Going Green without Spending Green

We have this mistaken idea that to go green, we have to spend green dollars. Well, actually, you do not need to strain your budget just to adopt an eco-friendly lifestyle. In fact, you will be fattening up your wallets with these tips on going green without spending your green dollars. And trust us, these ways are easy, effective and convenient.

Reduce Food Waste

Your grocery bill may constitute more than 50 percent of your total household bills. Thus, any and all efforts to reduce food waste will add up to big benefits to your pockets and to the environment for many reasons. You can achieve this end by:

* Reducing your food consumption in terms of shopping for groceries.
* Using leftovers for new dishes and enforcing a no-dregs policy
* Planning meals in advance to avoid too many leftovers

Use Heaters Wisely

We are so dependent on hot water for many of our needs from washing our bodies to washing our dishes and clothes. Well, go green by choosing cold water for many activities in the house. Start by taking cold showers when the weather permits instead of hot tub baths. Then progress into using unheated tap water for washing your hands, dishes and clothes. Studies have shown that tap water is just as effective in killing germs as hot water. The trick is in washing your hands properly for 20 seconds, soaking the clothes for 30 minutes to remove stubborn dirt and washing off the dregs on the eating utensils before placing on a full dishwasher.

Unplug the Appliances

You can save as much as 10-15 percent of your electricity bill simply by unplugging the cords from their sockets when these are not in use. This is because so-called phantom electricity does not flow from the grid into your appliances. And speaking of appliances, you can save money by either buying ones with the Energy Star logo or ones that have been refurbished. Of course, make sure that the refurbished appliances are also energy-efficient. You ought to save money in the long run instead of sticking to your run-down appliances. However, do recycle said old appliances with the manufacturers or with the recycling centers.

Use Recycled Materials for Your Home

As much as possible, use recycled materials for your home. You can purchase scrap lumber from hardware stores, vintage wood and glass panels from garage sales and old houses, utensils and ornaments made of recycled materials from green stores and sites, to name a few options. You will often spend less on these items and yet get as much mileage as you possibly can from them. Better yet, you should adopt the motto of environmentalists everywhere - reduce, reuse and recycle. You will soon find that indeed being eco-friendly has its rewards for you and for your children's children.

Starting today, take a look around your home and see what else needs to be done to be as environmentally-friendly as possible.



Read about ways to start going green in the kitchen and more about the different ways to recycle.

Benefits of Working In a Data Center

As the Internet continues to grow and produce large amounts of traffic the need for data centers and data center management increases. This continued growth creates data center jobs and IT careers in the technology field. Data Centers not only provide large hubs for Internet traffic, but it also completes the network infrastructure of most mid-large size companies. Data centers usually house thousands of computers, servers, and technical components. This in itself tells why it is a tremendous benefit to working within a data center. Just the amount of knowledge you can gain while on the job is rewarding enough. Having a data center job puts you on the bleeding edge of technology and hi-tech equipment. By working in a data center you will naturally be more advance than your peers who work in different industries experienced in technology.

Data center jobs consist of many different job types which fall under information technology, such as: system administration, network administration, IT security, computer operations, help desk support, server administration, pc repair, engineering, and so much more. If you ever been to school for a computer-related field or you always had an interest to work with computers then working in a data center should have been at the top of your list. Though, most do not consider data center jobs when looking for a job in the information technology field. This is mainly because data center jobs are merely overlooked. Most individuals consider working for a company or corporation in an industry other than data centers, mainly in a company like where they previously worked, before being technically inclined. Gaining a data center job is exactly why you went to school or aligned yourself within the technology field of work.

Data centers are inhabited with individuals who are fairly intelligent, usually skilled professionals with an educational background. The benefit of surrounding yourself with knowledgeable individuals is that it enhances your own technical aptitude and empowers your keen technical sense. Another benefit to working in a data center is many times the operations are around the clock (24/7), which means you may have the option of being flexible and working flex schedules, at your leisure. The biggest benefit of working in a data center is “stability”. The fact being that so many operations, calculations, and transactions depend solely on data centers - society cannot afford to lose data centers. Data centers will always be around and continue to thrive, so this means data center jobs will never fall short. Even in the wake of economic hardships, data centers still did not take a plunge or lose its clarity. If you are reading this article right now, then more than likely at some point a data center involvement allowed me to deliver this article to you. Data center jobs are for life!


