We had some crazy weather last weekend and apparently there was a tornado at one of the beaches that my wife and I regularly go to that is about an hour down the road. The winds blew over a heap of trees and caused wide spread rain which caused loads of flooding across the state. Pretty crazy stuff.
Fortunately the worst of it for us was a sideways tree in our front yard and a very soggy (and a bit stinky) backyard.
The storm blew our tree sideways.
Ebook
I want to thank everyone for getting their eBook topics in to me on time. I appreciate the amount of time and effort that everyone has put into for this and I hope we can really make a difference in some peoples lives with the content we have produced.
Blog
Things have been getting crazy busy here at MPB. I am receiving offers left right and center at the moment and am spending almost an hour each day responding to emails. Does anyone have any tips for dealing with this efficiently? I am thinking of hiring someone as a virtual assistant, but I am not sure how well it would go.
Posts This Week
This week I had 2 posts this week
- The first was a post titled How to Assess a Prospective New Home for Risk of Bushfires before Buying
- The second post was a big one that good a lot of good feedback called How Much Does it Cost to Have a Baby?
Welcome to the Pool Room
Time for the Pool Room!
I seem to finally be getting into the swing of being a dad a bit better now and so I have been able to enjoy being more active with commenting on other PF sites this last week. Also I’m breaking my own less than 5 posts rule this week as there were just too many good posts and I have to share them with you – I promise they are all worth it.
In case you don’t know what the pool room is, I explain it in this post.
1st place this week goes to Ready For Zero with How to Get Out of Debt. I’m not going to say anything about this post other than that it is an absolutely amazing post and everyone needs to check it out!
2nd place this week goes to Sicorra at Tacking our Debt with her post 69 Fantastic Ways to Make Money. I think Sicorra has been entered into the pool room more than any other person so far and it is because she keeps posting these amazing articles. I honestly almost put this at number one this week and any other week it probably would have been number one. So go take a look at all the different ways you can make money.
3rd place was a post over at The Money Principle with Dealing with debt: seven steps to debt busting. I though this post included a lot of information that could help someone out if they found themselves stuck in debt. It is a great post to compliment the one from Ready For Zero and between the two posts there should be no excuses for not destroying that debt.
The other posts that I really want to share with you are:
Nuts and Bolts of Living on One Income (couplemoney.com)- This post was topical for me at the moment seeing as our income has dropped significantly since my wife stopped working.
How To Pay Little To No Taxes For The Rest Of Your Life (financialsamurai.com) – I hate paying taxes and I also really hate the way governments squander our tax dollars and so I really liked this post about how you can minimize the amount of tax you pay.
Reformed Spenders Adjust to Life on a Budget (eyesonthedollar.com) – Kim has another outstanding post this week (this time on her blog – if you missed her guest post last week check it out – Financial Plans to Make Before Marriage). Her post reminded me of how my wife and I started out about 5 years ago and how we worked out a budget and included was our own spending money.
Congratulations to this weeks winners – I hope everyone enjoys the posts mentioned above as much as I did.
For next week – If you think you have a top post and you want to make sure I see it, be sure to leave a comment somewhere on my blog and include the link in the Comment Luv section. I make sure I check every blog owners page if they have left a comment on my blog, so that’s a sure fire way to ensure I see your blog post.
We’ve been having nasty weather over here in our part of the world too Glen (snow)! I’ve got a few of those sideways trees in my backyard. Unfortunately they are stuck that way.
My advice for dealing with emails: Have a lot of scripts ready. For example, when I get one of those spammy “I’d love to do a guest post” emails from someone I’ve never heard of before, I have a ready-made response that I quickly cut and paste into the email and send back. 9 times out of 10 it turns out to be nothing and I don’t waste anymore time on it. For the prospects that actually turn into something, I also have a ready-made price list that I can email out. Other bloggers have a “marketing package” that they put together which accomplishes the same thing.
My Money Design recently posted..4 Passive Income Ideas I Learned From Robert Kiyosaki
I think it would be so cool to have snow in your backyard – you know, so long as the heater is working inside
To be completely honest, I have some canned responses and sometimes I simply don’t respond to some emails that I know aren’t going anywhere.
