Was Black Friday a boom or bust?

I am having a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend so far. I haven't had to cook yet so that is a bonus at my house. Yesterday, on Black Friday, I managed to stay away from the stores, since I am not fond of crowds but I also know that the real bargains come 2 weeks before Christmas.

I was not at the malls but yesterday I drove past 3 major ones and saw that the parking lots were full. My question is, are those people buying anything or are they window shopping? Of course we will not know that for another week or so when the major stores do some preliminary revenue checking.

Now here is the kicker, do people spend more because they see other people spending? Will reports of non-spending make people stop and think about what they are buying? It is my opinion that shopping is a lot like industrial hand wheels, when one wheel turns is gets a lot of other wheels turning. What people are waiting on, is to find out if that first wheel is turning or not.

Let's see if people in general think this economy is turning around - or not.

Christmas shopping for necessitates

This Christmas season will be marked by people shopping for necessitates as gifts. With a down economy the gift giving will be more like getting what you need rather than what frivolous thing you want. Items will be more along the lines of keeping that commuter car running rather than fancy auto accessories for it. Wardrobe will be more along the lines of replacing worn out items like shoes and outwear rather than buying an expensive cocktail dress that gets worn twice a year.

Of course the retail industry wants people to think differently than that. I have even seen a really dumb commercial for a toy that looks like pipe cleaners. There was also an interview on my local TV news with a women that plans on spending a lot less this year on toys for her kids. She said that she would rather buy one good quality toy than 20 toys that break in under 6 months.

People are finally wising up. It only took a recession for them too learn.

Blog burnout

I have been writing this blog for over 3 years now. Some months I write everyday, and some months twice a week. In those 3 years I have never let the blog go for longer than a week without an entry. During that time I have seen people start up blogs, be fanatical about them and then stop suddenly writing in them after 6 months or so. At first I thought that maybe something happened to them and they cannot blog anymore or they had died. Then I saw their "handle" on a message board or another site and found out it was them. After a few exchanged blog comments or emails I found out they had experienced bloggers burnout.

Bloggers burnout is nothing like writers block, it is much more drastic than that. What those bloggers did was start a blog that they thought might make them some money but did not take into consideration the fact that the subject might not be of real interest to them. One guy had a car blog and was hoping to attract advertisers for Ferrari parts or other high end car. It went well for almost a year then his post had dwindled to one blog post a week, then once a month till nothing. His interest in the subject was waning. Another blogger that I had followed lasted for more than a year. Her blog was about making money using social networking online. She had instructions on Squidoo (something I never got involved with) lenses, blogging communities and even did some great exposes' on email reading scams. She disappeared and then showed up again at another site we both frequent. She simply got bored blogging and did not see much of a return for her efforts. Both of them have given up on blogging.

Just to give you some info on blogs: most of them are abandoned after 4 months. About 1 blog in 100,000 will have more than 10 visitors a day. Only 1 blog in 500,000 will make its owner enough money to pay for the domain name or the hosting for a year. The rest of them are the cream of the crop and those are the ones that advertisers are interested in. They have to have at least 10,000 visitors a day. Most blogs don't even come close to that.  It is no wonder that bloggers are experiencing burnout by the truck load.

Holiday stress

Tis' the season for headaches and stressed out feelings, it is the end of the year holidays. From the day after Halloween to a week after New Years Day it is the most stressful time of year. People worried about buying gifts for people when they themselves don't have much money to live on, others worried about if they will have a job in the new year and the last group who get stress out because someone they know is stressed out.

Unfortunately for many, those stressful worries are well founded. Lots of companies choose the holiday season to give their employees unwanted gifts - their pink slip. I find this not only a nasty gesture on their part but also, almost immoral.

Those custom shot glasses that people got for gifts many Christmases ago are now getting a workout. There are now reports of increased alcohol consumption due to stress. People are now turning toward food as a stress relief too.

Holiday stress will probably end once the retail industry quits pushing their wares on people because of "gift giving". What ever happened to goodwill towards your fellow human? Instead of giving an item give yourself. Do something nice as a gift, help clean a room, tidy up a neighborhood, offer temporary foster care to a shelter pet, give a helping hand to those in need.

So are you saving and getting ahead yet?

In the 2 years that I have been writing this blog I can tell you that I have paid off plenty of bills in that time. Just managing money and learning to go without some of those impulse purchases has made a big difference. I can sleep better at night, where as I use to wake up worrying about bills or where to get the money to pay for them.

