Personal Finance

Referrals are a win-win situation! The referred party typically gets some sort of special deal while the referring party gets some sort of compensation. Just check out all the newly added affiliate advertisements on the right-hand side. You’ll get some great offers, and I’ll get a nice “thank you” ;)

There’s never really any backlash for referring others to products or services. Once the transaction has been made, each party continues on their merry ways. If the referred is no longer happy, they can easily leave. On the opposite end, they can start making referrals themselves if they’re very happy.

Most people know the different adages about employment, namely:

“it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.

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Referred to as the “Counter-Culture Club”, the book – Enjoy Your Money: How to Make it, Save it, Invest it, and Give it by J. Steve Miller – chronicles a group of young friends who, interestingly enough, met during in-school suspension.

In trying to learn more about each other, they come to the realization they all had one thing in common – a general lack of understanding about money. Having parents with poor financial habits and seeing them struggle, they looked for guidance. This came somewhat unexpectedly in the form of an older, Social Studies teacher no one paid much attention to.

What followed was a series of breakfasts at a local diner where the group learned everything from saving for retirement to car shopping. The group even picked up an additional member, one of the wait staff! The group entertains a host of guest speakers – people they never would have thought were financially successful until they heard their stories. Most of the individuals came from meager means, but were able to build wealth through education and sound financial principles.

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How much time are you willing to spend to prevent fraud? Would you spare 5 minutes?

That’s all it takes to complete the OptOutPrescreen form.

And the best part, you have two options: 5 years or forever.

After launching the program, many people were confused considering it to be fraud. Rightly so, the program is hosted through the big credit reporting agencies. If it looks like a phish, and smells like a phish, then it must be a phishing scam – right?

The FTC now provides an information page to dispel these myths.

So, how does the program add another layer of protection to your identity?

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If you’ve been tracking Kita over at PF Journey, she’s asked her readers to help with her used car purchase and has been documenting the journey (ties nicely into the site name) along the way. Hopefully she’s been reading the material over at Car Negotiation Coach to help with tips & tricks.

My own car, the “Red Baron”, has been getting up in age – 10 years to be exact! So I’ve started the process of looking for replacement vehicles. There’s such a vast amount of information out there, you could spend hours filtering through sites. From everything I’ve seen so far, two in particular stand out.

TrueCar

Provides detailed trending information in a variety of formats. The basic report is a histogram of actual sales data for your area. The best feature has to be the seeing the price swings between the: sticker price, factory invoice, average paid, and dealer cost.

Understanding the true costs of a car purchase are critical to negotiating the best possible price. Referred to as the “Cash Flow Shell Game” (scroll to bottom of page), the site provides a graphic worth checking out explaining how dealer’s make their profits.

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