The other week I was emptying my pockets and like usual I put a handful of change in a jar up on my dresser and the thought crossed my mind how much of change am I throwing away on frivolous expenses.

Whether it’s a cup of coffee or a soda pop, a handful of change does not look like a lot of money, in fact countries like Canada have even stopped making pennies altogether because of production cost.  So I challenged myself to see how much change I typical end up with in a weeks time.

How Much Change Am I Wasting

After a few weeks of watching how much change I put in my change jar I concluded that I actually put between $3 to $4 a week in my change jar on a consistent basis.  That means in an average months time I’ll put around $13 to  $18 of change in my jar, and in a years time that adds up to $156 to $216 I just throw away and spend frivolous junk.

Now a couple hundred bucks still may not sound like much but I could think of a million things it could do for me right now like pay down credit card debt, or help build up my emergency fund but yet this money seems to keep falling through the cracks of our finances.

So what can we do to fix this issue?

What I’m Doing With My Change

One thing I’ve been doing for the last 6 or 7 years is that I’ve started a penny jar, and any time I have any pennies in my change or find one just laying on the ground I will put them in my penny jar.  To the left is a picture of my penny jar and what was amazing about this is that I was able to fill it in 5 years and when I cashed it in I had over $80 in it.   That means I would have been throwing away around $16 a year in just pennies alone.

What’s worst is people don’t value pennies like they use to and I feel this is all the more reason to pick them up when you see one just laying around.  However when it comes to nickels, dimes, and quarters those are the coins I feel tend to get abused the most and wasted on stuff we really don’t need to spend it on.

The answer to this is simple.  Determine what you really want spend the money on and save it for that purpose.  With a purpose behind saving the money I feel their is a much better chance it will be used for the right reasons and not on junk. Below is a list of great ideas I’ve seen people use their spare change with over the years.

• Vacation. On great idea I saw was a family member who used their spare change to go vacation every year.  In fact they would purposely break a dollar when they would buy something so the rest of the change could go towards their annual vacation.  The great thing I like about this idea is that it can always seem like a pain to save money for a vacation and this can be one of  the easiest ways to do it.

• College Fund. Another idea I’ve seen people do with their spare change is put it towards their kids college funding.  This way they’ll have some money to go towards books and tuition fees.
• Reward Yourself.  Finally, another great idea you could do with your spare change is save it for some sort of reward.  For example, once you get all of your credit card debt paid off you could use all the spare change you saved up over the years to go on a cruise or buy that something you’ve always wanted and what’s great you won’t have to rack up the credit card debt again either.

Is Pocket Change Worth Saving

When it comes down to it your spare change could be used for a lot of other great purposes.  The point is to figure out what that purpose is and start saving it.  I plan to start saving my change more purposefully and designating a reward I can look forward to with it.

What Are You Doing With Your Pocket Change?

So in this article I’m going to first off reveal my niche,  secondly I’m going share the mistakes I’ve made with this site,  and finally share what I’m doing fix this mistake and move on from here.  On top of that I’m going to keep things as detailed as possible and hopefully help all of you who are building niche sites avoid these disasters.

So let’s get started.

My Niche

First off, the niche I picked was Life Insurance Training.  The reason I chose this niche was based on a few factors.  One being that I was a life insurance agent at one time, and two I know about the issues life insurance agents go through to get licensed.

I felt with this niche I could share my expertise and help people get it done a lot faster.  However as you’re about to see the niche looked very promising at first but once I dug into the finer details of the site I realized this isn’t a good niche after all.

In fact, as you can see below I currently rank 6th for the keyword Life Insurance Training, all without doing any back linking of any sorts.  At this point I was pretty ecstatic for the little work I’ve done, and you might even be wonder what’s the problem.

Mistake 1: Traffic and Earnings

The first mistake I made was that I did not consider the amount of traffic and earnings that this keyword had.  When it comes to a niche site I want at least a 1000 visitors a month and a $1.00 cost per click or ore.  Below is a screen shot of the keyword I chose.

At first glance the niche I selected looked like a clear winner.  It gets right around 1900 search visitors a month and $6.20 cost per click.  However the problem came when I failed to do an exact match search instead of a broad match search.

The difference between the two can be staggering if you don’t do this right.  For those that don’t know what an exact match search is, it’s the results that shows you only the exact amount of people who are searching for that particular term.  A broad match term will include other variations within that term.  Below is an example list of examples.

• Cheap Life Insurance Training
• Ohio Life Insurance Training
• Life Insurance Training in Ohio

Now let’s look at our same search term but as an exact match rather than a broad match.

As you can see the exact match of this same term gave us totally different results. Instead of 1900 potential visitors their are only around 91 people searching for this exact term on a monthly basis.  However, one other thing to take note of is that the CPC went up to $9.50 which is great but with the low amount of traffic it could very hard to make little if any money with this topic.