Data Center Migration

Data center migration services

Here's How the Economic Stimulus Package Affects Your Taxes

President Obama has just signed the "American Recovery & Reinvestment Act." While much of the news focuses on the spending provisions, it also includes $287 billion in Tax Cuts:

The act includes a new "Making Work Pay" credit for 2009-10 to offset the first $400 of Social Security tax you pay ($800 for joint filers). It phases out as your adjusted gross income (AGI) tops $75,000 ($150,000 joint).

There's a new higher education tax credit of up to $2,500 for your first $4,000 in college expenses. The credit phases out as your AGI tops $80,000 ($160,000 joint). You can also use Section 529 plan funds for computer-related expenses, including software and online access (2009-10 only).

Buying a Car? You can deduct state and local sales and excise tax you pay on a new (but not used) car, light truck, RV, or motorcycle you buy between January 1 and November 30, 2009. The deduction is limited to purchase amounts up to $49,000 and phases out as your AGI tops $125,000 (250,000 joint).

Buying a Home? The act increases the "first time Home buyer" credit from $7,500 to $8,000, extends the purchase period through November 30, 2009, and eliminates the requirement to repay the credit for homes purchased in 2009. This credit phases out as your AGI tops $75,000 (150,000 joint).

Buying Business Equipment? The act extends the current $250,000 first-year expensing limit and 50% bonus depreciation provisions for purchases through 2009.

Finally, the bill "patches" the Alternative Minimum Tax, to protect 24 million mostly middle-income filers from the AMT's bite.

Congress passed these new rules with less deliberation than usual, so there's bound to be confusion. To learn more, contact your Tax Advisor.

Rachel Butler

Get your Economic Stimulus Package Bill news at iTaxRebate.com

Analyzing A Nursing Continuing Education Opportunity

Continuing Education (CE) is vital for the further development of a nursing career, but you shouldn’t choose just any courses to add to your credentials. Each CE program that you choose should enhance your knowledge, make you a more valuable employee and further you on your career path. Evaluating your nursing continuing education opportunities for each of the following criteria can help you choose just the right courses to keep you on the right career and professional path.

Is the Course Relevant to my Job?

Choose courses that enhance your ability to do your job. If your current position is in the school nursing environment, a continuing education course about the latest advances in ER technology isn’t likely to have much relevance to your job. On the other hand, some courses that seem to be irrelevant on the surface may have subtle connections that aren’t obvious at first glance. Is some of your school nursing time spent in a full-service on campus clinic? In that case, that emergency room CE course may just offer something of value.

Does it Enhance my Career Opportunities?

Even if you’re content in your position and have no plans to seek advancement, you should evaluate how a chosen continuing education course fits into your plans. The world of medicine changes every day, and so do expectations of nursing professionals. Keep your eye on advances in your chosen segment of the nursing field to be sure that the courses you choose keep you qualified for the jobs to which you aspire.

Is the Course Accredited?

If your main goal in taking nursing continuing education courses is to garner CE hours toward recertification or licensure, then accreditation is vital. Check to be sure that the courses you choose are accredited by The American Nurses Credentialing Center.

Is it Offered by Respected Professionals in the Field?

Do you recognize the names of the instructors, or of the institution offering the course you’re planning to take? Popularity isn’t always a measure of quality, but it is one way of checking the credentials of instructors and institutions. If you’re not familiar with either the instructors or the offering institutions, ask around. Nurses’ forums on the Internet are great places to find out about programs that you might be considering – and you’ll hear directly from professionals just like you whether or not the course material was helpful and suitable for your continuing education.

Is the Learning Style Accessible for You?

One often overlooked facet of evaluating a nursing course is personal learning style. No one knows better than you do whether you learn best with hands-on instruction, or can absorb more information if left to explore and gather it on your own. Choose classes that are conducted in your best learning style to get the most out of your continuing education hours.

Continuing education courses for nursing represent a substantial investment of your time and money. Take the time to evaluate each course that you plan to take to make sure that it meets all your expectations and needs.


