Smart Saving and Investing

Here’s a link that you can subscribe to and get new financial and investment words delivered to you by email.  Browse to InvesterWords.com and subscribe to their daily email.  You’ll receive one word a day to your inbox and you’ll start learning the lingo slowly over the long haul.

written by Bill Stevens \\ tags: financial glossary, financial terms, financial words, investment glossary, investment terms, investment words

This expired 2/14/08 and is no longer available

Listen Up!! There is a free eBook over at Oprah Winfrey’s site. Suze Orman was on today and everyone can download her book Women & Money - Owning The Power To Control Your Destiny. Here is the link to the free eBook. You have now until tomorrow, 2/14 at 7:00PM Central Time to download it for FREE!!

And here are some links to Suze’s advice at Oprah.

written by Bill Stevens

Brush - Floss - Brush - Floss - Brush - Floss!! That is the way you save money on your dental bill.

Recently I’ve been in conversations with some younger folks who have been hit with some big dental bills because of the whole flossing thing.

I’m talkin’ into the thousands of dollars to clean their teeth because they didn’t floss. Well, I hate to sound like a dentist but that’s what you have to do. I did the same thing when I was young, I didn’t floss and I was told to floss regularly. It’s the last thing you want to do when you’re young and invincible. You think you need to do it, and you know you should do it, and ultimate - you have to do it.

Now, I don’t know what all dentists are doing now a days but I know they seem to push more stuff to be done to you than ever before. I could be wrong but it just seems like that.

A Quick Story

When I was a youngster (around10 years old) my family dentist was working on my brother and I. My brother was a few years older than me. I remember my brother accidentally bit the dentist’s hand or finger and the dentist slapped him. DANG!!

That was the way it was done. You know, when teachers could spank kids and the parents sided with the teachers to correct kids behavior. I’m certainly not advocating going back to that day, I’m just tellin’ ya’, that was my experience. End of story.

So that’s how you save money on your dental bill. You floss. And I can’t believe I’m writing a blog article about flossing. But dental bills can get expensive because some folks might not have it covered very well under their health insurance plans.

If you haven’t flossed in a long time, I suggest starting slowly. Maybe once or twice a week - every Wednesday and Saturday would be good. When you first start, don’t dig in with the floss creating a painful, barbed-wire experience. Start slowly and lightly. I also suggest mint-flavored floss so you make it a tasty experience.

I try to floss daily. I still struggle to do it some times and I don’t always do it daily, but if you slow down now and implement some of the necessary tasks in life, you’ll save money in the long run. Just like saving and investing.

Now all you have to worry about is how to save money on the floss.

written by Bill Stevens

Leo Babauta of the wildly popular Zen Habits blog has released an 83-page e-book called Zen To Done for $9.50.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1 Why ZTD?
2 Overview - What is it?
3 Minimal ZTD - the simpler alternative
4 Forming the 10 Habits
5 Habit 1: Collect
6 Habit 2: Process
7 Habit 3: Plan
8 Habit 4: Do
9 Habit 5: Simple, trusted system
10 Habit 6: Organize
11 Habit 7: Review
12 Habit 8: Simplify
13 Habit 9: Routine
14 Habit 10: Find Your Passion
15 A Day with Zen To Done
16 ZTD FAQ
17 Resources

If you’re a fan of GTD - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen or a Stephen Covey fan - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, then you’ll like this e-book.

Leo teaches you his ZTD or Zen To Done by combining and simplifying some of Allen’s and Covey’s productivity concepts. Narrrowing your focus on what you need to get done by way of MITs or Most Important Tasks.

Habit 10: Find Your Passion is one of the best sections of this e-book because it helps guide you through that over-arching question everyone needs to answer or update in their lives - What Are You Passionate About?

Leo guides you a long a path of questions that put you in the right mindset to help you determine what it is you’re passionate about.

I highly recommend this e-book as you can’t beat the price. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with all the stuff in your life and need a way to get organized Zen To Done will help you.

written by Bill Stevens

Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com recently released the Kindle (see below). When I saw the Kindle, I said to myself, “Self, I want to buy the Kindle NOW!!”

I grabbed my credit card and browsed over to Amazon.com.

I was ready and “Gung Ho” to buy it. But, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in the back of my head. My wife was watching me the whole time and the back of my head met the palm of her hand. OUCH!! She reminded me that I write about saving and investing at this blog and it wouldn’t look right to my readers. I reluctantly agreed. Besides, she’s still waiting for a new $12,000.00 diamond ring she’s been eying for a couple years. Yikes!!

The Kindle is something that would be really nice to have and I’m sure it will appeal to a niche audience. I think you have to pay a minor fee for downloading books and I’ve read in the blogosphere that the book selection isn’t that great - yet. You can also read newspapers and magazines, as well as blogs. The books typically can be downloaded for $9.99. Which is a steal.

My only beef when it comes to technology is that everything costs something and you have to decide when enough is enough.

The cost of the Kindle just like the iPhone is more than advertised and sets you up with a new recurring expense. So this might not be the most frugal thing to buy. But doggone it, it’s just plane cool.

I’m secretly hoping Jeff Bezos reads my blog and will send me one to do a full review.

More reviews and controversy on the Kindle:

• Kindle: First Impressions
• Kindle: Web Browsing Experience Is Horrible
• Dear Jeff Bezos (one-week Kindle review)
• You don’t know what you’re talking about, Scoble

written by Bill Stevens