Shopping centres, supermarkets, gas stations, websites – it seems not a minute goes by these days where we’re not being given advice about our finances from some so-called expert. But in my experience, if there’s one place you’re most likely to find an amateur ‘financial adviser’ spouting all sorts of handy hints and tips, it’s the pub.

With a little courage from beer, everyone is an expert on how to earn an easy buck.
How many financial deals, dodgy or otherwise, have been done over a pint and a packet of peanuts? However, while it’s safe to say that 90% of what you’re told about money in a pub is going to be nonsense, occasionally these drunk bar guys can come up with some pretty compelling arguments. Here are three of the best money saving tips I’ve picked up during my quest to slowly kill my liver.

1. Get rewarded for your spending

After getting a round in with my credit card, I was quickly asked by my pub companion about how much the card was costing me each month. After being met with a shrug of the shoulders, my mate proceeded to berate for not having a reward credit card which gave me a little bonus each time I spent, whether that was cashback, air miles or discounts.
He was right. I switched to a cashback card and my friends have been getting a round of extra drinks at the bar ever since.

2. Take good care of your debts

After drowning my sorrows with a mate over my mounting debts, he suggested I look into 0% balance transfer credit cards. To be honest, at this stage I wasn’t even sure what they were, until he explained it was a good way of clearing debts on all of my other outstanding loans and cards and reducing my monthly payments. I found a lengthy 0% deal and now my finances are firmly back on track.

3. Never be the first one to buy drinks for your friends

Whether you’re hitting the pub after work or meeting your mates, there’s a fine art to the optimum time to buy your friends a round of drinks. If you’re out with a gang of four and have on average 6 rounds of drinks during the evening then the best time to buy a round for your friends is after the 3rd round. The reason is simple – since you usually have more rounds than there are people there will inevitably be someone who ends up paying for more rounds than the others. Don’t be that sucker who pays more than your friends!

When you’re measuring your financial progress, most of you may think that you could just be richer if you could make more money per month. But have you ever though whether making more money is enough to make you richer?

One of the most controversial debates that are currently going on in the world of personal finances is what constitutes rich. Most people agree that the place they live at makes a big difference in whether or not you feel that you’re rich. Standard of living is the most important thing that determines your richness. Becoming debt free in a place where the standard of living is high is much more difficult than paying off debts in a low profile place.

Making more money does not translate into having the money to spend on whatever you want.

What are the expenses that drain off your wealth?

It is worth noting that there are some particular expenses that drain away wealth, no matter how much money you make each month. Staying educated on these spheres will help you avoid such expenses so that you can maintain a wealthy life.

1. Your house or car

Most people in America turn out to be house poor. They decide to get a big house and then terribly struggle to make both ends meet. If you have not been modest while purchasing your home and you had stupidly bought a home beyond your affordability, you must have been suffering lately. Since the financial crash, it has been surveyed that most homeowner’s monthly housing costs comprise of half of their monthly income. The same theory goes for a dear car for whose insurance you cannot arrange money.

2. Your unsecured debts

Your unsecured debts are a big expense for you. What can be more unfortunate than having unsecured debt obligations and paying interest rates to someone else instead of using that money to invest for your future? There are instances of people who make more than $150,000 per year but are saddled with unsecured credit card debt and feel themselves to be nothing but poor creatures who are failing to make both ends meet.

Monetary resolutions to set your foot on a wealthy life?

After some studies have been made among the affluent, it has been derives that planning, perseverance, dedication, hard work and self-discipline is what it takes to be a wealthy man. Here are some monetary resolutions that must be taken by every individual in order to build wealth and take a plunge into the life of a millionaire.

1. Live below your means

Don’t be fooled by the average lifestyle of a millionaire. The keyword to living a life of a true millionaire in the near future is ‘frugal’. Most financial experts believe that leading a frugal life is the secret of saving for your future. The typical Americans are known for working hard, making money and then spending it well. You must change this spending habit and make sure that you stop buying unnecessary things that you can do without.

2. Evaluate the importance of saving each dollar

When you put in your efforts in saving money, you can soon understand how spending $10 and $30 dollar makes a huge difference. You must always remember that money has the ability to work in your place and therefore, the more you employ it, the faster it will grow with time. Try to save money at every step of life and enjoy leading a frugal life so that you can soon get the results you desire.

3. Become proficient as an investor

In order to boost your savings and build wealth, you can try becoming a proficient investor. Investment is one of the best ways to make money and also boost your savings by controlling them. Get to know about the investment market so that you can understand the fluctuations and take good control over your investments. Also make sure that you manage a balanced portfolio that will help you gain maximum profits with minimum risks.