Online LPN Programs

Online LPN Nursing Programs

Zimbalam Digital Music Distribution and Selling on iTunes

Music has not lost its inherent character ever since the times of prehistoric percussion, but recording media is becoming more and more intangible. MP3 is gradually replacing the CD, record stores are disappearing and giving way to web shops, and search engines are now taking the place of the guy at the record store who used to tell you where to find the record you were looking for and also told you who was hot or not. Even though it's not the case yet, soon iTunes, Napster and Amazon will surely sell more music than physical stores; and they have a great advantage over "real" shops: there's no need for a warehouse anymore, the stock stays on a server and it can be replicated endlessly.

These developments affect the key players in the music industry and the role they have in the process of marketing an album. Until now, once the record was mixed and mastered, the artist depended on the financial support of a label to replicate a great number of copies and to dispatch them to the dealers. Both of these tasks are on their way to disappearing thanks to online music sales and service providers like Zimbalam.

Zimbalam.com is the "mass market" version of Believe Digital, a record label with its own artist roster and, at the same time, a special service provider helping traditional labels bring their catalog online. The idea behind Zimbalam is very simple: they put your songs in 20 online shops in 240 countries for a fixed rate under a non-exclusive distribution agreement. Having your demo on Napster, Amazon and iTunes is now possible for only £19.99 (two tracks) or £29.99 (three or more tracks).

One of the best surprises Zimbalam has to offer is that you get 90% of the royalties generated from the retail price, which means real money in the bank for each sale. If you sell two songs at £1.49 each, at the end of that quarter you'll get around £2.20 from the sale. You can also claim back an additional percentage of the sale as a song-writer's royalty through the PRS, to further increase you revenues. Excellent royalties, absurdly low prices and a non-exclusive agreement? It seems too good to be true. That's why we went to Believe Digital's offices in Paris (France) to learn more about Zimbalam and to test their services. We met Denis Ladegaillerie, a skilled lawyer who has worked for Universal Music US, eMusic, MP3.com, Rollingstone.com, and is co-founder and CEO of Believe Digital.

He was very straightforward when asked about the reasons for founding Zimbalam:

The record industry is like a pyramid: you've got lots of artists starting out their career at the bottom and a few top-selling artists at the top. The pyramidal structure reflects a decrease in the number of artists as you move from one development stage to the next according to your notoriety, and the services you need to go on to the next level. When we started Believe Digital, our digital distribution service wasn't really at the bottom side of the pyramid (Editor's note: Believe Digital helped record labels sell their catalogs on the web), and we developed in two different directions: on the one hand, we went to the top of the pyramid by doing the same things as a traditional record label (promotion, web, radio, and TV marketing) and, on the other hand, we expanded downward with Zimbalam. Last year, for example, we received about 50,000 demos at Believe and we signed 200 deals. From those 200 artists we signed, some of them will make it and others won't. But it's the same thing with the 49,800 artists we didn't sign: we can't really know if they will succeed due to some other reasons. For example, one of them could work for a big communications group like Publicis and manage to license a tune for a Mercedes ad campaign, or another one might know the film editor of a big TV group and get one of their tunes to be the theme song of a new TV show. So an artist we overlooked could become a success for one of these reasons.

That's why we decided to mix everything at Zimbalam... Still, the quality of the 49,800 demos we receive is not always the best. Moreover, I know Apple refuses certain applications for the App Store. So my guess was they were also picky when it comes to the iTunes' music catalog, right?

Imagine my surprise when I found out that they accept everything when it comes to music. iTunes has been receiving demands from lots of artists hoping for a distribution deal for three years now and they've had some logistic problems so they forwarded them to us. When we told them we had already signed 200 deals from the 50,000 demos, they gave us hell and even threatened to stop working with us because they wanted everything.

Do they want to be the biggest?

They want to have the largest catalog. They also work on two levels: take, for example, a 15-year old girl whose parents paid for a recording session in a studio for her birthday. Telling her friends and relatives about it she might sell 15 or 20 downloads, but that actually generates a profit because logistic costs are so low. Even if she doesn't sell enough to make a profit, she will contribute to the education of the people, because she will prompt her friends to pay for music instead of downloading it illegally.

Moreover, the content that could be considered "undesirable" is not a problem, given that not all songs are visible. On the iTunes start page there's an editorial selection. Behind that you can have 300,000 or 1 million dubious quality artists and it's not going to bug anyone.

