Welcome to the weekly Friday giveaway roundup! Every single Friday we post giveaways ending within the next week. If you want to make sure you never miss one of these posts be sure to subscribe via RSS or Email.
Well, I’ve spent the past few days on the couch recovering from sinus surgery. Thankfully I felt well enough to put together this giveaway post. In the meantime I stocked up on a ton of DVDs to watch, but have mainly watched Prison Break and Jericho, both really solid shows so far.
This week we had our usual four posts:
I’m very thankful for the long Memorial Day weekend here in the United States. While I would love to say that I will be outside relaxing or doing yard work, I most likely will spend a majority of the time on the couch making sure I have a full recovery. What are you up to this weekend? Those in the US, doing anything fun or different for Memorial Day?
On to the giveaways!
First, enter my current giveaways:
Once you’ve entered that one, check out the 227 giveaways (a new record!) that are ending from 5/24 to 5/30. Good luck!
Ending 5/24
Ending 5/25
Ending 5/26
Ending 5/27
Ending 5/28
Ending 5/29
Ending 5/30
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Good luck on all the giveaways and I hope you all have a great weekend!
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Photo by urbanfoodie33
Editors Note: Today Victoria talks about why you should enter giveaways. Until the past year, we had no idea how many giveaways were really happening online. There are literally thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of prizes being given away every single day. While there are countless smaller prizes, there are also some very big ones like houses (check out HGTV’s Dream Home or Smart Home giveaway), $50,000 for home renovations, cars, and most of all vacations. Needless to say, we see value in entering at least a few giveaways.
When I mention to people that we spend time to enter in giveaways, the response I often hear is “I don’t have time to do that” or “I don’t even know how to do that.” What I really want to say to these comments is “bologna” because it is. Today I explain five reasons why people have no excuses to not enter blog giveaways.
1) It is easy
If you know how to get to Young Adult Money’s Friday giveaway post, entering giveaways is simple. Find the giveaway you want to enter in and the form is right on the blog after clicking each link. You can use your email or your Facebook account to login, nothing else. It is only complicated if you make it that way.
2) It can be quick if you want it to be
You can enter as many or as few giveaways as you want. You can even choose certain entries to complete and not complete. Following people on Twitter is usually an entry in a giveaway. To follow them you just have to click follow in the widget. If you have even ten extra minutes in a day, you can easily enter all of the giveaways listed for each day on the Friday giveaway roundup if you did just one entry.
3) No matter what you win, it is worth it to enter it
Even if you don’t want any of the things that specific blogs are giving away, it is still worth your time to enter. Let’s say you don’t have a baby but you enter in a giveaway for a baby product. You can always sell it, or better yet, give it away as a gift to someone you would have otherwise bought a gift for. The best thing about giveaways is that it is FREE. No penalty for entering, you get the product shipped to your house, and if you don’t want it, you can sell it for cash.
4) You have the opportunity to try new things
Many of the things that blogs give away might be products you have never tried before, always wanted to try, or never even heard of. What better way to try new things without spending money on it? Just by entering a simple giveaway, you can experience something in the world that you might not have ever gotten the chance to.
5) A discovery of new blogs is inevitable
As I have been entering giveaways, I have found numerous blogs that I would have otherwise never have found but are worth keeping up on and following. There are millions of blogs online right now and it can be challenging to find ones that are not a waste of time to read. By entering multiple giveaways on a number of blogs, finding great topics to read and learn about can be achieved.
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The above picture is a sample of a giveaway – we are giving away the above pair of Aurorae yoga pants as well as a yoga mat, total value of $137.
What’s the best thing you won in a giveaway?
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Photo by Kevin Krejci
The good life?
This past weekend I tweeted:
I am fairly confident that one day I will tell people ‘I used to be an accountant’
A fellow accountant, Lance from Money Life & More responded to this tweet and led me to reflect on what my goal really is with my career, income, and my dang entrepreneurship itch that I’m afraid will never go away. I’ve already written about the benefits of being an employee as well as some of the perks of being a full-time employee. The reality is that there is a huge incentive to get a career/job and stick with it until retirement. With that being said, I know for a fact there are millions upon millions who will end up or already have ended up reaching retirement wishing they had given something else a try.
I’ve researched different ways to make income and create wealth quite a bit. Don’t ask me why, but I started to read Donald Trump’s books in middle school. While most of his books are pretty much high-level and broad advice, I have also looked into and seen firsthand how people have made income in various other ways. This has ranged from online poker (there are multiple people from my high school who have in excess of $1 million in lifetime winnings) to writing to small business ownership. Overall I think that income generation comes in a few different stages, which I which I will go through now and in the end I will talk about what my overall goal is for how I generate income.
