Students Of Success

You go to the mail box and scan - a couple fliers (nah), your magazine subscription (yes!) and bills (groan). Every month the bills show up and as you sigh and take out your check book you wonder if you will ever be free.

Each month you pay the minimums and although you KNOW you’ve got a handle on it - you are not charging your credit card or accumulating new debts anymore - it seems that you will be paying the minimum fees forever.

Did you know that HOW you pay your debts can affect how soon you will finishing paying them off - even if you keep paying the same amount for debt every month? Of course you might be able to get a consolidation loan, but if you’re not eligible or are not interested then there are several other things you can do.

It’s not always the easiest to figure out the mathematics, but there are three steps to quicker debt relief - guaranteed.

STEP ONE - Create a list.

List your smallest debts first followed by your largest high-interest debts (credit card) and then your largest low-interest debts (Lines of credit and taxes).

Plan to pay the minimums on all debts with these goals in mind:

STEP TWO - Small bills first.

They may not be the highest interest, but every bill that you are paying some interest on means you are usually only paying minimal amounts on the principal. Multiple debts are also a sure way to bring your spirits down. Paying off small debts first is a quick way to start checking them off - and freeing your mind.

STEP THREE - Move the payments along.

When one debt is paid add the funds to the next debt. For example, say you’re making $75 payments to a small debt. When the debt is cleared add the $75 to the next debt on your list. If the next debt had a minimum payment of $100, you will now pay $175 until it is paid off. When that one is finished, take the $175 and add it to the next payment and so on.

STEP FOUR - Save the cash!

Don’t forget that when your debts are cleared you have set yourself up for a better financial future. The best way to take advantage of your new situation is to use all the money you were spending on debts and start investing or saving it every month.

With this strategy your debts will clear faster meaning you will pay less interest, you will see progress as you clear small debts first, and you will not be tempted to use the funds for personal use instead of debt repayment.

It is a worthwhile goal to get out of debt. Seeing that goal come sooner and teaching yourself discipline sets you up for a brighter financial future. You OWE yourself that!

http://www.ult.net

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Hard-nosed, veteran investigative journalist that I am, I just
had to dig into Saddam Hussein’s past in an attempt to explain
the possible causes of his behavior. Here is what I uncovered.

When he was a baby, Saddam’s fundamentalist au pere only
believed in changing his diaper once every two weeks.

As a child, he was confined to his room and exposed constantly
to second-hand fig potpourri.

His pediatrician once treated a childhood infection by injecting
honey into his sinuses and shoving locusts up his nose.

In second grade, everybody laughed when he lost the spelling bee
at Mosul Elementary by spelling the word “Kurd” with a Q.

When he misbehaved as a child, his father made him sleep naked
on a water buffalo.

On a dare, he spent the summer of 1962 smoking Preparation-H.

He once witnessed his best cow being humped by a camel.

He was once rejected by a semi-voluptuous vixon named Baghdad
Bernice who smelled like an embalmed goat.

His first wife always liked his sister best.

He suffers from boomasomnia. He just can’t sleep without the
sound of roadside bombs.

Every morning, all his life, he’s been getting up on the wrong
side of his nails.

Though my findings may help explain Saddam Hussein’s behavior,
please don’t tell anyone about it. I don’t want to have to
testify.

$299.00, Financing available, Limited time offer etc etc. LASIK eye surgery is rapidly becoming just another commodity like shoes or cars. Every where we look there are LASIK ads with discounts, specials and financing offered by “doctors” that are vying for a percentage of the 3 million Americans rushing to have LASIK every year. Don’t be surprised if one day you can visit your local Wal-Mart and leave an hour later having had LASIK by a “professional who has done millions” We may even start seeing signs akin to McDonald’s 3,456,000 served!! There doesn’t seem much difference between the ads and techniques used to sell LASIK and those used to sell used cars.

What has happened to the great American medical standards and ethics touted for years? It is amazing to read that eye surgeons in the United States are still offering regular LASIK and for only $1,000 more “you too can have wavefront Technology.” For those who aren’t LASIK savvy, wavefront is a better diagnostic tool that maps your cornea. In South America, where eye surgery technology has always been at the forefront, surgeons will only use wavefront. There is no option because it is just better for the patient period!! American eye surgeons are also still performing PRK on those patients who don’t qualify for LASIK rather than using multifocal Intraocular Lens which was only approved 1 year ago in the States but has been used for over ten years by South American surgeons.

So if you are considering having LASIK remember this is a surgery on the cornea of your eye so be sure to educate yourself about all the possible risks and complications. Find the best possible doctor you can, not just the least expensive and make sure you are really a good candidate for the surgery and not just another number on the billboard and finally if cost is an issue you may need to resolve yourself to wearing glasses or do what thousands of people do and go to South America and have it done by some of the best eye surgeons in the world, spend half and have a vacation.

