I Buy Too Much When I Travel
I love to travel. I am generally good about finding affordable trips so that I can travel often. However, I have one weakness. I buy too many things when I’m on a trip.
As you might suspect, most of the things are things that I don’t end up needing. Like last year when I bought a really beautiful maternity top from a local artisan in Mexico City. It was gorgeous but unnecessary since I’m not pregnant nor do I think I might be soon.
For awhile, I was trying to stop making purchases on my trips. I failed miserably at this. It just filled me with longing to see all of these things that are so neat but not to buy them. I also felt bad looking through markets and local stores and not contributing to their sales.
I think I’ve found a solution. From now on I’m going to use my travel time to purchase gifts for the people that I love. I will give these gifts to them for holidays and special occasions. I’ll be able to eliminate my other holiday shopping by replacing those gifts with the gifts from my travels. The gifts will be more special and I’ll still be able to shop during vacations!
Keep Your Employees with Good Benefits
Times are getting harder, and your employees know it. While this means that most of them are grateful for a job, it also means that many of them will be sensitive to what they feel they aren’t getting from their job.
An important thing to maintain during times like these is good benefits for your employees. A lot of Americans are hurting for health care right now, and people are scared about what that means. It’s difficult sometimes to find affordable health insurance in Florida on your own, particularly if you’re trying to buy an individual policy on your own, without a job’s benefits. So if you take care of your employees during these tough times by being sure to always provide good Florida health insurance, your employees are more likely to value their jobs and stay with the company when times change.
Many employers assume that with the job market the way it is, they can easily replace employees that leave. However, don’t forget that new employee training costs a lot of money — and training new employees regularly costs at least as much as providing a good benefits package for your existing (read: experienced) employees!
Basics of Dreamweaver Extensions
I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz around the web about dreamweaver extensions. I finally got curious about what these things are. I did some research into it.
Here’s what I found out about dreamweaver extensions:
- The dreamweaver extension is something that you add to dreamweaver software.
- Dreamweaver software helps with building better web pages.
- The extension is easily added to the software to offer you more options for using the software.
- A dreamweaver extension package is itself a small software package.
- There are many different types of dreamweaver extensions. They all provide different types of advanced features for designing web pages using Dreamweaver.
- There are dreamweaver extensions available from many different vendors. Some of these extensions are free.
- You don’t have to have computer coding knowledge to know what you’re doing with dreamweaver extensions.
- You can use extensions to make certain web tasks automatic. This greatly helps with reducing wasted time.
Basically I learned that dreamweaver is a type of software that I should probably learn more about. It looks like it’s powerful. It also looks like these extensions make it even more powerful. I’m glad that I heard the buzz. Now I’ll have to see what else I can learn about it!
The Value of Team Building
My husband often complains about the team building activities his boss makes them do at work. A lot of the exercises do seem a little juvenile, but I know what his boss is trying to achieve: a team that knows each other well, is comfortable with one another, and are able to work together effectively.
Team building doesn’t have to involve silly activities where you get prizes for answering a question correctly. Team building can be as simple as encouraging everyone to dress up in wigs and costumes for Halloween, or having a special team lunch where everyone gets to order food they like and spend an hour together chatting. Heck, team building could even be everyone going out to happy hour together off of work!
The point is that team building is actually very effective — when it’s not forced by the supervisors. People who spend a lot of time together actually do like to get to know one another, so it’s natural for them to do this on their own when given the opportunity. Supervisors just need to know how to best encourage it. Team lunches (with a little extra time built in for chatting), holiday parties, and encouragement work much better than regimented team building exercises, because the latter are forced and ultimately resented by the employees.
Take the Family to Canada
Have you made your summer travel plans yet? It’s not too late to take your family on a summer vacation. There are many destinations to choose from. I happen to think that the best one is Canada.
Reasons that I think a family vacation in Canada would be ideal include:
- Most people haven’t spent a lot of time in Canada. You get to go somewhere foreign without a big trip overseas.
- Canada is beautiful. Those people who have been to Canada already can attest that it’s a truly beautiful country.
- There are lots of cool adventures to enjoy there as a traveler. A great example is that you can take a Canadian Rockies train ride with your family.
- The summer weather there is great. You can choose from different specific locations to get the exact type of weather you’d like to enjoy during your vacation.
- It’s easy to travel there. You do need passports but other than that it’s a destination that doesn’t require a lot of hassle.
A Canadian vacation is a fairly easy vacation to plan and execute. It offers a lot of benefits over a domestic vacation. Don’t wait until next summer to enjoy this type of experience.
LEED certification in 2 days? Yes!
