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And what about some other fine print at the dealership that’s not on the flyer that says the prize money goes to a down payment of a car?

Reminds me of the times the top “prize” is a car lease. Yay, I won going into debt!

I was looking for this report when i got a car dealership junk mailer for Pryor, Oklahoma to Play The 25,000 Prize Is Right Game that you pull the tabs and everybody wins, Like I did thinking I won 5,000 but you have to take it to them to confirm the confirmation code to see if you really won anything! The fine print says if the tabs match for the 25,000 you are entered into a contest to win the 25,000, And what about some other fine print at the dealership that’s not on the flyer that says the prize money goes to a down payment of a car?

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1699834/000155335017001299/wpc_ex3z2.htTh

This is a copy of the agreement we all consented to when we purchased Worthy Peer Capital Bonds. Note his discouraging paragraph: (b) INVESTMENT IN THE BONDS IS HIGHLY RISKY AND YOU MAY LOSE ALL YOUR INVESTMENT. THESE ARE SPECULATIVE SECURITIES. YOU SHOULD PURCHASE THESE SECURITIES ONLY IF YOU CAN AFFORD A COMPLETE LOSS OF YOUR INVESTMENT. BEFORE PURCHASING A BOND, YOU SHOULD REVIEW THE RISK DISCLOSURES AND OTHER TERMS OF THE SECURITIES OFFERING AVAILABLE IN THE WORTHY FORM 1-A OFFERING STATEMENT ON THE SEC’S EDGAR FILINGS DATABASE AT HTTP://WWW.SEC.GOV.

It appears we most likely will lose most if not all of what we invested in Peer Capital I and II. Sad, indeed!

I’m a big fan of Personal Capital (now Empower). I switched from Mint to PC when I started caring more about investment returns and real estate than individual transactions, but it does all of the above of those well

Ed Choice is funded in Ohio by the Ohio Government.

Which is a roundabout way to say - by taxpayers.

There’s not an end date that I can see in the bill, so it’ll last until another bill comes along to replace it.

This is sickening. Sure we know its not fdic however their claims of being able to sale loan borrowers collateral to pay us investors back is a bold face lie. This has been going on for a year but yet they are offering and selling other investments like their community, property loans etc. However those like me that invested in the beginning into worthy peer capital have yet to see a return on our capital. I’ve gotten money back from the other offerings that came after peer capital but I can’t withdraw what I have left which is over 5k. I’ll never invest in them again.

Who funds Ed choice in Ohio and will it ever go away? Is it funded through a certain date and then revisited.

They have been claiming over a year now that they have repaid millions but they provide no evidence. I have asked. I will be blunt. I invested 15k and now with interest it claims to be worth over $18k. Just this week I received a reply form support that indicated to me they will more than likely file to default completely on this. I doubt anyone will ever get their money back from this one. Yet they make bold claims online to the current products. Makes no sense to me how this can keep going on.

Thanks for posting this. I got the Amazon gift card one, but it looks like I “won” the second prize of $2,500 cash. Except like in yours, there’s no relation between the winning number and the prize won, despite the intentional alignment.

I’ve worked at an a printing company for several years. We don’t print anything on cups, shirts, pens etc. We print on paper only. Business cards, magazines, mailers, flyers, etc. Every 3 months we had a car company (very well known car dealership) that would order of 100,000 of these exact flyers. Same purpose, same promise, and same cheesy flyers which read in huge letters… “YOU COULD BE THE NEXT LUCKY WINNER OF ONE OF THE FABULOUS PRIZES. A BRAND NEW $25,000 CAR, A $7,000 POLARIS SPORTSMAN 450, A $1000 GAS GIFT CARD, A 55” SOMY TV, A $500 PLAYSTATION 5, A $250 BLU-RAY PLAYER, OR A $29.99 PAIR OF WIRELESS AIR BUDS. DONT GIVE UP EVEN IF YOUR CODE DOESNT MATCH THE WINNING COMBINATION WE’RE DOING SOMETHING NEVER DONE BEFORE AND THAT MEANS WE’VE DECIDED TO STILL GIVE EVERYONE A CHANCE TO BRING THE KEY THAT CAME ATTACHED TO YOUR MAIL FLYER AND TRY YOUR CHANCE AT STARTING UP THAT BRAND NEW $25,000 CAR AND IF YOUR KEY STARTS UP THAT ENGINE THEN YOU GET TO DRIVE IT OFF THE LOT BECAUSE ITS YOURS! ITS THAT SIMPLE. LIMITED TIME ONLY SO GATHER THE FAMILY AND COME ON DOWN TO SEE IF IT’S YOUR LUCKY DAY!

Finest print ever:odds of winning anything even the “$29.99 earbuds that cost $1.43 are 1 in 66trillion. basically you’re more likely to get eaten by a 26ft great white man eating shark on land than you at winning the China earbuds.you guys don’t even Wana know the odds of winning that $25,000 car do you? ok for fun only…there are no odds because of course no key would every start up anything except the key that fits whatever piece of sh*t you wasted gas and time to drive here but on your way out we do have a nice mardi gras type cup, a pen with our dealership info on it for our promotional purposes and a business card in case you decide to come back and purchase the damn car because tax season is coming up. Take care now

The Ohio Department of Education now has a PDF that is more official than this blog post:

EdChoice Expansion Income Eligibility Requirements for 2023-24 .pdf

I’m so happy to have found this article and your comment. I live in the Morristown TN area and we received one of these gimmicky games from Morristown Ford. My husband was about to fall for it especially after just returning from a cross country vacation and thinking the “$1000 winnings” would help us post-traveling. The cheap prize on this mailer is a Bluetooth Waterproof Speaker and it states, “$25 value; odds 1:1 should no other prize be won” I’m sure if he took the time to go out there with the pull tab that shows he won $1000, he’d walk out with only a very cheap speaker that’s more than likely Dollar Tree quality and was Made in China.

I have also come up with questions around personal freedoms. A time in you life you wished you had more personal freedom, a person in history whose freedom was compromised or taken away and you could grant them freedom, what does freedom mean to you in a marriage or interpersonal relationship

This was very helpful as i Googled this topic and your Blog came up, this is just want I needed for my club as Table Topic Master. Thank you for your post

Did this today. Bristol TN Chevrolet. Thought I win $1,000 cash. Walked out with a cheap pair of ear plugs

Sorry, I haven’t heard anything. I hope you get your five figures (that’s, what, at least ten grand?). And if not, I hope you do okay without it.

They were never FDIC insured, so I was always leery putting any money into it - which is why I only put the hundred or so.

I have 5 figures invested with them. I am trying to team up with folks to try to go after them to get my money back. If you have similarly heard from others, I would appreciate if you could forward my email REDACTED for them to reach out to me.

Thanks, B

I got a scratch off saying my amazon card could be worth $25.00-$10,000 an of course I had the big prize winner. I text it to Nissan dealership in Newnan Ga they responded with in 20 minutes to pick a day thats convenience for me to come in. I screenshot a lot of replies about these fake scratch offs and sent it to them. That was @6:12pm. I’ve heard no response but I thanked them and promised to post it for anyone who received this scratch off can see.

Hmmm. It looks like it doesn’t work on mobile…

Thanks for the guidance. I was banging my head. I thought I’ll share the method that does not need find and replace in a separate text editor.

openssl pkey -in lesson6.key -pubout -out public.key openssl rsa -in public.key -pubin -modulus -noout

Copy the text after Modulus= to the first text box.

Thanks for the feedback on these items! Glad to have some more information before I go vote. Agree on each.

In my case I can’t get the code to work at all. Then they gave me a code with the letter B at the end of it. 4 #’s and the letter B. No way to enter this unless there’s a trick! I’m frustrated with this damn thing.

I had to use echo -n with the colon-less hex blurb in quotes, pipe it to what you have exactly with exception of the -hex, then pipe to base64

**99% of this came from the hints as they probably thought most of us would have issues with this concept.

Steve

I’m so glad I’m reading these comments to these Lottery’s Car Dealerships ..I thought I Won a Prize A lot Of Cash but Ik now I didn’t I’m on a Fixed Income I only get paid once a month So Scams like these shouldn’t be allowed I don’t have the Gas to be Traveling 10 to 20 miles to get a cheap set of ear buds this should be against the Law..Thank you

Jesus, man… Been sitting all day bashing my head against the wall, reading what seemed to be every resource on the planet on this issue. Thank you so much, this was EXACTLY what I was looking for

You don’t have the winning number first prize of $25,000. The ticket is meant to make it look like you’ve won when in reality you haven’t. It’s not a scam per se but it might as well be.

I have the winning number first prize of $25,000 should I go to the dealership and collect my winnings money of $25,000 or it’s just a scam

This helped me out for my Toastmasters meeting! Thanks!

If she’s your 2nd great grandmother and my 4th great grandmother, does that make us 3rd cousins 2 times removed?

I do see Mary Cromer’s grave on Find-a-Grave.

Ancestry.com is also pointing to a couple of US Census records (1850 & 1860) as well as a couple possible immigration records.