When it comes down to it ranking for a term with a low exact match search volume is not  a good idea, instead stick to terms at least a 1000 or better.  Now having good traffic and a good CPC are just one factor when picking a niche topic but competition is also another you need to consider.

Mistake 2: Competition

The second issue I also did not consider before I started build my niche site was the competition.  Now obviously, ranking for the term life insurance training is not that difficult but ranking to easy for something was kind of the first sign to me that something was up, and that’s when I began to really start digging into things.

If I’m ranking 6th for Life Insurance Training I should be be getting some sort of decent traffic even with 1900 possible visitors a month however I’ve only manage to bring in 7 or 8 visitors through search from this term, so something was definitely wrong.

Now my goal wasn’t to just rank for one term but to rank for a bunch of different terms and since my site is about life insurance training my plan was to create a page for each state life insurance requirements.  Then after some serious research I started to notice a trend.  See if you can notice it below.

By looking at the first 10 results for the term Ohio Life Insurance Requirement they seem to be not that competitive, however the first few results to almost ever page were .gov results.  The problem with this is that if you are trying to rank for Ohio Life Insurance Requirements or California Life Insurance Requirements it’s going to be next to impossible to rank  number one for these terms.

Going Forward

So what do I plan to do going forward?  For now I plan to just hang tight for a bit and monitor the site.  On top of that I plan to add a few links to the site to see what happens.  If I see some  increases in search traffic I may put more of an effort towards this site.

However if I don’t see much of anything from this site I may just let it sit for a while and test a few different ideas towards the site to see what happens.  One thing is for sure though and that is that this site is not dead in the water.  Even if the site ranks enough for me to make $10 or $20 a month it’s worth it, and maybe I’ll be able to earn a little bit of the money back I stuck into the site over time.

What I Learned

So what did I learn from this experience?  Look I wasn’t even sure if I would earn any money from this site in the first place, that was a given.  Being my first site and all it probably wasn’t very likely so if you are in the same situation don’t feel bad, just pick out the things you learned and move on.  Life is way to short to worry about one little website that didn’t work out.

As a result here all the things I’ve learned from this experience.

• Look For Higher Traffic Keywords.  Obviously, I need to pick higher traffic keywords.

• Research the Competition Better.  Secondly, I need to do a better job at researching the competition for my main keyword.  You want something that is fairly easy to rank for but not to competitive.

• It’s Not Tough To Rank.  Third, I learned it’s really not as tough as we make out to be to rank for a term, you just have to stay focused and give it time.  In fact I feel that is the real secret to success here,  just doing the right things long  enough to get the given result that you want.

• I Went and Did It.  Finally, I feel just taking action made all the difference.  Before I started this site I sat for months contemplating whether I should start a niche site and then one day I asked myself what am I so worried about, that this site won’t work out.  Think of it like this, most baseball players only ever make it on base 2 or 3 times, out of ever 10 times they come up to bat.  That means 70% to 80% of the time they are striking out.  For most of us 20% or 30% seems like a complete failure but for baseball players who can hit that kind of record make it in the hall of fame.  So what does that tell us about what we can do?

 What I’m Doing Now

So what am I doing now?  My plan is to build a new niche site but I’m not exactly in a hurry this time around.  This time I’m planning to take my time and do the proper research to pick a good niche.  So right now I’m going through all kinds of different niche ideas and considering the earnings potential, traffic, and competition.

Below is a spreadsheet of what I’ve done so far.

If you’re having a little trouble understanding my chart below is a list of things to help you out.

• Green – Good Keyword /Low Competition 

• Yellow  Moderate Keyword/ Medium Competition

• Red- Hard Keyword / Tough Competition

• Traffic Column – Amount of Traffic in a month

• CPC Column – The amount of money the top advertiser will pay for one click in Google Adsense

• Top 10 Page Rank Column – Tells you how competitive each page of the top 10 rankings is.  0 is less competitive, and 10 is the most competitive.

• ED % Column – Tells how many pages in the top 10 pages have the exact keyword in the domain name of their site.

• Title % Column – Tells you how many of the top 10 pages have the exact keyword in the title of the article.

As you can see I did not include the keywords I’m  looking at but anything that is a green is a possible topic and their are a couple of them I’m pretty excited about.  Look at the 3rd keyword from the top is has 33,100 visitors and the cost per click is in the $9 range which is great.

On top of that the top 10 pages for this keyword have two PR 0 pages and one page that is not ranked, which means their is some room for me in this niche.  However one of the downsides is that their is one exact match domain in this spot which could be hard to beat but I also take that as a sign that their is some great money to be earned in this niche.

Final Thoughts…

As a final thought building my next niche site seems to be in great timing with Pat Flynn as he is planning to build his next Niche Site in the Niche Site Dual 2.0.  What’s great about this is he is interviewing a lot of great people right now about SEO and what he should and should not be doing when he builds his next niche site.

