Personal Finance and Investing

The role of women in society has changed dramatically over the last fifty years. We have moved from an expectation that girls will marry young, stay home and bring up children to a new world in which women are financially independent and less dependent on the decision-making powers of their fathers and “husbands”. This has, in some ways, made life more difficult for women. They must now find a balance between developing a career and the biological drive to have children. Women have also retained their role as carers and are often expected to look after ageing parents. As a result, many neglect their own financial affairs. To protect their interests, the challenge for the modern woman is to make the claim of independence real. This means having a formal life plan. Because life expectancy is longer for women. they should establish goals and set out strategies for achieving them. Just drifting through life is a recipe for disaster.

In all this, proper life insurance is a must. The latest national statistics show that about a quarter of households across the US do not carry any insurance. Why should this change? If you leave debts behind you, the family may be forced to sell off assets to pay off what is owing. If you die young, will your children have enough money to go through college? Will your parents manage on their retirement savings? Having some insurance gives you peace of mind. You know there is an adequate sum of money for those you leave behind. What are the specifics?

If you are a single mom, you are the sole breadwinner. The family looks to you to provide for all their needs. With insurance, there will be enough to pay all the funeral and other expenses, pay off the mortgage on your home and leave some cash to meet future expenditure. Nothing can replace you as a person, but you can leave a lump sum representing your earning capacity behind.

If you and your partner are just starting to get a base together, life insurance cover on both of you gives the survivor a safety net. Otherwise, with young children and a new mortgage, it’s not going to be easy to cope.

As an older woman, having a long-running policy in hand gives you financial room to plan. If there’s a surrender value or an investment element, you can borrow or sell the policy for a lump sum. This gives you access to cash during retirement when all your other savings may be tied up or run down.

This puts the pressure on you to get the right coverage in place from an early age. Shop around and get as many life insurance quotes from different companies as possible. You need to get a feel for what the marketplace can offer. You should also take advice. The life insurance quotes are only useful to a point. An independent professional can tell you which policies make the best long-term investments. Remember, it’s cheaper when you start paying premiums early in your life. If you delay, the premiums will be significantly higher – a shorter working life if you have children to care for and a longer retirement period. Plan now for a long and successful life.

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Although it may seen odd to talk about spending money on your property during a recession and a credit crunch, this is the time when you may be most at risk if you start changing things around. Let’s start with a simple question. One of the results of this downturn has been a dramatic increase in the level of unemployment. So many more people have either found their hours cut or they are out of work. But what to do? The bills are still there to be paid. The obvious answer for some is to start running some kind of business from home. Even if your efforts only produce a few dollars of profit a week, that’s a few dollars more than you would have had. Except that’s changing the use of a part of your home from residential to commercial. So think about what business you might try. It might be turning your kitchen into a catering operation to sell cakes and cookies. You might look to do some woodworking in the garage. Your spare bedroom might become a home office. The idea is to convert an existing hobby or skill into money. Except your home is currently insured as a residence. Adding in commercial woodworking or cooking operations may increase the risk of fire. More people may come into your home to buy goods or services. If they are injured by slipping on your floor tiles or tripping over a loose carpet, are you covered against third party liability claims? So here comes the headline: always tell your insurance company if you are going to change the use of your home. If you do not, the insurer could refuse to pay out on any claims!

Another possible way of raising money is to convert a part of your home into a self-contained flat and rent it out. That rental income could make a big difference when it comes to paying those monthly bills. Except that your policy will be limited to occupation by you and your family. Almost all policies have terms requiring you to tell the insurer if you increase the number of occupants. Again, failure to alert the insurer will lead to a refusal to pay out on claims.

Finally, let’s say you have a little cash but negative housing equity. In better times, you would have traded up and purchased a bigger home. Now the best option looks to be adding to or renovating your home – being forced to stay does not mean the building must stay small and uncomfortable. Now remember the rebuilding value you declared when you got your home insurance quotes. That was the price per square foot of putting your home back into its then condition. If you increase the size and quality of your home, the price per square foot of reinstatement also goes up. You must tell your insurer about the proposed increase in value and whether any changes in the materials used will affect the risk, e.g. using more wood will increase the risk of fire, replacing a wood-burning stove with central heating reduces the risk. Remember home insurance quotes are only good for the home as you had it. Always tell your insurer when you change the size or building materials used.

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A garage is the ideal home for all sorts of items and activities – from the storing of sporting equipment to tools and machines; and it’s basic intention for car parking to situations like a home-office, a gymnasium or a workshop. If your garage is just used for storing instead of other things it really requires some shelves for arrangement.

Usually garage shelves can be found in 2 main forms: site-built and prefabricated. Site-built is shelving commonly not so costly and allow you to accommodate the sizes to the free place accessible. Everything that you need can be found at the local home center, lumber yard, discount store or hardware shop.

One of the basic principles of the garage shelves is made of a simple piece of ¾” plyboard or a length of 1x or 2x lumber on a set of heavy-duty shelf angle brackets. This is mounted by attaching the angle brackets to the rivets directly using long screws then by attaching the shelving to the brackets. To strengthen the shelf you can add a brace at each rivet.

