The Dollar Diet

Go on a Money Diet. You've heard of going on a diet to lose weight and get back in shape...
Have you ever considered going on a money diet? Not spending any money so you can get back in financial shape?
Try this: make a deal with yourself that you will not spend a dollar for one week. No eating out, no buying stuff on ebay, no downloading music or MP3's, no filling up the car, no buying groceries, no shopping at all.

What changes do you need to make? Take your lunch to work with you, carpool, listen to your existing music library, eat stuff you have in your cupboards or fridge. Try it and see how much you can save. It's the little things that add up.

- Angela

Money in Your Pocket

Keep More Money in Your Pocket
By Angela Brown

Do you always get the right amount of change?

I don't. I'm not sure if cashiers are singling me out of the crowd or if I've got this big "I can't count" sign on my forehead. This last week as a test, I stopped each time I made a purchase and counted the change given to me. Out of seven purchases, I received incorrect change four times.
Once I was given one dollar too much and the other three times, I was short changed.

The funny thing is I usually don't even pay attention to the amount of change I'm given. Cashiers are paid professionals and they are just expected to give me the right amount of change - right? Well, you would think so, but I guess it's not so obvious.

So then I started paying attention to the receipts that cashiers ring up for me.
(And I admit that often I pay for purchases with a debit card and don't even look at the amount totaled. Swiping that card as you grab your goodies and off-you-go, is so fast, it's easy to forget to see if you were charged correctly.) So for two weeks now when I've gone to the grocery or department store I've stopped to check the receipt.
On one occasion, I was charged for two separate items each twice. Another time I was not charged at all for a $6.00 item. On a different day I bought two pillows that were on sale discounted $4.99 each, but when they were rung up, the discount was not included so in essence I paid $9.98 too much for the pillows (or rather, I didn't get the sale price.)

Here's the "rest of the story" as Paul Harvey would say; each time I brought up the error to the clerk, they acted as if "no biggie, we make mistakes like this all day." So I paid the six dollars I wasn't charged, I was patient while the cashier called her manager to erase the two extra charges at the other store, and at the store with the pillows the girl couldn't fix the mistake at all. She sent me to the customer service desk, where the service rep erased the entire purchase and rang everything up again. When she got to the pillows (19.95 each) and it gave her full retail price, she simply voided the charge, charged me for one pillow and gave me one pillow for free without even ringing it up.
I explained to her that if she gave me one pillow without ringing it up, instead of me getting a $10 discount on two pillows (discounted $4.99 each) that I was getting a $20 discount and there was no paper trail of what had happened to the pillow (i.e. inventory nightmare).

She assured me that it was fine and she would take the rap for it. I asked if she would like me to sign something that said I took one pillow for free so she wouldn't have to pay for the pillow out of her pocket and she said "no, it's no big deal."

The big deal is that stuff like this happens all the time - whether or not you pay attention. Sure I was glad for a discount and don't mean to sound ungrateful, but as I left the store, the business owner in me said; "Yikes, I wouldn't want her working in my store."

If you are one of those people who swipe your debit/credit card at the pay pump before you pay for gasoline and never look back, ask yourself next time you drive away: "How much did I really just pay for that tank of gasoline?" You might be surprised by looking at your receipt that you've automatically purchased a car wash or donated to the station attendant's favorite charity without even knowing it.

If keeping money in your pocket is important to you, make sure you check your receipts and check your change.

© 2005 Words of Wellness

Visualize Your Way to Success

Visualize Your Way to Success

In Bob Proctor's book, You Were Born Rich he suggests that the images we hold in our mind create our reality. "Your entire life is governed by images. It necessarily follows then, that you should be acutely aware of the images you are building in your mind."

It is rare if ever, that you hear successful people amazed of their own success - they are not only aware of the steps they took to become successful, but they've spent countless hours visualizing the process, the people involved, and seeing themselves achieving the highest levels possible.

Therefore, it stands to reason, that if successful people visualize success, and success involves visualization...that you should spend time each day in quiet solitude seeing and visualizing in your minds eye - all that you hope to be, do and achieve.