Money Blog Site

Here is my story about the new idea I had to make money.

IDEA

I had this idea for a very cool site that I thought would make me a ton of money, but I could not figure out a good domain name for it.  I thought of two different names, but only 1 .net domain was available and no .com domains.  But then I switch it it up and came up with the perfect domain name.  I went to the .com domain, and it was for sale.  I emailed the owner and told him I would spend $15 for it.  I would have went up to $25, but I wanted some bargaining room.  He emailed me back and told me that the domain would normally cost $5,000 - $10,000, but he would sell it to me for $3,000.  I emailed him back (he seemed like a nice guy as he visited this site and said there was some things I could do to optimize it), and I told him I would go $25 tops and sorry for wasting his time.

GoDaddy

I visited the site a few days later, and the registration had expired.  The owner had a few days left to re-register through GoDaddy or the site would be sold or put up for auction.  This made me laugh at the owner as he just let a “$5,000 - $10,000″ domain name slip away, and because he was trying to get me to buy it for $3,000.  I then decided to back order the domain for around $18.  I used a 10% coupon to lessen the amount, but I think $18 is still a little pricey for a back order.  I figured the guy had 10 days to 2 weeks to renew the domain, and if he didn’t, I would get it since I back ordered it.  I was wrong.

GoDaddy currently has the domain registered in their name, and they have the domain parked.  This makes me mad as I want the domain for development purposes, but I can’t get it because they are using it for nothing.  I am going to call GoDaddy tonight, but needless to say, in the meantime, I am pissed.

Anyone have an suggestions on how I can get the domain, or do I just have to wait until GoDaddy let’s it go?

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Here is the reason why I hate Dick’s Sporting Goods, and why I will never go back:

You can usually walk into Dick’s Sporting Goods and never have a problem finding what you want. When I used to go, I would walk around maybe 5 to 1o minutes and find what I wanted without any help. This is not the problem with Dick’s. The problem is when you actually have to deal with someone that works there.

Like I said, I would spend less than 10 minutes walking around the store, but I would spend 15+ minutes waiting to checkout. One time there were only 2 people in line, me being the 2nd, and it still took 15 minutes. I think the problem is 50% the fault of the people that work there and 50% the fault of the people that shop there. No offensive to people who read this and shop there, but the people I have seen in there are all idiots.

And after you finally get to the register, the price is never correct. When they ring up the product, the price tag is always less than what the cash register says. Then you get the product home, and it is subpar, so you take it back. Then you have to deal with the Dick’s people again. What a hassle!

Now I know you are saying that has to be just the one store you go to, or used to go to. I have been to Dick’s in 3 different major cities, and all of them are the same way.

Stay Away!

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One of the many reasons why my net worth did not increase last month was because I bought a Nintendo Wii. I bought the console and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for $300. The console came with Wii Sports which is five sports games in one:

• Tennis
• Baseball
• Bowling
• Golf
• Boxing

Wii Sports is enough to keep you occupied for month and existing month. I got hooked on Baseball and Tennis. My mother came over one weekend, and she got hooked on Tennis and Bowling. Now I am in the process of getting her one for Mother’s Day. The Zelda game was decent, but I hate games that you have check a walkthrough every 5 minutes to get through it. I have since sold it.

The Wii is a great way for people to exercise. I always get a workout when I play the Wii, especially the game that makes you swing the bat at 30 pitches in a row. Jumping around and swinging a tennis racket, or throwing your arms out in a punching motion really gets you going. The best part is, it is so fun to play. I also rented Madden 2007, and it had a lot of sweet innovations compared to the other console versions, so I will probably buy the 08 version.

While you may think $250 is a lot for a game console, it is not much compared to the others. Add in the exercise you get from it, and you seal the deal with me. The only drawback is that there are not a lot of good games out there for it. I want a baseball game that has the major league teams, but there are none out, and none will be released any time soon.

Bottomline, if you see one, you should buy one. If not for yourself, I think you can still make a $50+ profit off eBay.

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I hope is everyone is having/had a good Easter Sunday.  Mine has been quite interesting so far.

I was outside cutting the grass because it has been raining and snowing here the last few days.  While I was cutting the grass, I noticed something on the ground.  It was a dead bunny.  I do not know if it was God telling me I shouldn’t be cutting my grass on Easter or if it was a neighbor who does not like me.  All I know is that it scared the hebee-gebees (spelling?) out of me.

