Category: Cash

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course – Review

My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only. This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

How to Transition From Active to Passive Income

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info. This video was first published on my YouTube channel; you can subscribe to my channel here http://bit.ly/1BuKsoM .

Active Income

Active income is the traditional way of earning money when you have a job; an individual trades their time for an hourly rate and is paid wages or a salary. This model applies whether they are working in a restaurant, shop or an office. Active income requires you as the employee to be in a specific place at agreed times and to follow a predictable routine. The primary benefit is that you will receive income that you can predict and that you can plan your expenditure precisely. The major disadvantage is that you are limited by the amount of hours a day and the fact that the more work you do, the more tired you will become.

Passive Income

Passive income is income that you can generate once you have completed all the initial work for a project and then set up the processes to create recurring passive income. A good example of this is provided by the music industry, an artist writes, records and produces an album and then when it is released, they will receive passive income from its sales.

From Active to Passive

In the video, I discuss specific ways that you can transition from an active to a passive income model. It is not easy, you will have to do the work but once you have done it, you’ll be much closer to our shared goal of financial freedom.

Next Steps

Would you like to earn more from passive income? Have you already started? Let me know in the comments section below. Also, get in touch if you would like my help, my email address is mike@learnmoney.io

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

Respondent.io Review

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Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Coinbase Earn: Earn Free Cryptocurrency

Best regards,

Mike

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course – Review

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info. This video was first published on my YouTube channel; you can subscribe to my channel here http://bit.ly/1BuKsoM . Have you considered joining Michelle’s course? You can do so here –>

Affiliate Marketing

If you have read this post, Top 3 High Paying Affiliate Programs or this one, How to Monetize Twitter with Affiliate Marketing you’ll know that I believe that Affiliate Marketing is an open and accessible way for regular people to make side income without drastic changes to their lifestyle. The challenge with Affiliate Marketing is to create a truly systematic approach; simply spraying your affiliate links via your Social Media channels will not work, neither will just embedding your links into your website, if you have one.

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Last year, I was searching for a comprehensive course that outlined a systematic approach to Affiliate Marketing when I found the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course from Michelle Schroeder-Gardner.

Who is Michelle Schroeder-Gardner? Michelle is now a millionaire blogger but when she started her blog, Making Sense of Cents in 2011, she did so to track her own personal finance journey.

Her primary objective was to pay off $40,000 of student loan debt. She went onto achieve that and so much more; Michelle has moved from a position where she had a negative net worth to financial abundance and Affiliate Marketing is one of the activities that helped her make that transition.

The Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is the title of Michelle Schroeder-Gardner’s course.

Michelle now earns over $50,000 a month through affiliate marketing, and she shares all of my best tips in this course.

In this course, there are 6 modules, over 30 lessons, over 20 worksheets, bonuses and an extremely helpful exclusive Facebook group. The course content answers the following questions:

What affiliate marketing is and how it works
Why affiliate marketing is great
The exact steps she’s taken to earn over $300,000 from a single blog post
Picking the right affiliate products to promote
Increasing conversions
How to build trust and not lose followers
Required disclosures that you need to know about

I have given my comprehensive review of Michelle’s course in this video. This video will be of interest to Affiliate Marketing practitioners, B2B marketing managers, Content Marketing professionals, Social Media Managers, business owners, and anyone interested in making money online with Affiliate Marketing. Please let me know your thoughts below when you’ve had time to watch it.

Next Steps

Would you like to earn more from Affiliate Marketing? You can join The Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course here – Have you already started Affiliate Marketing? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

Respondent.io Review

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Best regards,

Mike

Coinbase Earn: Earn Free Cryptocurrency

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info. This video was first published on my YouTube channel; you can subscribe to my channel here http://bit.ly/1BuKsoM .

Earn While You Learn

Cryptocurrency is no longer new in investment terms but if it was a sport it would still be regarded as a minority sport played by a small percentage of the nation’s population. Established Cryptocurrency exchange and provider of free digital wallets, Coinbase knows this and has created opportunities for new and existing cryptocurrency investors to earn while they learn.

Coinbase Earn: Earn Free Crypto

What is Coinbase Earn? Well, you are asked to watch a few videos, answer questions and in return you earn cryptocurrency that goes into your Coinbase account. It is not complicated to do or to receive the cryptocurrency.