Congrats on your newborn baby. Thank you so much for sharing this article

My great-great grandmother is Mary Garver Cromer. I haven’t been able to find ANY other information on her. Do you have any? Thank you!

What type of file will this work with (i.e, PNG, SVG)? Can I set the width of the border?

I got the code for my 2004 civic hybrid but it doesn’t work I had 2 codes come up but the Second code has a B at the end

This seems broken to me. What time frame is used to determine bearish or bullish.. open and close? Every hour? 15 minutes? It also alllows voting after market hours. I voted on a Sunday after it closed down on Friday and I voted bearish and lost accuracy percentage points…

I agree that you need to get a Kill-A-Watt to at least get a baseline for the wattage of your rig but THANK YOU so much for the info on how to fill out the Schedule C. I was digging all around trying to find something on this and couldn’t find much of anything.

Worked just as written on my “new” 2004. Thanks very much!

It’s mainly, so they get you into the dealership, so they can sell you a vehicle. 99% of people aren’t going to win. It’s for your information.

Worked perfectly. Thank you!

Thanks! This helped me set up my own Twitter “bot”. Excellent tutorial.

I just got a very similar offer from a different Dayton dealership that the game piece shows me winning 2nd prize. These shouldn’t be legal.

I’m unsure if it’s from Pei, but I received a deposit today marked “WYRE PAYMENTS” for $37.93 in the same account that Pei withdrew the $21 from.

I’m not sure if that includes any cash back money, or is only the money from their interest account. Either way, at least it’s more that $21.

Thanks Joe, Questions still good for 2021. Will be Topics Master 12/28/2021

If you have a circle, you should just be able to add a stroke, and that’ll be you’re border.

So, make sure your circle object is selected, and then, from the menu, select Object > Fill and Stroke… The Fill and Stroke panel will appear, select the stroke tab and choose your stroke.

Thanks for your short tutorial. Is there an easy way for an object like an circle to put a solid border around?

I wonder if they are intentionally vague in their wording of these warnings. I have to go to battle with them shortly myself–mine says that my information is not current (re: sites listed in the Associates account, etc.). The warning was today, so I at least have part of today and all day tomorrow to figure it out (as I don’t expect much movement over the weekend).

It would help if they could assign us a case number as well–per your experience, it seems like they have random employees/contractors looking at the sites and making judgment calls on their own. I may try the chat, although I don’t hold out much hope. I’m afraid to call, as I don’t know if the call still ends up in the US or is offshored to employees who can barely understand English.

I think there is an oversight in that on the first day there are technically two gifts received, a partridge and a pear tree. Also overlooked are the facts that the six geese are laying eggs, the maids are presumably milking cows, the pipers are playing their pipes, and the drummers couldn’t be drumming without drums, bringing to question, are these accessories thereby also gifts? The total gifts if compounded daily then tally to 492… assuming each goose lays only one egg.

This is bad tax advice, you need to report electricity consumed as opposed to the maximum capable of the power supply.

Your point activity is n “community” under the “predictions” tab on your profile.

At this time, it does not appear that LSK is available for purchase on Robinhood. They do have a page where they report the price at https://robinhood.com/crypto/LSK, however.

If I want to buy LISK (LSK), can I buy it and keep on Robinhood as investment? For the time being I do not have an account. I can create an account on Robinhood link and then I can buy what do you have . Do you have a tel. Number ? Just in case I need to ask you about the process.

Sincerely, Vasilica Vasilescu

Dorco made it’s reputation in the US when they were selling their own blades. I stocked up on Pace 6+ blades everytime they had a sale. When they said they were moving to Amazon, I bought more and another handle.

While I’m still using that hoard, I checked them out on Amazon in 2020. Lot’s said they were trash because the handle and blades were redesigned. I just checked today and it looks like they brought the old Pace 6+ back and now call it the Pace 6 Sport. Unsurprisingly, reviews are great. The only difference is the plastic. + was white, and Sport is black.

You need to measure the output of the computer with a kill-a-watt or similar. A power supply will only draw the amount of watts as the equipment attached, and will typically be a lot lower than the rating of the power supply. For example, on my rig, I use a 1000 watt power supply, but the GPUs and Motherboard/CPU only consume around 267 watts when mining. You are almost definitely overestimating your power use and thus your expenses. Unless you have enough equipment attached to max out your power supply that is. Either way, the correct way to do it is measure the actual usage, a kill-a-watt is cheap.

Code 541510 isn’t in NAICS. Technically it’s just 5415. There is a 541519 code that is just “Other Computer Related Services” that is likely applicable under the 5415 code. I’d use this or 518210 code. I’ll likely use 541519 as it’s broad and can cover other income I may make in computers (selling compute resources, etc).

I also read (or more accurately, finished) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in August. I don’t know why I forgot to mention it. Maybe I was tired?

Thanks for writing this, you saved me a ton of headaches!

He wasn’t lying about the law that says they have to give those prizes out. If that law didn’t exist places like this could have constant fake contests.

Thanks for the correction!

I had to read your comment ten times before I understood it though…

Omg that really helps me!!!!!

i read many Stackoverflow answer and still bamboozled why it isnt working thx for this post man! It really helps me a lot

maybe i’m too dumb can’t even know it was a pseudo layout, like i thought it was my fragment layout

Oh, and since I just reduced my business expenses by $816, that’s less money I can through into my solo 401k.

Throw?

Was looking for a solution like this, thanks for posting.

How is this not a bait and switch? Sure there is a lot of fine print, but the “winner” has no idea what they ideally won as the prize board doesn’t seem to be shown. You’re lead to believe you win $5000 but are given something else…That seems like classic bait and switch…

Thank you! I used some of these at our Toastmasters meeting today and everyone really enjoyed them.

Thank you for your effort in trying the dealership lottery. I got one in the mail today for the umpteenth time, and was going to go for it. But I jumped online and saw your article. It’s so funny that in your pic, the dealership is in Dayton, and I live in Dayton, and know exactly the dealership you described- and the address in the pic! The winning mailer card I got was for a dealership on Shiloh Springs Road. All the fine print is exactly the same as yours. Thanks for saving my introverted self some time and energy! And what are the odds that the article I’d pick to read out of the thousands- lives in the same town as me! Hmm, maybe I should play. Lol!

I still dont see where to find my point activity.

Since I’ve been running for about an hour a day (during the week) and these free, cheap headphones only last 45 minutes, I went and bought a new pair.

I didn’t get something expensive like Apple Airpods or Samsung Galaxy Buds (seriously, though, all the sites that are on the top of Google search for “best wireless earbuds” are showing $100+ earbuds). Instead, I bought a pair of AUKEY True Wireless Earbuds for about twenty bucks.

They feel about the same as my old free ones, but still have plenty of charge even after my one-hour run. And they’re easier to use, too.

If you just put the filter in wrong, you should just be able to take them out and turn them around. Although if it’s been awhile, I’d suggest getting new filters because there’s probably a build up of dust and dirt on one side that would end up being pushed into the system.

If you somehow put the whole plastic holder thing in wrong so that it got jammed in there, you’re probably just going to have to try to force it out. It might break things - hopefully just the plastic holder thing. If the plastic holder thing is broken, you can find a new one. It looks like it’s part number 80295-SDA-A00 or 80290-SDA-A01.

Here’s some links to buy it:

• https://www.hondapartsnow.com/genuine/honda~filter~assy~80290-sda-a01.html
• https://www.amazon.com/Genuine-Honda-80290-SDA-A01-Conditioner-Assembly/dp/B00LOB7ELC/?tag=hendrixjoseph-20
• https://www.ebay.com/itm/392723324248?epid=1018877902&hash=item5b70225d58:g:mPwAAOSwqSlgJ5AL&mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&siteid=0&campid=5337996799&customid=&toolid=10001&mkevt=1

I have installed filters opposite to air flow now they are stuck with frame how to remove it again so i can put them correctly

I have a Kroger credit card and I also use their Scan Bag & Go system. If I choose to use Kroger Pay (first) the barcode for SBG never appears again, their system assumes I will be scanning all my items. If I scan the SBG barcode first then I end up at the end trying Kroger Pay and of course it fails. The self checkout attendants have no clue what to do and are not trained. So I went back in the store and bought a couple items I forgot and scanned my Kroger Pay QR code first, scanned my items but never saw the “Mobile” icon but hit Kroger Pay….”Processing” rejected ….go back. Epic fail. I end up using my Kroger credit card in their card reader and the transaction works fine. On my receipt is a decline for the Kroger Pay attempt then a successful charge for the card reader attempt. My assumption is the process I followed was declined because the chip on the credit card was not read. The Mobile pay icon probably bypasses the chip on the card to record the charge. If they only trained their people ….. I refuse to use Kroger Pay.

Comment seems spammy, but I’ll allow it since it’s on topic.

New ideas for us Painters North Shore guys since we are trying to learn new stuffs about painting ideas.

That’s so smart! Unit pricing only makes sense if you know you are going to use everything you buy in the time it stays usable, and that by buying more you won’t automatically use more. That appeals to the engineer in me, I often saw people trying to solve the wrong problems. Sometimes the lowest energy machine wasn’t the best choice because it couldn’t really do the job. I had a boss who got a good deal on sheetrock when he was building a house, so he bought way more than he needed. That was thirty years ago and I think it is still sitting in one of his sheds. Not smart.