Robert Strong writes about medical tourism and runs the popular medical tourism web site www.surgicalservicesinternational.com

Your website is an electronic extension of your business. Poorly designed web pages often fail to provide users with a satisfactory online browsing or shopping experience. By nature of being an electronic medium, web surfers have constantly growing expectations from the sites they visit while online. The web page equivalent of local kid’s $5 car wash flier, or a poorly produced cable show or infomercial is no longer effective when it comes to convincing shoppers that you take your businessor themseriously. The appearance of your business website lends directly to your credibility. If you can establish credibility then sales will likely follow.

Meet Industry Expectations

A “professional” look can vary from industry to industry. For one industry you might need a site that screams “corporation,” while another industry might perform best with a mom and pop feel, still another might need a fun or artsy look. Building your site to meet industry expectations simply means knowing your audience and what they expect. Be careful that you don’t confuse any of the above with shoddy design. Whatever “feel” you give your site, make sure it comes out looking great.

Start by researching your competitors and taking an in-depth look at their websites. If all your competitors are going for a particular feel then maybe there’s something to that. Be sure to do your own research so you aren’t solely relying on what your competitors are doing. Often times you’ll find that your competitors are doing the wrong thing entirely.

Overall, make sure you are doing what’s right for your audience. In your design you don’t just want to match your competitors, you should seek to exceed them. Have your site designed to look and perform better, while still providing the overall tone your target audience is looking for.

Incorporate Usability Elements

As you put together your design elements, think: usability. There is nothing more frustrating to a visitor than trying to navigate through a website that is poorly constructed and does not provide obvious, user friendly markers directing them to the information they came looking for.

Intuitive Linking

Use textual links within the body content as part of your navigation scheme. Your website is not a brochure where people flip from one page to another; it is an active document that should allow visitors to navigate as they read, following links to wherever interest strikes them. Contextual linking in the body content provides that avenue without forcing the visitor to rely on the main site navigation to decide what to do next.

It’s the difference between asking your spouse what movie they want to see or asking if they would like to watch a comedy, sci-fi, action, drama or chick flick. With the first, you’re forcing her to do all the thinking and decision making for herself. With the other you are simply presenting options, allowing her to make a decision based on what she desires. That is how you want your visitors to feel. You want them to go where they want, but at the same time be leasing them, through various routs, to the point of action (i.e. sale, conversion, sign-up, etc.)

Emotive Colors

Colors fuel emotions so be sure the colors you use for your website bring out the emotions that best reach your audience. Integrating color elements effectively can create a more inviting website that can easily lead your visitors to take the desired actions.

Calls to Action

You’ve heard the saying, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” On the web, many people try to get the horse to drink without even leading him to water. When visitors come to your site they need to be lead to their desired destination. Use visual calls to action throughout your site that will direct your visitors to click, buy, purchase, read, get, view, order, continue, apply, enter, or whatever else you want them to do.

Careful and strategic planning before you begin developing (or re-developing) your website can help you build the best possible website that meets both your, and your customer’s needs. Consideration and implementation of the above mentioned elements will ensure that your website is effective at pulling traffic and converting your visitors into buyers. Throw in some quality customer service and you’ve got something for your customers to tell others about, which is the most effective kind of marketing there is.

Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing, a search optimization marketing firm providing SEO and website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He is the author of his E-Marketing Performance eBook and contributes daily to the E-Marketing Performance (http://www.eMarketingPerformance.com) marketing blog. (ea)

If you are one of the millions of self employed Americans with no health insurance, take advantage of the new affordable health insurance options now available. With a health savings account and a high deductible individual or family policy you can afford to protect your family’s health. And it has tax benefits too.

A Health Savings Account is a new Affordable health insurance option. Health Savings Accounts will change the way millions can save to meet their health care needs. HSAs will help consumers have more choice in meeting their health care needs The account is set up as a savings account, but it allows you to use the funds to pay for your health care expenses. With an HSA you can pay for current health expenses and save for future qualified medical and retiree health expenses on a tax-free basis.

You have to be covered by a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) to take advantage of HSAs. An HDHP generally costs less than traditional health care coverage, so the money you save on insurance can be put into the Health Savings Account. The national average premium for an individual policy is only $92 per month and $272 per month for a family policy.

Using an HSA can lower your tax bill too. If you make the maximum tax-deductible annual contribution this year, these new health insurance premiums are tax deductible so your after-tax cost will be even less!

These new plans reward you for staying healthy. Because they are based on your actual use of health care services, your premium is lower. In a traditional health care plan the premium is based on an average, so you get to pay based on the health risks of a big group. You own and control the money in your HSA. You make the decision on how to spend the money - as long as you stick to qualified medical expenses. To view a detailed list of acceptable expenses, view the IRS Publication 502. Also, you make the decision about what types of investments to make for the money in the account to grow.

If you invest in a Health Savings Account now, by the time April rolls around next year, you’ll not only have a good health care option in place, you’ll have a tax benefit as well.

Author, Craig Stiff, Marketing Director for Lifespring Health, writes on the benefits of Health Savings Accounts as an alternative to expensive Health Insurance Policies. More information can be found at http://www.LifespringHealth.com