While I was cleaning up after I cut the grass, I looked across the street and saw some people going to door to door.  I recognized one the men as a Jehovah’s Witness who approached me before.  He must have saw me outside because he didn’t stop at my house.  What nerve do these people have to come around to annoy people on a holiday?  If they would have come to my door, I would have given them an earful.  I think this is worse than people selling things going door to door on Easter.  In this case, they are trying to convert people to another religion on a religious holiday.  That takes some nerve.

Anyway, Happy Easter!

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If you haven’t noticed from the massive amount of posts, I am back. I did not want to post during my Blog Madness tournament, as I wanted the Tournament to be center stage. I had fun putting on the Tournament, and I did get some benefits:

• I found a lot of interesting PF Blogs that I now frequent.
• I got a bunch of links to my site and a lot of traffic. The traffic really slowed down as of late. I was averaging over 100 visitors a day, but after the Sweet Sixteen I was only getting around 30. Hopefully now that I am back to regular posts, my traffic will increase.
• My blog got a ton of comments.  I do not know if this helps my blog in anyway, but I like the idea of having over 3 times as many comments as posts.

While the tournament was going, I started to search the internet for more blogs and more websites. I will be posting about the interesting ones that I find, i.e. Tyler Cruz. There are a few more I have lined up, and more I still need to write. I also have been storing up ideas for posts, and those will be coming out soon. I have a huge whiteboard at home filled with ideas.

My goal from this point on is expand this blog as much as I can.  This blog will have it’s 3 month anniversary soon.  I am still waiting for a Page Rank, but I think that could be coming soon.  I have broke the 300,000 rank on Alexa.  I am also on my way to breaking the 100,000 mark on Technorati.  More than anything, I would like to bring better content to the blogosphere.  I have some great articles lined up, and hopefully from this point on, I reach higher level of informative content.

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If it may seem like I write a lot of banks, it’s because I have the worst luck with them. I just received a letter in the mail from Chase stating that my funds from my last two deposits are on hold. The reason, and I quote, “the deposited check(s) is/are not consistent with the account’s normal deposit activity”. Well, since these deposits were the FIRST TWO deposits I made, I would hope they are not part of the normal deposit activity. I DON’T HAVE A NORMAL DEPOSIT ACTIVITY, IT’S A NEW ACCOUNT.

Another thing that happened yesterday was that my neighbor knocked on the door and said Hi. He also said that Fifth Third called his house about us. He didn’t say what they told him, but he brought over the contact information for the lady that called. He said it sounded like the lady knew us, and that she didn’t say who she was until the call was almost over. My wife called the lady back, and if you know my wife, she was P.O.ed. The lady said that she called our neighbors because she could not get a hold of us. Well, I have talked to someone from Fifth Third the past three days in a row. My wife has talked to someone from Fifth Third two of the past three days. My wife has decided to go tomorrow to the bank with all the account information from her account, and try to resolve it. Basically she is going to have to pay it off because Fifth Third only cares about the money and not about customer service.

A Third thing that happened was that I found out that the iGoBanking account I signed up for was denied. Basically they could not confirm her credit (probably because I put in her new last name, and she has not changed it yet). Well, I applied over two weeks ago for the bank account, and I didn’t even find out, my wife got an email about it. You would think they would email me about it. I got an email saying my wife completed her part of the joint account, but it never said anything about her being denied. This is just a hassle as I applied twice for the bank, so that is two soft credit pulls. If I apply again, that is three.

Some day when it comes to banks …

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Sorry for the absence, but one of the reasons why is because I bought a HANNspree Xv 37 inch Widescreen LCD HDTV from Buy.com. While there were not a lot of reviews of there, I took a gamble, and it paid off big time. This TV is AMAZING. I paid $899.99, but I already mailed in the $200 rebate. (Side note: I photo-copied everything including the UPC as I have gotten burned before from not doing so.)

When first watching this TV with an S-Video cord hooked up, it was good. But after ordering an HDMI cord from HandHeldItems.com for $7.84 shipped (use coupon code “hdmihdmi”), this TV has the best picture I have ever seen. With a little tweaking on the cable box to get the 1080i reception, I am in love. Even Spongebob Squarepants in 480i looks great. I only get the local channels in High-Def, but I am am very tempted to spend the $7.95 a month for the rest of the channels.

I have already ordered a new UpConverting DVD Player with HDMI output from Walmart.com. I also had to order another HDMI cord from HandHeldItems. I can’t wait to watch all my DVDs on this TV.

The one downfall I see from this TV is that I am having to spend more money for “accessories”. The DVD Player is an example, even though the family badly needed a new one as we were using a portable one. We will also need a new Audio Receiver as the one we had does not work with this TV and the HDMI connections. I will have to buy a Receiver that can connect HDMI (this will probably run $600 or so). I am also thinking about a PS3, another $600. I think I will get to get the Receiver first, but I can’t wait to see Madden in 1080i High-Def.

