How Can You Cut Expenses?

We've all got our guilty pleasures -- monthly manicures, daily Starbucks runs, HBO, unlimited data plans on our cell phones... But, do we really need all these extras? How much money would we save monthly and yearly if we cut down on some of these expenses?

• Manicures/Pedicures. If you must indulge, skip the acrylics and have your natural nails professionally painted. This could easily save you $20/month or $240/year. If you manicured your own nails altogether, that's an extra $30-$45 in your pocket each month, or $540 a year!
• Starbucks coffee. We know it's overpriced, but we buy coffee from "Bigbucks" anyway. Instead of ordering your favorite grande skinny latte for $4, opt for a $2 double espresso. If you buy Starbucks three times a week, you will save $24/month, or almost $300/year.
• Get basic cable. Most TV is trash TV these days. Even basic cable subjects you to mind-numbing "reality" TV shows that grasp your attention and distract you from actually doing something productive with your time. If you have a deluxe cable package but do not watch TV often, save yourself $20 a month by downgrading to basic cable. This equates to at least $240 a year in savings.
• Downgrade your mobile data packages. If you have a BlackBerry phone with an unlimited data plan among other picture messaging/text messaging extras, at least downgrade to a 10mb data plan to save money. This way, you can still check Google maps and get your emails without paying $20 extra a month. This means saving $240 a year.

Adding up the total savings from this list only, you could bank an extra $1320 a year. Add to this your remaining discretionary spending and we're talking about having saved enough to have your rent or mortgage for a couple months. Not bad!

How can you cut your own expenses?

6 Things to Get Your Mindset Right for Blogging

Are you a blogger or getting into blogging? Tim Brownson from A Daring Adventure shares The Psychology of Blogging on Problogger. Here are his tips for six things to get your mindset right for blogging (emphasis mine):

• 10 spare hours a week (dedicated to blogging)
• Niche market (a concrete topic for your blog)
• Basic understanding of SEO
• Google Adsense account (cha-ching?)
• Dummies’ guide to writing great content (read all of Problogger!)
• Burning desire to succeed

Click here to read the entire article.

Which Music is Best for Productivity?

So if we accept that music does increase productivity, does it matter what types of music we listen to? Does all music have the same effect or are certain types better in certain circumstances?

If your goal is to increase your concentration then music which has a constant, easy beat and light melodies are recommended. These are said to be good for those trying to study as they help you pace your reading to aid focus and memorising. Baroque music is reported as an excellent example, especially the works of Vivaldi, Bach and Handel.

Rock music can have a similar effect. According to a report in the journal Neuroscience of Behavior and Physiology, the Russian A cademy of Sciences discovered that a person's ability to recognize visual images, including letters and numbers, is faster when either rock or classical music is playing in the background.

If you are aiming to be more productive through being more relaxed, then you may be interested to learn that research has shown that music with an upbeat rhythm can reduce stress hormone levels by as much as 41%.

Eating Healthy Helps You Save Money

Buying only groceries (versus take-out) monthly will save you a lot of money. Especially if your normal diet depends on pizza delivery and half-baked subs from your favorite take-out spot.

Rather than ordering in three nights a week, use that $50 to buy fresh produce at the supermarket. Not only are veggies more filling, but you get more for your buck than that veggie pizza with extra cheese and carbohydrate-filled crust.

Tasty (Store-bought) Salad Recipe:

2 cups spinach leaves
1 baby tomato, diced
2 tbsp lite Italian dressing
a pinch of sea salt or salt substitute

Your waistline and your wallet will thank you.

3 Google Tools to Keep You Organized

Online productivity/organization tools are awesome. They require no hard disk space nor significant CPU usage (observe how long it takes to open a program on your computer versus the time it takes to click a bookmark icon in your web browser, let alone your computer's lag time while having open multiple programs...). If you're worried about security, web services such as Google allow you to manually change the "http://" in your address bar to "https://" enabling you to navigate any Google service securely. Because of that, and because of how successfully Google is growing and improving their services, I use Google for almost all of my organizational needs.

Here are my three favorite Google services for organizational purposes:

Google Calendar. The Ajax-powered interface of Google Calendar enables you to add new calendar items, drag & drop, and edit event dates with speed and ease. Colored calender labels, which can be personalized from a palette of colors, help to keep your events and dates organized. SMS alerts are also an option. Using Google Calendar ensures that you have access to your schedule from any computer or web-enabled phone.


Google Notebook. When I began using Google Notebook and installed the Firefox addon, I concluded that using pen & paper was more practical and stopped using the service. When I began delving deeper into affiliate marketing (one of my income streams), I was trying to digest as much information as possible on the subject. It got to the point where I didn't know how to aggregate the best information I was finding from different blogs and sources. Using the Google Notebook browser extension, you are able to highlight text and pictures from any website and paste them all into Google Notebook and then file them by subject. Google Notebook is a handy study tool!

Google Reader. Do you follow many blogs each day? I certainly hope that you are using a feed reader! By subscribing to various blog feeds, you can view everyone's updates all in one place, which saves a lot of browsing time. My favorite reader is Google Reader, where I have all my favorite feeds categorized into folders by subject. You can also enable Sharing for your favorite feeds to share your subscriptions with friends.


Although I'm a fiend for customization (layouts, icons, everything), Google's universal minimalistic design doesn't hurt. I find that it keeps me focused and it is great for when you are sneaking away from your office work duties to read your favorite blog feeds.