manage your cellphone bill.

Check for Extraneous Charges

An informed and aggressive subscriber can get any carrier to apply retroactive credits for services like roadside assistance and handset insurance if they've gone unused.

Look for Premium Text and Content Charges.

There are predatory players out on the Internet who lure unwitting subscribers to sign up for their services and bill through the carriers' systems.

Don't Pay for Text and Data Plans if You Don't Need To.

Many subscribers are sold these plans when they sign up for service, but don't use them enough to warrant a monthly plan. Some quick math will tell you if you're one of them.

Make Sure You're Billed for the Right Plan

Nights and weekends should be free. If you've used fewer minutes than your plan allotment, you should not be charged overages.

"Right-Size" Your Plan

It's nearly impossible for any subscriber to keep track of all of the plans on the market and to find the best one. It's even tougher for businesses with hundreds or thousands of service plans.

Challenges that come with growth.

Each stage of growth comes with its own challenges. A small business with $500,000 in sales trying to get to $5 million has different operational, financial and human-resources challenges than a company with $25 million stretching to hit $100 million.

For tiny companies with a bead on that $5 million-in-sales mark, the first thing to do is chart a financial course.. mind your cash. Unless you socked away a pile from a previous life.

Next step:

Focus your energies. At this stage, nearly every ounce of investment (in cash and time) should go toward perfecting your product and building a solid reputation with customers."The only people you talk to at this stage are customers and potential customers." If you don't plan to bootstrap your business to the next level, you'll also need to find a way to drum up some capital.

Getting From $25 Million To $100 Million.

At this stage, your success depends less on your product and more on execution. Think broadly about what businesses you're in and be willing to cut loose underperforming product lines and reinvest in stronger ones. "That's a big switch from early-stage companies, where it was about laser, single-minded focus."

Career diversification protects you

You can boast a wider portfolio of skills and services. You don't just have one source of revenue, but “multiple streams of income.” If one declines, another can take its place.

And there are more reasons.
During tough periods, companies trim their staff or don’t hire as they normally would. An outside consultant or trainer, a one-time project, a lower-priced service -these can be attractive options. You’re also in an ideal position to promote yourself by speaking at business conferences and other industry events. When people are desperate, they’re eager to hear solutions.

How to calculate your hourly worth.

Here’s the formula : Take the amount of money you earn per year. Then divide that by 50 weeks and then by 40 hours.

For example, growing real estate business.

Making about R800,000 a year. R800,000 divided by 50 weeks equals R16,000 (weekly income). R16,000 divided by 40 hours comes to R400.

"That’s how much your work time is worth," I told him. "So never do anything yourself that you could have done for less than R400 an hour."

Now you do it. Divide your yearly income by 50 weeks. Then divide that by 40 hours.

If the number you come up with is less than R150, it tells me you are not practising a financially valuable skill -
At the same time, make yourself as valuable as you can be at your present job. And start focusing on the really important work that will propel your career - and your income - forward.

Before long, your hourly rate will be double or even triple what it is today.

And your personal time will always be worth even more.

The secret to selling the rights products.

1. Catch their attention.

If you use a letter or e-mail to get to the decision-maker you’re trying to reach, your attention-getter will be your headline. If you intend to contact him in person, it will be the first sentence you say. Whatever method you use, you must have a powerful grabber that will make him want to take action and buy the rights to your product.

2. Show them how to promote your product.

Don’t just write a couple of paragraphs saying that your product is sure to sell like hotcakes. You need to convince the decision-maker that your product can be marketed effectively.

Show him exactly how to do it. Create some promotional literature for the product, including sample ads, Web pages, and/or direct-mail copy. Give him a marketing plan that the company can put into action and quickly start seeing profits pour in.

3. Have the actual product or a prototype in your possession

Well, what they want is what anyone in their position wants: a potential money machine handed to them on a silver platter. If you can provide the full package - the product as well as some good marketing ideas for it - you will get very serious consideration…

Why budgets don't work...

By categorising expenses and limiting spending, they argue, you can have enough left over every month to save money and grow rich.

The problem is that when you budget, you pay everyone else first - the landlord, the credit card companies, the phone company, and so on. So at the end of the month, you have nothing left to put in the bank. You promise yourself you’ll do better next month, but you never do. There are always unexpected bills to pay, unanticipated sales to take advantage of.

Budgeting doesn’t work. But there is something that does: putting some predetermined percentage of your income into a savings account each month before you pay any of your bills.

Think of yourself as a personal corporation and the money you save as your personal income. All the other money you spend on house and car payments and so forth are the expenses of your personal corporation. Only the portion that goes into a savings account is really yours.You might, for example, have a portion of your paycheque automatically deposited in your savings account each month - as soon as the check is deposited.

Pay yourself first by putting as much money as you can into a tax-deferred savings vehicle (like an RA).Do this for yoursef, you spouse, and children. Then pay the government next by creating a separate holding account into which you deposit a percentage of every fee that’s paid to you - the money that you going to owe in taxes. Then you pay your bills. Then you will realise that what you have left divided by the days in a month is adequate to cover expenses.

Sir Isaac Newton knew about investing.

The bailout wasn't going to solve the world’s economic problems immediately, The approval was something that would bring about some sense of order.

Now what? Obviously the market isn’t going to fix itself - so where do we go from here? That is a good question. Only time will tell, but Sir Isaac Newton probably got it right with his first law of motion: An object in motion will stay in motion and an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force.

At this point, the market is in motion… and that movement is on the downswing. The bailout could have been the opposing force to halt the downward motion, but now we will never know. This economic slowdown is far from over until an unbalanced force comes up.I believe that every individual can give the economy the drive it deserves to end the world crisis.