I’ll be heading down to California next week. As I mentioned i an earlier post my friend has taken a job at Apple so I’ll be helping him move down. We are driving there, then I’m flying back up. He currently wants to finish the 25 hour drive in 2 days, but I’m a bit skeptical. 

I will be updating this blog throughout the trip on my attempts (both successful and otherwise) to stay as frugal as possible. Since I will be taking my computer with me I also plan to put in some work while down there, this should help to offset any spending I do. 

This trip will really be a test for how frugal I really am, and I’m very curious to see how I do. This post is a bit short, as I’m heading off to meet with some developers to talk about a Mac OS X application, stayed tuned for more.

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Filed under: Frugal, Misc. | 1 Comment

This is the third installment in a series about saving money with ebay. You can view Part I here and Part II here.

Alright so as you all know I started buying some clothes on ebay. Currently I’ve received 3 of 4 packages, I’m going to pick up the last one later today. And I have to say that right now I’m rather pleased with the results.

I ordered 1 pair of slacks, 1 pair of jean and a pair of jeans for a friend. After some research and rigorous analysis my friend and I came to the conclusion that all of the items are authentic. But it should be noted that prior to ordering any goods I went through a fair number of authentication guides. I highly suggest that anyone who is buying clothing on ebay go and look through the appropriate guides before making a bid. Although I completely hate to be prejudice it seems a lot of fake items come out of Thailand. 

Another thing to be very careful about when ordering on ebay, is the size of items. Make sure you know your size, for things like dress pants/shirts you should be fund since everything has standards (for example you might know you need a 32″ inseam). But for t-shirts and other items they often come in S,M and L, if you can I would try on the item at a local store before ordering online. This not only lets you know what size you need, but also lets you know what the item actually looks like (where tags are and what they look like etc.) so you can further tell the authentic items from the fake.

All in all I have enjoyed my experience on ebay, despite the fact that shipping costs sure add up. I have saved some money and kept myself fashionable all at once.

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Filed under: Frugal, Saving | 1 Comment

However, I’m going to purpose that you stay away from these funds. The fact is, the return on your investment is not likely to be as high. When fund managers are deciding what companies to invest in, their selection is significantly smaller, because the companies must be environmentally responsible. Because of this reduced selection, the managers are ignoring many businesses that could be more lucrative for investors.

So I have a different proposal for you: instead of investing in these funds, invest in a more traditional fund (such as an index fund) that will likely earn you a higher return. You can then use some of the extra money you make to buy products that have a premium attached because of the “green” factor. Or you could choose to put the money towards an environmentally friendly charity/non-profit. By doing it this way you have more choice in how much you support these causes.

Please check out the Carnival of Personal Finance for more great articles

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Filed under: Green, Investments | 3 Comments

Thank you Arnold!

The Governor of California and heads of state in Canada have teamed up to finally bring the Hydrogen Highway to life. This huge plan which is to be completed by 2010 in time for the Olympics. This highway is supposed to run from Vancouver all the way to Baja, California and have somewhere between 200 Hydrogen refueling stations.

Damn, it’s about time someone who is in government did something huge like this to stop the ridiculous oil and gas prices and I commend the Canadians and Gov. Schwarzenegger for their commitment to both the environment and delivering alternative fuels to both Canada and the United States.

I can guarantee that if a hydrogen supplying company were to go public, investments would pour in from all social and economic classes and from around the world.

Tomorrow, I am calling the Governor and saying “Thank You” on behalf of all Floridians. If you’d like to keep this a hot topic on the Governor’s mind or to show your support, please contact him at this information:

Governor’s Office:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-558-3160 ( new number )

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Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments

I know it has been a long time since anything was posted about the blogs revenue. So I’ll give it to you plane and simple, because of our absence of focus on the blog it has seen a fairly large drop in revenue. In fact the adsense revenue has dropped to almost $0.00, but we have seen a bit of an increase in paid link revenue, which is nice. 

The adsense drop is mainly due to lack of effort on generating new traffic. New traffic is more likely to click ads and thus more valuable from a click-through point of view (but don’t worry we link our regular readers the most ). In the blog world traffic equates to cash flow and short term revenue.

Instead of working on generating new traffic lately we have been instead building back links, this helps to increase our Page Rank with Google which equals a higher ranking in search results. These back links are good for building longer term cash flow, because of the linking power it gives us. 

So what have we learned from this experience? Well we need to put more focus on generating traffic to the blog, so far out methods of traffic are Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon (so feel free to give us some votes ). We would like to purpose this question to the readers of MMandYou, how would you increase traffic if this was your blog?

Also, we will be doing a revenue post at the end of this month showing exactly what our numbers are, so stay tuned for that. 

