$755: My Highest Earning Freelance Week Ever + MORE

On a lazy Sunday afternoon, while SMB was away to her friend’s house, I was looking at the Google Analytics report to research recent search rankings of my articles. Google Analytics reports the exact search terms used to visit the blog. One search term caught my attention while browsing through the list…

This post is from staff writer Sarah Gilbert. April’s post about financial literacy struck something in me, especially the part about the “Fallacy of Financial Literacy.” The idea here is that we are sold tools to increase our financial literacy, when in fact they only increase our knowledge of products the banks who create the tools can use to their profit and our detriment…

The phone rings, and a voice on the other end says you owe $25,000.
Impossible. You have impeccable credit. Or, so you thought.
It turns out that someone’s been using your identity and has now run up mountains of debt. Unfortunately, this is all too common these days.
According to IdentityTheft.info, identity theft strikes 15 million people per year…

Last year, more than 7,000 websites (including big ones like Wikipedia and Google) protested a piece of anti-piracy legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. The measure ultimately failed.Now Congress is voting on a new version called CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act…

Professor David Nutt, who was scrapped as the United Kingdom’s drug tsar in 2009 after he claimed that using ecstasy was no more dangerous than riding a horse, has an interesting theory about what caused the current global financial crisis: Too many people in the worldwide financial industry are using cocaine…

Credit cards, when used carefully, can be great financial tools. However, you have to make the credit card work for you. If you don’t, you end up paying a great deal in interest charges, and your credit card costs end up being in charge of your finances, rather than you being in control of your credit card…

It was a busy weekend for me. Most of my time was spent redesigning MANteresting. We threw up a new logo. Moved some stuff around. And ultimately brought the site up to web 2.0 standards.
After a couple of hours of coding in the MANteresting changes, I couldn’t help myself. I figured it was time to give this here blog a face-lift…

Hey blog peeps! Happy Monday! I have a bit of a freelancing break down post for you today.
(break-break-break-it down yo)
So, normally I don’t publish my freelancing income, but I had a really good week last week! So, I thought I’d share it with you just to show you the different streams of income that I have, and maybe you can get a better idea of how to accomplish this for yourself in the future…

After the recent strong stock market gains, I have been asked a few times lately: “What should we do to protect against a possible market downturn? Should we become defensive?”
If you could move in and out of the market at the right time, you would obviously increase your returns and avoid some losses…

I’ve been a homeowner since last year and finally decided to join Angie’s List. I’m glad I did: it has saved me potentially thousands of dollars on some plumbing work I need done sometime in the near future. More on that in a minute.
If you aren’t familiar with Angie’s List, it is a consumer review site where user reviews of service companies are aggregated…

Today is Earth Day. I’m fired up, and you’re welcome to join me. Lets make it more than just a token day that we forget about tomorrow. Let’s make it Earth Week, Earth Year, and even Earth Lifetime. And…save some money in the process.
If you fall in to the bucket of those who have a conscience and give a damn about the planet (or if you normally don’t, but want to get started), I’m going to throw out a challenge…

Travis Pizel found himself at the end of his ropes.
He had amassed over $100,000 of consumer debt and to make matters worse, his wife was completely oblivious to the amount.
For many couples that could have been the end of the relationship. Despite the hardships, Travis and his family have been able to buckle down and pay off over $84,000 of debt in just under 4 years…

Today’s podcast featured Phil Anderson, creator of BudgetSimple.com, the free online budgeting tool.
Phil wanted a piece of software that would simply help him manage his money. He also had a strong desire to be his on boss. So he used his software development skills to build the tool that he needed…

One of the keys to healthier eating — and saving money while you do it — is preparing meals at home. However, it can be difficult to find the time to make meals and enjoy them.
There are a number of benefits to cooking at home beyond just improving your health and saving money. According to many studies, there are relationship and other benefits for sharing meals at home with a family…

And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
When you comin’ home Dad?
I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, son
You know we’ll have a good time then
– Harry Chapin, Cats in the Cradle
I have a free weekend. I want to spend that weekend doing a bunch of small home repairs that need my attention…

Last week, I got an email from someone who is casting for a TV show. They are looking for extremely frugal people and the tips they can share. Even with the amount of money we save, we aren’t really that frugal. To me, the things we do to cut expenses are probably not going to make a entertaining TV show…

A lot of experts predicted that consumers would cut back on credit card spending this year. I’d even bet that consumer behavior analysts felt they were making pretty safe predictions. And honestly, I kind of agreed with them.
I can think of three reasons we should all be skittish about flashing our plastic…

Here we go with the final round of Free Money Finance March Money Madness (to follow all the action click on my March Money Madness category link and scroll down to read all the posts involved in this subject.)
Today’s game is brought to you by the Citi ThankYou® Preferred Rewards Card which is currently offering 15,000 bonus ThankYou Points after you make $1,000 in purchases within the first 3 months after account opening—good for $150 in gift cards…

While working hard can help you make more money, you don’t always need to work harder. Sometimes, you can get more done, and boost your income, by working smarter.
There’s no reason to work extra hard to earn just a little bit more. Here are 5 tips for working smarter:
1. Know When You’re Most Productive
One of the best ways to work smart is to know when you’re most productive…

Non-profit organizations and for-profit businesses promote financial literacy education as the solution to a society of citizens unskilled with managing their own money. If only we could have mandatory money management classes in high school and earlier, advocates claim, the United States would be a nation of savers, free of most debt other than mortgages, with an emergency fund in every garage…

Aside from sports, there are few fields in which there are so many platitudes, old saws, epigrams, rules of thumb, etc., than investing.
Perhaps it’s because there are few endeavors where you have to put it on the line like you do in sports and investing. There are clear winners and losers, and risk can be your greatest friend or your worst enemy…

I am a risk adverse person by nature, so becoming a landlord is not a natural thing for me. But here I am, a landlord with two rental properties, and looking forward to more. This article is my story about how I became a landlord and why I did it.
I have always had a mixed feeling about becoming a landlord…

…. Said the woman who just did it 🙂 And who’s now my favorite person of the day!
Her name is Sarah Hanson, and she just got $125,000 in return for giving up 10% of her future income for 10 years straight. That’s 10% of everryyyyyyyyyyyyyything she does (or doesn’t?) do for 10 years in a row – Wow…

I bet you’ve never heard of this.
It’s a special government loophole that allows you to earn extra cash, totally tax-free. It’s 100 percent legal and simple to use. It can even help you pay for a dream vacation home.
This loophole is not for everyone. But if you qualify, you should start collecting this income right away…