Love is in the air (or maybe it’s pollen) so here are some cheap date ideas that shouldn’t seem cheap. Now that the weather is starting to warm up, we can head outside and take advantage of the city.

1. A picnic in the park
2. A free concert (and then maybe number one)
3. A street festival (Mmmm, funnel cake)
4. A game of tennis/squash/racquetball/basketball/badminton/whatever with private lessons from you.
5. Sightseeing. (A lot of times people neglect to site see in their home city because it doesn’t feel like a vacation.)
6. Homemade tapas and a cheap but fantastic bottle of wine, served on your apartment balcony.
7. Take a stroll through a farmer’s market and pick up the ingredients for an amazing salad.
8. Take a stroll through an outdoor flea market and laugh at the crap people are trying to sell.
9. Have a tasting of a local delicacy from a bunch of different places. (Assuming, of course, that it’s something like pizza or a pastry and not foie gras.)
10. If there’s a cause you’re both passionate about, volunteer together.

Any other inexpensive date ideas?

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I’m going to be totally honest with you. Only a very small number of bloggers make enough revenue on their blog to cover the costs of hosting, let alone make a decent sum of money on the side.

Blogging is a lot of work if you’re looking at it as a source of income rather than a hobby. To be a successful blogger you must:

• Write entertaining posts. Whether or not they are educational is up to you, but all posts need to be well thought out and well written.
• Maintain the blog. This includes updating any codes, setting up or reorganizing your sidebars, redesigning layouts, etc.
• Network. This includes reading other blogs and commenting, answering e-mails, joining directories/exchanges/whatever.

At first glance that doesn’t seem like much, but if you figure it takes you half an hour to write a post, maybe another half an hour to read blogs and comment and another half an hour a week to maintain the blog and you’re dealing with 7 or 8 hours a week.

If you’re like most bloggers and make less than $1 a day in ad revenue, you’d be making around $1 an hour, which wouldn’t exactly have you rolling around in a bathtub full of Benjamins. And if you’re serious about your blog as a secondary source of income, you’re probably spending 20 hours a week on it, with not that much more of an increase in revenue for the first few months.

Still, blogging is a great hobby and with sites like Blogspot offering free hosting, there’s no reason NOT to try. Just don’t expect to suddenly be making a fulltime salary. It takes months of dedication to make a profitable blog and even years to gain a decent income.

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So first off, what is a multi-level marketing? Wikipedia to the rescue:

“Multi-level marketing (MLM), also known as Network Marketing, is a marketing strategy that compensates promoters of direct selling companies not only for product sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of others they introduced to the company. The products and company are usually marketed directly to consumers and potential business partners by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing.” - Wikipedia – Multi-Level Marketing

Multi-Level Marketing is NOT the same as a pyramid scheme. The difference being that there is a real product being sold and MLMs are technically legal.

Common MLMs that you may have heard of include Amway, Mary Kay, Cutco and the newcomer Mona Vie.

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So what’s so bad about that?

First off, if you want to make a decent amount of money you can’t just sell the product. Instead, you need to sell the MLM to other people who will then start to sell the product (and MLM) thus giving you referral sales/money. While this sounds fantastic, you have to realize that there’s a limit to how deep in the referral levels you can make money off of.

If you take a good look at the ‘success’ stories, you’ll find that the people more than $100 or so a month are the people in the top 5% or so of referrals. In other words, they’re the guys at the top of the pyramid. The other 95% are peons making the money for the the guy at the top. Statistically speaking, if you join you’re probably going to be a peon and not the pharoah.

That’s not to say that it’s impossible to become rich with a MLM job. I’m sure the top .05% of the marketers are enjoying their second home in Hawaii.

Secondly, most of these companies make you buy your own stock to start off with. While company literature usually claims that start up is ‘free’ or ‘only $XX’ that usually doesn’t include the stuff you have to buy in order to sell. If you can’t sell this crap, you’re stuck with it and you usually have to buy a certain amount of product a month to continue to collect your referral sales money. Many companies also make you buy more than the minimum if you want to make an extra percentage on the referrals.

Company literature also usually claims that this can be done from home in a few hours a week, which is bullshit. The people working only a few hours a week are the ones in the bottom 95%. The people making a living off of MLM are the ones treating it like a full time job and working overtime. MLM is not something you can do in your spare time and expect to make a decent supplemental income on.

And finally, you will become ‘That Guy’ (or ‘That Girl’). In the end, almost everyone in the MLM ends up preying on their own friends and family. It’s hard to make cold calls into a cold market where you don’t know where the demand is, so you end up trying to sell to your friends, family and co-workers. No one wants to be friends with someone trying to pitch a product to them and people will start to avoid you. No, I’m not exagerating. I’ve known a few people in MLM schemes and this is exactly what happens.

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So why do so many people get sucked in? GREED.

Thousands of dollars a month for only a few hours work. Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?

But like all things that sound too good to be true, Multi-Level Marketing fails in the end.

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More Reading:

- Federal Trade Commission on Multi-Level Marketing
- Great article on MLM with links for further reading

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Things to remember:

• A lost pregnancy is as real and as painful as the loss of any other family member.
• In addition to the pain of the loss, your friend may be doubting or blaming herself.
• Miscarriage can be physically as well as mentally traumatic.
• Pregnancy hormones don’t disappear overnight, so your friend may have crazy mood swings from hormones as well as grief.