As you might think that there’s nothing wrong with spending money on things that seem to be important to you, you must reconsider your decision. The actual concept of being ‘rich’ is being able to spend money for what you need now, save money for your future and spend a little in purchasing things that you like. Lead a debt free life and boost your income so that you reach one step closer to becoming a millionaire.

You are fed up with your work. Your boss is an asshole. Every day that you go to work is the worse day of your life.

You decide to give your employer the finger and quit without a notice. You simply get up and walk away from your cubicle and 5 minutes later you are free – no obligations, no nerve-wracking job, and

No weekly paycheck!

If you were to quit your job right now, how much money would you have left? Would it be enough to continue living your lifestyle for 1 month, 2 months, 3 months or more? Is it enough to comfortably find a new and a better job?

F*CK Y*U money is typically measured in months or years – how long can you live using your reserves without changing your lifestyle?

Leave your answer in the comments!

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And remember – leave your answer in the comments!

1. Steal

It’s just like taking candy from a small child!  Stealing is taking the easy way out to get rich. As we know from the news it can at times be quite rewarding – if you do it right you can make a million dollars in a few hours. The thing that keeps most of us stealing is that it takes balls – if you get caught you will most probably spend a lot of time in jail.

If you are planning to start stealing as you number 1 career choice then listen to these words of wisdom:

Don’t bother with the small stuff. Stealing small amounts multiple times is the worst thing you can do – it means minimum rewards with maximum chance of getting caught. Just look at my post about pickpockets and you’ll get the idea about what not to do.

The way to go is to make 1 difficult but well thought out job once in your life time. Good examples are my post about the thieves who stole 6 million dollars while everyone were watching football or about the guys who pulled off the heist of a century when they robbed over 1 billion dollars in Sweden.

2. Become a Professional

If you are looking for something more traditional you should take the obvious way of getting rich – hard work.

You’re not going to get rich working an average job however.  It takes time, charisma, skill, and education to land a high paying job.  If you can commit to higher education, then earning big money as a professional may be in your future.  On this path to riches, you definitely get back what you put in. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that it can take a whole lifetime before you get where you want to be.

3. Turn Hobby into Business

It may surprise you to find out how many million dollar businesses started as a hobby.  With a good idea, some skills, and a little ambition, the thing you love the most can be bringing in the dough.  This can be something as simple as a craft, running a specialty food cart, or even making a website about your favorite topics.

4. Start A Website

Speaking of websites, if you haven’t noticed, blogging is HUGE.  With the explosion of blogs comes the ability to capitalize off of a well written one.  To make money with a website you either have to sell a product or receive revenue from advertisements placed on your site.  Many webmasters choose to do both.  If you identify a paying niche and do the necessary research you could have a site up with little to no out of pocket costs.  Getting rich will require a lot of trial and error, like any other business.  For wannabe webmasters there are tons of tools that even the most computer illiterate can use to publish their very own page.

During the years I have made a few thousand dollars with my website Financial Jesus. Each month I make a few hundred bucks and I am pretty sure that if I wanted I could make a full time income off of blogging. To see how much I made in 2010 and where the money came from – take a look at my post about My total blog income in 2009.

5. Play the Stock Market

Even in tough economic times, there is money to be made in the stock market.  Trading stocks is a simple way to get rich, not fast but simple.  The idea is to purchase a stock when it is at a low value and then sell when that value goes up.  Simple concept, but takes time and discipline to make it into millions.  A significant amount of research is needed in order to make solid decisions instead of buying and hoping for luck to bring in the dividends.  With the decline of stable social security and retirement plans in the American economy, many younger people are taking investment into their own hands.  With that comes more user-friendly trading sites and plenty of internet articles about the market.  Beware of the get rich quick scams though, in this area there are plenty of them.

6. Marry Money

Got a ton of charisma but don’t want to work for your money, then marry rich!  Sure gold diggers have a bad reputation, but marrying someone of high social status is nothing new.  The modern approach involves matchmakers that specialize in introducing millionaires to their perfect match, that could be you!

This also works the other way around – take a look at my article about how the right woman can make you rich.

7. Write a book

Sure almost everyone thinks they have a great idea for a book, tv show, or movie.  Not many have the imagination, skill, determination, and luck to make it a reality.  Even fewer of those ever make any real money.  However, the silver lining is that with the ease of publishing books and movies online the real talent doesn’t get lost in a sea of rejection letters.  Don’t want to write a book?  No problem, you can also get rich by writing a screenplay or even a movie.

