Start your own business and escape the 9-to-5 for good.

Increase your income by thousands of dollars a year through side hustles like freelancing.

Download a FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide today by entering your name and email below — and start earning more money today.

Yes, send me the Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Name *

Email *

Give me instant access!

100% privacy. No games, no B.S., no spam. When you sign up, we’ll keep you posted

Budget help: How to build a bulletproof budget is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/budget-help/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes

paulckrueger · 3 years ago

Text

Budget help: How to build a bulletproof budget

Even after 10+ years of spreading the Rich Life gospel, our founder Ramit Sethi still runs into people who need budget help. They typically:

(A) Don’t know how to build a budget.

(B) Don’t know how much they’re spending each month.

For example, this tweet:

The answers he got back were fascinating:

What do you notice about the responses?

Some common themes are fear, laziness, confusion, and even anger.

If that sounds familiar to you, that’s okay! We want to be there to help.

That’s why we’re going to break it down to the basics today on how you can build a budget.

Bonus: Want to know how to make as much money as you want and live life on your terms? Download my FREE Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Why you need budget help

When people think budgeting, images of their parents studiously going over receipts, writing down expenses in a notebook, and screaming, “HOW DID WE SPEND SO MUCH ON GAS LAST WEEK?” come to mind.

That might have worked for them … but it sure doesn’t work now.

How many times have you opened your bills, winced, then shrugged and said, “I guess I spent that much”?

How often do you feel guilty about buying something — but then do it anyway?

This is unconscious spending (aka “spreadsheet budgeting”). The main issue with it is simple: Human willpower.

Who wants to track their spending? The few people who actually try it find that their budgets completely fail after two days because tracking every penny is overwhelming.

Alternative budget building tips

Instead, we’re going to gently create a new, simple way of spending.

We’re going to help you redirect it to the places you choose, like investing, saving, and even spending more on the things you love (but less on the things you don’t).

This is going to be the foundation of your Conscious Spending Plan.

1. Know where your money is going

It’s time to sit down and categorize your spending into four buckets.

Fixed costs

Investments

Savings

Guilt-free spending

Bonus: Ready to ditch debt, save money, and build real wealth? Download my FREE Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance.

Investments and savings are easy enough to tally up, but it’s worth going through your fixed costs and guilt-free spending categories to see whether you’re overspending.

Fixed costs examples

To make sure the money goes where it needs to, you need to complete your fixed costs category first. You also need to allocate funds to this category first.

Guilt-free spending examples

2. Build your budgeting systems

So how do you get off this slippery slope?

Allocate sub-accounts in your savings

Your savings account should have sub-categories that allow you to save up for your various needs. For instance:

Gifting and birthdays: If your budget is tight, it’s important that you budget birthdays and gifting ahead of time.

Big deposits: Vacations, a wedding, downpayment on property or car, this is the category where that goes.

Automate your finances

We’re really, really big on this. Automating your personal finances is a game-changer.

It takes the fear of the unknown out of your finances

You don’t have to spend a ton of time on your finances (increasing the chances that you’ll actually stick to a system)

You’re able to identify holes or money traps in your budget

It helps you build good financial habits

You can automate your finances to such an extent that you simply have to give your bank accounts a glance over once in a while to make sure things are still running as they should.

Every single thing that needs to be paid, can be automated. Let’s have a look:

Bonus: Learn more about automating your finances with our FREE Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance. It’ll show you step-by-step how to set up your accounts.

3. Cut mercilessly on things you don’t love or need

Don’t like watching TV? Cancel the Netflix subscription. What about the gym subscription? Is it possible for you to get the same results at home?

Before you even own the house, you need to have the downpayment, closing costs, and reserves on hand. While the downpayment and reserves are in your best interest, it may take time to build it up.

You may not want to cut out every day items that you love, like lattes and dinners out with friends, but if you can make cuts on major expenses like housing, that’s a huge win.

4. Increase spending on the stuff that matters

Don’t let anyone tell you you’re wasting money when you’re spending it on the things that matter to you.

When you’re doing this right and you’ve allocated what you need to in the other categories, imagine getting the figure up to 30% or even 40% of your take-home pay?

5. Boost your income

Your salary might have potential

It’s worth the discussion and if you follow our founder Ramit Sethi’s negotiation steps, you might just be looking at a dream salary.

Negotiate your financial and non-financial products

You can reduce that fixed costs spending category in a matter of minutes simply by picking up the phone and reminding your service providers what a good customer you are.

Checking accounts and credit cards are two other products that can do with a price check. If you’re paying monthly or annual fees, it’s time to call them up and bring that figure down.

But there are other areas you can save.

Internet service providers that onboard new customers at a lower rate. Get them to lower yours too in order to keep your business.

Gym membership fees. Depending on the club and the length of time you’ve been with them, ask them to see if there’s a way to cut down on the fees.

Start a side hustle

Budgeting FAQs

How should a beginner budget?

What are the 50/20/30 and 70/20/10 budget rules?

The 70/20/10 states that 70% should go towards expenses, 20% on savings, and 10% on giving.

What is the envelope system?

Summary

Get the ultimate guide to making money

The best way to ensure flexibility in your budget is to earn more money.

And there are a few different ways you can do this:

Negotiate a raise. If you have a job, this is a no-brainer … but it takes a lot of planning and study.

Tap into hidden income. With a few 5-minute phone calls you can save yourself THOUSANDS every year. Find out how with this free PDF.

If you apply the right systems you can find the money to make expensive purchases AND earn money at the same time.

That’s why we want to offer you something:

The Ultimate Guide to Making Money

In it, Ramit has included his best strategies to:

Create multiple income streams so you always have a consistent source of revenue.

Start your own business and escape the 9-to-5 for good.

Increase your income by thousands of dollars a year through side hustles like freelancing.

Download a FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide today by entering your name and email below — and start earning more money today.

Yes, send me the Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Name *

Email *

Give me instant access!

100% privacy. No games, no B.S., no spam. When you sign up, we’ll keep you posted

Budget help: How to build a bulletproof budget is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Surety Bond Brokers? Business https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/budget-help/

0 notes