In this video, I demonstrate the process you need to follow to earn the free cryptocurrency and explore Coinbase’s motives for creating the initiative. I hope that you find it useful.

This video will be of interest to people who are interested in earning income online and making money online generally. It is another simple way you will be able to increase your financial assets and investments without a drastic change to your lifestyle or weekly routine. Here’s and then you can participate in Learn and Earn.

Next Steps

Would you like to earn some free crypto via Coinbase? Here’s my invite for you . Have you heard of Coinbase before? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

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Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money down the Plughole?

Best regards,

Mike

Respondent.io – Review

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info. This video was first published on my YouTube channel; you can sign up for Respondent here –

Increasing Your Income

Often the path to financial freedom isn’t complicated, or at least the next step isn’t, it could simply be that you need to increase your income without adding additional stress to your weekly routine. In this post, I focus on one website that will allow you to do that. As always with any review I publish, I have personal experience and results from using the product or service. I hope that you find it useful too.

Respondent.io Review

In this video, I review the Respondent website. This video will be of interest to people who are interested in earning income online and making money online generally. Respondent is a website that brings together companies wanting qualitative research for their products and services and research participants who are paid for their time taking part in market research interviews.

It is very much a qualitative approach, typically you will be interviewed via webcam or in person by a market researcher for 45 minutes. Within 8-10 days you will receive payment via PayPal. Respondent is a good way to earn extra cash; in the video I discuss the process of applying for research interviews, the cash amounts available and my personal experience with Respondent. You can sign up for Respondent here

Next Steps

Would you like to earn some extra money on Respondent? You can sign up Sign up for Respondent here -> Have you heard of Respondent before? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money down the Plughole?

Is Affiliate Marketing Easy to do?

Best regards,

Mike

Top 3 High Paying Affiliate Programs

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info. This video was first published on my YouTube channel.

Affiliate Marketing

If you do not know anything about affiliate marketing, please read this post first, Is Affiliate Marketing Easy to do?

Affiliate marketing links and banners take time to set up but can prove to be very lucrative in the long run. It makes sense to become an affiliate for programs that drive the best return on investment, in most cases these are the high paying affiliate programs.

In this video, I discuss the top 3 high paying affiliate programs that I have experienced personally. Before selecting any Affiliate Marketing Program to join, I reviewed each program to ensure that it was in alignment with my values and those of my business.

Affiliate Programs

There are hundreds of affiliate programs that you can join, it is possible to approach some potential affiliate partners direct and many more can be accessed via an affiliate marketplace. ShareAsale is an example of an affiliate marketplace with over 4500 merchants. After joining ShareASale, it is easy to apply for the the affiliate programs of those merchants; many categories of products and services are represented on the platform.

Have you applied to join any affiliate marketing programs? Have you started Affiliate Marketing? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

How do you Monetize Twitter With Affiliate Marketing?

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money down the Plughole?

Does Your Choice of Supermarket Matter?

Best regards,

Mike

References

How do you Monetize Twitter With Affiliate Marketing?

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info. This video was first published on my YouTube channel.

Affiliate Marketing

We will need to embrace alternative ways of generating income if we are all to achieve our goal of financial freedom. In most cases, selling your time for money in a traditional job will not be enough.

If you have read this post, Is Affiliate Marketing Easy to do?, you will know that Affiliate Marketing is one of those alternative methods that could help you achieve your financial goals much faster.

Globally the Affiliate Marketing industry is worth $12 billion and is predicted to grow by 10% in the next few years*. Affiliate Marketing could become an additional revenue stream for you.

In this video, I demonstrate how to monetize Twitter with Affiliate Marketing. If you are not already a member of any affiliate programs, you’ll need to join a few and then you’ll be in a position to start making additional income from Affiliate Marketing.

How to Monetize Twitter

Twitter is a social media platform with 321 million monthly active users** ; recent research published by the Pew Research Center has confirmed that 80% of tweets are sent by just 10 % of users. If you want to be successful with this monetization strategy, you will have to become one of the active 10% of users on the platform.

Have you thought about monetizing your Twitter account? Have you started Affiliate Marketing? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

How to Boost Your Income With a Temporary Christmas Job – 4 Examples

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

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Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money down the Plughole?