As a result I will be following along with Pat when I build my next niche site and I will also be sharing all the details as I did before but I will not be sharing the keyword or topic I choose.  So if you would like to learn more about this and follow along with Pat as well you can check out his first interview here.

Steps 1: Record All Income And Expenses

The first step on how to make a budget that works is to carefully record every single transaction you make over a set period of time – a month probably makes the most sense. Carry a notebook with you to record all expenses and save all of your receipts. It is important to record and track every single penny.

Be specific in recording your spending. Rather than recording how much you spent in a particular store, you must note what you actually bought. This is especially important if you buy items from multiple categories. One example might be that you have spent $50 in a department store which needs to be split between food and  new household appliance.

A great way to track such expenses is to use spreadsheets. You will be surprised at how much money you are wasting every month. Seeing it all in black and white can help you to figure out where you are overspending. For example, do you really need to spend $250 on eating out?

Steps 2: Record Your Income And Necessary Expenses

Once you have an idea of your spending habits it is time to get down to the business of agreeing on your budget. The first step is to write down the net income brought into your household each month. You should then write down essential expenses that are paid every month. This will include things like rent, credit card payments, loan repayments, insurance and other regular payments. Your tracked spending from the previous month should help identify these.

Once you have the amounts of your regular monthly payments, you need to subtract them from your income. This gives a total amount for you to work with for your other expenses such as groceries and transport.

Step 3: Make Necessary Adjustments

If you find that your income is greater than your expenses, then you are in a great position. You can begin to put a little into a savings plan for the future. However, if like most people you find that your expenses exceed your income then it is time to make some adjustments.

There will be some obvious place to save money, like the large eating out bill noted earlier. There will also be plenty of other places that you can trim a little off of your spending. Groceries are one of the main areas that people overspend on. However, it is important to be realistic. It will not be possible to drop from spending $300 on groceries to just $100.

Step 4:  Stick To Your Plan – But Be Flexible

Once you have created your budget it is important that you follow it. This is by no means easy, and there will be times when you screw up. However, if you remain focused on your budget you will continue to move closer to your financial goal. It is important to have a little flexibility in your budget. At times there will be unexpected expenses or the cost of things such as fuel rise. This means that from time to time you will need to adjust your budget.

The key to a successful budget that really works is to be realistic in setting your budget figures. It is also important to make sure that you are willing to stick to it as much as possible. However, it is not set in stone and there is a little flexibility. If the budget is not working out then you can revisit it and make some changes.

 Bio:

Hugh Tyzack is the founder and managing director of loansforbad-credit.co.uk, a company which provides loans including logbook loans to individuals who have bad credit. More details are available on his website or you can follow him on Twitter @badcreditloans8 and also on Google+. When he is not working, Hugh listens to music and plays the piano.

In late 2011, 28 people were indicted in an identity theft case that victimized customers of some of New York’s top steak houses. The thieves were waiters who used small skimming devices or scanners to copy customers’ credit card data. They then turned the data over to their bosses, who in turn created fake credit cards.

People were then sent out to rack up big charges on the credit cards, sometimes as much as $35,000 on each card. The restaurant credit card scams the crime ring perpetrated cost their victims in the range of $600,000 to millions of dollars.

Cases like this aren’t isolated incidents. Hackers have apparently long been targeting restaurants and similar businesses for harvesting customer identities. In 2011, data security firm Trustwave’s SpiderLabs unit conducted an investigation into a number of data breaches. The firm found that more than 85 percent of the breaches they analyzed came from the food and beverage, retail, and hospitality industries.

SpiderLabs also found that in 75 percent of the cases they reviewed, hackers targeted point-of-sale or POS systems. Those little card scanners with the keypad where you type in your PIN? Those are part of a restaurant or retail shop’s POS system. Once they’ve gained access to the POS system, the hackers are then free to do what they want with the data stored on it. This, of course, includes confidential customer credit card information.

Credit fraud in restaurant franchises such as Subway has an even higher chance of happening. Franchises most often use a single POS system, so once the system in one store gets compromised it becomes easier to replicate the attack in other locations.

Customers have no control over whether or not a business will fall victim to a data breach. The protection of such sensitive data in the restaurant falls on the business’ shoulders. The good news is that there are a multitude of data security software and services available to these establishments. The bad news? Most businesses have weak data security. The SpiderLabs report found that hackers spent an average of 173.5 days inside a system before they were detected. That’s almost half a year; more than enough time to compromise a vast amount of customer data.

A system-wide data breach may be out of your control, but there are still some steps you can take to minimize the chances of your credit card information falling into the wrong hands. Here are a few key tips to prevent credit card fraud in a restaurant.

