Credit trap: Keeping Young Adults on the Right Track with Credit Cards

I will never forget the time I got my first credit card. I signed up on my college campus. It was great because I got a university t-shirt when I applied for the card. The people working the kiosk basically guaranteed that I would be approved. I was sold! I took the application, filled in my details, and impatiently waited for my shiny new card to arrive in the mail.

It is funny when I think back about how young and naïve I was. I did not care about annual fees, interest rates, or credit limits. If I would have known then what I know now, I would have set a booth right next to that credit card kiosk and passed out fliers about how bad the credit card offers are on university campuses.

There is a popular military strategy called “shock and awe.” Basically, a military will use overwhelming force and spectacular displays of power to paralyze the enemies on the battlefield and destroy their will to fight. The same strategy is used by these university credit kiosks. They promise young and financially naïve adults all these great benefits, but fail to inform about high annual fees and interest rates. Eventually, the college kid finds himself/herself in a debt trap from which he/she cannot escape.

My advice is to do your homework. Make sure that the credit card offer is not all smoke and mirrors. Ask about the annual fee and interest rates. If the person working the kiosk does not know the answers, do NOT get the card. There are too many places where a credit card can be obtained, therefore, you do not have settle for the sub par cards that they hand out on college campuses.

Is it Possible to Live Without Money?

Technically, it is possible to live without money. One can barter for necessary items such as food, water, clothing, and shelter. However, this is more true in earlier times than in today’s modern society.

This question is more important in the context of determining what is important to you. Think of this question more as a “would you rather” situation. For example, would you rather be rich or happy? Therefore, the question of “is it possible to live without money” is more metaphorical. In my opinion, it is possible to live without money as long as myself and my family are healthy and happy. Keep in mind that I am not saying that I do not want money or wealth. If I am able to obtain all three (health, happiness, and wealth), I will do everything in my power to achieve.

The purpose of the question is to make you think. Think about what you are willing to do, sacrifice, or compromise in order to obtain your ambitions. Think about whether the things you are compromising or sacrificing are more important that the things you are compromising or sacrificing it for. In other words, do the means justify the ends?

Think about this carefully or you could be giving up more than you obtain.

Cool Financial Calculator Website

I was reading some financial news yesterday and happen to stumble upon a really cool website. This website had any and every type and kind of financial calculator you could think of.

Every calculator was 100% free to use and could even be imported onto your website or personal profile page. And, when I tell you they have every financial calculator you can think of, I mean it! It is important to note, however, that using the calculators are free, but if you want to put one on your website, it is going to cost money.

The website is www.dinkytown.net. You definitely need to check it out. I do not believe that this website is really well know, therefore, if you do not feel comfortable as to the quality or accuracy of these calculators (I am not saying that they are inaccurate, and I have never had a problem with using them), www.bankrate.com is a pretty cool financial website that has a financial calculator option. Bankrate is not a pure financial calculator site like dinkytown.net is, but Bankrate.com is more popular.

Need More Money? Try Cutting Your Costs!

I had a unique experience yesterday afternoon. I was talking to a friend that was having trouble paying his bills. He was wondering how he was going to make next months rent payment (he lives in Los Angeles and thus his rent is very expensive), his car payment, his student loan payments, and all his other bills. He kept wondering and asking me how to make more money.

During our long conversation, I was amazed that he was considering getting a second job (considering he already worked 60 hours a week). What amazed me further is that he never considered cutting costs. His entire motivation was about making more money.

First, let me start that making more money is a great goal. The entire purpose behind this blog is to share knowledge on how to acquire wealth. However, wealth accumulation can be a long process. Absent hitting the lottery, millions of dollars do not come overnight. It takes hard work, dedication, and motivation.

Most people in my friend’s situation think one dimensionally. The problem presented in paying bills. They think “I do not have enough money to pay bills, therefore, I need to make more money!” This way of thinking is not incorrect, but it can create many problems in the immediate future. Let us say that my friend got a second job on his days off. I guarantee in a month, he would have no energy and his primary job performance would suffer, as well as his health and personal life.