They’ve now added this to the comment section under a given stick, FWIW. Same bullish/bearish interfaces. Same frustrating lack of feedback.

I assume you’re referring to the following equation:

(input × hours / usage) × bill = costs

Where input is the power supply wattage, hours is the number of hours it was on, usage the the watt-hours reported to me on my bill, and bill is the dollar amount I was billed?

I suppose you’re right - there’s no guarantee that the power supply ran at a consistent wattage, and it probably ran at a wattage less than it’s listed max value.

However, the dollar amount and watt-hours used passed a few sanity checks:

• the watt-hours calculated was less than the watt-hours the bill stated
• the remaining watt-hours (that is, the difference between the watt-hours billed and the watt-hours calculated) was about equal to my usage before & after I used my cryptocurrency miner

You should not multiply your power supply wattage to calculate usage. You need to report actual usage which would I’ve never seen exactly match the power supply’s max actual wattage.

Thank You for Your response!

While trying to figure this out. I found that the break stopped the loop. As without it, the loop would keep reiterating the first index. very strange.

I’ve since found a solution. here it is.. I managed to figure it out using jdoodle. it’s not totally perfect as if prints each index twice after the the first loop. but it does the job. disregard all the extra libraries. I’m juggling my main code between machines in and out of work haha.

one again thanks o bunch.

 import java.awt.EventQueue;
 import java.util.ArrayList;
 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.io.OutputStream;
 
 public class Main{
 
 public static void main(String []args){
 
 String text = "hgyt jfur kdie";
 
 String[] textarray = text.split(" \\s{0,}+");
 String showarray = Arrays.toString(textarray);
 System.out.println(showarray);System.out.println("");System.out.println("");
 System.out.println("for loop RESULT = ");
 
 for (int i = 0; i<= textarray.length;i++)
 {
 String line =(textarray[i]);
 String[] linesplit= line.split("");
 String Kline = Arrays.toString(linesplit);
 
 System.out.println(line );
 System.out.println(Kline );
 System.out.println("");
 
 while (i < textarray.length )
 {
 
 System.out.println(String.valueOf(textarray[i+1])); break; }//ENDOF while
 
 }//ENDOF for loop
 }//ENDOF main(String []args)
 }//ENDOFCLASS

OUTPUT:

 [hgyt, jfur, kdie]
 
 for loop RESULT =
 hgyt
 [h, g, y, t]
 
 jfur
 jfur
 [j, f, u, r]
 
 kdie
 kdie
 [k, d, i, e]
 
 Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: Index 3 out of bounds for length 3
 at Main.main(Main.java:49)

I ain’t got nothing on the guy who took a selfie everyday for twenty years.

That guy - Noah Kalina - has taken a photo of himself everyday since January 11, 2000. Before selfies where even a word, I believe.

I didn’t have any letters in the code when I entered mine, so I’m not sure. You could try entering the number that corresponds to what button the letter would be on a phone. For instance, for A, B, or C you could enter 2.

Why do you have a “break” at the end of your for-loops? Having that break ensures that the for-loop while loop at most once. Try removing it and you should get the result you want.

I’ve also posted this video on Twitter and Facebook.

That’s dope, haha…

I haven’t shaved for about 250 days now and wish I could have gone back in time now, lol..

Here’s what I currently look like :)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMNhSXZH5Nq/

Hello Sir i can’t seem to get a simple loop to run.

It only prints the first index of my array.

I’ve managed to create a program where i copy paste a text into a text area, split it, and display what ever index I need on the console,

but i need to go further.

ex.

 text(via TextArea): hgyt jfur kdie
 String text = TextArea.getText();
 String[] textsplit = text.split(" \\s{0,}+");

yields the following array when printed.

 [ hgyt , jfur, kdie ] = textsplit

now I need to split further…

 [ [h,g,y,t] , [j,f,u,r], [k,d,i,e] ]

I’ve tried building an array of arrays, switch statements, not just ‘for’ loops, the simplest ‘for’ loop only prints the first index.

 for (int i = 0; i< textsplit.length;)
 {
 String line =(textsplit[i]);
 
 String[] linesplit= line.split("");
 String Kline = Arrays.toString(linesplit);
 System.out.println(line );
 System.out.println(Kline )
 
 ;break;
 
 }//ENDOF for loop

output:

 hgyt
 [h,g,y,t]

I almost does what i need, but not completely.

The following code is interesting but cannot extract strings from the copy/pasted text in the final result, merely an attempt to construct a multiArray from variables generated by the copied text.

 for (int i = 0; i< textsplit.length;)
 {
 String line =(textsplit[i]);
 
 String[] linesplit= line.split("");
 String Kline = Arrays.toString(linesplit);
 System.out.println(line );
 System.out.println(Kline )
 
 int x= textsplit.length;
 int y = linesplit.length;
 String[][] sort = new String[x][y];
 String sorted = Arrays.toString(sort);
 System.out.println(sorted);
 String[] reduce = sorted.split(",");
 String fin = Arrays.toString(reduce);
 System.out.println(String.valueOf(sort));
 System.out.println(String.valueOf(fin));
 
 break;
 }//ENDOF for loop

output:

 hgyt
 [h, g, y, t]
 [[Ljava.lang.String;@531e248f, [Ljava.lang.String;@4a6c9da, [Ljava.lang.String;@b45bde1]
 [[Ljava.lang.String;@64329de2
 [[[Ljava.lang.String;@531e248f,  [Ljava.lang.String;@4a6c9da,  [Ljava.lang.String;@b45bde1]]

I believe these are addresses for and “empty” array.

any advice would be great!

how do i enter the letter thats part of the code

They don’t last very long, either.

When I first started using them, they lasted a little over an hour. Now they seem to be lasting about 45 minutes.

Replaced the engine starter battery myself. Used the guidance here to get my radio unlocked; thank you.

Haha, always wondered what the deal was with the sleezy car dealership junk mail that I would get. Also, I had the same exact pair of headphones, they’re actually the super duper cheap kind that’s made in China. Pretty much dollar store headphones. I bought mine for 5 bucks on Wish. So I’m sure the schmuck heads at the dealership got a big box of those for 50 bucks bulk style.

Back when I published this post, I listed my book for $10.

Nobody’s bought the book since then, so I’ve lowered the price to $6, which is pretty much the lowest price Amazon would let me list it (I could’ve listed for $5 and some change, but then I’d make no commission on it).

I received in the mail today a 1099-NEC from Square, Inc. today.

It states that I received $19,280 in “nonemployee compensation” - box 1.

Keep in mind I only was able to withdrawal $1,050 before my account closed. And I was only able to track - via the emails I was receiving - $16,650 worth of referrals (or 1,665 referrals). That means I probably received another 263 referrals before Square was able to close that end of the issue.

Note that I’m only going to pay taxes on the referral money I actually received - that is, I’m only going to pay taxes on $1,050, not $19,280. If there’s a place to note the discrepancy on my taxes somewhere, I’ll be sure to do that. Otherwise, I’ll have to see if the IRS audits me.

I’ll keep this review up for gits and shiggles, but don’t bother using my referral code. I might work, I don’t know, but Square closed my Cash App after I received over 1,600 referrals in one weekend.

I forgot one financial goal - max out my bonus 5% grocery category with my new Chase Freedom Flex card.

The terms for the 5% effectively were:

Earn 5% cash back on grocery store purchases (not including Target® or Walmart® purchases) on up to $12,000 spent in the first year.

My first transaction was on October 1, 2020 - so I have at the latest October 1, 2021 to complete $12,000 spend at grocery stores. Of course, I don’t want to spend money just to get the 5% back, but there are some things I can do (such as buy a Kroger gift card in-store to use at the pump) that can move spending from a non-grocery location to a grocery location.

I’m unsure if Chase is still offering that particular bonus, but they always seem to offer some sort of bonus, so feel free to use either this referral link or that referral link.

Here I am, ten years later, re-reading what I wrote ten years ago.

Today, I have two kids: a one-year-old daughter and an almost three-year-old son. Is it hard to say no to them? Absolutely! Do I occasionally say no to them? Yes, I will often tell them no.

Including:

• No TV.
• No more TV.
• Eat this before you can have that.

We’ll see what the next 10 years brings, however.

As expected, I the deposit in my savings account from Bumped showed up on today, Day 5. However, instead of being the $329.73 I thought it was going to be, it ended up being $330.01.

Better too much than too little, I suppose.

I bought my 1st Dorco Pace 6 yesterday at Clicks store in Cape Town, South Africa, used it for a bald head shave, facial, underarm and… you know where else. What a pleasant experience. I’ll use Dorco untill it’s nowhere available and yes, I’ll stock up on Pace 6 blades today. Thanks for a great product. Moses (Cape Town, South Africa)

Need radio code

You now have to order them from Amazon.

Here is a link to their store page.

This link will add the Dorco Pace 6 Plus three packs of three to your shopping cart.

Hiya can I still order for o razors lease as I have ran out and cannot order from your website.Is this still the same.Do you no where I can order some from please.

