schedule appointments online With Yourself to Assess

Few among us actually enjoy dealing with the financial paperwork and self-assessment of managing our money. Finance blog Five Cent Nickel suggests treating your money like you would the doctor or dentist: keep a recurring appointment with yourself.

We're used to setting up regular appointments with people we appreciate but don't necessarily enjoy seeing. While our finances may not be the most fun thing to deal with, you can use the same strategy on yourself:

Make an appointment with yourself — and keep it. Just as you'd make an appointment with a doctor or a mechanic, schedule a regular time to review your accounts and pay your bills. I recommend blocking out an hour on Saturday or Sunday morning. Keep the appointment every week. Treat it as a priority.

On the first Monday of each month, I check balances and pay bills. I also enter data into Quicken (I like to do this by hand), which allows me to generate financial statements. Most importantly, I review my spending to be sure it hasn't strayed too far out of budget.

As the site points out, this appointment isn't just about paying bills, but about reviewing your spending habits and assessing future changes. We can all veer off course if we're not careful. Unlike our medical or mechanical lives, our financial lives don't usually have an expert who will remind us what needs to be done. We have to do it for ourselves.

Make an appointment with yourself to manage your money | Five Cent Nickel

Photo by Dafne Cholet.

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The First Financial Investment You Should Make is in Yourself

We all know the importance of investing. When we get to the point that we can start saving, it's instinctual (and rightly so!) to start looking at financial investments like stocks or 401(k)s. One reddit user, however, suggests that the first investment to make is in yourself.

The same principle of compound interest that applies to your financial investments applies to your personal investments: the earlier you start, the greater the impact later on. Even something as simple as buying a nice wardrobe can pay huge dividends if your professional-looking appearance catches the eye of a potential employer:

I told him he isn't really making enough money to justify an investment at his age. (20 yrs old) and that he needs to take his $11 an hour and invest it in himself. He needs to ensure that he looks professional (clothes/appearance/take care of himself) and improve his educational background/experience to find a better paying job later in life. $5,000 on a trade school IMHO is better money spent then $5,000 in the stock market at 20 yrs old.

What this means for you will vary greatly depending on where you're at in life, but maximizing your earning potential early on will greatly affect how much you have available to put in that retirement plan in five years. While it might be easy (and tempting) to go overboard, we've discussed before how not all purchases are frivolous if they can boost your career.

My opinion on low income earners wanting to make more money | Reddit

Photo by Simon Cunningham.

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Ask Yourself What Three Things You Need to Do Today

We love to-do lists, tracking tasks, and keeping an eye on everything that needs to get done. But Jeff Atwood suggests a different approach: every day, ask yourself what three things need to get done, and ditch the other lists.

Atwood's long been against to-do lists, and his three things rule is a pretty solid solution for a lot of us:

Instead, ask yourself this:

What three things do you need to do today?

You should be able to instantly answer this simple question, each day, every day, for the rest of your life. Without any tools other than the brain you were born with.

If you don't have this skill, develop it. Practice, starting today. Right now.

What are you doing right now? Is it going to somehow result in one of those three things getting done today? Will this you get you to where you need to be by the end of the day?

It's a pretty simple idea and if you're finding to-do lists cumbersome or unwieldy, it's an approach worth trying.

Three Things | Coding Horror

Photo by Pascal.

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Stop Telling Yourself You're Too Busy

Ever feel like you're overwhelmingly busy? Of course you have. We all do. But chances are, you might not be as busy as you think—and knowing this simple fact can reduce a lot of stress.

It sounds silly—after all, you'd think this "trick" would work with anything—but there's something special about the way we claim business these days. We live in a cult of busy. And chances are, you're not actually as busy as you think. Hanna Rosin over at Slate explains:

[John] Robinson doesn't ask us to meditate, or take more vacations, or breathe, or walk in nature, or do anything that will invariably feel like just another item on the to-do list. The answer to feeling oppressively busy, he says, is to stop telling yourself that you're oppressively busy, because the truth is that we are all much less busy than we think we are.

We've discussed this before, but it helps to have this basic reminder: and the most important thing is that you stop telling yourself how busy you are. If your brain just refuses to accept that, there are things you can do to convince it, like logging your time—but chances are a simple reassurance will help.

You're Not as Busy as You Say You Are | Slate via 99u

Photo by Bark.

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Marketing Yourself Tips On How To Leverage Your Weak Factors 2014

Marketing Yourself Tips On How To Leverage Your Weak Factors 2014

No one’s perfect. Nobody must be. We all have weaknesses. Those weaknesses are the very gasoline that can drive us forward. Humankind has carried out this for hundreds of years. We invented spears to beat our agility weaknesses and be capable to hunt much sooner animals.

We’ve got planes that help us soar hundreds of times faster than the fastest eagle. We can explore the depths of the darkest oceans, thanks to good strategies and correct implementation of those strategies. So you don’t need to be perfect. You just need to constantly improve yourself. Applied to the business world, that just means good marketing.

Recommended Reading: How To Balance Marketing Yourself With Getting Work Done

Marketing makes all the difference

Marketing sells. Before this, marketing used to be all about emphasizing your strong points. Basically, listing all the benefits of your product and trying to convince your client about what you’re selling. Today’s business environment is just too crammed of a space for that to work. There aren’t enough idle ears. In fact, there are none.