An easier way exists. I told him he needed to cut costs. Cutting costs will have an immediate effect. I told him to stop going out to eat so much (he went about three times a week), brown bag lunch at the office, and stop buying unnecessary stuff. Additionally, I told him to contact his student loan office and ask for a month reprieve. I think that most student loan providers allow the payee to request a “month off” without penalty. Taking a month off will put him a month ahead on his student loan payment.

There are many other little costs he can cut that will add up big in the long run. My biggest piece of advice for him was to NOT form a budget. Budgets are too hard and people never stick with them. All I said was to keep track of the costs that you eliminated. This way, he will be able to see a noticeable difference in his checking account, and most importantly, he may not have to pick up a second job!

Adsense Revenue Sharing Websites

Many article submission websites exist. I have provided many of them in previous posts and many more are still to come. However, Adsense revenue sharing websites also exist. When you submit your articles to these websites, you also submit your Adsense publisher ID.

If you do not have an Adsense publisher ID, then you have to get one from Google by submitting you website for approval. Once approved by Google, you will get an Adsense publisher ID.

As you are all well aware, when you submit an article to websites, your rewards are backlinks, page hits, and reputation building. However, if you want to make any money, people have to visit your website. With Adsense revenue sharing websites, when you submit articles, Google Adsense advertisements appear next to your article. When a person clicks on these advertisements, you get paid on these clicks. For providing these services, the webmaster takes a percentage of the Adsense revenue, usually between 10-50%.

If you do not feel like sharing, then you do not have to submit to these sites and you can benefit from submitting to a traditional article submission site. However, submitting to both of these types of article submission websites will produce the benefits of both. Check out these sites if you want more information:


http://www.xpressideas.com/
http://www.articlecodex.com/
http://www.writingup.com
http://www.articletrader.com


http://www.articlewise.com
http://www.hotwebtools.com
http://technologyparent.com
http://www.arcade-game-online.com

Reverse Piercing and the Myth of Limited Liability – Beware of the Alter Ego!

A novel situation has presented itself in recent court decisions. In 2004, the New York Court of Appeals ruled in favor of granting a new type of remedy, “reverse piercing.” Piercing the corporate veil is a fancy way of saying that the shareholders of an entity are personally liable for the debts and liabilities of that entity. This means that if the entity does not have enough money to pay all debts and liabilities, creditors came attack a shareholder’s personal holdings.

Reverse piercing is different. In a reverse piercing situation, an entity is held liable for the debts and liabilities of its shareholders. This is an amazing theory because the whole point of a limited liability entity is to protect the personal assets of its shareholders and vice versa. In other words, the shareholders and the business are two completely separate entities. However, many of the factors used by the court to determine whether an entity should be pierced are used in determining whether a reverse piercing should take place.

The main inquiry is whether the individual shareholder is the alter ego of the entity. In other words, are the two distinguishable (in a legal sense)? In the New York case, the defendants were sued by two creditors. The defendants contracted to buy a house and formed a corporation for the purpose of buying the house. The defendants, and not the defendant’s corporation, paid the property taxes and mortgage principle and interest on the house. The defendants then deducted the payment of these taxes and mortgage interest from their, and not the corporation’s, tax return. The court concluded that the defendants bought the house in a way to avoid the creditors’ claims, and the defendants utterly controlled and completely dominated the corporation. As such, the court held that the defendants were the alter ego of the corporation, and the house purchased by the corporation (and therefore the property of the corporation) was subject to the creditors’ claims.

Let this be a lesson to all you aspiring entrepreneurs! If you have a corporation, or any legal limited liability entity, make sure that you keep the entities affairs separate from your personal affairs. If you do commingle these affairs, you may be subject to personal liability or, under a reverse piercing theory, your entity may be liable for your personal debts and liabilities.

Blogging News

Blogging is a great way to create income online. As I have written in the past, blogging can produce several income streams from the internet. However, blogging also creates an information stream for people. You would be amazed how much information you can obtain from reading blogs.

Before I attempted to create a revenue stream from blogging , I did a little research. At first, I randomly surfed around the internet. I found some interesting websites, but for the most part, these websites offered very little useful information. It was not until I started looking at blogs that I acquired relevant information about producing income online through blogging.

