Cheap alternatives to expensive items

Everyone wants to save money but from experience I also know there are some items we each choose not to scrimp on. Take for example my husband who will only eat Heinz ketchup, it has to be that brand or he will not touch it. I have been often tempted to buy a cheaper brand of ketchup and just put it into a Heinz container.

I know women who will only buy a certain brand of cosmetics or hand cream. Of course those brands are not the cheap ones. I only shake my head because those fools wrongly believe that price dictates quality and often it is the opposite. Take for example those expensive acne spot treatment creams. There is a much cheaper alternative and I used it when I was a teenager and now my daughter uses it, it is yogurt.

You need to look at your own shopping list and decide if you have been shopping based on brand names, taste, quality or if the product works or not. Only after you realize how you shop will you be able to save money when you shop.

Some things save you money and others simply don't

How many gizmos have you bought or had installed in your home that were purported to save you money? I am currently looking up at my ceiling fans that came with the house that are suppose to save us money on our energy bill, but quite frankly I rarely turn them on. I know I was warned a few years ago not to install those thick air filters that filter out even the smallest micron in our heating system simply because the whole house fans would be using more energy just trying to pull more air through the filter. The result would also be a burnt out fan motor.

The common item you hear on the local TV news stations for saving money on your energy bill is to install drapes. Quite frankly I think that drapes are a trade off. Install them and you have to turn on your lights more often as they cut out natural lighting. I firmly believe that drapes actually do nothing in insulating your windows. The only way to insulate your windows is to have double pane windows installed.


One of the easiest ways to cut your energy bill is to have your house shaded by trees in the summer and shielded by cold winter winds in the coldest months. You can do that by landscaping with the right outdoor plants.

Are you getting spam comments on your blogs yet?

Many new bloggers have their blogs set to automatically approve comments. That is usually just fine in the beginning of a new blog since it has no PageRank yet. Just wait until your blog starts to get some visitors. Your comments will run the gambit from, "I like your blog," to people trying to sell you advertising on their websites or "we can get your blog listed with 500 search engines." All of that I consider spam, but why? The "I like your blog," seems innocent enough unless they have listed their URL (website) as some obscure web addy like www.hydrolyzereviews.net or worse some porn website. What happens it that their name becomes the link to that website and the search engines are finding their website via your blog. Now you have 2 choices at this point, either to delete the comment or publish it without the link. If you have a blog that is using Wordpress.org software then you can publish the comment then edit the comment to remove the link. In blogger you do not have that option. Why should you care what people have linked to in your comments? Consider those links as free advertising that you are now doing for some stranger. If you don't like their website why would you give them free advertising? I personally check out every link someone puts in a comment that appears in one of my blogs. If I find those links helpful to my readers then I leave it, if not I tend to delete the entire comment. How you will handle your blogs comments will change over time.

Making lemonaid from blogging assignments

If you ever join one of those paid to blog companies that give you nothing but assignments about "the best website hosting company," or "diets that work," type of blog posts for you to write about but your blog has nothing to do with those subjects, don't fret but do what I did. For some odd reason I kept getting dieting posts to write about so instead of turning down good money from those offers I started up a dieting blog. Why fight it when you can be making money? If you get lots of technology post offers then start up a techie type of blog. Who knows, you might be making more money writing about stuff you are not passionate about but the advertisers love it.

Using your blog post title to attract the search engines

Notice how I just put the whole idea of this blog post in the title sentence? That was to get the search engines attention. If you are writing blog posts to get people to visit your blog, you HAVE to use the correct words in your title that people can search on. If you are writing a blog post about the cure for hemorrhoids, don't title your blog post "I had a bummer of a evening." Then talk about the cure. No you need to put your idea with the key word hemorrhoids, in the title of your blog post.

Some of the worse blog titles are "what a day!" and "wordless Wednesday." Just do a search on those titles and see what you come up with.

Search engines use titles of blog posts as the words they include in their searches. By adding the main idea and a few keywords in your title you WILL see an increase of traffic from search engines. Blog post titles are not an after thought, they should be well thought out and often written after your blog post is done.

Where to put your investment money

With the stock market doing a roller coaster ride and real estate not yet recovered, where do you put your money as an investment? I have heard everything from loose diamonds, bars of gold to green technology.In reality, my personal opinion is that real estate is still a good investment provided you don't have a loan on the property. Buying rentals makes for a good steady income, again...only if you don't have any loans on the property. People got carried away when those who could not afford to invest in real estate started to get involved in real estate investments. No doubt on the advice of some marketing gurus selling their books on infomercials.

Another thing to do to invest your money is to pay off any of your debts. That also means your home. The less you have to pay out in interest rates the more money in your bank account. If you have borrowed on a life insurance policy then pay it back too. Those life insurance policies that you can borrow from usually have a higher interest rate then regular bank term accounts so it is like paying yourself back.