Employee
Whether it’s working at Pizza Hut (which I still think was the best job I ever had…in a non-monetary sense) or working as a financial analyst at a huge corporation, an employee is someone who essentially works for one company and trades their time for money. Again, there are a ton of benefits to being an employee versus some other income-generating options, but the biggest drawback is that you are trading your time for money and it’s highly unlikely that arrangement will change as long as you plan on working for someone else.
This is where most people stop. There are countless would-be entrepreneurs who simply are not in the position to take the risk of entrepreneurship or simply are willing to keep the security of a job and enjoy their life outside of work as much as possible.
Self-Employed
Self-employed individuals are people who have a special skill and essentially have one-man shops. There are many benefits to this sort of income setup. You get to set your own hours, take on as much or as little work as you desire, and you answer to no one but your clients (which are essentially ones you choose to work with versus being forced to work with a client as an employee of a larger company). While self-employed individuals have the ability to essentially choose how much their time is worth, they also have potential to make more money as they become more in-demand for referrals. I wrote about ways to find customers for your service business and stressed that there will always be clients needing certain work done. Lots of frustrated and disgruntled employees see self-employment as the best chance they have at getting away from working for someone else. But most also do not realize they should have a strong sense of organizational leadership to make it work.
Business Owner
Business ownership is a lifestyle that is idolized by many employees who would love to stop “working for the man.” Not only are you the boss as a business owner, but you have employees who you can utilize and leverage to maximize the value of your company. Depending on the size of the business (and the financials), business owners could realistically spend very little time on tasks they do not want to do, such as accounting or marketing.
I would like to further split business owners. There are many small business owners who end up working eighty hours a week and constantly have something that needs their attention. They might make a lot of money or they might make a little money, but they’re the boss. They set the agenda for the company and success and failure ultimately falls on them.
The second group of business owners are pretty much completely detached from the company. Everything from sales to support to advertising is automated; the owner has built a system that does not require him to be part of the process. Easily the best book about this sort of income generating setup is The 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. In fact, the entire book is meant to explain exactly how to go about setting up your “muse” and trying to convince you that it’s a myth that a business owner has to be a vital part of the business model.
My Take
Personally I really look at it as a progression system of sorts. Most everyone will start out their working lives as an employee. A large majority of people will stay there and will never move on to self-employment or business ownership, and that’s okay. A smaller percentage of people will try to work self-employment on top of their regular job, and even less will eventually quit their job to work this business full-time. There is a decent number of people who will either be self-employment or own a business most of their life.
It’s natural to progress from an employee to self-employed or business owner. What I personally care most about is the nature of how income is created in terms of time committed. The reason I think that in forty years I will not still be an accountant is because I’m so interested in the various forms of income generation and have been intrigued with forms other than employment. I personally know quite a few people who are either self-employed or own a business and are making more money working less hours than they would as an employee.
Right now I think I am in the right place, and that is working as an accountant for a large corporation. I have a career track, I’m gaining valuable skills, and the salary and benefits are exactly what I need. Long-term, though, I still think I will give self-employment or business ownership a shot, with a long-long-term goal of creating a muse (Timothy Ferriss’ term) where I own a business (or multiple businesses) where I have outsourced most of the work. What that will look like I’m not 100% sure at this point, but I certainly have been inspired by various people I have met – primarily through blogging – who are showing that it is much easier to design a lifestyle you want if you are not an employee.
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Now I want to hear from all of you: what are your thoughts on the various forms of income generation? Are you an employee who desires to own a business or be self-employed? Are you happy with being an employee? Is business ownership even worth the risk?
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Photo by Paull Young
Starting your first “career” job can be exciting. You’ve finished college and you finally have that first job, even if it is on the bottom of the ladder. You feel excited, motivated, relieved (it’s a tough job market), and ready to take on the world.
Then reality hits you: in the real world your work is usually only noticed by a small number of individuals. If you work for a giant company, you realize that your entire team’s work is felt by a small number of other teams. Everyone you work with is at least fairly competent, and you realize just how hard it is to stand out among your coworkers.
Additionally, you realize just how hopelessly dependent you are on other people’s performance. You would have had that project done a week ago…if the John and Jane would have returned your emails. You would have everything submitted on time…but Joe made it a low priority to provide you direction. The event would have been great…but Sarah waited until the last minute to book entertainment.
There are ways to stand out and provide value at work, regardless of the seemingly endless number of hurdles you will inevitably face.