The best way to make it through all that is with good communication and marketing strategies. What does Zimbalam offer in this regard?

With Zimbalam, we wanted to offer a clearly distinguishable service: we take care of the technical part but we don't do any marketing or communication at all. You get a MySpace compatible player (Editor's note: soon available for Facebook too) that can be embedded in all HTML applets, because we know it's one of the most effective tools to convert your efforts into sales, but that's it! Nevertheless, we have plans to offer some sort of individual artist microsite but we're still in the developing stage right now.

There is no such Internet miracle...

From what we have seen, digital marketing is very similar to standard marketing: to promote an artist he has to be aired on the radio and highlighted on the Dailymotion, YouTube or iTunes home page. And you have the same bottlenecks in the digital world as in the real world: you can only put so many artists on the iTunes, Yahoo or MySpace home page. The people responsible for making the selection won't promote an album if it hasn't a certain quality level... In the end it's the same story all over again.

Is it possible to switch from Zimbalam to Believe?

We follow download statistics - provided to us daily by iTunes - very closely so that we can discover an artist as soon as something starts happening around him. When that happens, we can contact him to propose a marketing campaign with Believe.

So, if I have £10,000 to make a record, does it make sense to spend £5,000 on the production and use the other half of my budget to buy my own songs in order to draw attention?

That's something we're fighting against. We've seen a lot of that going on in Italy. But that's totally useless because iTunes has all the information about the buyer (credit card number, login, etc.) The funny part about it is that the people who do that usually buy songs in round amounts...

And what about non-exclusivity? That's something not very common in the record industry, is it?

Yes, but if you already paid Zimbalam to put your song on iTunes it doesn't make any sense to try to upload it again to the same store through one of our competitors.

You have no presence in services like Deezer. Is it deliberate?

Yes. Right now, every time a song is streamed on Deezer it brings between 1/10 and 1/15 of a dollar to the composer. It didn't seem financially interesting for the artist, from our point of view. Especially considering Deezer tends to cannibalize the MP3 market.

Do you pay attention to copyright, for example, to check if the songs being uploaded are registered in a collecting society?

We aren't paying much attention to whether or not our clients are members of collecting societies because right now European distribution services pay collecting societies without distinguishing between members and non-members. So every time a tune is bought for £0.99, the corresponding collecting society gets seven cents in mechanical royalties, regardless of whether the composer is a member or not. If we were to ask all online shops to give us the amount corresponding to non-members so that we could give it directly to artists who aren't affiliated to a collecting society, they wouldn't be able to do it.

So you're saying collecting societies receive money that doesn't belong to them?

Yes, but they know who the money belongs to, so if that artist becomes member he has two years to claim his royalties. We would advise all our UK artists to register with collection societies wherever possible as the benefits are not limited to just additional royalty collection, societies such as the PRS in the UK have many additional member discounts and free services that independent musicians can benefit from, they are also free to join.

(Editor's note: I called the French collecting society, SACEM, to ask them about this matter and they denied getting paid for artists who are not in their repertoire. I guess the best way to find out what happens to that money is to go ask Apple directly.)

Could it be useful for an artist to have songs in different online shops to become a member of a collecting society like, say, SACEM?

I actually contacted the French collection society (SACEM) to ask about that and they told me they are considering the possibility of artists becoming members if they reach a given amount of sales. But it isn't possible yet..."

Zimbalam and me

After this chat, I had to test the quality of the service provided by Zimbalam to see if it really is what they say it is. I took two demo songs and a CD cover made with Photoshop and signed up for the £19.99 two-song pack. The back office, from the uploading of songs to the online management of content, is very clear and well thought out. You have the possibility to monitor your sales in real time (at least on iTunes) and to check your account statement as well as your agreement with Zimbalam. Do keep in mind that all data assigned to the files can't be modified once the songs have been uploaded to the online shops, which takes somewhere between two and six weeks depending on the shop. So pay attention to that, especially considering that the different shops don't always faithfully reproduce the information you originally entered. In my case, my artistic name "[nwaR]" became "Nwar" on iTunes because Apple's catalog specifications prohibit the use of special characters and the free use of capitalization. It's a pity considering that "Nwar" makes no sense and that Fnac and Amazon do display the name [nwaR] correctly.

