Category: Financial Planning

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

How to get paid Referring Friends for Jobs

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

Image credit: pexels.com

Are you Missing out on Compound Interest?

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

What is Compound Interest?

The thought of saving money is not exciting to many people, they would rather buy things with the money that comes into their hands or wallets. Compound interest makes the prospect of saving money more exciting.

Compound interest is when you earn interest on the interest that you accrued as well as the initial sum invested.

How Does it Work?

For example, if you saved £1000 at an interest rate of 5%, at the end of year 1 you would have £1050, with a compound interest account you would then earn 5% interest on £1050 by the end of year 2.

This would mean that your total going into year three would be £1102.50 instead of £1100.00 if you had earned 5% each year. Over the long term, the increases to your savings total become very significant so much so that Albert Einstein reputedly said of compound interest,

“Compound Interest is the most powerful force in the universe. Compound interest is the 8^th wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.”

Albert Einstein

Savings Accounts & Compound Interest

Given how beneficial Compound Interest is to the individual saver, you would expect all savings accounts to offer Compound Interest to their account holders but that is not the case. There is every possibility that your savings accounts are not paying you compound interest, please check with your bank or building society. Your bank may be only paying you simple interest, which is interest paid annually on the principal sum only.

If they are not, study the example below and open a new account that will pay you compound interest from any provider you choose. Remember that to really benefit from compound interest you will need to save for the long term.

This is an example of a UK savings account that pays compound interest. International readers, you may need to do some investigative work to find comparable savings accounts in your country.

Next Steps

Hopefully this post has made you re-consider the savings accounts that you have; now is the time to open an account that will pay you compound interest. Let me know your thoughts 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:

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course – Review

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

How to get paid Referring Friends for Jobs

Best regards,

Mike

Image credit: pexels.com

Make Money with the Amazon Influencer Program

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 .

Amazon Influencer Program

The Amazon Influencer Program is one of the more straightforward ways of making money online based on Affiliate Marketing. It is a method that would be accurately described as intermediate level rather than beginner. This is because you will need to have built an audience on at least one Social Media platform to be accepted into the Amazon Influencer Program. The full list of requirements is here.

How Does it Work?

The Amazon Influencer Program is an extension of the Amazon Affiliates Program. The Amazon Affiliates Program is virtually open to all; once accepted, into the program, affiliates are able to promote Amazon products via affiliate links and earn a commission when purchases are made within 24 hours of their links being clicked.

The Amazon Influencer Program has two key differences from the Affiliates Program. First of all, you need to meet more stringent criteria before you are accepted, you must have a Social Media audience. Secondly, instead of promoting lots of different affiliate links Amazon gives you your own Amazon Shop Page to send your audience to.

Purchases that follow clicks on your dedicated Influencer page earn you commissions ranging from 1-10% dependent on the product category.

In the video, I demonstrate my Amazon Shop Page and explain how to take the opportunity presented to you by Amazon.

Next Steps

Does the idea of having a Amazon Influencer page appeal to you? Are you already part of the Amazon Affiliates Program? 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:

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course – Review

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Course – Review

Best regards,

Mike

How to get Paid Referring Friends for Jobs

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 .

Extra Cash

Most of us would appreciate the chance to earn some extra cash but from my anecdotal research I know that few people seriously consider the opportunity to make extra cash by referring their friends for relevant jobs.

It’s not just a pipe dream, it can be your reality too. In this video, I discuss 2 websites that will enable you to do just that; you do not have to be a recruitment consultant to connect your friends with jobs to help them continue or improve their career. The websites I discuss are just examples, there are many more offering similar incentives for helping companies to find the right staff. If you live outside of the countries I discuss in the video, do not lose heart because there are likely to be similar offers in your country too.

Referring Friends

In the video, the first website I discuss relates to the American employment market and then the second is relevant for the United Kingdom employment market.

Referring friends for relevant jobs can be a fairly lucrative activity because ultimately you will receive an amount equivalent to a percentage of the new employee’s salary without having to do a lot of work. It can be an excellent way of generating extra cash.

How Does it Work?

In the video, I discuss specific websites that will enable you to earn extra cash by referring your friends for jobs. Usually your friend will have to be successful with their job application and to keep the job beyond the probation period for you to receive your money.

Next Steps

Make a list of friends who are looking for work and arrange a time for you to discuss with them the possibility of you referring them for a job. When you have, 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

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:

How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

How to Stop Emotional Spending

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

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

How to Stop Emotional Spending

Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money down the Plughole?

