June 2016

9 Ways to Save Big Money on Car Maintenance Right Now!

When it comes to car maintenance, many folks prefer to depend on auto shops and mechanics’ advice for fluid fills, repairs, and tire care. Many automotive repair companies and mechanics have solid reputations, but deceitful practices such as misleading sales tactics continue to lead to lawsuits and frustrated customers. The average car maintenance cost can be a large portion of the cost of owning a new car.

To avoid getting a bad deal on your car’s maintenance and repairs, here are nine clever ways to save money on all things automotive including tips that you can use to save money on car maintenance right now – today!

How To Save A Fortune On Car Maintenance

How do you save money on car maintenance? Here are 9 great tips! Click To Tweet

Monthly DIY Engine Check

Even if you know very little about cars, you can still check your own engine fluids as a part of a monthly car maintenance routine. LifeHacker lists five engine fluids you can check on your own: engine oil, transmission fluid, coolant, power steering fluid, and brake fluid (LifeHacker also includes helpful videos for each fluid mentioned).

By performing your own car inspection on a monthly basis, you’ll be more aware of what needs changing or refilling and when, rather than relying on quick-lube shops’ “every couple of months” guidelines. It’s also very important to check and clean your car battery on a regular basis to avoid corrosion and maintain its functionality for several years to come.

Buy Your Own Auto Parts Online

Dealers charge a premium for automotive parts, and local auto shops may not be much cheaper. If you’re doing your own repairs or having your car repaired at a local shop that has a flexible policy on bringing in your own parts, you can save money on car maintenance by purchasing auto parts online.

Autozone.com, Parts Train, and Parts Geek are popular websites for affordable car parts with favorable consumer benefits ranging from free/fast shipping and low price guarantees to large inventories and money-back guarantees. Save 15% On Online Ship-To-Home Orders Of $100 Or More PLUS Free Shipping! Use Coupon Code: SAVE15

Check Your Car Warranty

All too often, people begrudgingly pay for pricey car maintenance work without checking the warranty first. If you have an older car with more than 100,000 miles then there may not be much left on the warranty (though it’s worth checking!), but a newer car will likely have some parts covered.

To check if your car has a factory warranty, Cars Direct recommends investigating with your car’s VIN number (on the dashboard or on the driver’s side door), contacting your dealership, or requesting a CARFAX vehicle history report. You may just find that a new battery or perhaps an $800 repair job for your engine might be paid for with the warranty instead of out-of-pocket. You have nothing to lose by checking, right?

Forex Profits With the Fishing Strip Strategy and AlfaTrade

by Guest Contributor

Technical online Forex traders use a variety of strategies in the pursuit of profitable currency pair trades. Some of these strategies have proved effective over time, have been adopted by many traders, and even have colorful names so that traders can rapidly understand what another trader has done in terms of executing a trade. One of these colorfully named strategies is the “fishing strip strategy.” Setting Up a Fishing Strip Strategy Trade 1. Apply the Bollinger band indicator to the price chart. Set the indicator on the chart to show a 20-period channel. The upper and lower bands of the channel will show the price fluctuation for the past 20 price bars or candles. The indicator should be set for … Read more

Royal Capital Pro: A Complete Guide to the MetaTrader 4 Platform

by Guest Contributor

Of all the tools a trader must have in his/her arsenal, an intuitive and easy-to-use platform is secondary to none. The right platform can easily aggregate information, analyze large data chunks, provide technical indicators and signals, and overall can make the life of a trader simpler. Comparing all the available Forex trading platforms today, MetaTrader 4 is unarguably the most popular among the slate. This guide is ideal for both the complete novice who just signed up for a trading account recently and to intermediate traders who have only scratched the platform’s surface and have yet to access its full potential.

What is MT4?

Short for MetaTrader 4, MT4 is a digital trading platform that is widely used to trade the trillion-dollar Forex market. Although free to use for different market participants, the platform is used predominantly by retail traders, those who trade for themselves and are usually stationed at a home office. MT4 was created by MetaQuotes Software and was launched in 2005. Instead of being sold as a financial product directly to clients, MetaQuotes Software licensed it to Forex brokers like Royal Capital Pro who then provided the platform to their clients.

Why is MT4 Essential?

MetaTrader 4 is distinguished from the rest of the available trading platforms in several ways, one of which is its functionality. User interface is integrated with an editor and compiler along with access to a large library of software. The software is open source and free to use so it’s a great tool for traders who are looking to build trading systems and scripts themselves. To be able to write these systems, MT4 comes with its proprietary language called MQL4/MQL5. This scripting language allows users to create Expert Advisors, which as the name implies advises the user when a predefined set of parameters are triggered.

Three Home Business Opportunities To Boost Your Income

by Hank Coleman

Top 3 Home Business Opportunities To Boost Your Income

You need more income to help your financial situation. Cutting items from your budget and watching your pennies each month will only get you so far. You need to attack the other side of the budgeting equation. Many people simply don’t know where to start, but there are many business opportunities from home that you can use to increase your income.