When it comes to pricing strategy, it varies from one store to the other (only French stores tested). On the online form I selected €0.99 as the price per song and €1.49 for both songs, but only iTunes seems to respect my will. As a consequence, buying both songs on fnac.com costs €1.98 while Amazon set the price per song at €0.79. When I contacted Zimbalam they told me I will always get the same amount from all stores given that Amazon has a very aggressive sales strategy and they cut back on their profit margin. I'll have to get back to you on that matter because payment is due quarterly and I haven't received the first bank transfer yet.

I should note though, that in the UK market and across Europe, iTunes is the store with the most different pricing brackets available so artists are likely to see a slight differentiation between the price of their release on some stores. This is mostly applicable to releases priced in the mid-range (EPs and mini-albums) as this is where iTunes has more options than most stores and the stores without the same pricing plateaus will simply sell the release at the nearest level they have, which could be around £1/1 Euro more or less than the specified sale amount.

What's even more annoying: I specified that the album cover was licensed under a Creative Commons License but my songs got classified as Creative Commons - probably due to a parsing error - even though I clearly stated the author and composer (Arnaud Cueff) before uploading.

Let's Start Selling!

As we mentioned in the interview, Zimbalam gives you a player you can embed in your MySpace, or any other website, by copying and pasting a small HTML source code. The player is well conceived, freely customizable (particularly regarding size) and it not only provides access to online stores, but also to the artist's bio or even to a video clip. A Facebook version is due soon and I couldn't use it on my Wordpress blog because Wordpress deactivates Javascript components for security reasons. I did however manage to embed it by installing an open-source Wordpress on a Free server.

Still, a well-designed player and an outdated blog due to lack of time aren't enough to become the new chanson star. Apart from the excitement of reading your name listed on iTunes when you look for it, you'll surely understand what Denis meant when he said that Zimbalam simply provides a technical service. Even if I convinced my friends and family to buy my album, my sales figures wouldn't rise much and I still wouldn't be any more interesting than before when it comes to signing a record deal with a label.

To be successful I would have to improve the ranking of my website, create buzz around my music, find as many listeners as possible, and play gigs. Maybe then would Zimbalam allow me to earn some real money.

But the deal is fair enough: 20 shops for £20. I can't wait to get my royalties at the end of the quarter. You can be sure I will show you my bank statement when I get paid. I have no way to know if I'll be able to afford a beer with the money I earn, but I'm positive about the fact that people who promote their songs can get real benefits out of this kind of service, and maybe even more with a bit of luck...

Sarit Bruno manages content and editorial line for Audiofanzine

AudioFanzine offers benchmark testing/reviews of products, software or instruments and articles of a tutorial nature, all of which are systematically illustrated by exclusive videos or audio extracts. Addressing a universal audience, both amateurs and professionals alike, http://en.Audiofanzine.com addresses musicians as well as sound engineers, home-studio recording enthusiasts, and audio and lighting engineers.

Bestel iTunes Gift Card.

The Rating Blog – A Top Ranking SEO, Internet Marketing and Online Business Blog

If one wants to reach dizzy heights in Internet marketing in a genuine and time tested manner then The Rating Blog should invariably be such a person’s place of online business pilgrimage. The Rating Blog is the favorite of the best search engines of the cyber world and, being a highly SEO acclaimed blog, it is frequently visited by some of the expert talents of online business from whom an online business dabbler can take valuable advice. This blog is attractive in its content and interaction with its visitors. It consists of the following sections: the Blog, The Online Business Handbook, Money Maker Monday, Asking Alan, Interviews, About, Articles and Advertise.

The creator of The Rating Blog is an online business expert who believes in showing a reliable way of achieving success in Internet marketing. According to him, there are no shortcuts to success, as many Internet marketing blogs falsely promise. Here, one can get invaluable assistance in starting and carrying on Internet business successfully. Blog marketing is fast catching on these days and the online community is infested with innumerable business blogs that offer highly useless information to which the inexperienced business enthusiasts get attracted. These are actually marketing blogs, whose main aim is just to make their blogs popular by attracting SEO traffic.

The Rating Blog is a business blog where people can get everything under the sun about online business. In the Blog section one can get current information about online business amongst useful information from other fields. In the About section one can get to know the author of The Rating Blog and find out how he feels he and his visitors are benefited by this Internet marketing blog. The Online Business Handbook contains A to Z information about online business.