Thank you for attending the Investment Basics workshop. I hope you and your wife had a pleasant experience. Covid has caused me to conduct my workshops virtually at this point. I do miss the small group atmosphere of the library and the interaction that comes with that. I make a very conscious effort to no be pushy, but do have confidence in my abilities and the services we offer our members. I do try to educate my clients in regards to their investments and the vast menu of investment options available. Wish you well.

I hope you get your account back. Good luck!

Nice article. Me too received similar warning. Responed and waiting for their reply since 3 days.

Great job on your goals so far this year! I had no idea Sam’s has cholesterol checks. May have to take advantage once the pandemic lets up. I’ve also wanted to get more involved in volunteering at church but hard when the doors are closed. Best wishes to you the rest of 2020!

Thanks for the response! I’m glad you enjoyed them!

Great questions for a Toastmasters meeting around the 4th of July! Thank you

GOGO JO! see i made a slogan.

Yeah, it was a bit of work, but I enjoyed doing it nevertheless :)

That was interesting & fun to see the venn diagram. However, all the coding seemed like WORK! 🤣

Totally. I’ll probably remove one of VGSLX or VRTPX (the REIT funds) when I do, since they overlap so much.

Very cool, can you include VTIAX as well? Interested in seeing the VTSAX/VTIAX/VTWAX comparison

Never got a check from Great Lakes; however I was looking at how much interest I’ve paid so far with LendKey and noticed a payment I never made in the exact amount I overpaid on Great Lakes.

In other words, my overpayment to Great Lakes went back into my LendKey account.

I found a 12 Pack Refill of Dorco Pace 6 cartridges which is equivalent to three boxes of the four-package cartridge. A little more than you need, but I hope this helps.

Dorco Pace 6 4pkg. cartridge need to order 2 boxes

Got the bonus from LendKey today via PayPal - we’ll, technically it came through their referral system first, as if I referred myself. Here’s the email LendKey set me:

Your LendKey Refinancing Bonus

Hello,

Congratulations on successfully refinancing your student loans with one of LendKey’s community lenders!

We just wanted to give you a personal heads up that you can now begin the process of collecting your $200 bonus for coming to us from Mint.

Please note that we use our referral program website (called Ambassador) to make bonus payments, which you already have an account for that is separate from the LendKey.com website. You should be receiving a welcome email today for this account.

LendKey Referral Program Login: https://lendkey.getambassador.com/login/

*Note: if you don’t receive welcome emails, or your password doesn’t work, please click the ‘Forgot my password’ link on the login page.

Please make sure that the email address “referrals@lendkey.com” is on your safe sender list to receive these communications.

The payout is made via Paypal so we’ll just need you to enter your Paypal account email address into Ambassador. Once you do that, we can send the bonus within 5-10 business days!

Have a great day,

The LendKey Team

I received a letter & check from Navient on Saturday (March 7th).

Still waiting on a check from Great Lakes and the bonus from LendKey.

It’s soooo cute to hear him sing “No more monkeys jumping on the bed.” That’s his favorite part!

We also love Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed at our house. Baby Shark is one of the only songs my son will sing, but not to the music. Only as a solo! I need to read more for myself.

I was trying to figure out what was wrong with my AdSense graph. The image simply wasn’t showing.

Turns out my AdBlocker was blocking the image (I’m currently using the Brave browser).

Turned off the ad blocking and it reappeared.

Lol.

Cool, I’ll have to check it out!

Print-on-demand is where I supply the content - such as book content or t-shirt designs - and the book or t-shirts doesn’t get printed until a customer orders it.

Great report. Thanks for sharing! One questions what is print on demand sites?

Hey Joe - great recap. I wanted to reach out cause I actually created a tool that will definitely answer if a no annual fee credit card will pay back or not. If you want to check it out!

https://www.juststartinvesting.com/credit-card-tool/

Thanks for sharing! Cash back credit cards are my favorite way to get paid when spending money. Nothing better than getting everything on sale with literally 0 effort!

I mean, it’s not my game. It’s something I played on Facebook ten years ago and then wrote this post.

All I get on your game page today is blank space…kinda like this place where I am supposed to write something good about your game. Not today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Sounds frustrating…

Awesome!

I’m glad to hear you could withdrawal the money, even if it was difficult.

And thank you for the comment!

More updates I missed :

• My NounProject profile
• My Redbubble profile
• My TeePublic profile

I have been playing this game since I joined Facebook and I think it’s a darn shame that a person can’t never win anymore on the daily challenge. It’s always set up where you can not win….I might, if I’m lucky, win once every 6 to 8 weeks and then it’s a worthless boost.I wondered why hardly any of my friends play it anymore, now I know and guess I will join them and find something else to play.

That was a very detailed post. I always wonder how other fellow bloggers are doing. Thank you for sharing!

On bejeweled blitz it keeps telling me invalid session key error 102

I signed up for Bumped based on your referral, maybe 6-8 months ago. I’ve earned about $40 after linking all my cards and forgetting about it. I did try to withdraw the money, and it de-linked my bank account while trying to do that. I had to relink it, but did the money out. I will say that their app makes it difficult to cash out, but I like the concept.

This is a pretty old post - nine years old!

What do you need help with?

I love Bejewled, please help me

Thanks!

Nice! Don’t forget about community resources that may fund energy efficiency projects for you! Our local library has free LED lightbulbs and more available. Many utilities offer free lightbulbs and free energy audits, along with financial incentives and rebates for swapping out old, less energy efficient appliances.

Really interesting. Good to see that the LED is a “hell yeah”. I don’t know when I last bought something other than LED. I also try to save energy by using smart home gadgets. Not sure if it saves me money, but at least it is fun.

Thanks Joseph for your detailed explanation but in my case it does not work because the app used https://radio-navicode.honda.com/ is only for cars of US. I bought my car in Venezuela. Can you help me to unlock my radio? The information related my car is: VIN: 93HES16904Z150547 Serial: 40155311 Error of the App: The VIN you entered is not valid. Please verify the number and enter it again. Valid VIN numbers use the letters A-Z and numbers 0-9, except for the letters I, O, and Q

Thanks in advance for your help!

Emilio

The pumps are now chip-enabled:

Borax is great for killing ground ivy (Creeping Charlie). To much borax is bad for all plants, however ground ivy is very sensitive to it.

You can find the dosages online, it’s super simple to do and will save you from having to use nasty chemicals.

Yeah, that’s why I’ve looked at this as a war with several ongoing battles rather than a one-and-done battle. I doubt the war will ever be over.

I don’t mind those video screens too much. I wish there was no sound, though. That part is annoying.

That’s a major point of frustration for me with Kroger Pay - it’s more of a pain to use, and I get better rewards with my non-Kroger credit cards. After using it a couple times, I just found it easier to straight up use a card like normal.

Speedway has been replacing their pumps (the ones with the obnoxious video screens that play crap while you use the pump) and in a 2nd wave of updates, they’ve enabled this chip-reading option.

I’ve fought the same battle, though I didn’t approach it as methodically. That stuff is persistent and seems to pop back even when you think it’s gone. It’s tricky to rebuild the good ground cover and keep it away. You’re being very methodical about it, so I bet you get there. Good luck!

OMGoodness, I was wondering why I wasn’t seeing the additional fuel points from using Kroger Pay. I don’t have a Kroger debit or credit card; didn’t know you needed them connected to reap the additional 50% fuel points bonus.

They completely got rid of the Explore Feed, which is unfortunate. At the time I wrote this, it was still available, albeit a bit hidden.

I can’t find my Explore Feed. my app is Updated.

The public Heroku instance made by eduardoboucas isn’t, however, I’ve made my own Heroku instance, and it works fine.

Is staticman working?

I like the tagline! That would’ve made a good blog post to even be noticed by Microsoft lol. Goog luck with the rebranding and I’ll be sure to come back when I’m wondering what’s on Joe’s mind.

I like the rebranding, make it more clear is always a great idea. :)

I think there’s still a waiting list, so I highly suggest you get in as soon as possible.

Bump’s currently been my most profitable rewards app. Right now I have about $95 in stocks - eight months after I made this post.

Great app review! Everything is so straight to the point. Maybe I’ll be using this app someday.

My wife suggested I point out any symbolism in the flag. I didn’t add any symbolism, but the original did.

The two H’s obviously represent Huber Heights. The circular shape they are in represents an “O” for “Ohio.”

The two double-bands represent the two major thoroughfares that go through Huber Heights - Brandt Pike and Old Troy Pike.

There are seventeen stars. Ohio was the seventeenth state admitted to the Union.

Green and blue, for some reason, are colors “that had come to represent” Huber Heights. Don’t know why.

Thanks for the comment!

I use Android and don’t have a Costco Membership, so that won’t work for me. How much cash back is the Costco card giving you?

Forget Kroger. Costco and Meijer paying with Apple Pay on a Costco Visa Card are so much better.

Good review. Would suggest you put the using section first. No point reading all the How To Set Up given KP stinks.

Apparently another way to get WeBull points is to comment on stocks. I’m also seeing the stock predictor on normal order pages now?