• Never let your credit card out of your sight. When the time to pay for the bill comes, ask your waiter if the restaurant has a portable credit card scanner. This way, your credit card stays with you while your bill is rung up. Make sure that the scanner they are using is the one provided by the store, as well. An unscrupulous individual can carry their own handheld scanner to read the info on your card’s magnetic stripe. If they don’t, ask to accompany the waiter to wherever the scanner is located.

• Don’t leave your receipts behind. Some restaurants’ POS systems don’t mask your credit card’s number and expiration dates on their receipts. If your receipt doesn’t have masked numbers, it can become a huge security risk if an identity thief gets hold of it.

• Consider signing up for a credit monitoring service. It’s an after-the-fact alarm system, but it can still help you minimize the financial damage if your identity ever gets compromised.

• Pay for your meal with cash. It’s simple, straightforward, and is the only foolproof way to make sure you aren’t left open to credit card frauds while dining out.

As is always the case with identity theft, the chances of it happening to you can be reduced through constant vigilance. Just always remember to keep an eye on your credit card and your receipts to keep your delightfully exquisite epicurean experiences from turning into identity theft-fueled nightmares.

***

Joy M is an active blogger who is fond of sharing interesting finance related articles to encourage people to manage and protect their finances. Follow her and know the best ways to prevent identity theft and how to monitor your credit against data breaches.

• How To Build A Niche Site Series Part 1: Accepting The Challenge

• How To Build A Niche Site Series Part 2: Picking Your Niche

• How To Build A Niche Site Series Part 3: Creating Your Site Plan

• How To Build A Niche Site Series Part 4: Content Plan – Graphics – Set Up

In this step I’m going to cover site promotion and what I plan to do to promote my site and drive in that important traffic.  As a part of this step I will cover several different topics form guest posting, social networks, to commenting.  So let’s get started.

Guest Posting

One of the first strategies I plan to do is guest posting.  Guest posting is a great way spread your name, promote your brand, bring in a small trickle of traffic and even boost your site up in the search engine rankings.

The real question is how muct guest posting do you really need to do?  To answer this question it all depends on the type of niche you picked.  If you picked a really tough niche like credit cards, or life insurance you’re going to have your work cut out for you.

However if you’ve done your homework correctly you should have picked a niche that isn’t to tough compete in.  In the fact I’m already seeing signs that I’ve picked a great niche because I’m already ranking 6th for my main keyword.

So when it comes to guest posting I suggest at least a base of 30 guest post to get started.  From their over time you’ll want to build things up to around a 100 to 150 guest post in order boost yourself up high in the ranking on Google and other search engines.

On top of that I usually put 1 to 2 links in each post.  One link usually goes in my bio which links back to my home page and the other link goes to a specific page on my site that I want to have rank well in the search engines.

However I should mention a word of caution here.  When it comes to guest posting their are certain things you need to do to make this successful.

Build Relationships First.  First and foremost you need to build relationships with people in your niche.  Knowing people in your niche that know you will help spread the word and help promote you as well.  Then when you go to ask to write a guest post it’s not perceived as some sort of hard sell because they know you already.

Link Only To Quality Sites.  Second, you only want links to quality sites related to your topic.  While their is a lot of debate as to what is a quality site some will define it as page rank, and say if you have a page rank of 3 or better however I don’t think that is the best route to go.

While page rank is one indicator to look at, I like to look at things like social interaction, such as Facebook likes, G+, and Twitter mentions.  On top of that how many comments does the site get, if they get tons of comments it’s probably a good site to write an article for. Also, how often is the site updated, if it hasn’t been updated in the last 6 months you’ll want to avoid sites like this as well.  Finally, does the site have a name behind it.  In other words can  you easily and quickly see the name of the person who owns the site.  

If the site is a ghost town and I don’t see any recent content,social signals, comments, or the name of a person I will usually pass the site up.

Write High Quality Articles.  The third thing you need to do when it comes to writing guest post is it needs to be high quality content.  I can tell you from my own experience that writing crappy guest post for crappy websites will get you nowhere.

I did a lot of bad guest posting back in my early days and it cost me dearly in the search engines.  In fact in May of 2011 my site got hit by one of the first Panda updates and cut my traffic in half.  Over the following months I managed to gain a good portion of that traffic back only to be hit by another Google Panda update in late October 2011.

The moral of the story is don’t write junk content, and link back to crappy websites.  Rather build a brand, build relationships with others online, write high quality articles, and only link to quality sites.

So now that we know guest posting is a great way to promote your niche site, take some time to map out a potential guest posting plan and get started.

Commenting

Now that we’ve covered guest posting, another way I plan to promote my niche site is by commenting on other like minded sites.  What’s great about commenting on other sites is that it does several things for you all at the same time.

