Archive for "Sponsored Post"
Keeping Romance Alive
Posted on September 30, 2007 by Ching under Life, Sponsored Post, Web.
Brian and I often get mistaken for newlyweds. When we tell others that we’ve been together for over eight years – one year of dating (actually more like a few months), two years of living together and five years of marriage – they usually can’t believe it. They want to know what our secret is. There’s really not a big secret or method to it. Brian and I just make sure we set aside time do fun things and we always celebrate milestones. We don’t necessarily spend money on gifts for anniversaries, but we invest in memories. Our philosophy is that any new toy or trinket you have will only last a few years (if you’re lucky) before you grow tire of it or it breaks. Memories, on the other hand, last a lifetime.
These celebrations – for anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, etc. – need not be expensive. There are many resources on the internet that will give you ideas. Romance for Everyone is one such web site. They have many tips on how to cultivate love and romance, articles on relationships, and samples of love letters. The web site also has sample “I miss you” and “I’m sorry” letters, perfect for times when flowers aren’t enough to convey how you feel. Although it’s better if you write your own, the sample love letters are particularly helpful to those of us who are not so creative or don’t have a talent for letter-writing. At the very least the sample letters will help to inspire you.
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Planning for Retirement
Posted on September 29, 2007 by Ching under Life, Sponsored Post.
Brian and I met with a financial advisor, Jeff Smith at Intrust Bank, today to see if we can setup a Roth IRA for Brian. As you know I’ve gotten pretty obsessive about saving for retirement of late. I don’t know what happened but over the last few years I’ve transformed from a spender to a saver. Brian and I both agree that we want to make sacrifices now to enjoy our retirement later. We want to be like John and Wilma, one of the many wonderful couples we met during our Jamaican vacation this summer. They can afford to spend several weeks throughout the year traveling because they’ve planned for retirement well. My feeling is retirement won’t be that much fun if you don’t have the money to enjoy your favorite activities. Doing the same old things every day will get pretty boring after a while, unless it is playing poker :P. And I really hope that by planning carefully for our future Brian and I won’t end up having to work in order to support our retirement income. I see old people like that now and I feel really bad for them. I don’t want to share the same fate.
I feel pretty secure about our retirement plans. I have planned my retirement pretty carefully and I am confident that Brian and I will have enough money to live on after we retire even without the help of social security. However, we are staring a retirement savings plan for Brian because we want to have some slack. We don’t want to be just surviving when we retire. We want to enjoy. Besides that, since we don’t plan to have any children, we have to think about what we will do past the early stages of retirement. The fancy nursing homes are pretty expensive. We want to make sure we have enough saved up to afford to stay in one of the nicer ones; some of them are like resorts nowadays. Once we are too old to travel, we might as well live in a nursing home that is a lot like a resort environment.
As always, there is a plan B. If we end up not saving enough, we can always go back to the Philippines and retire there. If we retire there, then our dollars will buy us more and will last longer. Don’t ask me why I am fixated on this stuff now. I have at least 30 years ahead of me. I guess it could be that since I’m turning 30 next month, I feel like having some sort of retirement plan is paramount. And it is. It’s never too early to start saving for retirement.
Another thing tha people often take for granted is insurance. Paying for insurance is like a catch 22. On one hand you are paying for something that you might never use so that in the event that you need it you are covered. You don’t really benefit from it unless something bad happens and you have to file a claim, but at the same time you don’t really want a catastrophe either just so you can get your money’s worth. It’s something you buy but hope you never have to use.
Anyway, since it is something that you won’t really need unless an emergency comes up it’s very important to make good choices. Let’s take car insurance as an example. It isn’t always best to go with the cheapest. You should compare car insurance and see how satisfied their current customers are. If you have the cheapest rates, but when it comes time to file a claim they give you a lot of hassle and don’t want to pay out then it’s really not worth it. You want to go with someone you can trust. Choose a company that will deliver when the time comes.
The same goes for home insurance. This is something that one shouldn’t take lightly. One again, you hope never to have to use it but it doesn’t hurt to be covered. Planning for retirement and having insurance or some sort of contingency plan in case of disaster are two very important things when planning for your future.
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Portable Back-Up’s are a thing of the past.
Posted on September 18, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
I was browsing the web the other day looking for parts to build my dad a portable hard drive for his laptop. I came across this site that offered online back-up for next to nothing. That got me wondering, and I decided to do a little research. I found that on-line back up is the next big thing in digital storage. It used to be that if you had a lot of stuff to back up then you bought a drive, filled it up, got another and started the process all over again. Now we are moving into the age of online backup and anywhere storage. No more lugging around bulky hard drives that require power outlets or buzz away on the table top while your sitting at the library. Now you can access anything you store from anywhere in the world and have it at your fingertips. IDrive-E, a leading online backup service provider offers encrypted online backups up to 2GB for free and Unlimited storage for $4.95/month. It is easy to use, fast and secure. While there are other alternatives in consumer online backup space, IDrive-E is one step ahead of them in performance and features. Recent enhancements include near real time backup of frequently changing data. I truly think that this is the way to go for future storage needs. Its easy, it fast and you never have to worry about maintenance or space limitations ever again.
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Do It Yourself Flashback
Posted on September 16, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
My wife and I were going through some old web sites the other day looking at pictures from when we first bought the house. I got this wild hair up my butt and decided that I wanted to remove the old out of date wall paper from the walls. This was old 1970’s vinyl wall paper that looked like a bad acid trip. I first tried some wallpaper remover goo. this stuff was nasty and smelled like a wet yak on a hot summer day. when that didn’t work I decided to go for a more industrial method. I bought a wall paper steamer and used it to remove the wallpaper. this worked out perfectly, except for one small snag. The previous owners did not prime the walls before putting up the wallpaper. They simply papered over the sheet rock, creating a semi permanent bond between the sheet rock and the adhesive of the wall paper. this resulted in tearing and almost complete destruction of the sheet rock. Here are some pictures of the mess!
I learned my lesson and am starting on some smaller projects in the house. I will be remodeling my whole house but this time I learned a few helpful tips from the “Do It Yourself” website. The have all sorts of great tips and classes that you can take as well as forums and videos. I learned to build a bookshelf, put down flooring and hang sheet rock. I have learned so much that I think this will be a different experience than before, knowledge is power and I have learned more than I even knew before. Hopefully I will be able to show some pictures soon of the finished product, this time I am prepared and not just jumping into a project head first and blind. Thanks to the DVD’s and the many project notes on the site I am prepared to tackle anything.
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Water, Water Everywhere
Posted on September 3, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
As many of you know I frequently write about the home remodel that I am gearing up for. As part of that remodel we are looking at different things that we will need to purchase like building materials and fixtures for our bath room and kitchen. I often use the web to search out ideas for our new remodel and this time I was looking for some interesting ideas for our bath room. I was looking for a shower faucet that would look good but wanted to remain somewhat neutral in appearance. This is hard because the trends right now are fancy and somewhat over the top. I came across Zoe Industries on the web that sell every kind of shower faucet that you can imagine, fancy, high end and just plain if that’s what you need. I was impressed with the quality of there products and the ease of there web site. They have a large selection and now my only problem is, I have so many to choose from; picking one out is going to take me a while!
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