8. Gamble

You’ve seen it on the news and in movies, the bright lights of a casino, or the screams of a lottery winner.  Winning money can be the most thrilling way to become rich.  Ways to gamble vary greatly, there are traditional casino games, sports betting, and also other lottery style games.  For those who want to practice their skills in the comfort of their own home, online casinos exist.  Games can even be played for free to build up skill before hitting the high roller table in Vegas.

Check out my interview with a guy who won over 5 million dollars with the lottery to see what the good life is like after winning or read about the British taxi driver who keeps it real and is still working even after winning 26 million pounds (40 million dollars).

9. Buy Real Estate

Another traditional way to become rich is investing in real estate.  Though news of falling property values make would be investors nervous, many recognize this as an opportunity to make millions.  There will always be good deals in real estate.  With some knowledge, capital, and sweat equity, there is still millions to be made.

10. Become a Street Entertainer

Might sound funny at first, but consider this; if you want to make it in the entertainment business you need to be able to perform in from of ANYBODY.  Recording demos and networking is fine for some, but there comes a time when you just have to get out and do it.  With the popularity of sites like youtube, street performers are being discovered around the world.  Point is, you never know who is watching.

As promised in my last post – Ask a question, get it answered by me – I will every day answer the best question I get here on Financial Jesus.

Today’s questions come from Paco Vanderdo in Colorado, USA.

He sent 2 questions:

1. What are all the types of Ancient Roman money?
2. How long did the Ancient Roman money last?

Instead of just answering the questions I’ll get a little more specific and do an overview of money in ancient Rome.

Ancient Rome and the beginning of an empire

Ancient Rome is probably the best known empire in the whole world. It is studied in history classes around the world and one can say that no country since the fall of Rome has ever risen to the glory of the Roman Empire.
Ancient Rome was founded in 753 BC (Before Christ) by Romulus and lasted for 2206 years until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD.

During such a long time change is inevitable and this is probably the reason why Ancient Rome didn’t have the same kind of money throughout all of its 2206 year history. This would be equivalent to us using the same money as Jesus did.

The first money of ancient Rome – the Cow

While funny, the headline above is very true! During the early days of Rome, money was not invented yet. Just like the rest of the world, the Romans used the bartering system.

This means that when they needed something they simply traded what they had for the thing they wanted. As you probably imagine all this meant a lot of negotiating. To make things a little easier the ancient Romans used cows as the base for their bartering system.

As the small town of Rome developed into a city and then into the Roman Empire the need for a new kind of money suddenly became inevitable.  Cows were great but they were incredibly difficult to transport over long distances.

First Coins in Ancient Rome

About 300 years after the foundation of ancient Rome the Roman Empire had grown to include several of its border territories.

To effectively deal with its trading partners a new system of coins and money was developed. At first the Romans simply started using small chunks of metal. The most common of them all was bronze.

Raw Bronze or Aes Rude

The lumps of bronze were called Aes Rude and they were simply lumps of bronze. The heavier it was the more value it held.

Here is a picture of the ancient roman bronze money, known as Aes Rude.

Aes Rude

Notice how the Aes Rude looks just like a rock. However when you hold it in your hand it feels like metal. None the less it is very difficult for the ordinary person in the present to recognize this form of money from rubble. It is just a piece of bronze that is unprocessed – just how it is found in nature.

First Minted Coins – Aes Signatum

After some time of usage the bronze lumps proved themselves as a great substitute for using cows as money .Bronze proved to be so effective that in no time the Roman government decided to issue stamped bronze coins – the Aes Signatum.

Aes Signatum

Most of the early coins carried pictures of animals and nature. For some unknown reason each of the coins initially weighed about 1.6 kilograms (3.5 pounds). This made them rather heavy. The coins were also all in 1 denomination.

First real coins – Aes Grave or Heavy Bronze

In 267 BC the first coins as we know them today were issued in ancient Rome. They were a lot lighter and in the beginning only weighed about 200-400 grams. As time went on the coins lost more and more weight.

The Aes Grave coins were minted in different denominations – making them a lot easier to use. Usually they depicted animals, ships and gods of ancient Rome.

Aes Grave

Silver and Gold Coins in Ancient Rome

The Ancient Greeks had been using silver and gold coins for a while when Rome took notice and wanted to copy them. Since more valuable, silver and gold allowed to carry larger sums of money more easily than the bronze coins. This meant better and easier trade!

In addition to the bronze coins the Romans came out with 2 additional coins – the denarius (silver coin) and the aureus (gold coin). Since the Romans didn’t have any know-how about making coins from precious metals they employed Greek metal smiths to mint the silver and gold coins for them.

Aureus - the Roman Gold Coin

The gold and silver coins were the first real coins in the sense of their weight. The golden Aureus weighed only 8 grams.