I received the following response yesterday:

From: Amazon Associates
To: Me
Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2019 10:59 am
Subject: Your Amazon Associates Inquiry

Hello Joe,

This is Kim with the Amazon Associates Program. I hope your having a great week.
Thank you for contacting us regarding your Amazon Associates account.
Based on your response, we will not be closing your associates account at this time.

Thank you for your participation in the Amazon Associates Program.

Best regards,
Kim A.

It seems my account is safe for now.

Unrelated to the previous shutdown, I received another email from Amazon:

From: Amazon Associates
To: Me
Date: Wednesday, April 17, 2019 10:55 am
Subject: Your Amazon.com Associates Account

Hello hendrixjoseph-20,

Effective in 7 days, Amazon is terminating your Associates account as well as the Operating Agreement that governs it.

Note that this communication is regarding only the account listed in the subject line of this email.

Why?
You haven’t referred any qualifying sales for more than 365 days.

What’s next?
You must stop using the Content and Amazon Marks and promptly remove all links to the Amazon site. You will be paid on the regular schedule for any outstanding fees that have accrued prior to this notice.

You are welcome to reapply at any time by visiting https://affiliate-program.amazon.com.

Thank you for your participation in the Amazon Associates Program.

Amazon.com

While I don’t make a ton of referrals, the last referral was in January of this year, way less than 365 days ago. I responded to Amazon’s email last night:

Hello,

I received an email stating that “Effective in 7 days, Amazon is terminating your Associates account” because I “haven’t referred any qualifying sales for more than 365 days.”

However, the last time I referred a sale was January 29, 2019, which is much less than 365 days.

I was wondering if the email was sent in error, or if there is something else I need to do.

Thank you,

Joe Hendrix

I’ve yet to hear anything. We’ll see if I do get shut down again or if nothing happens.

It seems Amazon cannot make up their minds as to whether I am in violation or not. Today I received the following email:

From: Amazon Associates
To: Me
Date: Monday, March 4, 2019 8:12 am
Subject: Your Amazon.com Associates Account

Dear Associate,

Thank you for your cooperation in complying with the terms of the Operating Agreement. As a result of your response, your Associates account and your pending Advertising Fees have been reinstated.

Your continued participation in the Associates Program indicates your acceptance of and agreement to comply with the terms of the Operating Agreement. If you would like to review the complete Operating Agreement, you can do so by following this link: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/agreement.

Thank you again for your cooperation and for your participation in the Associates Program.

Warmest Regards,

Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/associates

Yes, trading fees would probably change things a bit.

I only “buy” or “sell” if the previous day was not the same as before. So if there are multiple consecutive days of “sell” or “hold,” then no transactions occur on those days.

In your example, after a sale you automatically buy back in at market regardless of the price change while you held? Would be interesting to calculate this with trading fees.

Apparently you have to be logged into MyFitnessPal to make the ticker work…

25K @ -10%

Hi Kim!

Print-on-demand is where the product isn’t printed until a sale is made. In the case of t-shirts, I provide a design to be printed on the t-shirt, and then when the website sells a t-shirt with that design, they’ll print the design on a t-shirt and ship it to the customer. I don’t have to keep an inventory of any physical products at all, and the website (Redbubble, Amazon, etc) shares the profit of the sale with me.

Joe, i guess we have a few things in common, I’m a #lifelonglearner too, & am in total agreement about the possibilities of jobs on Amazon, except what is a print on demand?

that’s probably the part most people get stuck at, thinking they can transact on the account via their normal Vanguard login. As a software engineer by trade, I understand why they have this limitation, although a simple solution would be to put a link in the “You don’t have the authority to transact on this account.” message to the small business web page for their Solo 401ks.

I’m glad my post was helpful!

Thanks for the post, helpful as I got stuck at the error saying “You don’t have the authority to transact on this account.” portion and didn’t realize I had to create a separate small business account.

Hey man thanks this worked like a charm

Content is the marketing king for blogging and it needs to give a top priority for a B2b marketer. Longer blog content tent to perform well in search engine and average word count number increasing year by year. This statistics helps a lot to empower the blog

Absolutely! I have some bond funds in my traditional retirement accounts (401k and IRA). I also own a small amount of cryptocurrency (mainly bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, monero, and ripple). Currently no valuable metals, and no foreign currency (i.e. forex) outside of a few bills of foreign cash, but that’s more for novelty reasons.

I used to run my Antminer s3, but the electricity cost exceeded my profits (in other words, I would do better just buying the bitcoin outright).

I also “invest” in passive income and am constantly trying to pick up new skills.

Do you also invest in anything else besides stocks? Maybe bonds, cryptocurrency, valuable metals, forex? I find that diversifying your risk is best and investing a small percent of your income into different things will yield the best results over time. Take crypto for example: invest 2% of your monthly income, over 10 years, buying 20-40 altcoins and Bitcoin and you will be seating on a big chunk of change. If you get in now, while the prices per one coin are low, in a few years, you can make hundreds of times more.

I enjoyed this topic! I am Nigerian born, Belizean raised and currently living in America, what I hear is so drastically different from what is said! I need to verify always.

prof prem raj pushpakaran writes – let us celebrate eDay (Euler’s number or Napier’s constant) on February 7 !!!!

My hat’s off to you for recording this timeline of events! We had a similar experience with the crazy medical billing system surrounding childbirth services with the birth of our first son. In our case, we had contracted with a freestanding birthing center operated primarily by midwives, with a fallback option of a local hospital should it be necessary.

We began labor at the birth center, but complications resulted in a move to the hospital. We were fielding bills from the birth center, hospital services, and physician services at once! Throw in pre-payments, an HSA, and an out-of-state provider, and you can imagine the headache. We were billed in duplicate as well, and I can vouch for the fact that if we weren’t on top of things would definitely have over-paid.

Congratulations on a year of accomplishments, highlighted by the birth of your son!

Your son’s a cutie! This is a really interesting look at pregnancy and finances. “If I hadn’t been on top of things, there is no way I would have known I don’t actually owe ten grand.” This is the reason I force myself to stay on top of my medical expenses (of which there are many) and insurance matters, even though it sometimes sounds like Greek to me. I can only imagine how many people pay bills they don’t owe because they haven’t tracked what their insurance does.

Huh, I didn’t know earning season was a thing. I noticed there were a lot of earnings reports, but since I just started this, I just assumed that there were this many earning reports all year long.

Good job on the month earning season can be hard. Options are my favorite but you’re right they are very hard to manage. I consider each trade even a losing one worth the money in tuition on how the stock market works. I’ve read and studied a lot of strategies and theories but there’s no learning like jumping in yourself to see what happens.

I love these kind of thorough timelines with lots of numbers thrown in. I have always been in government work instead of big money lawyer jobs, but everytime (twice) I had a baby at the hospital and only had to pay a $300 anesthesiologist bill, I was happy with my benefits. congrats on the good looking abby!

Never would have considered making a post about financial matters during my pregnancy journey. Good read indeed

Giving birth was probably the most expensive thing I’ve ever done… Add that up with a house flood right before I went into Labor, and my company being bought out and getting notice of my employment being temporary with the new company… and we’ve got the perfect trifecta. I’m SO broke. LOL, but she’s worth it.

It’s so cool that you have all of this documented! This will be so fun to look back on!

Having children is expensive, before they are born and especially as they grow. Insurance companies, hospitals, etc. don’t make it easy so sometimes you aren’t prepared for expenses that should be covered but aren’t.

Babies are so expensive, and a lot of these expenses were from before the baby was born, so imagine as the baby continues to age! Sometimes people don’t consider all of these expenses, and then struggle when the actual baby comes along. Great post, super informative! xxx

In the past, I have owed a few different individual stocks. Currently, I just invest in funds. I am not opposed to investing in individual securities. It takes more time and research than simply using a few index funds. It can be rewarding, but also more risky.

I primarily invest in index funds, but hold several direct stocks too. I will say the trade war talk this year hasn’t been helpful in the most recent months on many of my individual positions, but my index funds have had a healthy 2018 for the most part.

And, they’re less maintenance than checking the headlines each week for each individual stock position to look for scandals, lost contracts, hostile takeovers, etc.

I have a Pinterest and Instagram for my dog blog (which the blog has been neglected for a few months) but I haven’t for just for my t-shirts. I might consider it, though - thanks for the idea!

Good progress, have you considered Pinterest or Instagram to increase your audience?

Index fund is the way to go. I also own some stock through my employer’s ESPP and can’t help but hold onto it. Maybe it’s tunnel vision, and the past is no indication of the future, but with 20% average returns it’s tough to not hold onto it.

I bought Plug Power because I thought it was a solar power company. I only bought one share at two bucks, though, and I plan on sticking with my buy-and-hold plan despite this.

i used to own about 35 thousand dollars of plug power stock and make some profit but will never own a crappy company like that again. here’s the article if you’re interested https://freddysmidlap.com/2017/10/18/my-17000-nap/

good luck with the investing.

freddy

These are such great questions. I love the variety and how they can be tailored to different personalities

How sweet that you read to your son! Starting at an early age can make him a lifelong reader (my parents did the same for me and I LOVE books).