• Drives Traffic.  First off, one of the great side effects of commenting on other blogs is that it drives in a trickle of traffic to your site.  As long as the site you’re commenting on is a quality site that gets traffic you’ll likely get a small trickle of traffic from it as well.  In fact my plan to is to comment on around 10 blogs in my niche actively and if each one brought me on visitor a day that’s 300 visitors a month to my website.

• Builds Your Brand.  Secondly, commenting helps build a brand.  If you are planning to sell something on your site whether it be your own product or an affiliate product as it is in my case you need to build trust and the way you do that is with a brand.

• Build Relationships.  On top of having a brand you it will also strengthen and build relationships with others.  I know for me building relationships on my own blog has had a tremendous affect.  The great thing about these relationships is that they will help if you happen to ask for a favor such as write a guest post or a recommendation.

• Creates Linking Opportunities.  Finally, another great opportunity that comes from commenting is linking opportunities.  With commenting, when you build that trust and relationship it tend to help foster links.     As long as you’re writing great content, commenting, and building relationships, this is were I’ve manage to build some of my best links.

So take some time right now and map out a commenting plan.  Find 10 to 20 blogs or websites that you could comment on regularly.

Social Networks

Now that I’ve covered guest posting, and commenting strategies as a way to promote your niche site, the final way I plan to promote my niche site is by using social networks.  In this section I will be cover the three major social networks, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

Facebook. To start I plan to create a Facebook page. What’s great about Facebook is that it will let me get on a more personal level with those that really like my niche site.  On top of that I also plan to follow other brands and companies in my niche.  What this does is it will hopefully open up a line of communication and allow me become more well known with these companies.

Twitter.  I also plan to incorporate Twitter into my overall strategy as well by setting up a page and following those that  could be potential customers or companies that could help me out.  On top of that you can also use hash tag searches in twitter and start following these people immediately.  For example, if your website was about iPhone screen repair you would search it in Twitter like this #iphonescreenrepair , or you might search just #iPhone.

What this will do is show you exactly who may potentially have an iPhone or even a broken one and could be an great opportunity for you to show them your services and build a relationship.  On top of that it will also drive a small trickle of traffic back to your site over time and grow your overall brand.

Google Plus.  The final social platform I plan to focus on is Google Plus.  What makes G+ different from Facebook is that they are more business oriented which may work well to promote your brand and build followers.  However the big reason I like G+ is because any time you promote something with it, it tends to show up in the search results almost instantly.

So if you just wrote a new article you could publish it and promote it on your Google Plus page and anyone following you that would happen to do a search for a term related to that article could likely see that article in the results.  So take some time right now and plan out your social strategy with Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

Finally Thoughts…

With all of these promotional strategies it will allow you to get in front of others and build relationships in a stronger way.   So what are you doing to promote your site?  Feel free to share how you are promoting your site.

One of the big misconceptions with this product is that it is no better than your average and ordinary credit monitoring service when in fact they are very different from each other.

To understand this better I’m going to show you exactly how Lifelock works and how it differs from your normal credit monitoring services.

How Does Lifelock Work

Register and Complete Your Profile.  When you sign up for Lifelock Ultimate the first thing you need to do is complete a profile.  Your profile is everything they will need to monitor and protect you from identity theft.  Below is a list of all the things you need to add to your profile.

• Credit Cards
• Drivers License
• Insurance Card
• Bank Accounts
• Home Address
• Email Address
• Phone Numbers
• Maiden Name

Monitor For Alerts. Once you’ve completed your profile Lifelock will monitor all of these areas for any changes or suspicious activity.  They do this by monitoring several databases with your given profile to see if anyone is misusing your information.

Here are several things that Lifelock monitors when it comes to your identity.

• Checking and Savings.  If anyone tries to open a new savings account in your name and you will be notified immediately.

• Account Takeovers. If someone tries to change the name on one of your accounts you will be notified.  You wouldn’t believe how easy this if for people to do.

• Apply For Credit.  If someone tries to apply for credit under your name you will receive an alert automatically.

• Name & Address.  If someone messes with your name and address or applies your name to an account but puts a different address down you will be notified.

• Court Records.  If someone happens to tamper with court records to have you falsly accused of a crime you didn’t commit it will alert you.

• Online Networks.  Lifelock will also monitor your online presence as well to see if people are misusing your personal information.

• Payday Loans. Finally, another area they monitor is Payday Loans.  These can be some of the easiest loans for criminals to get and Lifelock will alert you if someone has used your information.

Alerts. From here once Lifelock  notices any sort of weird activity they will notify you by email, phone, or even text if you prefer and in most cases they will use all 3 if they have to.

Once you receive an alert you need to notify Lifelock immediately whether this is a threat or not.  For example, when I recently moved from my rental house to my new house I received an alert that my address had changed. In this case nothing was wrong but if their had been I would have notified Lifelock immediately.

Lifelock Versus Credit Monitoring

Now that we have a basic understanding of how Lifelock works I want to point out some big differences between this program and credit monitoring.  To start I actually signed up for a free credit monitoring service through Credit Karma, and the differences between the two programs were huge.