Just like the USA is printing more money each day and thus slowly making the dollar worthless the Romans used to do the equivalent of their time. The value of the gold and silver coins did not come from their weight but it was always their face value – the sum printed on them.

The Romans had a problem that they wanted more coins but they did not have more gold to make more money. What they did was to slowly start making the coins lighter and lighter. At its making the golden Aureus weighed 8 grams, this slowly became 7.3 grams during the reign of Emperor Nero and then later even 6.5 grams.

The case with the silver denarius was even worse. While the denarius was also getting lighter, its silver content was also systematically lessened. In 301 AD  the golden aureus was worth 833.3 silver denari, by 324 AD it was already worth 4350 denari.The runaway inflation was caused by the decision to debase the coin value in order to seemingly pay more money to soldiers.

Money in East Roman Empire the Byzentine

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD (the original Rome) there was still the East Roman Empire or Byzantine that stood for almost another 1000 years. For a complete history of money in the Roman Empire you can check out this article in Wikipedia.

Waiting more questions

It has been fun getting questions from all you guys. Tomorrow I will answer another question. To ask me a question just insert it to the form on the top of the menu on the right. For additional instructions go here.

In a financial jam? Online Cash Advances from CashAdvancer.com can help you today!

100 Dollars

Here is what 100 dollars looks like. Probably everyone has seen one of these. Some of you have even been lucky enough to own one or two

The 100 dollar bill is the largest denomination currently in circulation.

100 dollars:

10 000 Dollars

If you take one hundred 100 dollar bills and put them together you will get the standard hundred dollar stack. You’ve probably seen it in the movies a thousand times. This stack of 100 dollars is less than 1/2 inches thick (1.2cm) and easily fits in your pocket. 10 000 dollars is a sum that most Americans find to be a very large sum. For the average American this is his income of 3 or 4 months.

10 000 dollars:

1 Million Dollars

The following is what 1 million dollars looks like. It is a hundred packets of the $10 000 above. It doesn’t look like that much. You can easily fit it in a bag and walk around on the street without anyone noticing. It takes the average American 25 years to make that kind of money – and that is when he would never spend a dime of it. The truth is that most Americans have made 1 million dollars when they have worked for 25 years but they have also spent the same amount.

1 million dollars:

100 Million Dollars

While 1 million dollars didn’t look like much, it is a totally different thing with $100 million. It would take 2500 years for the average American to make that kind of money (unless you steal it ).

As you see below, 100 million dollars fits perfectly on a standard pallet used for transporting cargo.

100 million dollars:

1 Billion Dollars

You can probably fit $100 million in a van but to transport 1 billion dollars you definitely need a bigger truck. It will take the average bloke 25 000 years to make that kind of money.

Now this is what I’m talking about!

1 billion dollars:

1 Trillion Dollars

This is the sum we have been hearing lately a lot in the news. It seems that  billion is the new million and  trillion is the new billion. A trillion dollars is also about as much as the bailout of the large banks cost to the government.

A trillion dollars is written with 12 zeros.
Here it is: $1 000 000 000 000

Oh and it would take the average American 25 million years to make that much money

1 Trillion Dollars Stacked

These are still $100 dollar bills. Notice that the pallets are double stacked. If you’d be in the middle of all this money you’d probably get lost and it would take at least 30 minutes to get out

Changing your name to more local sounding can significantly help you earn more money.

If you are a foreigner living in a country where you are also looking for a job it could be a good idea to change your name in order to find a job and get a significant boost in your income.

The Survey

In 2009 two Swedish scientists – Mahmood Arai and Peter Skogman Thoursie from the University of Stockholm – conducted a study where they found that immigrants who changed their names to more Swedish-sounding ended up with an average increase of their income of 141%.

The scientists analyzed data from 641 immigrants between the years 1991 and 2000 that had came to Sweden from Asia, Africa and Slavic countries and had also changed their name.

The income of an immigrant was analyzed 3 years before the name change and 3 years after.

The analyze took into account a number of statistical information, including inflation, age and place of residence.

Results of Changing Your Name

Mahmood Arai and Peter Skogman were stunned to see that the results of changing your name had a huge impact already 1 year after the name change took place.

The earnings increase was largest in the group that reported very little or no earnings at all before the name change. It was found that they had a increase in income between 0.5 and 2 years of changing their name. In some cases the increase in income was as high as 1000%.

Why Changing Your Name Can Make You Money

Scientists conducting the study found that changing one’s exotic and foreign sounding name had huge benefits on landing a job interview and thus increasing chances of finding work.