What you can do:

• Offer your unconditional love and support. You don’t need to ‘fix’ anything or psychoanalyze her, just be there when she needs someone to talk to.
• Offer to help around the house. A miscarriage can be physically draining, so an offer to bring over some frozen meals or to help clean up might be appreciated. If the couple has other children, offering to babysit for a few hours so they can have some time to themselves to grieve could be helpful.
• Watch for signs of depression. While the first few weeks will be rough, if your friend’s mood doesn’t improve at all as time goes by and you start seeing signs of a more serious depression, you should talk to your friend about it or suggest they talk to their partner, a doctor, therapist or their minister/priest.
• If you’ve experienced a miscarriage, share your story. If you are comfortable talking about your own experience, it can help to do share it. Many women feel ‘singled out’ after a miscarriage or feel that it was their fault. It can help to realize that miscarriage is fairly common (estimated at 1/5 pregnancies) and that there can be a happy ending down the road.

What NOT to do:

• Don’t downplay the loss. Even if the pregnancy is ‘unwanted’, a miscarriage is a traumatic experience. Don’t deny your friends grief or say something like “You can always have another one.”
• Don’t forget about dad. A man whose partner lost a pregnancy is grieving too. Don’t forget about your male friends.

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The support pouring in is overwhelming and amazing.

I can’t stress enough that if you suffer from a miscarriage, it’s important to talk. Those first couple of days you’ll want to crawl into the closet and waste away, but when you’re ready to talk, you’ll find that miscarriage is not as uncommon as you think.

With up to 1 in 5 pregnancies ending without a live birth, there are other women out there who have gone through what you’re going through and they are willing to talk to you about it. Don’t let the grief beat you down and make you feel like you’re a failure. One miscarriage is not an indication that you will have another and most women go on to have healthy, happy babies.

So thank you all for the support and sharing your stories with me. We’re hopeful that this was just God calling for a do-over because something went a little wrong and with any luck we’ll have some happy news to share in a few months.

- K

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I lost the pregnancy. I’ll be back next week.

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Be back soon, I hope.

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With all this talk about saving, people sometimes forget that it’s just as important to increase your earnings. With companies laying off people left and right, there are few opportunities in the business world for promotions and raises.

What that means is you’ll have to increase your income in more creative ways. While there’s always the option of trying to get a part-time retail/food service job, you can also create your own work. Where there’s a will, there’s a way and everyone has at least one skill they can market.

• Babysitting – Not going out this weekend? Babysitting can be quite lucrative, especially on popular evenings. Around here experienced babysitters can pull $10 an hour or more depending on the amount/age of the kids. You may need to take a child/infant First Aid class (offered by the Red Cross for a nominal fee).
• Tutoring – Math tutors are usually in the highest demand, but around SAT and finals time there’s usually a big need for language arts and other subjects as well. You can either sign up with an agency or market yourself around the neighborhood on your own.
• Teaching – Look for opportunities to teach at community colleges, historical/learning societies or adult/continuing education. You’ll need an advanced degree to teach actual courses at community college, but continuing education usually just requires knowledge and some references. There are opportunities to teach everything from home tax preparation to ballroom dancing.
• Cleaning – While you probably don’t want to be a custodian, picking up a few apartments to clean over the weekend could net you some extra cash. You could also offer an ‘after the party’ cleaning service. Start by asking your neighbors and let word of mouth help you out. Just make sure to pack a mask and gloves if you aren’t using environmentally friendly cleaning products.
• House Sitting – Also works for apartments. This is hard to get into because people are hesitant to let strangers into their homes while they’re away. Start by doing relatives and close friends/neighbors to get references.
• Dog Walking – You’d be amazed at the amount of people who buy a pet and never consider how much time it takes to care for them. Offer to walk twice a day and you could earn a nice wad of cash. Just make sure to screen dogs for personality if you plan to take on more than once. An dog aggressive dog is not a good candidate for walking in a pack.
• Errand Running – You can get paid for running errands for other busy people. And if you’re already out and about running your own errands, why not?
• eBay – Are you an amazing thrift store shopper? If you’ve got a great eye for vintage and used items, you can make a killing picking up items at flea markets, garage sales and thrift stores and then reselling on eBay.
• Odd Household Jobs – Washing windows. Cleaning gutters. Shoveling snow. Painting. You name it and there’s someone who doesn’t want to do it. That’s where you come in.

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Quickie post today. Just a few sites to help you get the most out of your money while shopping over the internet.

Shop It To Me – Helps you find clothing in your size on sale.

Retail Me Not – Database of coupon codes and sales.

Buxr – Database of sales and discounts.

DealHack – Another Database of sales and discounts.

eBates – Earn cash back at hundreds of sites (tell them kaligoddess@gmail.com send you.)

MyPoints – Earn rewards for shopping at your favorites stores.

And always sign up for the newsletters from stores you shop from often. Set up a seperate e-mail if you have to, but you’ll want advance notice of sales and special coupons.

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1. Wipe down older CRT screens (TV/Monitor) to get help get rid of static.
2. Use to collect pet hair off of hard surfaces. Also works for glitter, etc. that can be hard to sweep up.
3. Use instead of a rag or pad when dusting.
4. Wipe down pantyhose if your skirt is sticking and you aren’t wearing a slip.
5. Place scented ones in enclosed areas (cabinets, bins, etc) that could use a little aroma help.
6. Place a scented one in the drawer with your laundry if you’re fond of the smell. Can also help cut static and keep items from tangling.
7. Add scented ones to dirty laundry hamper if it’s starting to smell. (Or you could, you know, wash them.)
8. Can be used as a gentle scrub pad in the bathroom.
9. Swipe over dry, staticky hair to calm crazy flyaways.
10. Use scented ones hidden under couch cushions as emergency air fresheners if you don’t have time to clean before company comes.

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