It is kind of funny how we all strive to be different: in some respects it complicates things. 

Take buying a car for example.  Instead of going to just buy a car, you are going to buy something and then pick your options: do you want air conditioning, power locks, tilt, cruise, etc.  In essence, you can end up with your own unique car depending on what you pick.  But, you can’t just go buy a car.

Credit cards are another good example.  When you go shopping to buy the best credit card you are presented with options.  In some respect too many options.  You can get credit cards with fees and without.  How about a 0% interest credit card?  They exist too.

Want to get paid to shop?  Fill out a cash back credit card offer.  How about a card that gives you reward miles, pays for a portion of your new car, or donates money to your favorite cause?  You can get that too.

In our struggle to be unique we can find difficulty, in this difficulty we can find selection, and in the process of selection we can find stress - at least for some of us.

In psychology class we have been studying learning disabilities.  I recently had the opportunity to hear the story of someone with dyslexia and I thought it would be worth sharing.  Enjoy the read:

“I have always hated school.  I was one of the few people in high school who easily made the decision not to further my education.  From the time I was very young, we all knew that I had problems learning.  I was diagnosed at age seven as dyslexic.

I am not one of those people who benefited from knowing my disability.  Even though I did dyslexia tests and showed all of the dyslexic symptoms, nothing was really done to help me.  I was merely the problem student who was put on the back burner while the time was spend on those students who showed promise.  Because of this treatment, I became very bitter about going to school.

Recently, an opportunity arose for me to go back to school to further my career.  It was a wonderful opportunity, but the closer I got to my start date, the more I thought about my past education history and the more discouraged I became.  I decided that I was not going to go through this again and so made an appointment with the admissions counselor, completely ready to drop my classes.  That meeting changed my life.  I was awed at the amount of help and the resources available to me.  I went to classes and for the first time in my life, enjoyed school.”

Well, I just got back from school today.  It was ok, but sometimes it sure makes for a long day.  Today was very uneventful except for one thing: a pop quiz in finance.

It was definitely not looking good for me.  You see I have been working on a paper for English for the past few days and haven’t been keeping up with my finance class.  I also take the class for granted sometimes: I am very passionate about the topic so I have made a point to learn a lot about the subject.  It also comes easily to me, so I don’t study for the class as much.

Thing is the topic of the quiz today was mortgages: which I am not too familiar with.  You see, I have not bought a house yet, so I really had no idea.  The concept of home refinance stumped me, so I had to skip the question.  I think I got the question on home equity loans but we will have to wait and see.

All in all today was a wake up call for me: maybe I don’t know this class as well as I thought.  I will need to put some time into studying it as well.

I have new and exciting finance news.  I now have two mortgages

Last week, I signed the papers and bought myself a house.  I am also keeping my condo for the time being.  My two room mates are going to continue living there and paying rent to me.  I know they are clean and responsible, so I have nothing to worry about.  When they decide to move, I will consider selling it.

My boyfriend and I will be moving into the house in a couple of weeks and I am excited about all the space I will have.  I will also have my own room to study in.  It will be great to have the computer out of my bedroom.

In the past year, my car has been vandalized twice, which has made my car insurance go higher.   I have a garage now for my car, which will make scraping windows in the winter a thing of the past.  Also, it should be safer to keep the car in there.

I felt so good about the financial decisions that I have recently made and just had to share the news.

I found out this week that the Internet is a valuable comparison tool.  It allows you to shop at many different places without ever having to leave home.  You can also find special offers that you usually cannot find at a regular brick and mortar store.  I just want to highlight my journey this week on my quest to find a credit card.

You see, I needed a credit card as there were a few gifts that I wanted to purchase for my friends for Christmas that were a lot cheaper online.  Catch is, you needed a credit card at these sites.  So I thought I could just jump on the computer, go online and find a good one.

Man, there were so many options.  I found cashback credit cards, credit cards with reward programs and even ones that had no fees.  There were also different interest rates and different payback options - talk about overwhelming.  So I found three or four of them that I liked the most, printed out the information and sat down to read them.

After about an hour or so I have narrowed it down to the two cards I think I would be best.  I have decided to sleep on it so that I make a good decision.  I am happy that I did my research online: I was able to compare credit cards easily, but I was able to decide without having to make an appointment with anyone, freeing my time for other things.