My goal was to create as much income as possible from the internet while spending as little money as possible. Blogging was my first and best choice. Blogging creates the benefits of a website without all of the liabilities.

Recently, an income stream used by bloggers has been criticized in the news. That income stream is blog advertising. Blogging purists and others believe that blog advertising is deceitful because the links to an advertiser’s product are “concealed” in the blog post. I do not agree with this criticism. More often than not, blog advertising companies require that you disclose when you are advertising in a post. Therefore, there are no hidden advertisements, nothing is “concealed,” and nothing is wrong. If these people do not want to make money off their blog, that is great. However, these people should not criticize others for trying to create revenue from information and/or thoughts posted on a blog. Nobody forces anybody to read blogs. Therefore, to all the critics out there, worry about your own blog and your own audience. You can keep your blogging “pure.” Just know that me and people like me are going to try to create a revenue stream from our blog.

What is the Purpose of your Corporation? – A Brief Look at the Doctrine of Ultra Vires

Many states have created a standardized document for forming a legal entity. These standardized forms were created partly to prevent lawyers from drafting and submitting extremely long incorporation documents and partly as a way to create ease of use for the general public. Most standardized forms contain a section for the name of the entity, the name of the resident agent, the name of the officers and/or directors, and a section for the corporate purpose.

We are going to take a closer look at the “purpose” section of an entity formation document. Today, lawyers generally use broad language such as, “any lawful purpose” in the purpose section of these documents. However, such was not the case many years ago. Incorporation documents used to be drafted with a very specific corporate purpose. As such, the doctrine of ultra vires was created by the courts. The doctrine of ultra vires was the cause of much litigation and judicial interpretation. The dictionary definition of ultra vires is “beyond the legal power or authority of a corporation, corporate officer, etc.” It is important to note that this doctrine, although traditionally applied to corporations, applies to all types of legal entities.

In plain terms, the doctrine of ultra vires applied to the “purpose” of corporate formation. For example, if a corporation was formed for the purpose of laying railroad tracks, that corporation could not engage in any other business. This makes sense if you think about it, but you can only imagine the limitations such a doctrine creates in this modern age. Today, corporations engage in so many different types of businesses and investments that if this doctrine was statutory majority law, instead of common law minority, you would see many more lawsuits due to a company’s participation in an enterprise that was not originally committed to paper in that pesky “purpose” section in the articles of incorporation.

The ultra vires doctrine was used both by the corporations and by other contracting parties. The problem with this doctrine is that it was easy to abuse. For example (using the same railroad laying track example above), if a corporation stated on its articles of incorporation that its purpose was to lay railroad tracks, the corporation was limited to pursuing only that business. Let us say that this corporation entered into a contract to manufacture railroad tracks. According to the doctrine of ultra vires, the corporation was prohibited from doing this. However, a court could only get involved if one of the parties complained. Therefore, as long as everybody got along, it technically did not matter that the corporation was conducting business beyond the limits of its stated purpose.

However, problems arise when a party wants out of the contract. For example, let us say that the railroad laying company is losing money on the contract for the manufacturing of railroad tracks. If the company wanted, it could get out of the contract by using the doctrine of ultra vires. It could argue that although it freely entered into the contract, it could repudiate the contract by stating that the doctrine of ultra vires prevented it from performing under the contract (in other words, the corporation was prohibited from manufacturing railroad tracks). The irony of this is that the other party that entered into the contract could assert the same thing if he/she/it wanted out of the contract. Basically, both parties in this example had a sure fire way out of a losing contract.

The dangers, pitfalls, and areas of abuse were wide. Additionally, you could see how this doctrine could create very unjust results. Two parties that freely entered into a contract could essentially screw the other if one was losing money. Due to this inherent unfairness, the doctrine has fallen out of favor. However, the doctrine is not nonexistent.