First off, Credit Karma sent me only one notification for as long as I’ve had it.  With Lifelock I received tons of alerts from credit applications, to sexual predator notifications, to address changes.

Secondly, Lifelock monitors far more than just your credit report.  They monitor, your address, your credit cards, your bank accounts, phone numbers, email, online networks, bank accounts, payday loans, and your court records.

Plus to boot they also show you your credit score, credit reports,  inform you of any sexual predators in your area and even order you new credit cards and insurance card if your wallet happen to get stolen.

When it comes down to it credit monitoring services are only looking at your credit report, while Lifelock is looking at the entire profile.

How It’s Working So Far

To date I’ve received a total of 8 alerts so far and it’s working great.  Luckily, none of them have been serious so far, however the latest statistics show that almost everyone will experience an identity theft some point in their lives.

If you don’t believe me just look at these stories I came across on you tube of people who had their identity stolen.  Identity theft isn’t going away, in fact it is only getting worse so take some time sign up now and get a 30-Day Free Trial + 10% Off Your Final Purchase of LifeLock ULTIMATE

As a society, we are used to doing things quick. We communicate by text message in short, and sometimes indistinguishable, words. We buy media directly from the device that plays it, and we scarf down fast food in the small gap of time we have between things we have to get done. So when it comes to diet scams that promote fast and easy weight loss we could say that we fall for them because we have made this a way of life.

Spotting the Scams

First of all, there are many supplements and diet programs out there that are not created with the sole purpose of making off with your hard earned money. Certain supplements do provide energy, nutrients and other beneficial elements that can help a person lose weight the right way.

It is important to understand, though, that simply taking supplements will not help you achieve your weight loss goals if you pound down a pizza and spend the afternoon napping on the couch. You need to be a part of your weight loss program, not the foundation of it.

No Exercise Needed

This brings us to the easiest way to spot a weight loss scam. If the diet, pill, drink, etc. promises you weight loss without having to exercise steer clear.

Most likely the product has you supplement meals with something that lacks essential nutrients and calories so you starve yourself. You will lose weight, however it is not a healthy weight loss and scams like this run the risk of causing you to binge eat.

Lose X pounds in X days

People are all different. A person who is obese that goes on a diet program will lose weight more quickly than someone who is only a 10 pounds overweight. Younger people will lose more quickly than older people.

People with the right genetics will lose weight at a faster pace than someone whose genetics cause them to carry excess weight. Get the picture?

Herbal Weight Loss

We are suckers for anything that claims to be natural or herbal. Guess what? Hemlock is both natural and herbal. What catches our attention is the belief that anything “natural”, “herbal” or even “organic” is automatically good for us.

Herbs and pills alone are not going to help you lose weight in the long term. Herbal and natural supplements can help you lose weight when combined with a healthy diet and proper exercise.

The Claims

Many of more common weight loss and diet scams make unnecessary claims. 100% safe is the biggest one to watch out for. Why are they even making that statement? Of course it should be safe, that shouldn’t be a selling point! While we’re talking about 100% another red flag is the outrageous percentages that they claim. Increase your strength 300%, lose 200% more than dieting and exercise, etc.

Another one that screams scam is Miraculous Breakthrough or Newly Discovered. But what really takes the cake are the testimonials from customers. It is really easy for a scam artist to write up some testimonials to throw up on their website to make things look legit.

It is false advertising, it is unethical, it is wrong but remember – these people are scam artists! It’s their job to trick you into handing over money for worthless junk. Oh, and just because they have a money back guarantee don’t think that your money is safe. Most of the requests for refunds are never honored.

Fitness Scams

It’s not only the diet scams that you have to watch out for. Plenty of fitness products are just as worthless as the other scams we mentioned here. Using the same claims, revolutionary products that promise results in as little as ten minutes a day should raise some serious questions.

Workouts require a sustained period of time for fat loss and muscle building. Six minutes spent with some weird contraption isn’t going to help you accomplish your goals, unless that goal is to lighten your wallet.

Avoiding these scams is not all that difficult if you keep your eyes open for the obvious warning signs. If you are unsure of a product or diet check with a medical professional before you make any purchase. They will be able to tell you what to expect and what the results should be.

Jeff covers fitness and healthy eating choices for Weight Loss Triumph. When he is not writing he can be found reading or coaching his kids’ sports teams.

Of all the financial strengths I have, managing my budget is probably my biggest weakness.  I’ve started a budget dozens of times with the intent to improve my financial situation and make it better but failed each and every time.

So over the last couple  of weeks I’ve decided enough is enough, and decided to step up to the plate once and for  all and face this challenge head on.  Over the last week I figured out how to manage my budget better using Mint.com and as a result I’ve learned a lot.  For those of you don’t know what Mint.com is you can check out my review of it right here.