All-in-all, though I spent $700 for the TV, I am very happy with the purchase. Some people may see it as unnecessary, but those people have obviously never seen this TV in action.

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The wife and I opened a new Checking Account at Chase yesterday. We just got their free checking with no fees and a debit card. We really did not need anything else. Interest would have been nice, but the 46 cents a year we were getting before was easily sacrificed. We liked it because it was a bigger bank so when we travel they will have some in the area. They have a branch by both of our parents’ homes. We also liked it because of the $75 sign-up bonus for using Direct Deposit.

We switched from Fifth Third because of the horrible customer service. It is easily the worst bank I have ever had to deal with. The worst part of all is when you have to call and talk to a Customer Service rep. These people are all idiots, and I feel bad for anyone who has to deal with them. Most of the time the person said they would transfer my call, then they hung up on me.

On top of this was the fact they charged my wife $131 because of a fraudulent charge made to her Debit Card. Someone at Vermont Teddy Bear put in too many numbers for the credit card number, and my wife’s card got charged. They refunded the money, but after my wife closed the account, they wanted the money back. Needless to say in having to deal with Customer Service to resolve this issue, it never got resolved.

Once we get our tax refund, we will be closing our accounts at Fifth Third and never looking back. We only opened a checking account at Chase because I did not want to be transferring money back and forth all the time like I did with the old accounts. I have a High-Yield Savings Account that I will be using for my savings. I think I will open another High-Yield account and have one for our emergency fund and one for our “New House” fund. I want to buy a $200,000 house by the time my daughter goes to 1st grade (4 years), so I will need to save $40,000.

Moral of this story is to steer clear of Fifth Third. My wife’s parents agree that it is a horrible bank, so they are switching too.

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I just received a profit-sharing bonus from my company because we had a very good quarter. The bonus is about one month’s salary. This is just the start of what seems like a huge money stream coming in. I received $150 from one of my cell phone rebates, and another $150 from the other cell phone will be on its way soon. I just got a new job (and a new raise), and I will be receiving about 2 weeks extra pay for my extra Paid Time Off. I should be receiving another $2000 from my tax return. Needless to say, my wife and I will be coming into a lot of money that we have no idea what to do with.

With this new money, I have come up with a lot of topics to write about, but I will start with the obvious first question. What should I do with my extra month bonus? I had planned on putting 2/3 of it into the Emergency Fund. Some of this money going into the Emergency Fund will be used to buy baby stuff (as my wife is due in July). We do not need any baby things right now, but just knowing we have the money waiting for it gives my wife and I piece of mind. The other 1/3 will be divided between an extra principal payment towards the mortgage (7.25%) and my wife’s private student loan debt (9.85%).

One of my goal’s for this year was to pay about $7000 of my wife’s private student loan debt. Let me just say that this is just the tip of the iceberg as she has around $14,000 in private student loan debt, $16,000 in federal student loan debt, and I have about $14,000 in federal student loan debt. The federal loan debt does not concern me as the interest rate is around 4.5%. The private student loan interest rate, like I said before, is 9.85%. This is the highest interest rate on any loan I have, so my goal is to get this paid of as fast as I can.

I was thinking about investing some of this new money, but I am a very passive investor. I do not like to lose money, ever. When I do the ShareBuilder promos, I know that the stock I buy is basically free as I get the money back. I think I will wait for some of the other money I have coming in before I start investing. I will just take a good chunk of the money I have and put it into my 4.75% savings account.

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I have wanted a new LCD TV for a long time now, and I am in a big debate with myself and my wife about whether to buy one now or after the Super Bowl. I was always told (and remember from last year) that after the Super Bowl, the prices on TVs went back up. I was also told that going to places after the Super Bowl, you can find open box TVs where people return them after using them for the Super Bowl. They may be cheaper, but I would much rather have a brand new one all to myself.

I told myself I would buy a 32 inch for under $500 or a 37 inch for around $700. I have only found one 37 inch under $700, but it was without a Tuner. The reason I want a Tuner is in case we drop our cable, I could still use the TV.

I am looking at two 37 inch TVs this week. One from Target, and one from CompUSA. I like the one from CompUSA because my brother has the same brand, and he loves it. I love this TV too, and I told myself I would like to get an Olevia TV. I just got a new Discover card, so if I buy the TV, I have 0% APR until October.

So should I buy now, or wait until next week?

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