Does Your Choice of Supermarket Matter?

Can you live off a Cash Budget for a Week?

Best regards,

Mike

References

* https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/affiliate-marketing-stats/

** https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18213567/twitter-to-stop-sharing-mau-as-users-decline-q4-2018-earnings

Have you Found all of Your Dormant Accounts?

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

Image credit: http://www.asianage.com/

During the course of our lives we will move house and change jobs, life can be fairly hectic at times so it can be easy to lose track of some aspect of our financial affairs. It is possible to forget about bank accounts that we opened as children or teenagers, particularly if there was not a lot of money deposited in the account at the time. When a bank account or savings account is inactive for a period of time, financial institutions categorise the account as dormant. The amount of time it takes to be categorised as dormant varies from bank to bank. For some it will be a year, for others it will be 3 years of inactivity. The money in these dormant accounts still belongs to you so you should take steps to retrieve it. I recently became aware of a dormant savings account that I was using up until a few years ago.

Dormant Accounts

What Should you do Next?

If you have the account number and sort code, contact a branch of your bank or building society and explain that you want to re-open a dormant account. If you simply want to withdraw any funds from the account, explain that too. They will have their own procedures for reactivating a dormant account. In my case, I needed to present an accepted form of identification (passport or driver’s license) together with an up to date proof of address. When this was verified, the bank were happy to reunite me with my funds.

If you cannot remember the account details and do not have any old correspondence to help you visit http://www.mylostaccount.org.uk/ . The website will ask you to fill out an enquiry form and then will help you through the process of tracking down your dormant account or that of a deceased family member. Please be aware that the process could take up to three months.

Image credit: https://www.mylostaccount.org.uk/

If the dormant account that you are trying to find is a pension, rather than my lost account you should read this article which will help you find your pensions.

The Government Will Take Your Money

Following the introduction of the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Act in 2008, Reclaim Fund Ltd (RFL), the government laid out plans to seize money left in in dormant accounts and untouched for 15 years. This moneywill then be re-directed to good causes across the UK, so far £360 million has been used in this way. If you want to decide for yourself how to spend your money, track down any dormant accounts that you have and reclaim your money.

Have you have success tracking down a dormant account? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

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4 Obstacles you Will Face on Your Financial Journey

Make Money Now With These Two Referral Apps

Have you got the Right Money Mindset?

Best regards,

Mike

Follow me on Pinterest

Accommodation: 5 Ways to Reduce Your Largest Monthly Expense

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

Image credit: https://www.ukuni.net/

For most people, accommodation remains their largest monthly expense. In earlier posts, I have mentioned this point. If you haven’t read, How to Create a Budget That you can Stick to, please read it today. It naturally follows that if you can reduce your largest monthly expense you will have more freedom within your budget to save more and to invest. These are two activities that will move you closer to financial freedom. The focus of this post is to explore 5 ways that you will be able to achieve this reduction in accommodation costs.

Cutting Accommodation Costs

I have spilt this list of five ways to reduce your accommodation costs into two mini lists. The first is for homeowners and the second is for tenants / lodgers who rent accommodation. The resources that I have linked to are for the United Kingdom because that is where I live. If you are reading this post outside of the United Kingdom, there may be comparable opportunities and resources in your country too.

Homeowners

Take in a Lodger

If you have enough room, take in a lodger to live with you at your main residence. Following a UK government initiative first introduced in 1992, homeowners are permitted to earn up to £7,500 tax free as part of the rent-a-room scheme. Technically this does not reduce your accommodation cost but it does reduce your financial burden because of the additional income that the lodger provides. Click here to read more about the rent-a-room scheme.

Move to a Cheaper Area

If you are living in a desirable area, more than likely that desirability comes with fairly high accommodation costs. One possible solution that most homeowners do not think about is this one; rent out your home and move to a cheaper area.

Let me explain with some sample numbers. You are currently living in area A and your home could be rented out for £2000 per month. This is more than you are paying for your mortgage which is £1500 . If you move out of your home and rent in a cheaper area (area B) for a cost of £1400 per month, you will be reducing your accommodation cost plus receiving £2000 in rent for the house that you still own.