Lawyers combat this doctrine by creating a very broad “purpose” section. For example, as I stated above, usually lawyers use the “any lawful purpose” language when drafting a purpose section. However, you must be careful. Some state laws prevent the use of such broad language. Additionally, using broad language is not a guarantee against a lawsuit. Your safest bet is to know your local laws, draft broad purpose statements, and write a solid contract. So, for all of you entrepreneurs that want to form a legal entity, make sure your draft your articles correctly and carefully because something as simple as a “purpose” section can end up destroying a future contract!

Credit Score Loophole Closes

As we are all well aware, a good credit score is an important asset to possess. Not only does a good credit score save you thousands on interests payments, it is also an essential item needed to qualify for most loans.

It order to help out close friends and family (usually children), people put a specific person on their credit card as an “authorized user.” An authorized user is authorized to use the card, but is not liable for the card’s debt. Before recently, credit card reporting companies (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax) did not distinguish between the original card holder’s credit record and the authorized user’s record. Therefore, for example, if the original cardholder had a flawless ten year record on a particular card, the authorized user receives the benefit of this flawless record regardless of the length of time the authorized user is on the card. The benefit to the authorized user is huge. These benefits to the authorized user’s report could boost his/her credit score upwards to one hundred (100) points. This practice is known as “piggybacking.”

This is all about to change. Recently, the Fair Isaac Corporation, the company behind the FICO credit scores, reported that it was going to stop giving these benefits to authorized users. It was reported that certain internet sites started selling the rights to great credit reports. In other words, people with great credit would sell the right for other people to be listed as an authorized user on their card. This caused problems for lenders because they were unable to accurately gauge the credit risk of a person. Due to these complications, the above action will be taken starting in September of 2007.

Fortunately, this is not all bad news. Although the authorized user loophole is going to be closed, a second person can still receive the benefits of another’s credit history by adding the other person as a “joint user.” Unlike an authorized user, a joint user is liable for the debt on the card. However, if you are a responsible credit user, the joint user should have nothing to worry about. The joint user still gets the benefit of the entire credit history of the original card holder. Therefore, if you want to give your kids, your spouse, your other family members, or your friends a credit boost, you still have the option to add them as joint users. This option could also help business partners.

Multiple Streams of Income: The Internet Part 10

Recently, there has been a large emergence of Adsense revenue sharing websites. The concept is simple. Like many other websites, you submit content (articles, videos, podcasts, blog entries, pictures, etc.). The difference with the regular websites is that the webmaster takes one hundred percent (100%) of the Adsense revenue. You get the benefits of backlinks, reputation, and traffic building, but you do not actually share in any of the advertisement revenue.

With Adsense revenue sharing websites, you still get the backlinks, reputation, and traffic building benefits of other content submission websites, however, these revenue sharing websites also give you a percentage (usually fifty percent (50%) or more) of advertising revenue. These websites are easy enough to find and usually have a submission procedure similar to the other content submission websites.

Here is how it works. For each piece of content you submit, you get one (1) point. The more content you submit, the more points you get. Usually, you have to submit a certain amount of content before you can earn your percentage of advertising revenue. The more content you submit, the more your articles will show up and thus the higher percentage you have of getting paid, and the more you get paid.

You may be wondering how these websites track your Adsense advertisements. All of these websites have a section where you submit your Adsense publisher ID. This may freak you out, but can be worth it in the long run. This is allowed by Google, and can be safe if you do a little research into the websites to which you are submitting. Be careful about who you give your Adsense publisher ID to because you do not want your ID to be misused.

Ultimately, the choice of whether or not to participate in these websites is up to you. These websites are just like other content submission websites except you can make more money. If you do a little research and make sure the websites are credible, you literally have zero risk.

I have one last note for you. Although other advertisement programs (such as Adbrite) exist, I have only seen revenue sharing websites use Google Adsense. Therefore, if you do not have a Google Adsense account yet, I suggest you get one ASAP. Sign up is easy and your website will be reviewed quickly. Just know that there is a waiting period before you get an Adsense account.

Article Submission List Part 14

If you want to add pictures to your article submissions, be aware that not that many article submission sites allow you to do this. As I stated in Part 13, many sites disable html and other programming code in the “body” part of the article. Therefore, a picture code will not appear as a picture. If the site you are submitting to disables code in the body portion, just make a reference to the picture near the relevant information in your article. For example, state, “See picture at www.______.com.”