You need a side hustle. But, I’m not talking about selling stuff to your friends in your living room during in-home demonstrations and fake parties. Selling multi-level marketing (MLM) items simply won’t work for the long term. You need a real home business opportunity that can help you make real money.

I know far too many people who hope and pray (and fall prey) to the allure of easy riches of MLM opportunities. My house is full of candles, protein powder, vitamins, jewelry, weight loss wraps, and face wash that my friends have been hocking over the past few years. Your home-based business has to be more than simply selling things to your friend and family. Eventually, you’ll run out of customers. And, the leaders of these types of businesses often don’t communication (or we’re oblivious) to how much real work goes into making them successful.

Many MLM programs are built on you recruiting distributors underneath you instead of actually selling the products. Selling items to customers is often a byproduct of the business. The real business is recruiting unfortunately.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my friends. I don’t mind supplementing their incomes to a certain degree if that’s what will make them truly happy in life. The problem is that these MLM strategies aren’t good enough home business opportunities to earn additional income over the long term for most people. If you’re on the bottom of the pyramid, the income can be quite paltry.

Here are three home-based business opportunities that can help you earn a real income over the long haul.

Home Business Opportunities To Boost Your Income

Create Your Own Website

Okay, I’m a little biased with this home business opportunity. I think everyone needs a website. It’s a great creative outlet. It sets you personally up as your own brand. And, then it can be a launching pad for any home business opportunity that you want.

Do you want to sell items that you create? You should have a website to highlight your products. Do you want to freelance as a copywriter? You should have your own website to showcase your talent.

Everyone needs a website. And, you also need to own your name URL. It took me years to purchase hankcoleman.com. But, it was worth the wait. You should own your own name as a .com and .net. And, for that matter, you should own your children’s names as domain names too. $10 per year (or less in many cases) is a small price to pay when it can cost you hundreds down the line.

A great way to build your website is through sites like Wix.com. Wix.com makes it easy to build your own site, and they show how to make your own website if you’re a beginner.

Wix provides free websites for people with an easy drag and drop system that is geared towards the beginner who isn’t familiar with coding. There is no coding required with their system. They also have designer pre-made templates and photo galleries that you can use to help you build your website.

Wix can help you create an amazing website for free. It’s never been easier since you do not need to be tech savvy. It’s all drag and drop. You simply pick a template, add images and videos (either your own or theirs), making any changes to the layout you want, add text and then publish your site online instantly.

And, if you choose, Wix can help you add secure hosting and domain names to your website. It’s a one stop shop for building your website from scratch with little to no previous experience all wrapped up in one.

How To Learn To Invest With Wall Street Survivor

by Hank Coleman

How To Not Let Investing Intimidate You with Wall Street Survivor

Investing in the stock market is a great way to retire comfortably and make your money work for you. However, there are some risks involved, and it is crucial to learn as much as possible about the stock market before you get started. And, that’s where the Wall Street Survivor comes in! Wall Street Survivor teaches investors how to invest in the stock market and how to buy stocks by playing their stock market game. Their virtual stock market game is the best way to learn to invest initially without risking any of your own hard-earned money. Wall Street Survivor Courses Teach Investing Wall Street Survivor has step-by-step courses that each you how to invest using fundamental and technical analysis. Ever wonder what Jim Cramer … Read more

Should I Open a 529 College Savings Account?

by Hank Coleman

This guest post is by Kimberly Palmer, author of the new book, “Smart Mom, Rich Mom: How to Build Wealth While Raising a Family”.

For a long time, I resisted opening 529 college savings accounts for my two children. It seemed like a giant hassle, adding even more paperwork to an already complicated situation that included various retirement accounts and a mortgage. I could barely keep up with our current stack of accounts; how could I possibly manage more?

But after delaying the decision for a couple years, I finally decided that I couldn’t pass up the tax savings any longer. After all, if you open a 529 account, the earnings are not taxed, as long as you use the money for its intended purpose of education.

After conducting some basic research about our available state plans, I went ahead and opened the accounts. Here are three reasons why you should also consider opening up a 529 college savings account today:

The tax savings: The most obvious reason is also the most important: An analysis done by Vanguard for the New York Times showed that if you put $5,000 a year into a 529 savings account that grows 6 percent a year, then after eighteen years you’ll have $179,140 in the account for education expenses. (You can also play around with your own numbers using college savings calculators at FINRA.org, Bankrate.com, Fidelity.com, or your own financial institution.)

It forces you to save the future. It’s so easy to let daily and monthly expenses eat up your entire budget. But if you set up a college savings account and commit to making regular deposits into it, you’re setting money aside for the future and guaranteeing it won’t be spent on restaurant meals or new outfits instead.

It gives you a chance to talk to your kids about your educational values. Ever since we started actively saving for college, the topic has come up more in dinnertime conversations. Our kids are interested to hear that we want them to go to college one day, and even though they are still just learning to read, I think it gives them a good goal to plan for. They also are starting to grasp that college is expensive and that finding a way to pay for it one of our priorities, so we might make some other sacrifices in the short-term to get there.