Today I was in Future Shop , a consumer electronics store, and noticed that there was a lady who was trying to return a DVD movie as she wanted a refund. She did not have a receipt and mentioned that it had been over two months since she bought the item. The reason she wanted to return the item was because the DVD was damaged as it was literally broken in half. When the lady was asked on how that had happened she explained that she had accidently stepped on it. Afterwards, it was explained to her that they would be unable to give her a refund because it had been over two months, she did not have a receipt and the DVD was physically damaged.

She then started to go off on how she has bought so much from the company and that it was not only unreasonable but she then threatened to never shop there again if they did not reimburse her for the DVD. In the end, she was not allowed to return the DVD and she marched off with a disgruntled attitude. I wouldn’t be surprised if I see her in the future publishing her comments on some kind of Future Shop sucks type of site(I personally think she was very unreasonable).

Times like this I am just amazed on how some people take absolutely no blame for their life ordeals as if they are a child that doesn’t know any better and require their parents to clean up their mess. Similar to managing your finance, you must be able to take responsibility on things such as your spending habits in order to improve on it. For example, if you are working at a job that pays you a very low wage and every month you are struggling to pay the bills, it is very easy to start blaming all the problems on the fact that your current job doesn’t pay you much. Instead, why not ask yourself “What can I do to fix this?”.

You’d be surprised on how many times where I have tried to offer people advice on ways to save money by first learning about some of their habits and they would respond by saying things such as “I like to go out and drink with my friends a lot”. When I ask whether or not they would be willing to take it easy on how many times a week they would do things like that they would tell me “No Way. I only go a few times a week. It doesn’t cost me that much anyways”. If you are unwilling to recognize that your outcome is the result of what you have done, then you shouldn’t be complaining as that is the type of lifestyle you are choosing to live.

Take responsibility for your own actions and you’d be surprised just how much wiser and independent you can become in managing your lifestyle.

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It seems like every other day I am reading stories from site owners on how they are struggling to handle the financial burden of running a web site as their visitor base is sky rocketing. While they have methods such as affiliate programs and various advertisements in place to generate income, the common theme that I hear is that it is not enough as their visitors don’t seem to be supporting their sponsors.

For example, let’s pretend that there is a person who frequently shops at Amazon.com. One day, a hobby site that the person visits decides to run the affiliate program offered by Amazon.com as a way to generate revenue. Even though the person frequently shops at the site, a common scenario is that the visitor would purposely avoid purchasing it through the hobby site that is trying to generate revenue and would instead go directly to Amazon.com even though there would be no real difference in the service that he would be receiving.

You can plead and beg all you want for support, but from my personal experience it comes down to the fact that there are many people who feel that if you have something to gain from a certain situation, they will take the extra initiative to make sure that you do not benefit from it because they would rather see themselves as the only one gaining something for it. Although I can say to a lesser extent that I have experienced similar scenarios in an online environment, there are multiple times in life where I have experienced this type of behavior from others.

A couple of years back when I was first able to offer people Internet access services I naturally started to promote it as it was a good service at a very competitive rate, the customer had the opportunity to get their service for free through referrals and for me it would help that category of my business grow. A couple that I personally knew was in the midst of searching for an Internet service provider and so I felt it would be an ideal solution for them. Since only the wife was available at the time, I spoke to her about the service and provided details about the rates and the perk of being able to receive free service by referring others to it.

She seemed excited about it and asked me to provide all of the necessary details to sign up and it was apparent that one of the key reasons on why she wanted to sign up was to help my business grow. After providing all the information, I left as it would be up to them to decide whether or not they wanted to go with it. A few days later, I noticed that they were one of my new customers and thought everything was well. However, apparently the decision was made without both of them agreeing to it first. The husband apparently blasted her for making the decision and eventually the service was canceled. It wasn’t too big of a deal that I lost the account, but I wanted to make sure everything was okay and to find out the exact reasons for the cancellation.

After discussing it with the husband, everything seemed okay which was great and when I asked whether or not there was a specific reason on why he wouldn’t want the service he just stated that he wanted to think it over more and to see what he could get from others. That sounded fair to me. Afterwards, his wife informed me that he was angry that she enrolled into a service without thoroughly thinking it over first and that since I was gaining something in this deal that they must be getting shafted somehow.

A few days later, they signed on with another provider and it was solely decided by the husband as he was mainly impressed that he was able to receive one month of free service for everyone he referred to the service. After looking at the service and rates, it was more expensive and was virtually the same thing that I offered. Obviously, the fact that he knew that I benefited in some way was one of the key reasons that he didn’t want to use the service.