A different type of shelves are the floor supported ones. 1 way is to extend vertical 2x4s each 50 ins and resting them on the floor and attaching them to the balks or ceiling joists at the top. In addition, the 2x4s are extended horizontally on edge between the verticals then a particleboard is applied to produce the shelf. The most normally utilized dimensions are 19-25 ins for depth and the spacing between 2x4s is usually on 25 inches but  these sizes can be changed to bear the size of the things  you are storing.

For storing small things consider the room between the studs. By attaching a series of 1×2 strips horizontally to the inside edges of two connected studs about 6 ins apart, cutting some 1×4 and 1×6 pieces of lumber and fitting them between studs and slipping them on top of the 1x2s you can create some small adjustable shelves. These are great for jars, cans and bottles and also for other small and light items. The small shelves are great for organizing and storing screws and nails.

The better selection when constructing prefabricated garage shelves is Steel shelves. Plastic shelving may be enough for storing light weight items but in time you may require something more resistant for storing heavier things. One disadvantage of the steel shelving is that they cannot be cut to size so they have general widths, depths and heights so you have to select something that suits within your accessible room.

Adjustability is another important consideration in preassembled shelving. Prefabricated shelves should be adjustable to at least two different locations within the shelving framework and also the pins for lining up should be heavy duty and should have something in place for preventing them from working loose or getting unexpectedly shifted.

Another thing to be taken into consideration when choosing for preassembled shelving, particularly those designed for heavy loads, is that they may need a wall fastening or other support against tilting.

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You can make your own supplement for general fish feeding that is high in DL-methionine (an important amino acid in fish nutrition); Start with whole salmon which is an excellent source of carotene for color (frozen or even canned works), frozen peas, hard boiled egg, frozen or FD brine shrimp, duck weed or spiulina powder, and fish oil (cod liver oil works fine). Blend this mixture then add corn starch to the paste to dehydrate. Spread this paste on small strips of foil (or even wax paper if your dehydrator does not get to hot). Make sure you leave room for air circulation.

For a frozen food, substitute the corn starch with unflavored gelatin powder.

For goldfish and koi, add wheat germ powder. Use this formula for African Cichlids, except delete the wheat germ.

For more carnivorous fish increase the whole fish and decrease the spirulina powder or duckweed. Calamari (squid) can be added too for carnivorous fish, but make sure that all the ink is removed from whole squid.

Use this formula for Discus.

For spirulina powder, Spirulina One Flake can be substituted, but since this already a complete diet for many fish, I double the amount of this and decrease other ingredients by comparable amounts.

Here are basic percentages, please note that you can change these percentages to suit your fish food requirements:

BASIC/GOLDFISH/CARNIVOURE

Whole Salmon: 25% 20% 30%

Peas: 25% 25% 15%

Egg: 20% 15% 25%

Brine shrimp: 15% 15% 15%

Spirulina Powder:10% 15% 5%

Wheat Germ: 0% 5% 0%

Squid: 0% 0% 5%

Fish Oil: 2% 2% 2%

Corn Starch or Gelatin: 3% 3% 3%

For a complete article about what constitutes quality fish food ingredients, please visit this article: Quality Fish Food; What ingredients are needed for proper nutrition, growth and health

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Effectively convey your marketing message to your target audience using poster prints. When designed correctly, these prints will give you the benefits of advertising on giant billboard spaces without having to pay huge amounts. You just need to come up with designs and content that will stir up interest among people and persuade them to read what you have to say. Successful poster printing should be able to persuade people that they need your products or services. Here are few tips that can help you create materials that would be effective in promoting your business:

Tips on Creating Posters for Effective Promotions

* Design prints that can attract people’s attention. Whether you want materials with happy or sad mood, you should be able to stir up emotions. That’s when you will consider your prints to be effective. When people can relate to your ads or the theme used in them, it’s easy to catch their attention and make them read. Come up with a unique concept and present a message that your target audience can feel associated to.

* Your prints should be able to build interest among the target audience. Understanding your target audience is important so you can come up with tactics that will build up interest. Conduct a survey on how they perceive things and know what questions they have that you need to answer. The data that you have gathered will enable you to create designs and themes that could stir up people’s emotions and interests. When you are targeting environment-conscious group of people, for example, you should create prints that supports their “go green” visions.

* Create desire among the readers. Even expensive printing will be useless if your print posters failed to create desire among the readers. Make sure to answer the questions that your potential customers would have about your products or services. People are interested in what you can offer them – what benefits they can get from buying your products or services. In this case, your prints should be able to highlight benefits and features. Create desire by showing them what you can give at great prices and quality.

* Don’t forget the call-to-action. One effective way to make people read the entire advertisement is to include an offer with a call-to-action. Promos like discounts and free gifts would be great. Include a deadline to prompt people to immediately take action. For art gallery owners, handing out artist canvas would be great. You can print affordable but quality artist canvas from reliable online printing companies.

Promoting products or services should be easy with posters since a few prints could reach a wider audience. Print them with the printing companies in the neighborhood or order prints online. Either way, make sure to create tools that will give you effective and successful marketing. And remember, a marketing campaign should be supported with other print materials. Aside from canvas printing, you can also use business cards printing, brochure printing or commercial flyer printing.

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