Glad there was no major damage to your house!
DC @ Young Adult Money recently posted..Friday Giveaway Post – 21 Giveaways – I’m Freezing Edition
Me too DC, that wind was pretty crazy.
Thanks for the tip, I do have a stock email I send out, but it is still very time consuming.
Glad you did not see terrible damage after the tornado Glen! We’ve gotten a bit of snow and butt cold weather, but I’ll take that over a tornado. I can relate to the amount of emails…it’s just nuts. What has helped me to save time is have a couple of canned responses so I don’t have to type something new to everyone. There’s some good ones out there, but often it’s just a bunch of junk.
John S @ Frugal Rules recently posted..Frugal Friday: Blog Posts That Ruled This Week, How Can it Be February Edition?
The tornado was about 60KM’s away, but it was still very windy where we were.
Tornadoes are scary! Glad you didn’t have major damage. Thanks so much for including me this week. It is a honor.
Kim@Eyesonthedollar recently posted..6 Months of Blogging!
No problems at all Kim
Glen, Thank you very much for the Pool Room award! I so appreciate you reading my blog and for awarding my make money post as part of your award program. It is an honor to be included once again.
Sorry to see that your tree was knocked over but happy that the damage wasn’t any worse. They showed some scenes on our Weather channel from a beach in Australia that was covered in what looked like soap suds and lots of people were playing in it. Did you see that on the news?
Tackling Our Debt recently posted..Is it Easy to Improve Your Financial Situation?
The suds were from the ocean and it was at a beach about 1 hour away from where I live.
If you saw the same video as I did it was of a car coming out of the foam and almost hitting some people.
Wow, thank you so much for the 1st place honor, Glen! You have made my day! I did put a lot of time into that post, so I’m glad you liked it. And I have to say, I really love the 1st place star that you use (did you create it?). The way it’s shaded and colored makes it feel very tangible!
I hope that your crooked tree will survive and not be permanently crooked. Your neighborhood looks really nice, by the way! Have a great weekend.
–Ben
Benjamin Feldman recently posted..10 Mental Barriers to Paying Off Debt
Not a problem Ben, your post was a standout.
I can’t actually remember if I made the images myself – sorry.
The tree did not survive
It is now a stump, but it did grow like a weed so I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a recovery.
Wow, thanks so much for including us and for your kind words! I know Ben’s super excited to have been mentioned and that you liked the post. I’m glad that the storm didn’t affect your neighborhood too badly and I hope you have a great weekend
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Shannon-ReadyForZero recently posted..10 Mental Barriers to Paying Off Debt
Thanks Shannon
I actually had a pretty busy weekend with all the eBook editing I was doing.
You have had a busy week Glen. I hope the little one is doing well. Have a great weekend.
Grayson @ Debt Roundup recently posted..Weekly Personal Finance Blog RoundUp – 2/1/2013
He cries a lot, but i’m thinking most new babies do that.
Thank goodness you guys are ok and the damage is minimal! We’ve been through that tornado stuff too: it’s not fun. Glad you’re all ok and that you’re settling into your new role as dad
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Laurie recently posted..Why Good Personal Finance Management and Prepping Go Hand in Hand
I have a lot less time on my hands now than I used to, but things are starting to fall into place.
Nasty weather seems to have been the theme in a lot of places lately.
I’m glad you didn’t suffer much damage!
Alex recently posted..Happy Thought for the Day: Non Zero Sum People
Me too, thanks Alex
The way I deal with my emails is to have some generic responses stored on my phone in the notes section. I answer them throughout the day (so they don’t build up) and can copy and paste some responses
Can’t wait to start buying the book
Savvy Scot recently posted..Passive Income Series – Method 2: Income from Investing
That is actually a great idea. My issue is that I only really get to them in the arvo and by then there are about 50 of them.
Glen recently posted..Giving Gifts on a Budget
Glad everything was OK with the house! I know what you mean about time management when it comes to blogging. Sometimes I wish it’s what I was doing full time because it takes a lot of time but I enjoy it. I’m experimenting with getting up an hour earlier to see if that helps.
Budget and the Beach recently posted..Where You Live: The Good & the Bad