Archive for May, 2010

I recently discovered the beauty of this app when my kid played with it while we were out shopping for outdoor electric grills. Unlike other apps, it lets you choose which filter you would like to use and save into your photo album. It has 8 filters, which you can see below. I use it a lot – that way I don’t have to edit pictures when I’m scrapping them (I am a scrapbooker too!)

Lomo Camera is similar to Camera Bag for the simple reason that it gives you several options to edit the photos you’ve taken. Whereas Camera Bag simulates different camera types that became famous through the years, Lomo Camera takes only one of those famous old cameras for a spin — the Lomo LC-A.

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/mobile/iphone/reviews/47527.aspx#ixzz0p5XFkyLj

1. Falling in Love … With Your Investments

It can be great to fall in love with a person, but stocks can get you into deep trouble. No one should have more than 10 percent of his or her wealth locked in one stock. Just ask the former employees of Enron, who lost both their jobs and their retirement savings when the company filed for bankruptcy 10 years ago.

2. Chasing a Fantasy

You’ve read it 100 times: “Past performance is not an indication of future returns.” But no one appears to believe it. One extensive study that looked at 19 years of market data found that investors consistently poured money into “hot” investments just as they were about to turn cold. That left the average investor with returns that fell way below the market as a whole and didn’t even keep up with inflation. 

3. Equating “On Sale” With “Good Deal”

Consider two television sets: Both are $500, but one is marked down from $800. Which one do you buy? If you’re being reasonable, you buy the one that got the better rating in Consumer Reports. But most people buy the one that’s on sale, says Matt Wallaert, a consultant for LendingTree, which owns the money management Web site Thrive. In fact, even people who would never have spent $500 on a television often will when it’s discounted — simply because it’s so cheap!

4. Retaliatory Spending

You don’t need it. You don’t want it. But, dang it, no one is going to tell you that you can’t have it. New York psychologist Bonnie Eaker Weil calls it “POP” spending — for “pissed-off purchases.” She did a survey before publishing her latest book, Financial Infidelity, and estimated from the results that POP spending accounts for about $424 billion in purchases each year.

 

One of Weil’s Brooklyn-based clients, for example, went on a retaliatory $500 shopping spree when her husband gave one of her beat-up old jackets to charity without asking her first. When she got home, she informed him that since he didn’t like her old jacket, she had gotten a new one from Saks Fifth Avenue. Such purchases can also result from a fight with your boss, mother, or best friend, according to Weil.

But as good as retaliatory spending may feel, it can do real damage to your financial health. Tarbox says a better approach is to talk out the anger, hurt, or disappointment — or just your bad day — with a friend, or even a professional counselor. If you have to spend money on a psychologist, it’s probably still cheaper than the golf clubs or designer shoes you put on your credit card after that last argument with the boss.

5. Hanging On to Debt

The number of people who have money in savings accounts, earning less than 2 percent, while carrying debt on credit cards that charge more than 14 percent is “shocking,” Wallaert says. Of Thrive’s customers who have more than $500 in credit card debt, almost 40 percent have more than enough in savings to pay it off, he says.

You might argue that you need those savings for emergencies. And you do need some emergency savings, allows Frank C. Presson III, a financial planner in Tucson, Ariz. But if you’ve got considerably more savings than debt, there’s no excuse. Keep one month’s worth of living expenses in the bank, even at those sorry returns, Presson advises. Use the rest to pay off the high-cost debt. Then rebuild the emergency savings, not the debt. Worst-case scenario: You still have the credit cards (now with zero balances), and you can tap them in an emergency.

6. Parental Martyrdom

An emerging problem involves parents who spend themselves to the edge of insolvency bailing out their children. “It starts from a good place, basically from wanting to be a good parent,” Klontz says. “They’ll say that Johnny is going through a rough patch and needs some help. But it becomes financial enabling.”

7. Cyber Insecurity

Roughly half the world has signed on for free online banking, which makes money management easier and saves the typical consumer about $50 annually in postage stamps. Among the people who don’t use online banking, 41 percent say they’ve held back because of security concerns, according to a recent survey by Gartner Research.

What do banks typically do to secure online customer accounts? They put up multiple firewalls, which are the equivalent of brick enclosures around your house, and they have techno-security teams attempting to find the weak spots and shore them up. They also patrol the firewalls 24/7, looking for climbers.

Now, let’s look at your mailbox. It’s probably unlocked and unguarded — just what a thief needs to steal your credit cards. In reality, the chance of becoming a victim of identity theft or financial fraud as the result of low-tech crime — whether it’s somebody stealing cards or “spoofing” you into providing private information via e-mail — is a lot greater than the chance that somebody will breach your bank’s online vault.

So sign up already and save the stamps. And if you’re worried about security, check your account regularly to make sure there’s no suspicious activity.

8. State of Denial

Remember when you were 2 years old and you thought you could hide by closing your eyes? When the stock market plunged last winter and spring, that’s just what investors did, leaving their quarterly statements sitting unopened on the counter.

If watching too closely would make you abandon a reasoned investment strategy, go ahead and ignore a statement or two. But losses don’t go away just because you don’t look at them, Tarbox points out. At some point, particularly if you’re nearing retirement or need the dough for some other reason, you need to take a look, assess where you are, and figure out what to do about it.