How to Stick to Your Budget During Summer: 5 Tips

Save Money by Switching Energy Supplier Every Year

Best regards,

Mike

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:

How to Create a Budget You Can Stick to

How to Stop Impulse Buying – 10 Ways

Can You Live off a Cash Budget For a Week?

4 Credit Cards to Repair Your Credit Score

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

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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

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Best regards,

Mike

Follow me on Pinterest

Is Affiliate Marketing Easy to do?

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

Image credit: https://partnernetwork.ebay.co.uk/

Affiliate Marketing is the process of earning commission by promoting a company’s good or services. In most cases, this commission is earned when a web visitor is sent from one website through to a retailer’s website and goes onto to make a purchase.

For example, if you are an affiliate partner for Amazon and one of your web visitors clicks through to to make a purchase via your promotional link, you will receive a commission. It is not essential that you have a website; it is possible to achieve the same by posting your links via Social Media, Having said that, if you want to take a more structured approach to Affiliate Marketing, creating a website will help you do this.

Affiliate marketing can boost your household income if you can master it and for that reason it is worth considering.

I answered a question on Quora related to Affiliate Marketing that I have chosen to share here too.

—

Liberty,

Thanks for the question.

If you are thinking about affiliate marketing for your blog, here are some considerations for you.

Affiliate Marketing Considerations

Time

Yes, you could get affiliate income in a few weeks but if you want to be realistic you should allow about a year to create significant income. On reading this, most people will no doubt click away. The article I have linked to below is one you should read.

How Long Affiliate Marketing Takes – Affiliate Marketer Training

Choice of Affiliates

Evaluate your niche and pick only the appropriate affiliates for your audience (assuming that you have built an audience for your blog). Don’t just sign up for Bluehost because the commission is quite good and you read that Pat Flynn and Michelle Schroeder-Gardner earn $50,000 per month from Bluehost. Those guys have a massive audience full of newbies. Maybe your audience isn’t people getting started earning money online. There are some great affiliate programs and many of them are not as well known as Bluehost and Amazon.

Be Prepared to Earn Nothing Per Month

For every blogger proclaiming that they earned $15,000 per month from Affiliate marketing there are many more who earned nothing. That is the reality that creators of Affiliate marketing courses do not always tell you. My experience has been in the middle… sporadic earnings but no consistent income. Nice bonuses here and there but not predictable.

Evaluate Your Affiliates and Dump Poor Performers

Even affiliate programs that are strategically aligned with your blog’s purpose and vision might not work with your audience. If that is the case, after testing for a few months, dump that affiliate and replace it with a new one.

Don’t Sign Up To Too Many Affiliate Programs

Avoid signing up to too many programs. You will need to keep track of them and assess click and conversion rates; signing up to 20 programs is not what I would recommend. Think quality over quantity.

I could probably write pages about this topic but I will end it here. I hope my list of considerations/ danger signs has been useful to you.

Good luck!

—

Are you an affiliate marketer? Is it a side hustle that you will investigate? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

4 Credit Cards to Repair Your Credit Score

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

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Best regards,

Mike

Follow me on Pinterest

https://www.quora.com/What-danger-signs-should-I-look-for-when-looking-to-start-affiliate-marketing-on-my-blog/answer/Mike-Pitt-1

Take This Free Financial Literacy Course Today

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

Image credit: https://vdc.edu.au/

One of the goals I set for myself for this blog was to help people improve their level of financial literacy.

What is Financial Literacy?

‘Financial literacy is the confluence of financial, credit and debt management and the knowledge that is necessary to make financially responsible decisions – decisions that are integral to our everyday lives.’

Kristina Zucchi, a contributor to www.investopedia.com

With each blog post, I have intended to spread financial awareness and increase the knowledge base of my readership. The feedback I have received suggests that this has been appreciated. Thanks to all of you that took the time to feedback. Another way of spreading financial literacy is by sharing details of a free financial literacy course. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I have been searching for a free resource that I could share with my readers. I have now found a suitable course and this course is the focus for today’s blog post.

Free Financial Literacy Course

This financial literacy course provides a good introduction to personal finance and money management. The course is supplied by Alison.com the free online learning platform set up as a For Profit Social Enterprise in 2007 by Mike Feeric. Alison.com was started in Galway, Ireland and now has over 12 million students from 195 countries. The course that I have selected has been studied by sixty nine thousand students and has a rating of 4.1 stars. The course will take approximately 6-10 hours to complete.

Click here to be taken to the course landing page.

Continual Learning

As we continue on this journey towards financial freedom, I will share other helpful resources with you. I hope that you find this course useful. I believe that it is important for us to continue learning and improving our knowledge base.

Have you taken any financial literacy or money management courses before? Let me know in the comments section below.

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

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

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier