Here are some Memorial Day articles to check out:

Saluting Those Who Serve

Sgt. Joe Cox

Slideshow

Photo courtesy of MSNBC

I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between swine flu news and personal finance. When emergencies occur in both the medical and financial world, it pays to be prepared. Here are some ways to protect yourself from the h1n1 virus or swine flu:

• Wash your hands.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth.
• Cough in your sleeve or tissue and dispose of immediately.
• If you do feel sick, seek medical attention and get help.

These four precautions and steps for swine flu avoidance are very similiar to handling your day to day budget. Here is my list of equilavent solutions to avoid a monetary swine flu:

• Know your spending. Just like washing your hands, you have keep track of where your money is going and what it is touching.
• Avoid excessive spending. Buying that $2.50 Coke at Bob’s Quick Stop is like picking your nose. Sure, it might feel good at the time but the feeling is short lasting and you end up with a booger on your pointer. Plan your spending wisely, just like plan on bringing some pocket wipes to help that booger habit.
• When you do have a cough or bump in your finances, make sure it does not spread into other areas. Confine your emergency to one area. Use your emergency fund (aka tissue) to stop the advancement of debt.
• If you find yourself financially sick – excessive debt, constantly borrowing, unable to pay for your basic needs, please seek help! Chances are that by yourself you can’t overcome this financial virus. Learn about financial planning, budget setting, and debt reduction from the experts.

The moral of the post is this – be cautious with your spending, prevent mistakes with budgeting, be prepared for emergencies, and if you do get the financial swine flu, get help.

1. Noone is safe. Realize whatever you do, you are at risk of identity theft. But don’t let this scare you. Just recognize, accept, and move on to the following steps.
2. Buy a shredder. The easiest way for your identity to get stolen is by going through your trash. All those credit card offers and balance transfer checks can cause trouble. Pick up a shredder that cross cuts to make it even more difficult to piece back together. Amazon has the Fellowes Shredder for $42 and free shipping. This one cross cuts the paper and also does credit cards. Use this on all your sensitive paperwork.
3. Don’t go phish. Phishing scams fool people into thinking that an email or link is from a particular company. They ask for personal information, including passwords and SSN, and then wreck havoc on your life. BE SMART. Businesses do not ask for passwords or SSN’s in emails. If you get an email that says “please update your personal information” do not click it. Instead, type the company’s URL directly in your browser. If they really do need an update or changes are made, they will let you know there. Scammers are getting smart, so be smarter.
4. Freeze. If you are really nervous about your identity getting stolen, put a freeze on your credit. Call each Credit Bureau and request a freeze on your account. This will effectively not allow anyone to access or apply for your credit information. This is as close to foolproof and secure as you can get. The bad news is that you will also be locked out, so if you need to open credit, you will have to contact the bureaus and open them back up.
5. Ongoing protection. If you are paranoid and think that everyone is out to get you and that your toaster oven is speaking to you, you can get credit monitoring service. I don’t really believe in these if you follow the steps above, but I understand where some can find the value. Dave Ramsey suggests Zander, who offer more than just credit monitoring and will pay fees if your identity is in fact stolen.

That’s it. If you do these things I guarantee you’ll be able to sleep at night and remove any anxiety you have about identity theft. You’ll have to go somewhere else to deal with that talking toaster oven issue.

I don’t want to make light of the situation out there, but this site is a joke. Yes, we are in a recession. People are losing their homes, jobs, and savings. People are struggling to make ends meet and are fearful of the near future. Do we really need a website telling us this? More importantly, what is this website actually telling us? Personally, I don’t need government to cope with my issues, especially when I think that they are a main source of the problem. It’s like turning to a crack dealer when you want help with your addiction.

Sorry for getting more political than usual but realize I kept my rant brief.