9. Hoarding Money

Children of the Depression did a lot of this — stuffing $20 bills in their bibles or balling up tinfoil and rubber bands so they wouldn’t have to buy more. But planners say that this is often a problem with wealthy and responsible older folks today: They’re so afraid of running out of money that they don’t enjoy the money that they have.

“When people deny themselves things that they could clearly afford, you have to ask them what they’re saving that money for,” Tarbox says. “We have to tell them that they’re not spending enough.”

If you’re worried about running out of money, sit down with a financial planner and work out the math. Make sure you consider worst-case investment scenarios, not just the averages. That will make you more comfortable about weathering a bad patch like the one we just muddled through. Then, if you still have more than enough, make a plan that will allow you to enjoy your wealth by either spending the excess or giving it away.

Money, after all, is a means to an end — not the end itself. You save it to make you, and the people you love, calm and comfortable. And it’s a lot more fun to take the kids and grandkids on vacation — or provide them with college money or other gifts while you’re around to get the hugs and kisses — than to know that they’ll inherit a fortune after you die.

If your biggest problem is how to get rid of blackheads and what shoe to wear today, there are people saving the environment, one tree at a time.

And now thanks to brilliant and caring people, you can now save the environment, even by blogging. Imagine saving the world by planting trees, one blog post at a time.

Yes, my blog is carbon neutral – and getting your blog to be one is ridiculously easy!

Just click on the button below!

You must know I love quotes and inspiring messages. I subscribe to blogs and twitter accounts to be able to get a daily dose of words to live by. In turn, I post them to my FB wall and retweet spam them all the time.

I think one quote is sure to be enough for one person to get inspired, sooner or later. I love these lessons from Abe Lincoln. People always refer to him as one of the greatest US presidents of all time. I learned from these lessons that being prepared for every opportunity is better than worrying and waiting for it to come (wrinkles will appear and you’d need prototype 37c for it!)

1. Prepare for Success
   
   

   “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”

   Before you can succeed, you must prepare. When Lincoln was an unknown attorney in the backwoods of Illinois he was preparing for success, when Lincoln became an Illinois State Senator, he was preparing for success, and even when he lost the election for the U.S. senate twice, he was preparing for success. What are you doing in preparation for success? Lincoln said, “I will prepare and some day my chance will come.”

2. Hustle
   
   

   “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

   You can’t stroll to a goal, you must hustle; you must move quickly in order to gain the momentum necessary to break free from the gravitational pull of the commonplace. The best things in life come to those who hustle. Are you hustling?

3. Remember That Greatness is Possible
   
   

   “That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.”

   If someone else can succeed in the business that you’re in, that is proof that you can succeed as well. If someone else can become rich in the state that you’re in, that is proof that you become rich as well. You have all that the greatest of men have had: a mind, and a will. Don’t make excuses, if someone else can do it, so can you… And who knows? You may be able to do it faster and better; never underestimate you abilities.

4. Become Worthy of a Good Reputation
   
   

   “Reputation is like fine china, once broken it’s very hard to repair.”

   Work to be, the way you want to be perceived. Don’t try to look good, be good. A good name is more valuable than fine gold and “choice” rubies.
   Practice becoming honorable.
   You can be just as honest, have just as much integrity, walk in just as much humility, and possess just as much discipline as the greatest men who have ever lived.

5. Make the Years Count
   
   
   

   “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

   
   Lincoln didn’t live to a very old age, but the “life in his years” made a profound impact on the world. Are you making your years count? Are you changing the world? You’re capable of it; if you’re able to read and understand these words, then you have the ability to make a profound impact, and that’s not just meaningless rhetoric, it’s a very real reality, but will you grasp it, will you believe it and make it “your” reality.

6. See the Brighter Side of Things
   
   

   “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”

   If you look for something to complain about, you will certainly find it! There’s “always” an opportunity to be “offended!” Don’t take these opportunities; they “never” lead to anything positive. Learn to see the roses in life; life is filled with roses, if you’ll take the time to see them.

7. Constantly Improve
   
   

   “The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can…”

   
   If you improve everyday, imagine the improvements you could make over the course of 20 years. You could become successful “in-just-about” any field in 20 years. You can make a significant impact on the world in 20 years! Remember, slow and steady wins the race; Rome was not built in a day. Work to get a little better everyday, and it time, you will accomplish your dreams.

Source

Lindsay Lohan is an everyday royalty on paparazzi blog sites. Paparazzis like to cover her everyday routine because it has a potential for a scandal all the time. She reminds me of Britney Spears during her wild and lost days, before she admitted herself to drug rehab and got some drug treatment.

I can’t quite reconcile the pretty little lady who acted brilliantly in the movie “The Parent Trap” can go lambasting her ex-girlfriend and dad over at Twitter, appear so drunk after clubbing that it’s obvious she needs to go to alcohol rehab.

I sincerely hope that whatever her father is doing is going to work. And that it’s not another self-serving purpose for his popularity. She needs someone who can control her life, get her alcohol treatment rehab in an alcohol treatment center and guide her as she straightens her life out!