So in this article I’m going to cover seven things I’ve learned on how to manage a budget better.

How To Manage Your Budget Better

Keep Things Simple.  The first thing I feel that is so important to keeping a budget is that you keep things as simple as possible.  I’ve found with all the other budgets I’ve had the moment I made things to complicated I would ultimately end up veering of course.

The best way I’ve found to do that is to use Mint.com simply because it does most of the heavy lifting for me.  I’ve found anytime that I used a spreadsheet or program that requires me to input every single transaction I manage to find a way over complicate things.

Link All Of Your Accounts.  On top of that I’ve also found that by linking all of my accounts into a great program like Mint it automatically brings in every transaction made with every account I have.

What’s great about this I can see every transaction made from one spot.  So whether it’s an account transfer, a paycheck being deposited, or a withdrawal, I can see it all in one place.

Categorize Your Transactions.  This brings me to my next tip on how to manage your budget better and that is to categorize every transaction you make.  Being very specific with the way you categorize your transactions has everything to do with making your budget a success.

What’s great about Mint is since all of your transactions are already brought into the programs it’s really easy to label them correctly an know exactly how much you are spending in any given area.  I should also point out that if you don’t categorize things right your budgets will be off so take the time to thoroughly categorize your transactions.  Below is a picture of what my transactions look like when they are properly categorized.

Set A Budget For Everything.  The next thing that is very important is to set a budget for everything you can.  Budgets allow you to designate money towards each individual area of your finances.  For example I have a budget for my television  internet & phone, electric, gas, water & sewer, insurance, and groceries just to name a few.

I also budget for harder things that tend to vary a lot like doctor bills and health care as well.  When it comes down to it set a budget for as many things as you can, this way it allows you to track the spending of those things as you go.  Below is a sample of my budget looks like.

Monitor Your Trends.  Another thing I learned from managing my budget this way is that it allows me to monitor trends within my budget over a long period of time.  This way I can spot things that may have gone unnoticed over the long term.

For example, a few things I didn’t realize that I spent so much money on was things like the kids and natural healthcare stuff.  Before keeping a budget I knew we were spending money in these areas but I didn’t realize how much it was.  This has allowed me to look for other ways to lower the cost these areas and spend less overall.

On top of that I’m also able to compare things from month to month or from this month a year ago.  So in a year from now I see how my spending has improved since I’ve started keeping my budget.

Set Goals. One area I’ve yet to dive into yet with Mint is setting goals, however I can already see the huge advantage to this already.  Personally I have a lot of goals in life, I want to travel, I want to pay off my debt, I want to have an emergency fund, and I want to quit my full time job and start my own business.

The thing is all of this stuff takes planning and without a good plan in place most of these things will only stay a dream.  With a budget it allows me to set goals to complete these task, and I hope to talk more about this as things progress.

Make It Fun and Work Together.  Finally, most of all I feel you have to make things fun.  Without that what is the point in doing all of this.  I think running a budget requires both spouses to work together to make it work successfully.  So when it comes to my budget my wife usually pays all the bills and I update the budget to make sure we are on track with our goals.

On top of that we are setting a goal to reward ourselves once we achieve a certain level of success.  For example, one of my goals is to take a trip to St. Lucia which has been a goal of mine for a long time.  So as a reward once we have completed several of our goals and improved are finances we plan to take a nice vacation to reward ourselves.

So what are you doing to manage your budget?  Do you use web based programs like Mint or YNAB?  Share your thoughts below.

So in this article I pose the question is health insurance worth it anymore?  Below are three reasons I believe it’s getting worse.

Premiums Are Increasing

First off, premiums are increasing at a very fast rate, in fact more than I’ve ever seen.  The other day I was watching my local news station and a report came on that claimed in the state of Ohio rates were going to increase by 80% by the year 2017.  That’s just four short years away.

Personally, I’ve seen my own rates increase big time over the last three years.  In 2010 my group health insurance plan went up by 27%.  In 2011 it went up by another 22%.  That means our insurance rates have gone up by nearly 50% in those two years alone.

In fact we’ve gotten to the point were my company had to drop it’s group plan because coverage for me and my 3 kids was costing the company over $850 a month, and that’s not counting all the other employees that were on the plan.

What’s worse is I don’t see these rates slowing down one bit.

Higher Deductibles

Another thing that is getting worse is deductibles.  Since signing up with my dud health insurance plan I’ve been talking to a lot of insurance agents lately and one of the big things they’ve been preaching is HSA high deductible plans.

Now I can’t blame insurance agents for pushing these plans because the premiums are usually the cheapest, however whenever I would ask about a plan with a lower deductible like $1500 I would usually get this awkward stare from them.

On top of that in order to have the health insurance cover any of the cost you will need to meet your entire deductible before the insurance company will cover one cent of your medical expenses.