An added bonus is the increase in equity associated with your property during the period it is being rented out. Please note, you will need to take all necessary steps to comply with the terms of your mortgage and to ensure that your property is in suitable condition to be rented.

Tenants/ Lodgers

House Shares

Renting a self contained flat or apartment can prove expensive, particularly in desirable areas. One surefire way to reduce your accommodation cost is to move into a house share. Sharing amenities brings the costs down. This website, spareroom.co.uk caters exactly for the house share market. Once settled into a house share, you can look forward to the positive impact that it will have on your finances.

Team up and Rent

Team up with a friend also looking for accommodation and rent a place that caters to both of your needs. This opportunity is not only available for twenty-somethings, an increasing amount of people find themselves heading one parent households and this is a good opportunity for them to reduce costs too. This website provides a forum for potential flatmates to meet each other with a view to finding a place together.

Move Back Home

This is not an option that is available for everyone for a number of reasons. It could a good temporary solution for some millennials. Moving back in with your parents could allow you time to reduce your accommodation cost and to recover financially. It should not be considered as a permanent solution.

Have you managed to reduce your accommodation costs recently? Which method did you use? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

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Take This Free Financial Literacy Course Today

Cryptocurrency Exchange: This is Why I Recommend DSX

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

How to Boost Your Income With a Temporary Christmas Job – 4 Examples

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

4 Credit Cards to Repair Your Credit Score

Best regards,

Mike

Follow me on Pinterest

Personal Finance: How Should You Prepare for Brexit?

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

Image credit: https://www.irishnews.com/

For those of you not living in the UK, Brexit is a word coined to mark the Great Britain’s intention to leave the European Union. This decision was the result of a national referendum in July 2016 in which the electorate voted to ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain.’ The United Kingdom was very divided; 52% voted in favour of leaving and 48% voted to remain. Those who voted to leave did so without any real understanding of the repercussions of such a decision; they were encouraged by politicians who were economical with the truth. Now in December 2018, UK inhabitants find themselves heading towards Brexit and what looks like a self-inflicted recession.

Businesses and consumers have been heavily impacted; consumers are not spending as much as they used to and business people lack of confidence about the future. Businesses are currently less likely to invest in new equipment or staff and according to the GFK consumer confidence Index the current score for the UK is – 13. To give that some context, in December 2015 the confidence index score was +2. Significantly 2015 was the first time the index had remained positive for an entire calendar year since records began in 1974.

Prepare For Brexit

From a personal finance perspective, how can you better prepare yourself for the reality of Brexit? Below I have listed 4 practical steps you can take that will help.

Revisit Your Budget

Take a look at your current monthly budget and re-evaluate all of your expenditure. If there are opportunities to cut back – take them. For example, a lot of people have unmetered water bills even though in many cases a metered water bill will work out cheaper; read this post for information, Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money Down the Plughole? There may be other opportunities for you to cutback.

Assess Your Employer & Job Stability

In financially challenging circumstances many companies suffer and some go into administration. In the UK, we have seen this with the demise of Maplin and Toy R Us.

The task for you is to dispassionately assess how well your employer is doing and how likely/unlikely it is that you be made redundant. Do not rely on any assurances from the management team at your company; do your own independent research. If you think that you could be made redundant save more money into your emergency fund.

Reduce Discretionary Expenditure

In personal finance circles, there is a lot of discussion around how much impact cutting out daily Lattes will have on the path toward better financial health. That’s a choice that you are best placed to make. However, what is sensible is to rein the dining out occasions and perhaps replace them with entertaining friends at home. Beyond entertaining, holidays are another area that you should review. Choosing a more cost effective destination or changing an international holiday to a UK based ‘staycation’ will give you greater financial comfort. Also, do not go overboard at Christmas.

Review All of Your Financial Products

Review all of your financial products including savings, mortgages, investments and pensions. Assess the impact on Brexit in each case and evaluate whether you should continue with your current provider. If appropriate, change to better performing products with other providers to maximise your returns.

How are you preparing financially for Brexit? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

Take This Free Financial Literacy Course Today

Cryptocurrency Exchange: This is Why I Recommend DSX

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

How to Boost Your Income With a Temporary Christmas Job – 4 Examples

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You