Another way to tackle the problem is to put the picture in your resource box. However, the down side to this is that sites usually allow only two links in a resource box. This means you will have to sacrifice a link to your website in order to install the picture. The choice is up to you.

Anyway, here they are:

www.articlevillage.com
www.articlevista.com
www.articlewarehouse.com
www.article-warehouse.com
www.articlewell.com
www.articlewiz.com
www.articleworld.com
www.article-world.net
www.aticle-den.com
www.authorcontent.com
www.bestarticlecity.com
www.bestwahmarticles.com
www.bigarticle.com
www.bigarticledirectory.com
www.bigarticles.com

Article Submission List Part 13

Make sure that you html code is correct. The worst thing you can do is submit all of your articles to all of the sites and then find out that your link is dead. A dead link prevents you from getting backlinks. The various search engines’ (Google, Yahoo, etc.) web-crawlers follows all the links on the pages. How can it follow a link if it is dead? Make sure your links work!

Anyway, here they are:

www.articlesrus.net
www.articles-submit.com
www.articlestack.com
www.articlestash.com
www.article-store.com
www.articlestreet.com
www.article-submitter.com
www.articlesworld.net
www.articleteller.com
www.articletime.com
www.articletogo.com
www.articletower.com
www.article-treasure.com
www.articletrunk.com
www.articlevenue.com

Article Submission List Part 12

Upon submitting your articles, make sure that you put your links in the appropriate resource box. Many sites disable html code in the article body. If you try to put a link in this part, your article will most likely be rejected. Additionally, your article, if accepted, will look like junk because your paragraph will be broken by unrecognized code. Therefore, put your code in the correct place!

Anyway, here they are:

www.articles-hub.com
www.articlesindex.com
www.articles-keyword-rich.com
www.articleskingdom.com
www.articlesmagazine.com
www.articlesnatch.com
www.articlesnet.co.uk
www.articlesnetwork.com
www.articlesolutions.com
www.articleson.com
www.articles-online.biz
www.articlesonline.org
www.articlesoup.com
www.articlesphere.com
www.articlesrightnow.com

Article Submission List Part 11

When you sign up for all of these websites, it might be a good idea to use the same user name and password. By using the same username and password, logging in to all of these sites, (there are at least two hundred) will be far easier. If you can remember two hunder different passwords, or have the discipline to keep records of two hundred plus passwords and websites, then use a different password. Another option would be to change your password by groups. Anyway you do it (because we are dealing with such a large number of websites and submissions) have a plan so that changes and updates will be easy.

Anyway, here they are:

www.articles411.com
www.articles4content.com
www.articles4free.com
www.articles-4-free.com
www.articles4reprint.com
www.articles4rss.com
www.articlesandauthors.com
www.articlesbase.com
www.articlesbeyondbetter.com
www.articlesearchnet.com
www.article-search-online.com
www.articleselections.com
www.articlesexpress.com
www.articles-galore.com
www.articleshelf.com

Article Submission List Part 10

When submitting articles to all of these sites, you might want to create a separate e-mail account specifically for that purpose. Usually, you have to provide an e-mail address when you sign up for these sites. Additionally, many of the webmasters will send you special promotions from their article submission site. If you like your personal e-mail to be seperate from your business e-mail, then creating a separate e-mail will be in your best interest. Not all of these article submission sites will send you additional e-mail besides your confirmation e-mail upon sign-up, however, it is easier, in my opinion, to keep things separate.

If you do not want to go through the whole process of getting a new e-mail address (it really does not take a lone time), then at least create a separate folder in your current e-mail program so that everything is organized.

Anyway, here they are:

www.articlenest.com
www.articlenews.us
www.articleonlinedirectory.com
www.articleoptimizer.com
www.articlepanel.com
www.articlepeak.com
www.articlepipeline.com
www.articleportal.com
www.articlepot.com
www.articleprobe.com
www.articlerampage.com
www.articlerich.com
www.articlerocket.com
www.articles24.com
www.articles365.com

Article Submission List Part 9

Here is part 9 of the submission list. Make sure you keep track of all of the websites to which you submitted and the websites you did not. You have to keep track because almost all of these submission sites do not immediatley approve your article submissions. You will have to go back to all of these sites so that you can make any changes necessary to fix a declined submission. Keep good records and fixing problems will be a snap.