Hmmm… I never did ever update this table. However, I do talk about the money I made from checking bonuses in the following two end-of-year side-income reports:

• 2016 End of Year Side Income Report
• 2017 End of Year Side Income Report

seems right. keep in mind you’ll have to differentiate between the electricity your miner uses, and the electricity everything else on the bill uses.

also, the reward isn’t constant (despite it being the same for each block) since the amount of people on the pool fluctuates.

I’m trying to get a handle on the numbers. Based on what you say, the rewards per day on the S9 would be about $34.23

https://www.google.com/search?&q=how+much+is+0.0052685+bitcoins

Based on that, you’d pay for the S9 in about 1 month without counting for electricity (34.23 X 30 = $1,026)

So that would mean if your electricity bill were < $1,026 month, you’d make a profit. So if you’re paying $0.10/Kwhr and using 33/day… 33X0.10 = $3.30/day which is $99/month. So you should have made about $925/month. Am I right or am I missing something?

That’s so annoying when there’s little nuances like that in the terms for loan accounts. While not as bad, I had a student loan account that would only allow me to make at most 8 payments a month. I tend to make several payments to my debts every month since I come across small amounts of money frequently, so it wasn’t uncommon for me to reach that 8 payment limit.

These are great points! I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the $$ they save making twice monthly payments - so I was going to sign up to do the same (on our old house; we’re renters now!) but then I realized the company actually CHARGED US EXTRA to do it that way - I was so annoyed when they presented as a way to “save money” because I bet a LOT of people actually bought into that.

Nice post, Joe - very helpful.

We don’t have a mortgage or any debt at the moment, but these are great points to remember.

Thanks for sharing. - Mike

Just because something is only “in your head” doesn’t mean it’s not real.

Nice analysis! I used to do the same thing, chipping in what I could when I could. My mortgage issuer even had a bi-weekly plan where they showed how much sooner you could pay off your mortgage if you used that. In addition to paying more often, you got the bonus of getting an extra months worth of mortgage paid each year.

Not a huge difference, but still better than going with their default pay off rate.

This is an interesting post! I never knew you could replace a cabin air filter. Now I wonder if my vehicle has one. I will have to check it out!

So cute! My parents read to me and I think it made me excel in English, reading comprehension, etc. Even if it seems like it isn’t making a difference it probably is. And as you pointed out, for your own reading, at least you are ahead of last year. Improvement is improvement. I’ve read about 15 books this year so far, but then again, I don’t have a baby to take care of.

Liked this post. If only everything was so simple.

I am a software engineer. And I decided to take a break because I was miserable at work. And the moment I made that decision, something changed. In the next two weeks, I realized that I like my job.

The only things that changed is that I stopped going to unnecessary meetings and did my work the way it should be done, not concentrating on all the low hanging fruits.

I now know, everything is in my head.

I don’t pay anything for Alexa, and I wouldn’t suggest it. Just plug in any website url into it’s siteinfo page and it will let you know some basic info.

For instance, if I plug in your site (https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/howtobrain.com) it shows me your global rank is 8,867,792 as of this comment. That means your site is the 8,867,792nd most visited site in their system - although it is just an estimate. Supposedly that number is updated daily, but in my experience it takes longer.

I haven’t looked into it, but I would suspect that pageviews would increase the more posts are published. This would be for a number or reasons. First, at least for me, I tend to promote new posts the most. If I haven’t published a post in a while, I tend not to publish. Two, having more pages means there’s more pages to view. Lastly, people probably prefer to read newer posts.

I looked into Alexa, and it seems like a very useful tool. The price seems quite high though and there isn’t a free version? Do you think it is worth the cost?

Hey Joe! I find that my pageviews seem to be highly correlated to the number of posts I publish. Is that the case for you as well? It would be interesting to see what percent your pageviews increase by if you increase your posting by x%.

Your stats aren’t bad, keep at it and I am sure you will see even more growth. Good luck!

At that point, I’m not sure it could be solved in a single equation, although I could see something along the lines of how long would it take you to reach a certain savings rate. For instance, if your income currently equals you expenses (i.e. a savings rate of 0%) how long would it take to reach a 50% savings rate if you get a 3% raise every year and save it?

I just did a quick excel sheet, and the answer to that question that looks like around 24 years:

Nice analysis! The math behind this gets tricky fast. I tried to do the math around this same analysis but adding on the idea:

What if you get a 3% raise every year and save it?

That makes the math MUCH harder. I know that would lower these times, but I’m unsure of how much that’d impact things. It would impact the lowest saving rate people the most, but be interesting to see how it impacts people in the middle range.

Reading to your kids is so important. My parents read to me all the time and I ended up way ahead in language skills. Good for you guys for starting off early on the right foot!

Awww I’m a bit late in this! I’m so sorry!

Congratulations on the new family member! Sooo cute! He’s sleeping so peacefully!! ❤️

You sound like you’re superrr busy but looks like you’re doing a great job at balancing your life. This is really awesome news!

I wish you and your family the best!!!

That’s really good, Joe! High five! 😉

It’s good to be handy and that’s something I don’t have haha. I do t think I’d have patience for that. Luckily my fiancé will YouTube and attempt to save us money when he can do it himself haha.

Congratulations on your new family member! I hope all are doing well - he looks so sweet in this photo and nice and healthy!

I been meaning to read it. Hope things are well at home!

Hi Joe,

Congratulation on your new baby boy, he is a trust - a blessing from God, and that’s what matters most.

As for the insurance issues and stuff, things will definitely fall into place.

I just read your comment on Janice Wald’s blog , so I followed you here to find out more about you.

Once again, congrats!

Congrats Joe! I’m sure it’s probably a little crazy these days but enjoy these moments. They only come once.

Yes, I was trying to indicate present value with PV. I agree, you have to make some assumptions but only time will tell how good some assumptions are. A couple years ago we would have assumed gas prices would continue to be more than $4/gallon. I think we agree, even with assumptions and simplifications it helps to run the numbers.

PV = present value? I guess my car example had one more assumption that I didn’t list: you’re paying for the car in cash (i.e. not financing). The other assumptions (all other maintenance costs are the same, gas prices are constant, and your current car is worth zero) are not realistic; I admit this in the explanation below the “answer.” This problem of bad assumptions is simply to make the math easier in the case of examples - you see it all the time in physics problems with frictionless planes and spherical cows.

And you’re absolutely right - a car that gets 50 mpg probably will cost a lot more than $7,200, which means, money-wise at least, it’s best to stick with your current car.

I’m not sure what you think of your car example. The question posed was How much should you pay for a car that gets 50 mpg? Your answer is $7,200, which is inflated PV because you neglected the return rate. Because you are not going to find a new car for $7,200, and extremely unlikely to find even a used car, the decision should be keep driving the current car until it’s dead. The largest cost of a car is the capital expense. If you have a paid off car- keep driving it. This also provides the opportunity to save for the next car. If you actually have the money in hand, invest it and earn more. When you are in the market for a car, you can compare the standard efficiency and high efficiency models this way too determine if the EXTRA cost is worth it.

This is a nice explanation and discussion. I think LED bulbs are an interesting test case. The payback period was much quicker than I expected. I know with older CFLs I felt that they rarely lived long enough to justify the premium cost.

Definitely an improvement over how it looked in the “before” photos. Nicely done!

It turned out really nice :)

Hey Joe,

That looks good! Like Jason said, if I tried to do something like that myself I’d definitely mess it up.

Cheers,

Miguel

Impressive Joseph! I wish I was handier. I feel like if I tried to do this alone I’d end up flooding my house.

Steve Thanks for sharing,

I test and analyze existing and new home efficiency for a living, and I would love to add some of the nuances to the discussion. The problem is that when most people including many mechanical engineers are “running the numbers”, the assumptions being used don’t match the reality of the building. Question, should I add insulation or air seal or both? That’s easy every ignores air sealing because they don’t measure it or understand how it impacts the insulation ability to work. So they insulate but don’t get the return cause the insulation doesn’t work as expected. So in addition to running the numbers, validating the assumptions is important, otherwise all you end up with is deemed savings which aren’t as good as actual returns.

So with the LED example the important factors are to get a light has a high lumen per watt ratio at a minimum, and if adoption is important, get one the matches the quality of light being replaced. To get the answer for lighting you need frequency of use, so the kitchen lights will have a faster payback than the back closet, even with same bulb swap. Another factor that comes into play is that the reduction in watts from incandescent = reduction in BTU’s, 1Kwh=3412BTU/hr. One Ton of cooling capacity is 12000Btu/hr so replacing the lights can have a substantial internal gain reduction. If you don’t use ac or any types fans to cool, maybe you get to sweat a little less (priceless) If the lights are located in recess fixtures exposed to an attic it gets more complex because of the heat transfer through the attic.

There is one other factor to consider in payback that doesn’t occur in most other investments. What is the tax rate on gains from efficiency measures? if you have a simple payback of 10 years, and the life of the improvement is 30 years, you have no tax on the investment “returns” that you experience in year 20-30. Even better your tax rate may be negative due to government incentive. As the FI community well understands a dollar that you never have to spend is way better than a dollar that you have to generate by work or investment income.