I think it would be interesting to find out on what exactly a person is thinking when they make a decision solely based on whether or not you have something to gain in a situation that wouldn’t impact them in any way. I can see for example if one doesn’t want to support a certain organization because of things like religious beliefs or that they would have to go through extreme lengths to support them, but in a situation such as the site example above is mind boggling. My personal opinion is that when you encounter a situation like this, don’t spend too much energy trying to change somebody else but instead look for more ideas that your supporters will embrace.

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While reading through all of the fine prints in the credit card offer that I received, an interesting line that caught my attention was how I would be charged a fee for all transactions that are conducted in a foreign currency. I’ve personally had no knowledge of this type of fee before as I have made many purchases in locations such as the US. So, I decided to do a little research on the topic and was surprised to see that virtually every major credit card company has this fee and that there was a lawsuit in the past about it.

Apparently what was going on was that most of them would have a fee of say one percent of the total purchase cost. Instead of displaying this fee separately to clearly inform the card user of it, the fee is actually incorporated into the final total. Like many others, whenever I see the converted total on my bill I just automatically assume that it only consists of what the current currency conversion rate is. I guess I must of been a bit too anxious when I first got my credit card, which was right when I was at a legal age to get one, because I didn’t remember reading about such a fee and would of definitely thought twice before making a foreign purchase with it. I bet that would of saved me some money if I was fully aware of it before.

This just goes to show you that hidden fees/charges are everywhere as companies have to make money somewhere and that making sure you understand your service contracts can go a long way in helping you to save money.

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Like many others, I constantly receive mails and offers from companies who want you to sign up for their credit cards. For myself, I have always been a one credit card person as I never really saw the need in requiring more than one and figured that it would be easier to manage my credit card bill this way too. Recently, I received a mail for a business credit card and most of them usually emphasize on how I am pre-approved for a high credit limit or that they have a low interest rate. Neither of those benefits really interests me as my current limit is good enough for my needs and considering that I always fully pay my bills on time the low interest rate is kind of pointless.

What caught my attention about this offer was how they were emphasizing the cash rebate program where you could receive up to 2% of your annual purchases back in the form of credit. Considering the volume of purchases that I do in a year, this actually got me thinking as it does seem like a good benefit. Currently, I receive airmile points for my purchases and to be quite honest I personally think the rewards compared to how much I spend is pretty low when you look at it from a dollar value. Like always though, you shouldn’t jump into anything hastily and I will definitely be reading all the fine prints. We’ll just have to wait and see on whether or not I will be carrying two credit cards in the future.

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Recently, I just had a conversation with a friend about times where it seemed like working with people that you have known and trust turn out to be a disaster. When I reflect back to the times where this has personally happened to me, the main theme in every case was that I was naive in believing that there is no way your friends would intentionally want take advantage of you as why in the world would you want to jeopardize your friendship with a person whom you’ve known for quite awhile? One of the biggest examples of this in my life was how I got taken advantage of by a person whom I’ve known for a fair amount of time.

This person was interested in expanding his company’s service line-up by offering site designing services on the side and since he knew nothing about it, obviously he needed outside help. After discussing about it a bit with me, I agreed to help and would do it at a ridiculously low cost to help him get started. For example, imagine a web development cost that should be $1000 whereas I only charged $300. The agreement was that I made the sites for this cheap price and that he would handle the billing to maintain his company image to his clients and would therefore collect the funds from them and then pass it to me. Basically, he wouldn’t be making any money as it was just a way to attract more clients to his main business. Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the case.

One day, I discovered that what he was doing was that he was actually reselling my work/services at a much higher price(Closer to the actual market value). He obviously didn’t know that I was onto him and so I kept asking questions such as how much he was charging people and of course he told me just the quotes that I gave him. After confirming and exposing the liar that he is, I immediately discontinued any contact and affiliation with him. I know most people would of held a huge grudge and done things such as go directly up to his existing clients to show them how much they got overcharged, which would of probably made him lose thousands, but I took it all as a learning experience and that I am no longer associated with an unethical person like this.

Each day now whenever I do business with people that I know, I always make sure that I also look out for myself and that if it seems like the business relationship is going sour, I am not afraid to bring up the issue immediately. Before I would be a little hesitant as I would be afraid that it would affect our friendship in a negative way, but if it’s a real friendship to the end, then making sound business decisions shouldn’t be a factor. This can also be true for more everyday events such as lending money to people that you know. If you lent them $2000 to pay off a loan and they said that they would pay you back in a month, you shouldn’t have to nag them for it. You might think that you are being a bad friend for asking them to pay it back, but what kind of friend would take advantage of your generosity like that?

Learning to separate business from personal events can definitely help you in managing your financial portfolio and life in general as you will learn how to help others without placing yourself in a position that affects you in a negative way.

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