Additionally, keeping track of your website submissions will make it easier to track your article hits. By tracking how many hits or reads each respective article is receiving, you will be able to get statistics on which of your articles is most popular and which articles need work. By revising and fixing articles that do not receive many hits, you will be able to write better content and ultimately, make more money!

Anyway, here they are:

www.articleinterchange.com
www.articlejoe.com
www.articlejunction.com
www.articlekarma.com
www.articlelists.com
www.articlelocker.com
www.articlelookup.com
www.articlemailbox.com
www.articlemap.com
www.articlemarketer.com
www.articlemasters.com
www.articlemax.com
www.articlemill.com
www.article-monster.com
www.articlemotron.com

Article Submission List Part 7

Here we go again. Some more websites for you all to submit articles. I would love to be able to tell you when this list will end, but the truth is, I do not even know. The list keeps growing, but this is actually good news. The more sites that exist, the more chances you have for submission and thsu the more backlinks you will get.

Here are some more sites:

www.articlecrazy.com
www.articlecube.com
www.articledaddy.com
www.article-daily.com
www.articledash.com
www.articledashboard.com
www.article-database.com
www.articledepot.co.uk
www.articledestination.com
www.article-directory.info
www.article-directory.net
www.articledomain.com
www.article-domain.com
www.article-exchange.com
www.articlefair.com

Article Submission List Part 6

If you are to this point in your article submissions, congratualtions. The bad news is, there are many webistes yet to go. The good news is that your articles are already starting to build backlinks, and your reputation. If you submit your articles to Adsense revenue sharing sites (lists to come later), you can start making some money immediately without people visitng your website.

Anyway, here are some new article submission websites for today! Submit, get some back links, make some money!

Here they are:

www.articlebin.com
www.articlebiz.com
www.articleblender.com
www.articlebliss.com
www.article-blogs.info
www.articleboutique.com
www.articleboy.com
www.articlebunch.com
www.articlebus.com
www.articlecapital.com
www.articlecircle.com
www.articlecircuit.com
www.articlecity.com
www.article-content-king.com
www.articlecorral.com

Article Submission List Part 5

Here are the latest entries in for Article Submission websites. Keep plugging away and build your backlinks! In order to stay motivated, imagine all the money you will be making! Also, if you are at this point in your submissions, you may have noticed that many article submission websites look the same. The reason for this is that ArticleDashboard.com allows anybody to download the software (for free) necessary to create an article submission website (not free). This is a great way to build a list, generate new business leads, and to create a another income "trinutray" (if you will).

Anyway, here they are:

www.allaboutarticles.org
www.allaboutguide.com
www.allaroundsuccess.com
www.amazines.com
www.answer-site.com
www.anyarticles.com
www.archivex-ht.com
www.articleaccess.com
www.articleagency.com
www.articlealley.com
www.articleavalance.com
www.articleavenue.com
www.articlebag.com
www.articlebar.com
www.articlebeam.com

Article Submission List Part 4

Article submission = Money! I know it can be difficult to submit to all of these sites, but you gotta do it to make some MONEY!!! When submitting all of your articles to the various websites, check to see how many members or writers have submitted content. If very few people have submitted content, this is evidence of one of two things: (1) the website is new and not yet established (which is not a bad thing); or (2) the website sucks, meaning that it does not promote or try to get indexed because the webmaster's sole purpose is to build a mailing list to send you e-mails. Use your better judgment when deciding to submit to a site like this.

Anyway, here they are:

www.101articles.com
www.1articleworld.com
www.a1-articledirectory.com
www.a1articles.com
www.aadpro
www.ababba.com
www.ablearticles.co.uk
www.acearticles.com
www.acmearticles.com
www.activearticles.com
www.activeauthors.com
www.add-article.com
www.addarticle-submitfree.com
www.addyourlinks.info
www.advertisingknowhow.com