GreenBucks

A lot of people aim for “The American Dream”.

What is exactly the American Dream?

Living in the suburbs, having one or two cars, vacation, shopping sprees, credit cards and other luxurious and comfortable ways to live. These are good to do as long as one can afford to pay for all of this. What if one can’t pay for all of these?

But this scenario is changing.

They are losing their homes and their cars. The American government even gave out tax rebates. Fannie Mae, the largest mortgage buyer and Freddy Mac, the second largest mortgage buyer were given emergency rescue plans.

Women who used to be in the workforce are not working anymore. Banks are reporting billions of losses.

This is being forecasted as the “death” of the middle class.

Americans as well as the British are deep in debts and there is more to this than meets the eye.

Why does this happen? It is because they are spending more than they can afford, courtesy of the lending companies.

So what do they do? Get another credit to pay for a credit.

So who is to blame? The credit availability or the mindset of getting things that can’t be paid for in cash but through credits?

Read what happened to Diane McLeod in a NYTimes article entitled “Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt”.

May this serve as a lesson to everyone who loves charging their purchases to credit cards.

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Mark Cuban not only owns the Dallas Maverick but serves as chairman of the TV Channel HD.Net. He blogs too.

The finer points discussed in the NY Times article about blogging are the following:

1. Don’t expect to get rich.
2. Write about what you want to write about, in your own voice.
3. Fit blogging into the holes of your schedule
4. Just post it already
5. Keep a regular rhythm
6. Join the community, such as it is.
7. Plug yourself.

There’s this part in the article that fits exactly what I think sometimes:

In the end, the biggest threat isn’t that you’ll fail to learn to blog. It’s that if you blog regularly for long enough, and begin to get comments and links from other bloggers, you’ll have trouble doing your day job.

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This is the emblem of the Shelby GT500, a performance muscle car from Ford Mustang. Click here for the 2008 Shelby GT500.

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Nice asked me to answer this question:

Can you share any budget or money saving tips that you find effective?

I found this very apt because of the present situation we are experiencing, not just here in the Philippines but all the over the world: food crisis, rising price of gasoline, environmental concerns, rising cases of violence among others.

On the other hand, I find this question amusing. Why? Because we have been saving, budgeting, saving, scrimping, budgeting…ok you got it, but still, no matter how much we save, nothing seems to be happening good with the budget, if there is even a budget at all.

Anyway, here are a few tips I can write about on how we try to save:

1. Instead of frying the chicken pieces, cook these with vegetables and sauce, that way, we have more servings. Same goes with fish and other food products. Be a kitchen genius. There’s no need to buy expensive ingredients if one knows how to cook well. If not, learn to cook and avoid, asmuch as possible, eating out.
2. Turn off all electrical appliances that are not in use.
3. Buying of toys and other unnecessary things are not allowed. These unnecessary things are the trinkets, small things that become junk after a few weeks.
4. Stick to the budget. The what? Yes, the budget, especially during Christmas holidays.
5. Bring food to work, or in my eldest daughter’s case, bring cooked food for lunch.
6. Take care of your things so these can last long.
7. Eat at home before going anywhere. And when going somewhere, bring packed food and drinks.
8. Ask yourself first if you really, really need a thing before purchasing. Be honest.
9. Wait for your favorite items to go on sale, even if it means a loooong wait.Who knows, you might change your mind and not buy that thing anymore.
10. Be simple. Feel joy and happiness without spending a dime by appreciating the wonderful things around you. In other words, walang malling, sa bahay na lang tayo.

This I can honestly say, our family can go to a mall to eat and browse, and window shop and leave the mall without spending on anything other than food, gas and parking ticket. Well, of course, that too is still spending so we would rather stay in the house or go for a nature walk.

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My friend Wenchie asked me two weeks ago about how a certain sponsored post writing goes. This paid posting site has it differently than other sites. Why? Because bloggers can bid the price that they want to be paid for writing posts. They get 65% of the price they would bid with.

Here are the simple steps in going about this sponsored post services:

1. Register your blog.
2. Wait for your bog to be approved.
3. When your blog is approved, check your blog’s status regarding ranking. There are checks that show how much one can charge, say from $10 – $100. There are also those who can charge as high as $500. But of course, there would be buts here which I wouldn’t write anymore.
4. When all these are done, one can start the bidding process. How? Here’s how:
   1. Look for available opportunities from advertisers.
   2. Be sure to read the description of the available opportunity. If it asks for blogs with PR3 and you don’t even have a PR, then don’t try to bid on that opportunity.
   3. Be sure to bid well within the range of prices set by the advertisers. For example, if the minimum bid price is $10 and the maximum bid price is $50, then don’t bid $75, even your bidding capability is up to $800.00. Yes, there are those who can charge as high as that, if there are advertisers willing to pay that.
   4. When bidding, try to bid using the maximum allowed bids. For the bidding price mentioned above, try bidding at half the price, or maybe even lower. Be sure to consider your blog’s ranking when doing the bidding. Blogs with high ranks are probably ok to bid high but to those of us without ranks, (Hello,Google? send some PR around here 🙂 ), that is a risk I wouldn’t want to take. Why? Continue Reading »

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I have heard one time over the radio about the possibility of issuing RICE COUPONS and FOOD STAMPS here in our country when the rice crisis gets worse. Unbelievable to think the government can shoulder these expenses. Maybe they will, but their kickbacks are bigger.I can’t believe I heard that. How can we, a poor third world country issue rice coupons and food stamps? This is not an answer, albeit temporarily that is, to the rice crisis  we currently have.

I don’t know what the answers are, nor will I ever offer one. What I feel we need to do is to work harder to be able to afford what we need to sustain our growing family.

Of course, no other course but to work doubly harder since everything is going up these days. Flour, rice, sugar, pork, electric bills,  fastfood prices, price of gasoline. Will there be no end in sight?

Sigh.

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