As many of you are already aware, the United States Internal Revenue Service is in the process of issuing millions of checks as part of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. These payments average $600 for individuals and $1,200 for those filing jointly. Anytime money is involved, it tends to bring out the criminal element ready to take advantage of unsuspecting citizens. The Economic Stimulus Act is no exception. Over the past several days, I have received dozens of official looking emails that appear to be from the Internal Revenue Service asking me to click on a link in order to expedite receiving my rebate. Below is a copy of the email I recently received: Read the rest of this entry »

I came across a cool web based file sharing tool from File Dropper.com that offers ultra low cost, unlimited file hosting (up to 5 GB per file) up to a total of 250 GB. You can assign different levels of access permissions ranging from public, password protected and private. An email option is available as well to email a link to anyone you want to have access to your files.

I quickly registered for an account and uploaded a couple of files to give it a try. Seems to work well. I was able to upload and retrieve files easily.

Below is a link to the offer page if you’d like to check it out. They are currently offering a free 7 day trial so you can test it out for yourself:

File Dropper.com

I welcome your comments regarding your experiences with this service.

With gasoline now approaching $4 a gallon (or higher in some parts of the US and globally,) anything you can do to increase your car’s efficiency and increase the miles you can squeeze out of a gallon of gas will help you keep more of your money. Below are my top ten methods you can use to save gas and save money: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a funny take on Mother’s Day courtesy of Igniter Media. Happy Mother’s Day Mom!!

The desire to work from home is often mentioned as a top reason for going from being an “employee” and striking out on your own working for yourself. When you do make the leap from just having a job to full fledged entrepreneur, it requires a disciplined approach to your daily work in order to keep things on track. You no longer will have a supervisor or manager watching you every second and telling you what to do and when to do it. Success as an entrepreneur requires you to have self motivational skills to get things done and management your work time effectively. What follows are my top success and time management tips for the newly self employed home business owner: Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re like me, you probably have received tempting zero percent credit card offers in the mail from time to time. These offers usually loudly proclaim that you are “pre-approved” for a new Visa or MasterCard with a special 0% “introductory” interest rate. This rate is usually dependent on you agreeing to transfer the balance of one of your other high interest rate credit card accounts. While these offers can definitely save you money, they can also be traps which can cost you far more money in the log run than you expect. Below are five potential traps to watch out for if you decide to take the zero percent interest rate plunge: Read the rest of this entry »

The time has come. The much anticipated Site Hoppin Toolbar private beta has been released. I’ve imbedded a “how to” video made by Josh over at the Unconventional Marketing Blog explaining what the toolbar is and how you can use it to significantly increase traffic to you blog or website:

Max over at Site Hoppin has made available the beta release to a few select friends including me. I have had the opportunity to download version 1.1 and have started playing around with it. It definitely makes “hoppin” from site to site a lot faster and eliminates the “browser in browser” configuration. You’re also able to access all your pages as well as easily rate and tag sites.

Starting today, for all Money Maker Times.com readers, you may download the beta release of the Site Hoppin toolbar for yourself to install and use. The download is available at: Read the rest of this entry »

David Allen, well known productivity consultant, is the creator of the Getting Things Done time management method. The above video is a presentation he gave to an audience at Google last October on GTD (Getting Things Done) and the two keys to sustaining a healthy lifestyle.

David Allen, 62, grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana and attended New College of Florida, in Sarasota, Florida. David Allen has had many jobs, in fact he claims to have had 35 different occupations before the age of 35. Among the diverse list of careers, Mr. Allen has held jobs as a magician, karate teacher, landscaper, glass-blowing lathe operator, U-Haul dealer and moped salesman among many others. He began in the field of “Productivity Enhancement” in the 1980s when he was contracted by Lockheed to design a program for executives and managers.

David Allen is the founder of the David Allen Company, which focuses on productivity and executive coaching. Allen has written two books, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, which describes his productivity program and Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life, a collection of newsletter articles he has written.

What does everyone think about the methods David Allen offers in his presentation? I invite your opinions and comments. Enjoy the video.

Your credit score is the most influential factor in determining whether you will be approved for a loan or mortgage and the interest rate you will have to pay. Your credit score or FICO (the term refers to the company, Fair Issac Corporation, which created the method used to calculate credit scores) is a measurement that the credit reporting bureaus use to predict your creditworthiness and helps creditors determine whether to grant you credit. Your score can be any where between 300 to 850. The higher the number, the more credit worthy you are and the lower the interest rate you will pay. Since having a high credit score number directly correlates with the amount of money your loan or mortgage will cost you, it obviously pays to maximize the conditions that will give you the highest score possible.

Below are six ways to maximize your own credit score: Read the rest of this entry »

As most people know who use the Internet, computer security is a huge concern. Most of us buy and install one of the well known virus protection software packages (Norton AntiVirus and McAfee are but two examples) to hopefully protect our operating systems and files from unwanted infection. Most of the software packages involve the purchase of the initial installation plus some sort of paid subscription that you must renew annually to access the frequent update downloads that are distributed, sometimes daily. These updates are vital to keep your virus protection up to date in order to combat the latest exploits from affecting your system. Along with costing way too much for what these products deliver, the more popular packages tend to greatly affect the overall performance of your computer. This results in painfully slow web surfing and other computer tasks due to the computing resources these packages require to operate in the background. Read the rest of this entry »