Calculating the ROI is like creating a budget, looking back on your expenses after the fact helps you to calibrate the budget to reality.

I’ve found LED’s at the dollar store and swapped out. They work great and a quick break even

Well done. I spent my career evaluating capital projects for the complex I worked at. We typically didn’t fund projects that took longer than three years to payout, with the exception of energy saving projects that we’d accept maybe a five year payout on. But that was because we had more projects than we had money to invest. For a family 8 to 10 year payback is probably about right.

I’ve noticed a recent huge uptick on search hits for this page. It seems that the Facebook Explore feed is indeed gone, at least as of March 1, 2018. I wrote this article on November 9, 2017.

I hope they bring it back, I really liked it. I can’t imagine it costs that much to maintain, but I could be wrong.

Sources:

https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/01/facebook-ends-its-experiment-with-the-alternative-explore-news-feed/

https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/01/facebook-ends-explore-feed-test/

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/1/17067700/facebook-explore-feed-experiment-ended

https://mashable.com/2018/03/01/facebook-ends-explore-news-feed-test/

I don’t think I’ve used those tools, or if I have I don’t know it.

I love the transparency!

I am so envious. I’d love a new master bath. I’m not near as brave as you, though, to take it on myself.

~Jaye

Good luck, Joey! Sounds like a huge project, but well worth it in the end. The tub especially will be great for bathing your son when he is older.

It felt like I was in math class all over again! Thanks for the lesson.

Interesting. I like to be transparent too, just in a different way. In the past I have shared my monthly income to inspire others and show that you can make money through freelancing and virtual assistant work. As your site grows and you share this info it may inspire others as well.

Thanks for the post–I’ve been trying to crunch the numbers on solar panels, but the different lease/buy options make it tough. This reminds me to take another look. And it’s hard to shell out so much money for a single LED lightbulb, so it’s gratifying to see how the math works.

I know! I even tried to make it worse in my example by only using it 8 hours a day instead of a full 24, and it still paid for itself fairly quickly.

Just over two months to pay off the light bulb!?! That’s pretty awesome. And yeah, our planet is in a bit of a crunch, so it’s worth making some changes just to consider future generations.

Lol the dryer thing sounds like something I would do. My wife once gave me her wet swimsuit in a grocery bag and told me to hand it up in the shower. She wanted me to take it out of the grocery bag and hang it in such a way that it would dry. Instead, I just hung up the grocery bag in the shower.

I used to have trouble with the word infamous too, until I realized it’s sort of on a spectrum of (famous for good — unknown person — infamous for bad).

Hey Joe,

Very insightful! It happens to me all the time that I miss things I’m being told, because I can have an extremely mechanical mind. For example, my wife can tell me to take the wet clothes from the washer and put them in the dryer; and I will, but sometimes I won’t turn on the dryer because she didn’t ask me to. I don’t automatically assume that unspoken next step.

Oh and I always have trouble with the word “infamous”. To my logic, it should mean someone that is not famous!

Cheers, Miguel

I’ve tried survey sites but I feel that my earnings from it is not commensurate to my hard work. So now I’m blogging and freelance writing.

I recently read Deep Value by Toby Carlisle which I liked quite a bit. Have to get around to doing a blog entry on it.

Hey Joe,

I really like the light bulb example, it makes it very clear, how energy efficiency can result in real money savings. It’s easy to wrongly assume that something more expensive is always more costly, even if it’s actually cheaper over the long run.

Cheers, Miguel

Ooohhh I like how the car example reverses it a bit to help you find out your budget. Because that’s one of the things I was going to say: for me, at least, we’re in such a crunch with the planet right now that I’m willing to pay a little more for anything that’s going to help reduce the harm.

Jetpack is a WordPress thing, right? This blog isn’t WordPress, so I don’t know much about any plugins. And I, too, don’t understand much of what Google Analytics offers. I’m thinking of taking one of Google’s free courses on the subject later this year.

Thanks for the links Joe, so far I only used Jetpack and Google analytics (and still don’t understand how to read most of the info on the latest!) I will check out adsense and Alexa. But I do find it gets me sidetracked when I check numbers too much. Cheers

I agree that an upfront investment isn’t necessarily the way to go if you want to build your income or retirement income. These are some good ideas.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to depress anyone!

Over 70 spam comments over the course of two hours! That sounds like such a pain!

So, I ran those numbers for my own personal expenses. Thanks, you’ve depressed me thoroughly. Math sucks sometimes!

Oh, good to know :-)

I had over 70 spam comments this morning between 5am and 7am… like seriously?? All copied and pasted with the same message…….. I need to find a way to get rid of this :(

Hi Joe!

Great list here! I’ve heard of Merch by Amazon and I was interested in looking more into it, but I’m not sure where to start. It’s something I’ll have to dig further into.

I’ve made money by picking up free furniture and giving them a face lift. It’s really fun too! Ok, fine… there are small up cost investments such as paint, paint brushes, and sand paper. But it’s not too much! I’ve also made money by picking up free stuff (i.e. clothing in excellent condition) to sell. Honestly, I am surprised with the stuff these ppl give away sometimes… I’ve seen online ads where people are desperate for you to take away their stuff. It doesn’t come up a lot, but I’ve tried it and it’s not too shabby.

This is really great to see. You often hear a lot about the snowball method being the ideal method to pay off debt, but you don’t really see the math showing the difference over time. Thanks for sharing this, Joe.

Interesting read about your life. I have quite a bit of public speaking experience. Recording yourself is a great tool to help you change and correct how you speak in front of others so I commend you for using it. Keep practicing and you’ll get more comfortable and better.

Congratulations on getting through your first speech. Sounds like 2018 is going to be quite the year for you, best wishes!

Yeah, paying too much attention to your traffic stats can be just as discouraging as paying to much attention to your investments!

I’ve installed analytics and I also use Adsense as an indicator. Alexa was mentioned to me and I’ve used it a couple of times. But I think I’m going to start ignoring my traffic stats for now bc I find that it can be distracting to me haha! I’m just going to blog at my pace and learn what I can. I don’t want to feel discouraged from seeing odd swings in my traffic >.<

Hey Joe - thanks for the recap.

The tools you mentioned here appear to be useful. I’m just using Google Analytics and WordPress at the moment , but I need to get more involved with the other tools and marketing / promoting aspects.

Thanks again for the post. - Mike

Do you mean the credit card rewards? There’s really no time commitment involved, although it does force me to pay closer attention to my budget, which is a good thing.

I actually started using Alexa regularly because of the blog reports on your blog. It’s a really nice and simple tool.

Nice. Looking forward to next report.

I do use the same tools as you Btw.

Not bad at all. One thing I won’t do is the accounts rewards - I think this takes too much time to manage and that this time can be used for something that scales much better (e.g. creates value and insane profits :).

Cool way to get to know you a little better, Joe! I worked at pizza shops in high school and a little bit after, too.

Awesome goals–and I like the distinction between abstract and concrete, too! Also congrats on all the huge upcoming milestones!!!! I’m also pretty optimistic about 2018. I don’t have sure thing increased income or anything, but I’m trying to do more things for myself personally and professionally. As I’m booking these big things I’m looking forward to, I’m realizing how much energy they can give you and how taxing it can be to put yourself on the back burner for an extended period of time.

Love the distinction between abstract and concrete goals. And also great ideas on New Year’s Resolution, I’m getting some of them to add on mine :) Congratulations to your baby and your upcoming graduation, Joe. Go for the goals!

Yes, spam comments are a problem we all seem to get hit with. I haven’t yet found a magic cure that takes care of all of them.

Iceland was a ton of fun.

My wife and I aren’t great cooks, so that really makes us more inclined to eat out. We’re working on this, though, starting with the most simple of dishes!

Congratulations! I really like the way you laid out your goals in different categories. Our achilles heel is also eating out. My husband and I are challenging each other this month to not eat out at all. It’s been a struggle but we are hoping it will enable us to start cooking more in the future as well. Good luck with your goals!

I don’t usually do yearly goals too much. I like my monthly goals the best. Yours seem to be very doable and I’m sure you will succeed! If you save more and think the money isn’t there you tend to spend less, that is what I do. I just pretend I don’t have any!

These are awesome, yet do-able goals! Iceland looks amazing too… I definitely want to spend less, save more, be better about money in general. And be more present.

just make sure the date on the cash is before what ever time you go back to!

it can be pretty hard to separate emotion from investing. hence panic sells and FOMO buys

Following your impulses reminds of the movie “Yes Man” with Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel where Jim Carrey decides to answer “yes” to every question.

You’ll have to post how it goes (went?) at the end of the year!

Congratulations on your bundle of joy, this year will truly be a good year for you. These goals look good and achievable without going overboard and being too strict. This year, I chose to follow my impulses and see what happens.

Thank you! We are so excited for our little bundle of joy!

Congratulations to your baby! And these are great New Years resolutions!! I hope my husband and I will get pregnant this year!

Nathalie http://apinchofaustria.com

I started losing my hair in my 20s. I’m not bald, but my hair is sparse enough that I’ve worn a simple buzzcut for years. It’s easy to maintain with my own clippers, and I just get a professional cut a couple times a year when it starts looking untidy around the back.