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Filed under: Blog Revenue | 3 Comments

There is a lot of stigma attached to the term “drop out” and allow like many labels it does apply some of the time, there are many times where its application is very inaccurate. Once a upon a time I used to think of a “drop out” as somebody who couldn’t handle school and just dropping out as an exit strategy (often due to drugs or other problems), but this simply isn’t true. 

Although it may appear as though some people drop out for no reason, chances are the reason is there. You can’t consider a drop out dumb for not finishing school, if they did it because they knew school wasn’t the way to make themselves happy. Then they made the smartest decision in the world. Realizing dreams that very people can admit to accomplishing and yet is something that everybody should be able to do.

Anyways the reason for this post is that I have a friend is was in his 3rd year of university, studying computer science. He has recently signed a job offer with Apple and will be working for them full time now, and not returning to school in the fall. It has always been one of his dreams to work at Apple (he is a mac enthusiast through and through), so its great to see him accomplish one of his dreams. 

So I purpose this to the readers of Money Management and You, what dream would you drop out of school / quit your job for? And what is stopping you from accomplishing your dream?

Please note I’m encouraging students to drop out of school, for many of them school is a way to their dreams. All I am doing is encouraging people to look at what makes them happy and what they want to do.

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Filed under: Misc., Personal Development | 1 Comment

So today, I finally decided that I plan on investing about $50 a month in a mutual fund. I am looking for an alternative energy/renewable fuels fund with companies like First Solar and BP. I need the fund to be mid growth and medium risk. I’m somewhat of a conservative when it comes to stock and funds.

I’m not sure yet if I plan to have this fund as part of my Roth IRA or possibly just as a regular mutual fund. I know the tax rate is a lot better if you have it in a Roth IRA due to the penalties if withdrawal.

I like a lot of the Vanguard Medium Growth funds that have all the oil companies in them, obviously.

I’m heading over to thestreet.com right now to check out the mutual funds. I anyone knows any good ones, let me know.

By the way, if anyone could look into WPKS.PK, The World Poker Store, I’d love your advice on that stock.

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Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments

Alright, so I’ve started using ebay to buy/bid on some clothing, and the first thing I did was start looking at more expensive brands – brands that I wouldn’t normally buy, such as Armani. However, I quickly noticed that were some large discrepancies in prices.

There was an auction for an “Armani” shirt ending in 15 minutes, and the bid was at only $15, which instantly triggered an alarm bell in my head. So I starting reading some reviews and articles that noted specific things to look for when trying to determine if an article of clothing is authentic or not. Good thing I did. It wasn’t long before I could immediately pick out the obvious fakes. Still, it’s a bit disconcerting to know that more than half of the listings are for fake products. I don’t care so much about whether it’s fake or not, but I do care about the quality of workmanship that goes into each article. If somebody is going to make a cheap knockoff, they’re not going to use high quality materials.

Good thing I read these guides, because they allowed me to separate the fake from the real and let me bid with confidence.

That was my first observation. My second observation was that I wasn’t really saving money on clothing, but I was buying high quality clothing for the same price at which normal clothing retails. So I propose this question to the readers: Am I being frugal if I spend the same amount but receive more in return?

I don’t think I’m being frugal by doing this. Although I’m receiving more in return, I am still spending the same amount which does not allow me to save or invest anything else. If I had been buying the same clothing before switching to ebay, then yes, I would be exercising frugality.

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Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments

As I previously wrote about my new venture which is called GreenLive365.com, it is an energy and alternative fuel news website. It hasn’t launched yet and I have some terrible layout uploaded on the website so please ignore that, it will be changed soon.

But I need your help! Help me pick a logo for my new website. Below is a thread in which I started a contest with the prize being $30 to the winner of the best logo.

Here is the link for the contest:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=866335

I want to know what you think and need help picking a logo because there are tons of good logo’s in this contest.

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Alright I’m ashamed to admit it but I did not have an ebay account before today. I have used it a couple times in the past with somebody else’s account, but never on my own. Thats about to change. I signed up for my own account and I’m going to try and buy all my clothing online for a while. 

The prices are lower then retail, but there is an increased risk is other areas. Such as fake brands, never receiving the item (relatively low risk) or not getting the right size. However I think those risks are manageable and thus I’m going to attempt to  reduce my clothing bill by purchasing everything online.

Before this I have bought an mp3 player online and couple small things, but there was no chance of wrong sizes. This will definitely be an interesting experience, but if I can keep the money spending low it will be worth it. 

I’m not getting a full load of hours at work, so I’m trying to save money in other areas to compensate.

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Filed under: Frugal | 2 Comments