Everyone’s a client and a seller at the same time. What makes the difference now is the ability to hint at your expertise without actually stating it out loud.

That’s intriguing. That stirs emotion. That will get you clients. Here’s how this applies to freelancers and small business owners.

Weakness 1: Not Enough Time

Clients love experts. I’ve recently started outsourcing some coding jobs through sites such as oDesk and Freelancer. The competition in any freelancing domain, be it coding, design or video editing, is high nowadays.

However, clients are still very much willing to pay top dollar for an expert. But experts are busy people — make sure you come across as one, leverage the fact that you are freelancing partime and don’t have enough time for all your projects in your benefit.

When writing a letter to apply for a job, make sure you do mention the fact that your time is valuable and you don’t intend to waste it nor do you intend to waste the client’s time. You’ll work hard and fast, but only within the space of the job description. Such a blunt, aggressive letter is something that will catch the eye of the client, in the sea of willingful and timid freelancers.

You’ve just turned your weakness into an asset!

Read Also: How To Balance Marketing Yourself With Getting Work Done

Weakness 2: Not Enough Skill

Experts are a bit arrogant. You should be too. Not over the top, and not at the price of honesty, but you should come across as someone who carries himself well. Let’s say your primary weakness is a lack of skill in a certain area. Leverage that to your benefit. Be honest, but cocky at the same time.

Here’s an example:

“My Java knowledge is limited and as such, I’m sure I’ll be able to develop a more simple, more compact and robust app, because I’ll be thinking from my VB Studio perspective. That means I’ll create a more unique, more innovative backstage solution (e.g. unseen coding patterns) which other specialized full time Java programmers couldn’t come up with. Sometimes thinking outside the box helps.

Are you willing to think outside the box with your app?”

Would you hire somebody who sells himself like that? I know I would.

The only thing is, you have to truly believe in what you are saying, in order to make anybody else believe it. The truth is in today’s world, a particular skill is something easily attainable. You can get a full expert course on just about anything for just a few hundred dollars. Check out sites like Udemy for that.

Read Also: 9 Sites For Free Online Courses And Open Courseware

Weakness 3: No Experience

Well first, you have to admit that you lack experience in that particular field. Let’s say you’ve just made a new profile on a freelancing site. It’s understandable that you’d have no ratings and no job experience there. What’s not understandable is selling yourself short.

So if you’ve applied for a job you don’t have any experience (but you do know how to achieve the objective), try to tie in your other work experience in other fields with this particular work.

As an example, let’s say you’re a freelance writer trying to get into Photoshop Design. You’ve just bought an online course and feel confident in your designs skills thanks to it, but you aren’t getting any jobs, because of your lack of experience. Talk about how writing connects to design. Be honest about your lack of ratings, but shift the conversation towards your strong points.

Here’s how the letter of intent should sound:

“I’m happy to design your website in Photoshop. I’ll bring all my fresh expertise in, and we’ll create the best custom site for your business. Please note I don’t have any job experience or ratings on this site. But I have all the necessary skills for the job.

So that’s why I’m the guy to pick!

Design is the most creative work on the Internet, isn’t it?

Because this will be the first job on this site for me, I won’t come with any restrictions in my creative way of thinking. As such, you’ll get the benefit of skill, without the troublesome hardships of working with an old style designer who isn’t willing to adapt, and just designs like a robot.

Here’s why I’m qualified to do the job:

I’ve done this before as a writer, writing for … and doing...”

And go on just listing your achievements as a writer.

Weakness 4: Not Big Enough

You should be proud that you are a small company. If you’re just one person, all the better! That can be easily leveraged into a benefit. When you’re small you can:

• Give each client more attention


• Provide faster, more personalized customer care


• Be cheaper, because of lower overhead


• Be more dynamic and more inventive

So make sure you convey all these points to your client. Nobody really wants to work with a big company nowadays, as everybody is aware of how they treat their clients. They don’t give the required attention to specific needs.

Read Also: How To Work Better With Your Clients

All that goes away when you’re small and you’re personally handling business for a client. So make that client feel special, make him feel cherished, as he should be. Be wary of rapid company growth. That may sometimes lead to disturbed clients, because of the attention they were used to getting.

Wrap Up

So there you may have it. Your profile on freelancing websites, your personal site, your cell app, heck, all the things visible by others, should be a weak point polished and turned into an obvious benefit. That’s good marketing.

Posted by: http://gosspot.com/

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"Make Yourself Happy So When Others Look at You They Become Happy Too"

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Today is the United Nation's International Day of Happiness. It's a great time to reflect on our own happiness—but also how that affects others.

The quote above, posted by Symphony of Love on Flickr, is from Yogi Bhajan: "Make yourself so happy so that when others look at you they become happy too."

Happiness and joy are infectious. Often we pursue happiness for our own benefit, but the quote reminds us there's nothing wrong or selfish about trying to be happier if you can spread that to others.

So strive to be happy, today and any other day. It's one of the best things you can do for yourself and everyone around you.

Yogi Bhajan Make Yourself So Happy... | Flickr

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