1) Attain Unique Knowledge
Every company looks for employees who know things that others do not. Considering we are in the age of Wikipedia and open information, it’s surprising how much information employees do not know about their company, their industry, and even their specific tasks. For example there is an unlimited amount of information you could learn about the Health Care Reform law in the United States and how it impacts health insurers and providers, but a surprisingly low percentage of people working in the health care industry have a robust understanding of the law. This type of information could be simply obtained by completing a masters in public health degree if you are self-motivated enough to pursue it. As an employee if you can learn information about important legislation or changes to an industry and coherently explain how it will impact your job function and company specifically, you have a huge leg up on all the other employees who are just starting out (and those who have been around for a long time).
2) Learn How to do your job, then learn Why
There is a “breaking in” stage of every job. If you are in your first or second job out of college, this stage may be longer than people who have a couple of decades of experience under their belt. The dirty little secret is that there is a huge pool of candidates who can do a job competently; there if a far smaller pool of candidates who will learn how to do the job and then challenge the way it’s always been done. Pretty much any job you can possibly imagine can be done better in some way, even if it seems like the way it’s always been done is just fine.
Decades ago there were teams of people manually doing jobs that are now done by one person who utilizes various technological resources to do the work it took a whole team to do in the past. That one person is likely someone who challenged the way things were done, not someone who just accepted the fact that things were always going to be the way they have been.
3) Learn Processes, then Improve and Automate
Piggybacking on learning how to do your job and then learning (and challenging) why it is done that way, one of the best things a young worker can do is to learn, improve, and automate processes. Just like the above example, the more you can automate the more value you bring to a company; over time you may be saving them millions by pushing the envelope of what can be done given the resources available to you.
What companies care about (for-profits and non-profits alike) is results. How many people attended an event you organized? How many reports can you tie-out and manage in a given 8-hour day? How satisfied were the clients with the service you provided? It should be everyone’s goal to “do better” than the job or task has been done in the past. This requires understanding the process, looking for flaws or areas for improvements through analyzing a process, and finally automation (if possible). If you work at a child care facility, how can you improve the check-in and check-out process to eliminate manual tasks? What can be done to better accommodate customers at your car dealership? Processes are meant to be improved.
4) Create Something New
Improving things is always good, but you can create some serious value by creating something new. Even if your job description isn’t to create new products and services, there is usually something of value that can be created that has yet to be built. In pretty much every workplace there is some level of resistance to change or the creation of new things. The best way to deal with this reality is to understand that your innovation and creating of new things will actually have a much bigger impact in this sort of an environment. If you worked a place where you were expected to create, and to create often, the new things you spend time and energy creating will have less of an impact and will certainly stand out less. Consider making the action of creating a normal part of your workday.
5) Connect with Others
Some people see little benefit in connecting with people who do not directly impact their work. I think there is value in connecting with people who do entirely different work than you, especially if they are outside of your company. Frequently people who have been working at a company for a long period of time start having tunnel vision as far as how things can be changed or improved. Connecting with people who work for different companies in different industries doing different things than you can provide you a variety of perspectives that will help you avoid tunnel vision.
The easiest way to connect with others is within your own company. Whether it is through volunteer events, company-wide events, or just staying in touch with them long after that project you collaborated on is complete, knowing people within your company can be a great value to you and your work. It helps you understand perspectives and priorities of people who you do not normally work with.
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Whether you are just starting your career or are simply struggling to figure out ways to provide value and inevitably stand out among your co-workers, there are many things you can do that will make an impact. It may not seem like networking with people or spending time improving processes will have an impact, but it’s been shown that long-term these are things that can potentially provide a lot of value both for you individually and your company as a whole.
Are you a young adult in the beginning of their career? What have you done to stand out or provide value at your job? If you have been working for a couple decades or more, what advice do you have for those who have been out of college less than ten years?
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Photo by Dell Inc.
One of the most important topics when it comes to personal finance is how money is spent. Today we have an infographic about the average UK household spends their money on. Additionally, the types of family units are broken down. I do find it interesting, but not surprising, that the average British household size has dropped from 3.1 persons in 1961 to 2.4 persons in 2011.
One thing that stood out to me was that in two of the three cases illustrated below, more was spent on “Recreation and Culture” than “Housing, Fuel, and Power.” I didn’t look at the report from the Office for National Statistics that this was based on so I do not know what exactly falls under “Recreation and Culture,” but it seemed relatively high. Then again this could include things like travel which can add up quick.
Take a look at the infographic, and see how your spending lines up with the average.
This infographic was put together by QuickQuid. They offer a cash advance service that can be used if your bank is closed or whenever you deem necessary.