Even though I only work as an architect’s assistant, I am with an extremely busy firm. And as such there is a constant flow of opportunity that streams through our offices. Just last week I was passively listening to some co-workers during lunch discuss their prospects at acquiring LEED certification.
Of course I knew that LEED stood for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, however I really didn’t know much in the way of what was required for that certification. My instinct told me that one would probably have to go back to school and dedicate a ton of time and money in order to get the certification.
As I listened on to my associates, I overheard one of them mention a training institute known as Everblue Energy. Immediately after the lunch break I went back to my desk and started doing some research on them and all that they offered.
I was very impressed and was especially pleased that they offered courses in some many major cities across the country. Additionally, while they did not guarantee successfully passing the examination, many of their courses had over 90% first time passing rates. That is not something to be sneezed at!
Add to this, affordability and short two day courses, and I know exactly what I’m about to take on in my life.
How to Go into Business as a Mortgage Broker
In general, starting a successful business requires acquiring the proper training and experience, and getting the word out there with potential clients. Becoming a mortgage broker is really no different, except that it takes a different kind of marketing to establish yourself with potential clients.
First things first, though — in order to become a mortgage broker you need to get your mortgage education. Safe mortgage licensing is required in order to protect borrowers, and before you can practice as a broker you will need to get your license.
Once you have your mortgage license, you will need to work to establish yourself. This is usually a precarious time for mortgage brokers, and the point at which many of them quit and move on to something else. However, if you have the persistence and the understanding of what it is you’re doing, you should be able to push on through and establish yourself as a mortgage broker.
The key to establishing yourself is getting enough feelers out there that you will start seeing regular business coming in. For instance, you might want to start by developing business relationships with several real estate agents in your area. The idea is “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” — the agent has a name to recommend to clients for lending, and you’ve got a couple of names to recommend to borrowers who still need an agent.
Other approaches you will want to try are having a website with some tools that borrowers will find useful, having an office with readily visible signage, running ads in community publications, and networking at local events. There is no guaranteed formula for helping you to get started as a mortgage broker, but with hard work and perseverance, you should be able to establish yourself in the industry.
Shopping Around
The last time I started looking for hot tubs, I had two specific things I was looking for and at. I wanted the hot tub to be at least a 2 person hot tub. It also had to be a good and competitive price. Hot tub prices tend to vary dependent upon where you buy a hot tub. There are all sorts of different places to buy hot tubs such as a mass merchandiser such as a Sears or Home Depot. You can also buy a hot tub at a specialty store such as a pool store.
Dependent upon where you purchase the hot tub also makes a difference. If you are in Minnesota versus Las Vegas, it will be a different price, so shopping around is a necessity. Shopping around is especially important when searching for a good price, and who is not shopping for the best price these days. There are always different options to check into, so make that part of your search. Every aspect of a search for a hot tub should be looked into, from the maker to the seats to the pricing. Even the smallest difference sometimes makes the biggest difference in the product and the price.
Making Jewelry for Money
One of my friends has developed a new hobby: beading jewelry. She has been beading so much lately that she decided she ought to try selling it to make up some of her costs.
She decided to try selling her jewelry on Etsy, and started a store there. Unfortunately she has noticed that the market is saturated with tons of jewelry almost just like what she is making. Therefore she is having a hard time selling what she makes.
As a sole proprietor of my own freelance writing business, I’ve been advising her a little bit on the technical end of running a business, such as keeping good records and paying taxes. But she gathered, without any help from me, that if she is offering a product very similar to everyone else, the difference between her and them has to be marketing. So she is working on ways of getting the word out there about her jewelry, via a blog and a few other methods.
These are the kinds of considerations you need to think of whenever you are starting up a business, whether it is making jewelry, writing, or just about anything else you can think of. Anytime the market is saturated with your products or services for sale, you have to find a way to make YOUR business stand out from the rest!
Finally Getting My Documents Organized
When I finally decided to bite the bullet and overhaul my company’s archaic file storage system, I was extremely overwhelmed at first. I mean, there was just so much work that had to be done to get all of the documents in order that I didn’t know where to start.
After a day or two of basically shuffling papers around, I decided that I needed help. I asked around and discovered that there were document imaging companies whose specialty was helping people just like me get their documentation in order.
I called up a local company and the rep who answered the phone was nice enough to give me a quick explanation of the various document scanning solutions that I had available to me through his company. To me, every option sounded like a Godsend. We talked about my specific needs and came up with a solution that was perfect for me.
Within a couple of days I was well on my way to having not only organized documents, but a system in place to make sure that any further documentation that the company gathered was stored in such a way that finding what I need would be a cinch.
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