In order to gain maximum benefit from this ace marketing blog one should first subscribe for this handbook that is available absolutely free, read it, visit the blog, subscribe via RSS and subscribe to the author’s newsletter. Attaining 100 % success in online business is explained in 3 simple steps. Selecting the web host, registering domain name, website promotion by buying traffic from some of the best search engines and SEO blogs and then monetizing one’s website traffic are amongst the major steps in achieving success in online business.

The Money Maker Monday and Asking Alan podcasts are unique features of this top-rated SEO blog. These are the podcasts through which the e-business expert keeps in constant touch with his visitors, clears their doubts and offers expert advice. The Interviews section of The Rating Blog consists of interview excerpts from people who have made it big in online business, so that beginners take them as examples and work their way to success. The Articles section consists of the best Internet business write-ups. In the Advertise section one can place advertisements of his/her company, as this is one the most frequently visited amongst the SEO blogs and the response to the advertisements can be overwhelming.


Bourne SEO offers Web Design in Sussex and other services.

Debt Relief -- Why Most Programs Have A 75% Failure Rate

Debt consolidation, equity loans, credit counseling, debt management plans, even Chapter 13 bankruptcy – it doesn't matter which of these debt programs you're talking about. They all suffer from one fatal flaw, the number one problem that causes most people to fail at eliminating their debts through these techniques. Can you guess the problem?

It's probably not what you're thinking. It's not the fees, interest rates, or the quality of the companies behind these debt solutions. No, the number one problem with most debt programs is that they require FIXED monthly payments without exception. This major flaw is the main reason that very few people make it through a credit counseling program or a Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan.

Do you make exactly the same amount of money each and every month? If you are like most people, the answer is probably NO. It's easy to understand why. Salespeople, for instance, often experience ups and downs based on how much commission they earn from one month to the next. Seasonal workers experience boom and bust times depending on the time of the year (think retail workers getting lots of overtime around the holidays). Overtime hours come and go depending on company workloads. Part-time jobs may offer hours that vary widely from week to week. And so on.

Now, what about your expenses? Do you spend exactly the same amount of money each and every month? Sure, your mortgage or rent and your car payments are a set amount each month. But doesn't your utility bill go up and down depending on the weather? What about your phone bill? How much will you spend on car repairs over the next 6 months? Medical bills? Dental bills? Can you predict such variable expenses with any accuracy?

If you have lots of room in your budget, with money left over at the end of the month, then fluctuating income and expenses are probably not a major issue for you. However, if you are struggling to make ends meet, living from one paycheck to the next, then an unexpected expense can destroy your monthly budget.

People enter debt relief programs with the best of intentions. Take credit counseling, for example. You enter a program to get some help in bringing your credit card debts under control. The monthly payment of $500 sounds good. You're humming along just fine for a few months, then wham! The water heater blows up. Time to shell out $800 for a new one. Unless you like cold showers, you'll need to skip the $500 payment to the agency this month, and part of next month's payment as well. Where does that leave you with the credit counseling program? Back on the street, that's where. You simply CANNOT miss payments into that type of plan and expect anything but failure.

Or look at Chapter 13 bankruptcy, where the court requires you to pay a set monthly amount to your creditors over a 3-5 year period. Even before the drastic new law went into effect, 2 out of every 3 people failed at Chapter 13 bankruptcy. It will get much worse under the new law, because the court will set your monthly budget for you, based on what the IRS says it should be for your state and county. This is simply unrealistic, and once people realize how bad the new law is, they will run in the other direction from Chapter 13. (Forget about Chapter 7, where you wipe the debts away. The new law will make it very difficult to qualify for the old Chapter 7 fresh start.)

Again, the big problem with most debt relief programs is lack of flexibility. You cannot call your loan officer, the credit counseling agency, or the court trustee and say, "Hey, my kid broke his leg and I had to pay the hospital $500 to cover my insurance deductible, so I'll need to skip my debt payment this month." If you could, then these plans might have a chance of working. But such inflexible programs simply do not reflect the unpredictable nature of the average household budget.