For me even with a $3500 deductible I almost never hit this deductible, which begs the question,  why even have the insurance if you never hit the deductible? It’s a perfectly logical question when I’m paying $459 a month for the insurance but still have to pay all of my own medical bills.

Where is the benefit in that.

Less Benefits

Finally, I feel the worse problem with health insurance is that they offer hardly any benefits.   With a family of three the two biggest benefits on a health insurance plan are the doctors copay and the drug card coverage.

With most personal plans you can’t even get this kind of coverage.  The last quote I ran with my insurance agent was a personal plan that had a $1500 deductible, 70/30 coinsurance, $35 doctors copay, and a drug card and the monthly premium was going to be $915 a month.  Ouch!

With insurance companies offering less and less benefits, what risk are they really taking on anymore, especially those that never hit these huge deductibles.

Is Health Insurance Worth It

So is health insurance really worth it?  In my opinion with the rising cost of insurance premiums, higher deductibles, and less benefits, you almost have to wonder how long will people and companies that offer group plans be able to afford it before it just becomes to expensive?

I personally feel health insurance is on a collision course and the results are not going to be pretty.  So what are your thoughts on the current heath insurance situation?

Photo by ajithrockscc

But that doesn’t mean that you have to give up a vacation altogether. There are plenty of budget travel options that are closer than you think.

Whether you like art, music, nature, or just the excitement of a new city; you will save money by staying in the United States. Even though it might not be as exotic as a vacation to Brazil, there are still some “uncharted” US territories to explore. If anyone asks, just tell them that you’re backpacking through the United States.

I’ve put together a list of budget-friendly vacation spots in the US, based on interests and budgets. Feel free to add your own. Now, put your backpack on and find out where you’d like to go, because summer is almost here!

Visit a National Park

Taking a summer vacation at a national park is one of the best ways to “disconnect” and get in touch with nature. What’s more, you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg for lodging and activities. Simply bring a tent, some hiking boots, and a decent camera.

Know that some of the parks get crowded in the summer. If you’ve already visited America’s first national park, Yellowstone, you probably know how tourist-ridden it is. In 2010, almost a million people visited the park during its busiest month: July. However, there are less crowded national parks that offer just as much scenery as Yellowstone.

Yosemite National Park, located in California, is one of the country’s biggest and grandest national parks. It spans across 761,268 acres of land, but the most popular part is Yosemite Valley, a glacial valley surrounded by granite summits (like “Half Dome” and “El Capitan”) and large pine trees.

Canyonlands National Park is in southeastern Utah and offers hiking trails, and the Colorado River and Green River. The park also has whitewater rapids, similar to the ones in found in the Grand Canyon. Canyonlands only gets 440,039 visitors per year, much less than Yellowstone which gets 2 million tourists a year.

Get Tropical…in the States

If you have a bit of money saved up and want to get out of the continental US, consider Puerto Rico, Hawaii, or the Virgin Islands. If you’re craving a Caribbean get-away but don’t want to pay to travel out the United States, Puerto Rico (or the US Virgin Islands) are great options. Both are located in the Caribbean and offer resorts, beaches, seafood, and tropical scenery; without the currency exchange.

Hawaii is a destination that most Americans dream of visiting. Luckily, with a little ingenuity, you can spend under $100 per day in this tropical getaway. By bringing your own food, choosing the right activities, and being prepared for the beach, you can save a decent amount of money during your stay.

Travel to a Big City

The biggest, most prosperous cities in America cannot be explored in one day. Plan a week long trip in a city that appeals to you most. For instance, if you’re a music lover, you could travel to Nashville. If you’re a fan of high art, visit Chicago or New York. The benefits of traveling to a metropolitan area is that you can cut expenses on hotels and transportation. Stay just outside city limits and save about $60 on hotel lodging.

Another remarkable, affordable city to visit is Austin, Texas. It’s a “cultural retreat’: from music to food to art, it has the allure of a big city and offers small town charm. There are plenty of bed and breakfasts and historic hotels located in and around the city.

Find Your Inner Artist

If you want to embrace your inner artist, travel to Marfa, Texas. Never heard of it? Most people haven’t; it is one of the most underrated vacation destinations to date.

It’s referred to by NPR as an “unlikely art oasis”. With a population of less than 1500, Marfa is located in the high desert and is a destination for many artists and musicians. New York minimalist artist Donald Judd moved there in 1971, bought many of its buildings and turned them into art installations. It fueled a substantial art movement that is still going strong today.

Marfa is also becoming a popular place to film movies: There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men were both filmed here. The city hosts its annual Marfa Film Festival from May 1-5. Marfa is proof that only through traveling across the country will you find undiscovered, unadvertised getaways.

So what are you doing to have a budget friendly vacation this year?

Bio: This is a guest post by Liam Garcia