I did Toastmasters for a few years, but lost track of my group after I moved. I may have to see if there’s another group locally to join.

All the best for your new year resolution. Spending less is really hard, saving more can help you spend less.

I did not really set goals for this year. However, my word for this year is “simplify”. I used to set too many goals and it was making me feel pressured instead of inspired. That’s why I choose a theme, if you will, and strive to achieve it.

Was thinking the exact same thing! Share your secret! Lol

Depending on your electrical rates, mining is hard to even break even with electrical costs. I think I’m breaking even at 10¢ a kilowatt-hour. All the pools I’ve been using have “withdrawal” or “cash-out” fees which cover any transaction fees. Time is normally near-instant, except for bitcoin, which right now seems to be backlogged - but they’re working on a “lightning” network which should speed things up.

Pretty interesting. Have you looked at the transaction time/fees for each crypto? I was looking into mining, but it only seems to work in a bull crypto market. I’d rather just be long the crypto instead of owning hardware too!

This is a nice summary of different income / revenue items to track.

I never considered tracking our credit card cash rewards, etc.

A lot of different items to keep in mind - thanks for sharing.

Mechanical Turk is fairly low-pay, so it’s definitely a last-priority side gig. it’s great to do mindless batches while watching Netflix

unfortunately I only had one item because my listings had expired and i hadn’t gotten around to relisting them since I was headed out for a week for new year’s. they should be back up now

The check engine light t-shirt is actually my best seller!

It looks like you made about $5,500. Not bad. And it looks like you sold even more items since 10 days ago when you published this post. Your eBay store is almost sold out (only 1 item left).

99to1percent recently posted: How I make 6 Figures Working Only 16 hours/week https://99to1percent.com/six-figures-working-16-hours-week/

I love seeing these kinds of income reports. I’m kinda surprised by Mechanical Turk accounting for so much. I used it once several years ago, but never made more than a dollar or two. Maybe I need to check it out again.

I say keep going with the shirts, the check engine light one cracked me up.

Nice work! I’m intrigued by the Mechanical Turk side gig. That’s something I’ll have to look into for 2018. Cheers!

Your year was full of experiments, congratulations Joe! Also you are getting into affiliate marketing as well, I think you have a lot of potential considering what you now know and it seems you are on track.

Very nice, sir! I just had some stickers made up for my blog, and I was wanting to look into shirts but really don’t want to handle shipping them. I’ll have to checkout the Amazon t-shirt thing!

I’m not sure how many books I have read this year, actually. I do love to read, though, and almost always vow to read more when I make my own New Year’s resolutions each year.

Dad’s Guide to Pregnancy For Dummies sounds interesting. when we were pregnant we got most of our information from YouTube videos. They were very addictive, we would spend a whole Saturday watching them :-)

99to1percent recently posted: What Do You Do For A Living? https://99to1percent.com/what-do-you-do-living/

Loved Don Quixote. Though it was certainly a labor of love. Like you, took me a few years to get through it end to end. Happily found it a much easier flow in the second half. Having also read “Millionaire Next Door” I’m betting you know all the tricks now for early retirement? :)

The Gh/s and the watts columns are just from the bitcoin wiki here -> https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Those are basically the advertised rates.

The reward / block column is just plugging in the Gh/s column into equation shown earlier on the post (but I’ll repeat it here):

reward / day is just the reward / block column multiplied by 24

kWh / day is the watts column multiplied by 24 and divided by 1000

Nice explanation and breakdown you have given to us, i am just curious on the number in based on different antminer you listed. How to you derived the numbers there?

Bitcoin is something I am interest in but I haven’t invested in any so far myself. Perhaps in the future…

This is a great write up and a very interested read. I am interested in bitcoin and see where the technology goes, although I don’t intend to buy any myself. I think I have a lot more research to do before buying any.

Very nice write-up. I wish I would have gotten into it more back when I first heard about Bitcoin, but oh well :).

Nice post about Bitcoin mining. I am not too interested in mining or earning bitcoin, but I am curious to see where bitcoins go as more people start to use them. If more online stores accepted cryptocurrencies, especially the big ones that would be huge for me.

Thanks for the detailed analysis, based on additional calculation on electricity rates in our area and the cost of the AntMiner S9 and the current exchange rate of bitcoin, it looks like the Ant Miner S9 will pay for itself in about 100 days. Of course assuming everything being equal for the 100 days :-) Not bad…

99to1percent recently posted…How we increased our annual income from $0 to $160K+ to $400,000+

It’s interesting to see the numbers behind what I have often wondered about. I probably won’t ever be able to simply live off the interest my savings and investments make, but I am still going to keep building them!

I created a spreadsheet that models how many stocks you would need to make X dividend income, and conversely how much dividend income you would get for X investment. It’s really popular, and I’m not surprised - people realize that dividend income is the ultimate passive income source.

Interesting. It kind of goes over my head, but it makes me wonder about practical applications.

After a long day of working in corporate finance, this is a little too much data analysis for me ;)

You should check out The Money Nerds podcast. It’s one of my faves!

The biggest change was including keywords in the brand name in addition to bullet points & t-shirt name. I also got very lucky with a certain design that really took off.

Nice, what changed that made your t-shirt sales take off?

I wish I had a time machine! Do you think they’d let me take a pocket full of cash with me?

This is good advice, though. You have to weather those storms.

“there is more money to be made when a market is in decline.” Unfortunately a lot of people panic in these times and take money out of the market. Ultimately I think wealth from the stock market comes to those who leave the money in the market.

I don’t put too much time into it - maybe a few hours a week. As far as 2018, I fear my royalties may go down since Amazon is increasing their fees. I’ve been expanding into other print-on-demand sites, namely Redbubble and Teespring, but I haven’t had nearly the success with those two as I’ve had with Merch by Amazon.

Nice consistent growth right there! How much time to you put into it? And what are your projections for 2018?

Blog Report for First Full Month (9,262 pageviews) Stats & Strategies https://99to1percent.com/blog-report-first-full-month/

Hi Joe, many thanks for this article. As the writer of a new blog, I’m looking for the best ways for readers to comment on my work and provide valuable feedback. I’ll certainly keep up to date on your posts, thank you.

Nice work here! I tend to stick with the set and forget approach to investing - dollar-cost averaging into boring index funds. That plus some real estate to keep things diversified.

I added a reply feature - it only goes one deep. Also, Staticman supports a subscribe feature, but you have to have (or rather, I have to have) a Mailgun account, but I don’t want to pay for it.

Oh, and I made our last two comments into replies manually :)

Thanks for sharing! I have actually never listened to any of these podcasts. While I don’t listen to podcasts much, I usually check out smart passive income and entrepreneur on fire

It’s pretty cool :) I had to check back to find your reply though - some sort of subscribe to comments or replies, and a reply feature would improve it, but it doesn’t look like that’s possible from the Staticman site right now.. maybe in the future!

Hey, Adam, if you want to see what the comments look like on the GitHub end of things, you can check out this repository’s pull requests - of particular interest may be the closed pull requests. Oh, and here is the pull request for your comment.

You might also want to check out my other blog’s closed pull requests since I’ve gotten a few spam comments there.

Hey Joe, Staticman sounds really interesting, I’m curious to see it in action! I’d used Disqus when I tried Jekyll and was overall happy with it, but at least with Staticman the comments aren’t on a third party. I really like the idea of Jekyll, but I just found it too fiddly overall, for reasons like this!

Good article! simply explained the difference between JavaBean and a POJO for which i have been looking for, POJOs, however, are everywhere and the a backlash against the reasons for EJBs has led to extensive use of ‘lightweight’ Java growth.Thanks for sharing!

Nice! I really love the second one. It looks great and simple. Good Job!

Any way I can convince you to come paint my house for $40?? That isn’t bad job at all either!!

Nice house. :D

It looks much better now. There’s no comparison

Looks good, Joe!
Following and supporting, mate! :)

I would prefer the second one!
+Follow

I think I preferred the pink..

;) Nice chocolate brown house. Would be good to have a green one instead? haha. It would be more relaxing with green.

looks much more manly now

Great tips, thanks for the post.

This doesn’t seem to be working right now… :( I’ll try to fix it later.

thats cool.

Wow. I missed out on the original not having an N64, think I will get on this!

Even though I’ve already played it tons of times, I really wish it was by Nintendo so I could play it on my nice big plasma. Great, now I want to play more Zelda games.

That’s pretty awesome!
I wonder how long it took them to do that

hey bart, that’s ok. I won a $50 savings bond

great exposition bro.

interesting!keep it up!

If you really want to do somthing then go for it, sitting on your computer jackng of to anime porn wont get you there. do it phaggot!

awh man i dont mean to sound like a dick. but in the 3rd grade i won a colouring contest and the poster that i drew and coloured was posted in the local art museum. sorry brah

That’s very interesting. I also wanted to design video games when I was younger. I remember my friend and I used to spend hours every day thinking out plots, style of gameplay, etc after playing Die Hard for PS2. I don’t know why that spawned it.

Heh I think alot of us wanted to make games when we were little