It was found common for employers to sort out job applicants with foreign names just because of the bias they evoked.

The bias toward foreigners was so strong that even smart law abiding people were not called for a job interview just because of their name.

In other words – if you have a foreign sounding name you will have a smaller chance of getting a good job simply because you are not called to the job interview at the first place. It is impossible to leave good impression of yourself when you are not even called to a job interview.

Today I am launching a new website – Money & Shit (www.moneyandshit.com).

It is a website featuring funny pictures that make me laugh – I hope they have the same effect on you!

Over the time I have collected a bunch of funny pictures on my hard drive and I have always wondered what to do with them – I am now going to share them with you!

How it Works

I first started playing around with the idea of creating a funny pictures website about a year ago but I never got it finished.
Now that it is ready to launch it takes up very little of my time and automatically posts 3 pictures every day – at 8 in the morning, at 12 noon and at 4 PM.

The website currently only has the essential functionality and I am not trying to monetize it but I am quite pleased with the design, especially since I am usually not very good with graphics.

The Future

In the future the website will probably have some additional functionality but it will eventually stay the same.

In the near future I am going to launch a number of additional websites intended to make me some money.   I will let you know when I launch!

Visit Money and Shit at www.moneyandshit.com and sign up to get notified of funny stuff.

Money and Shit

This is RULE 1 from a set of rules about how to get rich.

The best property of money is that it can be made by anyone. Money doesn’t ask the color of your skin, it doesn’t ask whether you are rich or poor, or who your parents were.

It’s possible for anyone to make money. That’s a fact.

Each and everyone of us has the same rights and opportunities to achieve as much as we want. Sure, some things are easier to achieve for some people and other things for other people but in the end the only true obstacle to making money is yourself.

The obstacles to making money have always been in the things we believe. If you think that you can’t make money because you are poor then that’s true. If you think that it takes money to make money, then that’s also true.

There could be a million people living in poverty, who all agree that because of their “special” conditions it is impossible for them to get rich. These people may spend 10, 20, 30 or more years living poorly but all it takes to succeed and get rich is if one person out of the million disagrees with other’s and says – “I will become rich!”

Money has no feelings

Money does not know who his owner is. Money can’t hear, see or smell. Money doesn’t care what happens. Its sole purpose of life is to be saved, invested and spent.

Looking at rich people has made it clear that the only common denominator for rich people is that there is no common denominator. There are rich people whose parents were billionaires and there are rich people who’s parents were beggars. There are rich people who are fat and rich people who are skinny. There are rich people who are incredibly smart yet there are rich people who are idiots.

I am certain that everyone has looked at a rich guy and thought – why him? Why not me? I’m smarter, I look better – what does he have that I don’t?

I have good news for you! Your life is just like a movie and you are the scriptwriter. You can choose what happens next!

There is a similarity that rich people have even before they become rich – they think that they have earned a chance for a better life. Poor people on the other hand think that they are not worth a change for the better. They are not brave enough to seize an opportunity when they see one.

Achieving success, making tons of money and getting rich can be difficult but it is never impossible.

Anyone can become rich

What’s the second rule of getting rich? Come back tomorrow  to find out.

Here are the income stats for www.financialjesus.com in October 2009.

Google Adsense - $74.86
Direct Links – $10
TopEuro.biz – $2.2

Total Income – $87,06

What happened

The total income for October 2009 was a bit down from September – $87 vs $89. In spite of growing traffic the total Google Adsense revenue was down 5 bucks.

I didn’t have a lot of time to work on the site, but just as I feared on my income post for september – people got used to the new design and ad blindness started to kick in. We showed more ads but got less money.

An average monetized site getting about 1000 visitors per day can except an advertising income of 200-400 dollars per month so I started thinking about ways to better monetize the site.

I asked around in forums and got some nice feedback in WickedFire, DigitalPoint and the Cheating Network. (click on the links for the threads I started and the great information I got back – specially the first 2 forums).

I signed up for CPM ads at TopEuro.biz. I only had them for a couple of days – that’s why the low income(2.2 dollars). These ads only show to people coming from USA and Canada and I don’t need people to click on them – I get money for just showing them! I’ll see on November how they perform!

Traffic is Growing

Traffic was up 20.3% in October – going from 25 000 to 30 430.

With the last 2 months the total traffic to Financial Jesus has grown 60%.

Goal for November

This month I will try to put into practice all monetization advice I got from the forums – my goal is blog income of $200 dollars.
In October I also happened onto a blog post in German that talks about 19 websites and how they make money- I intend to go through it again to find some great advertising programs.

I am also in the process of launching at least 3 new websites – I will let you guys know what they are when I launch!