Well, this doesn’t happen too much to me, but today I fell asleep in my finance class.  You see, I was up late till early this morning pulling an all-nighter working on my accounting assignment that was due today.  I got it done, but at the expense of my sleep.

The class started off ok, we were talking about loans - different types, financing options, as well as all the ratios that you calculate to figure out if your client qualifies for their loan.  We touched on the two general types of loans that you can get: unsecured loans and secured homeowner loans.

After that my memory gets a little fuzzy.  I do remember the professor asking me a question in an effort to both humiliate me and try to wake me up.  Too bad, I was sleeping too hard and I didn’t hear it at all.

I will have to get more sleep tonight so that I am awake tomorrow.  Even though I got the notes from my friend, I still worry that if I miss the lecture, I might not catch on.  And for those of you who have attended college, if you don’t catch on you are pretty much looking at an F.  With my scholarship, I cannot afford to do that - I have to keep my marks up.

Well it is Friday night, and I am home alone.  Now normally I would go to a movie, go out with friends, or find something else to do.  This week though, my car is broken and I don’t really feel like taking the bus.  Instead I am sitting here at my computer with nothing really to do.

I fired up my favorite search engine and made a quick web search for the first thing that came to mind: strange news.

Now you might want to ask me why that is the first thing that came to my head: well, I need to catch up on the news and hopefully weird news is funny.

I lucked out and found a strange news blog - and I was hooked.  I read article after article (and it took me over an hour to write this blog post), but I was entertained.  In fact, I had to add the site to my favorites, and I will be visiting it on a regular basis now.

I recently setup a few websites and wanted them to rank well for the keywords I used on the site.  In my case, I was creating some TV show fan sites and I wanted to come up near the top of the search results on the major search engines.  I wanted to do this as quickly and painlessly as possible compared to my traditional marketing methods.

Now, traditionally, I have been submitting my sites to search engines, free web directories, and have been writing articles to promote my sites.  If you have ever tired this, it is very time consuming.

I wanted to speed it up.  My biggest reason behind this would be the quicker I got it done, the quicker I could make another site.  So as a simple formula:

Faster Website Promotion = More Money in my Pocket

I was scouring many different forums today and came upon an easy solution:  I could buy links and speed up my link building process.  I thought this was a great idea, so I looked into how much it cost.

I was shocked.

Many of the sites visited charged more money than I was willing to pay.  I don’t really have a big budget, so I needed something a little more reasonable.

Enter TNX.net.

TNX is a new text link marketplace.  They offer a simple solution to link building: pick the number of links and the PR of the sites and poof!  their script takes care of setting up the links for you.  Price wise, you can get a monthly link for less than one cent - definitely affordable. Or if you want some free advertising, you can use their affiliate program and earn a commission from people who signup under you and use the commission to buy some links.

I am going to try them out.  I did also find a place where you can get free text links which gives you the opportunity to try out there service on a forum I frequent.  Try them out, I am sure it will work for you.  I will report my experience in a later blog post.

I have found the best savings account by looking on the Internet.  I have a few different savings accounts as I am saving for a few different things.  But, I found a plethora of information online that I would not have found otherwise.

I also decided to compare credit cards, as I was hoping to get one of my credit cards attached to my savings account.  I found a great deal on one that would take the money straight from my savings account.  So, when the money is sitting there, I accumulate interest, but because the credit card takes the money from my savings account instantly, I never pay interest.

I also did a car insurance comparison and found that I could get a really cheap rate by paying with the credit card I just signed up for. 

Now that I am all setup, I am so glad that I looked into it and did it too.  A sigh of relief and a few extra bucks in my pocket.

Have you ever had a dream of living a particular place in the world?  Well I have for a long time.  For me, the place I was thinking of is South Africa.

Their warm climate, and the possibility of living near the ocean excites me.  There  would be nothing better to own property that is along the beach.  Everyday would seem like a holiday.

I have actually been making some effort into finding out what my options would be should I move there.  I have been checking out some of the listings on Pam Golding International and Seeff Properties which are two of the leading real estate companies there.

Man, are some of their houses nice.  I did manage to find one that is very much like my dream home and well within my budget.  I would love to move, but to make my dream come true, I would have to convince the wife… I guess I’ll have to work on it