So is there any debt program that does provide this flexibility? Yes. It's called debt settlement, or debt negotiation. It's certainly not for everyone. Debt settlement is an alternative to bankruptcy. It's not for people who can pay their bills in full without hardship. But it can be a real blessing for those seeking relief from a crushing debt burden.

The reason debt settlement is so flexible is simply because YOU control the cash. You build up money in a separate savings account until you have enough to make a reasonable offer to one or more of your creditors. Like any debt program, debt settlement has its downside and its risks, but no other program provides this level of flexibility. Because the monthly payment is going into a negotiation fund that you set up and control, a bad month simply means you have less money to settle with. If you can make it up later, that's great. If not, that's life. When you have enough to settle ONE account (usually between 35% and 50% of the balance owed), then you make an offer. If your creditor takes the deal, then you start building up funds to knock out the next debt, and so on. It's the only program out there that recognizes a basic reality: Your budget should set the pace for your debt elimination program, not the other way around!

Again, debt settlement is not a magic bullet. It won't cure every debt problem. But if you need to skip a month, or adjust up or down a little to reflect what's going on in the real world, it doesn't mean the end of the program. It's truly a shame that the financial "experts" who have set up the bankruptcy rules, consolidation loan terms, credit counseling plans, and debt management programs haven't figured this out yet. If they would just recognize this fundamental problem, then the success rate on their programs would increase dramatically and they could stop misleading the public about what works and what doesn't in the world of debt relief.


Kristy Sinsara

Kristy Sinsara

30 Seconds to Easy Self Hypnosis

There are many ways in which to induce a tranquil, relaxed state of mind, in which the body is still, and the conscious mind is simply placed aside for a while as the subconscious mind assumes a more dominant role, and allows the therapeutic cognitive processes which are innate in all of us to become active.

This state of mind, known as the hypnotic state is very simply created by;
- Focusing one’s attention.
- Relaxing the body.
- Allowing unnecessary thoughts to enter, then exit, without any rationalisation.

This process can be easily accomplished by the technique that follows. It is known as the “Eye Roll Technique’, and is a very old but powerful way of entering a safe therapeutic hypnotic trance. When in this relaxed state of mind, it is possible to offer oneself any positive suggestions or affirmations in order to bring about the changes which you desire. Examples of positive statements and affirmations are given further on.

THE TECHNIQUE.
If possible, find yourself a quiet place and either sit down or lie down comfortably.
Roll up your eyes, just as if you were trying to look at your eyebrows.
Allow your eyelids to slowly close, and as you do so, take in a deep breath and hold it.

As you slowly exhale, allow your upturned eyes to return to their normal position.

As you finish exhaling, enjoy that gentle, floating sensation that you will experience.
At the same time, imagine your right hand to be very light, like it has a childs helium balloon tied to it making it rise gently. You may be surprised at the ease by which your hand and arm seem to float up by themselves.
This floating hand signal is a signal from your subconscious mind that you are entering a state of deep relaxation.

As you remain in this deeply relaxed, hypnotic state of mind, offer yourself any positive, therapeutic suggestions which you feel will help to bring about the changes you really want or need.
Remain in this state for 10-20 minutes, that’s really all that’s needed.

You can repeat the process as many times a day as you like.

EXITING THE TRANCE STATE.
Roll up your eyes behind your closed eyelids.
Very slowly, allow your eyelids to open, and the eyes to focus.
Make a tight fist with your right hand, and as you do, allow this light floating hand to drift down into a comfortable position. As it comes to rest, release the tight fist and gently stretch those fingers.……FINISHED !!!!

If necessary, the exit from the trance state can be accomplished any time by going through the steps listed above.

It may take you a little time to perfect the technique, especially if you are the ‘on the go all the time’ sort of person. Relaxation comes easier to some people than to others, so always bear this in mind.

Remember, if you want to make positive changes in your life, this relatively short use of your time can pay great dividends in the end. The beauty of it is that once you have practiced and mastered the technique, you will be able to enter the relaxed state much more easily and deeply.

Another point to remember is that everyone is capable of entering into a hypnotic state.
But just as we are all different, so is the ease with which we enter into a hypnotic trance.
Some will succeed on their first or second attempt, where as others may need many more attempts. It took me a week and a half, and about 15 attempts before I achieved a hypnotic state. The motto is—PERSERVERE. It may take time, but the rewards are well worth the effort.

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