However, if you are one who enjoys the old school ways of pen and paper or mail in your bills month over month instead of using the most often free online service, there are some steps to take to make sure you aren’t overspending. The price of stamps is going up to $0.44 on May 11th, so look into the following to help save some bucks:

• Make it last forever: USPS introduced the Forever Stamp a few years ago and they have been pretty popular. The great thing about these stamps is that they last, just as their name implies, forever. You can buy stamps today and 4 years from now when they are $0.50 a pop, you can stick a forever stamp on there and still be good. If you use stamps alot, this can be a real dollar saver. Those who avoid snail mail, I’d avoid this option.
• Weigh in: Make sure you weigh your letters and packages to ensure you don’t pay too much in shipping. If you have an eBay! business this is even more important as you don’t want the cost of postage eating into your potential profits. Familiarize yourself with the cost of postage. When in doubt, it may be worth dropping into the Post Office and paying the exact amount. You can get more information on sizes and rates from USPS.
• Check the destination: ensure that you have all the right information on the letter. Nothing worse than opening up your mailbox and getting a “return to sender” stamp on that wedding invitation. Not only is the letter ruined, you have use more postage. Double check that house number and zip code before raising the flag.
• Labels are best: I always wondered how the USPS delivered letters and packages with horrible penmanship on the labels. Do yourself a favor – print out labels from your computer. This will insure your package/letter is delivered with no errors. If you don’t want to make labels, be sure to print the address . Cursive or that chicken scratch you try to pass off as english could cause trouble.

One trick I heard of doing was to change the return address. Let’s say I was mailing a letter to Bob Johnson. I could simply put his name and address in the upper left corner of the letter and stick in a mailbox with no postage. When the Post Office receives the letter and notices no postage, they’ll send it to the return address. If all works, Bob Johnson now receives a letter from me with no postage. I do not condone this, and I’m pretty sure that this would be illegal. You are better off sticking with the sound and law abiding suggestions from up above.

I submitted my post into the tournament because of two reasons:

1. Charity: I really want my charity to win. I am playing for the PSP Society, which is short for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. My grandmother passed away from this disorder so it is very personal to me. Currently there is no cure and it is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s so public awareness and education are  very important.
2. Exposure: Getting my blog noticed is great, but I also just wanted to spread the word on how to lower discretionary expenses like a cable bill. For this particular topic, There isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t get an email from a work group alias asking “Any deals on Comcast?” Not only that, in my conversation with people I find that most are paying the sticker price for cable and simply don’t do anything about it. I wanted to arm people with the ways to save on this and other bills.

What I ask of you, my readers, is to visit my cable bill post. I also want you to go read my opponent’s post – The Importance of Savings Goals. It is a good read and although speaks about savings goals, it’s important to realize that setting goals in all areas of your life – work, family, weight loss, etc. are key to being successful in life. After reading both, please go to Free Money Finance and place a comment as to which article you prefer. My keyword is lower.

Thanks for taking time to read both articles. Feel free to pass this contest along to others. There are several great articles and posts about personal finance, and your vote actually does count in this!

Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!

So how do you avoid this? Well, there is no guarantee on electronics. So looking for a fail proof drive is out of the question. External drives are in the $100-$200+ range but you still need to back up data yourself or get another program to. But like I’ve said before, I’m lazy and need a setup that will cater to my do nothing attitude. So what do I do? I use Mozy. Mozy is a free online backup storage company that is super easy to use and provides you 2 gigs of backup space free. You simply point Mozy to the folder or folders you want to backup and presto – it does the rest. Here is the lazy man’s guide to get going

1. Sign up for Mozy.
2. Download and install the software. Mozy is compatible with Windows and Macs.
3. Check the directories and file types that you want to save during the setup
4. Set up a time to backup your files
5. Relax and know that your files will be safe in case of an accident

Is it really that easy? Yes, it is. Is it safe? Yes. You select the passcode for your data encryption and nobody else knows it. Of course, you need to remember the password in case you ever have to do a data restore. 

What I really like about Mozy is that they only backup files when you tell them to and there are settings to ensure that your bandwidth doesn’t get sucked up at the same time as you are watching streaming videos on Hulu or other websites. The progam is not intrusive and also works on external drives (no thumb or flash drives though).

Mozy also has an unlimited plan for $4.95 a month. I haven’t upgraded, but this is definitely one of the lowest cost backup plans available. They also have plans for business owners (as the 2 free gigs is for home use only). Want to know how to score more free space? Mozy has a referral program which allows the referrer to get 256 megs of extra space for everyone who signs up. I’ve added my reference code to the links here, but don’t feel like you have to use them. The peace of mind of saving possibly thousands by insuring your computer files for all my readers is the main objective.

Trust me, you’ll be thanking me the day you turn on your computer and it farts out on you. Sign up for Mozy today.