Handling money correctly was something our parents never taught us. They just told us to save, save, save, which is OK if you don't have bills, bills, bills. I had to learn by trial and error. Those errors got my family into some deep water at times. Making bad decisions on using credit cards and thinking we would always have a steady job was one big error.

I also learned to watch friends and family to see how they handled money. I learned from one family member not to use credit cards for an Outer Banks vacation rental when they could not afford to pay it back. It was when the credit card took her to court that I learned more about how not to handle creditors.

It has only been the last 5 years that I turned around my family's spending habits. If I had not decided to change our money management when I did, we would not have faired well when I went through several layoffs in the past 5 years. It was 2 years ago that this blog was started to share my knowledge of how I did it with you.

Now I have a question - how have you been handling your finances? Are you happy with the results or do you need help? If you think that your money situation can only be cured by throwing money at it, you would be wrong.

How to deal will blog comment spam

I recently made this blog a "do follow" for the URL on the blog comments. It opened up a flood of really weird comments on posts that were over a year old. I have had to go through each one and filter out where the URL were pointing to. I don't mind the occasional short comment like "great post" or even "you don't know what you are talking about" comment but when those short ones have URLs pointing to some Viagra site or best eye cream for wrinkles link farm then I just delete them.

That is what is known as comment spam. Someone just leaving a comment so they can have a link to their link farm or affiliate page. Most of the big name professional bloggers have had to deal with comment spam at one time or another. I personally moderate the comments but the bigger professional bloggers have so many comments that they have an automated approval system. They often require a person to become a member of their community before they can leave a comment. That way they are not giving out backlinks to commentators which means that spammers usually don't join their community.

If you have a blog, you must decide how you are going to deal with comments. Comments are often vital for a blog, depending on the subject matter. You can turn your comments off or on or, just run your blog like a regular website. The choice is yours and yours alone.

Saving for the Thanksgiving Dinner

Has the price of food got you worried about grocery shopping for this years' Thanksgiving dinner? Here is a short video showing you ways you can cut corners without starving yourself.

Some things a new blogger needs to know

If you are new to blogging, or even it you have been at it for sometime, there are 2 major things you should know. If you re using Google's Blogger, you should be aware that, that format uses the "nofollow" attribute for comments. That means if you put a comment in a comment box with your URL linked to the comment, the search engines will follow the link but not give you any "link juice" for it. In other words it will not count as a backlink to your blog. Wordpress based blogs, on the other hand will. Some owners of blogger based blogs are aware of this and have removed the "nofollow" attribute. I have removed that attribute so all the comments are a "do follow" on this blog. Before you go crazy and start commenting like mad, I must warn you that comments are still moderated.

Next you should know how to send a message to the search engines whenever you update your blog. The term "pinging" is used to describe that action. For Wordpress blogs, there is a section to add the ping services in your dashboard so that "pinging" is automatically done each time you publish a post. Blogger based blogs have a simple one ping service that may or may not work that well. Each time you publish a new blog post you need to let the search engines know about it. I use pingomatic.com a simple online submission tool that will send a ping to all the major search engines.

Just being aware of those 2 things will help you out in your blogging adventure.

Finance furniture scams

If you are a regular reader then you would remember when I warned everyone about those 0% financing scams that some retail stores do to entice customers in. When will people learn to read the fine print on those contracts? To emphisise the importance of knowing what those so called "deals" are all about, here is a news video on that subject. The news reporters go undercover to expose this illegal practice. Please watch and learn to avoid those "deals." Keep in mind that not all 0% financing is a scam but I urge you to watch the video so you know what to look out for.

Websites for job searches

I bet you have been trying to find websites that will list jobs and have been coming up with lots of scam ads like those "work from home" ones. First one to always look at, is your local state employment department website. Often all the jobs in your local area are listing right there. The best way to look is by location first. If you are looking for jobs in south jersey then look under the cities listed or if there is a county then under the county name.

Next you can look on the major job search websites. They are monster.com and careerbuilder.com both of them list many jobs but you will have to wade through the national listings that are mixed in with the local ones.

One website that I found helpful was simplyhired.com That website is a job search engine and will get listings from other job listing websites.

Those are my choices for job hunting. If you know of some that you think other readers of this blog might benefit, then by all means, leave a comment.