I was talking to a person today that was saying how she prefers doing a certain job over a volunteer position as for the job she actually gets paid for it. I guess it’s true too as for many people in many cases if they make a lot of money doings something they generally enjoy it more as I guess everyone feels that it is worth it while being a good accomplishment.

While I think the ideal answer would be that doing what you love is the way to go, you can’t argue that people have to make a living too. Hence, people usually opt to do the things in life that bring in the most money. I always find the best way to try and balance this is to do what brings in the money and at the same time you can try and use some of the money towards building whatever it is you are passionate about where it is self sustainable.

So for example, if you like donating food to charity to help the less fortunate it wouldn’t just be taking the money you earn, buy some canned food and donate them. Instead, you would try and use the money to say build a donation box machine of some sort where it is placed in strategic locations such as where there are wealthier people. Then, the hope is your donation box will continually generate money and then you can use that to buy the can food to donate. Hence, you don’t really need to sacrifice one or the other really as you are trying to leverage your time and money better.

Of course this type of approach will take more thought and energy in the beginning, but in the end it would be worth it I’d say. Just because you volunteer to do things doesn’t mean you have to kill yourself financially too.

So my mom was telling that that there was this ad about a local dentist that was offering some kind of free teeth whitening service for moms. The thing is they can’t enter themselves as the son or daughter needs to write a compelling story of sort on why their mom is most deserving for it. As you may have guessed, my mom is nagging me to enter her into this contest.

I was just reading all of the terms about this and it made me wonder how much of your information that you would need to surrender in order to claim the prize if you win. For example, you would need to give the sponsor full rights to publish details and photographs of the winners, they can use you in their future marketing campaigns, etc.

I don’t think things like teeth whitening is too expensive here too. Unless you are looking to completely replace your teeth and all with like porcelains. So in that sense would it be worth saving like $300 where in exchange you will allow the organization to use you to market their products and such? Kind of hard to put a price on that. Either way, guess I will have to help my mom enter this.

I noticed here recently that almost every Mcdonalds restaurant is offering free coffee to anyone and everyone everyday. My assumption is that they just launched a new brand of coffee and this way they can try to attract customers while potentially stealing them away from other big companies like Starbucks.

For myself I am not a coffee drinker and so this doesn’t affect me at all. What this made me think of is how this could easily get someone hooked on a product that you normally would have spent nothing on it. Eventually you will and it will add up as an extra expense. I actually avoid taking free stuff a lot in these types of scenarios if it’s a situation where a person wants you to try something you are unfamiliar with.

Example, I would be inclined to pass on an offer of say getting a free one month subscription for a magazine of some sort unless I was specifically looking to potentially subscribe to it ahead of time. Otherwise I find that you usually set yourself up to try and justify in introducing this new habit/product into your lifestyle.

Of course it must be working for businesses for them to continually provide offers like these. But if the goal is to save money then simply not being greedy is one way to continually train your habits from over indulging or having too much clutter.

Today I saw something funny as I was reading an article about people who were spending so much time a site trying to do earn enough digital points to play various games like poker in hopes to play a game to win more money. The funny thing was that it wasn’t much at all when you look at it from the big picture. For example, it appeared as if it would take someone about thirty minutes to do all these questionnaires of sort to simply earn like $2.

I was just thinking how it was so much more logical to just say work at a regular job and earn a minimum wage then to do that. I then asked someone on why they wouldn’t do so and the only answer I got was that they would never pay for it since they can get it for free. I suppose I see the mindset for this but value wise it just seems strange.

To me it’s only in situations where I don’t have to go out of my way for these types of items that I would be persistent in getting. Example, I think the reward points you spend on credit cards are kind of a bad value when you compare how much you need to buy to get something for free. So I would never intentionally try to get more points just to get an item for free. Instead I am earning it because I know that I am going to use the card or making a purchase anyways. You could be spending all that time and energy finding more ways to save or making money too.

For the past few weeks it could have definitely been helpful if I had an extra set of hands to get certain things done. Of course the easiest way is to simply hire some part time help but I am one to always try and find ways that you can make the solution sustainable where you are not reliant on one source to help you out. Not only that, but since that costs money obviously you will need to introduce a new stream of income to fill that in. The other solution is to just not do as much and therefore that will relief the load on you.

I always try to think of any people that could help me do tasks that would not trouble them too much. Example, instead of having to travel to a store to get some kind of stationary I would try to organize it where if a friend or family member who worked right next to one and I knew they always passed by the area they could help me grab the item instead. I am usually enthusiastic about helping others in a similar scenario too.

Another thing I have been doing is to exchange services with other people. Example, while I may have the right resources to quickly handle web related tasks another person might have the resources and capabilities to do printing and courier tasks. Therefore, I can simply pass off those tasks and vice versa where the both of us can have more free time afterwards.

While people do this all the time in a traditional business to business setting it can be a very frugal way to save money too as a long as everyone keeps it to a minimum where it is more of a mutual benefit as opposed to a situation where you are entirely reliant on the other. In those cases it would be better just to pay each other to avoid potential hassle. But for the sake of saving money it can work out very well.