Forget Frugality

We've been living on one income since we decided to start a family. It's hard to do living in one of the most affluent metropolitan areas of the country, but we're making it paycheck by paycheck. We cut our expenses to the extreme by selling one of our cars, eliminating cable TV and by me working from home full time. We recently paid off the car we still own two years early. I have a work issued Blackberry that I also use as a my personal phone so we pay for only one mobile phone contract. We started budgeting by using the best budgeting software for the money-YNAB, which stands for You Need A Budget. I found out about YNAB from my favorite personal finance blog, Bargaineering. We don't go out to eat or buy anything without a coupon or discount. We subscribe to Groupon and all it's copycat competitors. But you can only do so much cutting back before there's nothing else to cut.
2011 will be the year to "Forget Frugality". I've been looking into ways to make additional income, both passive and active. Passive income requires money but not time. Active income requires time and money, but less of the latter. We don't have a heck of a lot of money to invest in dividend stocks to generate passive income, and I'm not going to dip into our savings to do so. It takes a lot of money to make a lot of passive income, but anything is better than nothing. I don't have the time for a part-time job and they usually aren't worth the trouble for the amount (or lack of) money you make or the time investment.
I stumbled upon the internet marketing website Prosperly.com while researching YNAB's founder and online entrepreneur Jesse Mechem (He and I have something in common. See if you can figure it out by reading his profile ;)). Prosperly is a website flipping blog. The founder, Adam White, is supposedly a successful online entrepreneur and will teach you the 'Prosperly Way'. He offers personal coaching to help you buy and flip your first website. I'm intrigued but nonetheless skeptical.
The YNAB community also introduced to me Ramit Sethi of blog and book I Will Teach You To Be Rich and the "Earn 1K on the Side" course. I participated in a two part webinar hosted by him. He's an in your face/personal guerilla marketing kind of guy that really talks up his Earn 1K course. His hard sell worked. He only opens the course for very short internals at a time so we talked about it and we decided to sign up. It's an expensive course, so I didn't take the decision lightly. I was again intrigued but skeptical. He offers a 3 month money back guarantee, so what did I have to lose? When I went to sign up and pay for the course the website crashed. How's that for a sign? I contacted customer service and they gave me another link to sign up, but I saw the writing on the wall. I Googled both Prosperly and Earn 1K to see if they were scams, but nothing negative came up in the search results. That doesn't mean they aren't scams, it just means that no one has posted anything negative about either program or that both guys are very good at suppressing the negative feedback or they are legitimate. Has anyone ever used either course? I'd love to hear feedback from people I know.

Related articles

• 'You Need a Budget' Gets a 'Leg-Up' from App-Up (prweb.com)

Beard Team USA News

Here's the Thanksgiving message from BTUSA's Founder and self-appointed Captain, Phil Olsen:

Hi Everyone,

Here is the latest from Beard Team USA.

Beard Team USA Nationals:

I am still waiting for confirmation of a few important details before I can announce the firm date and location of the first ever Beard Team USA Nationals. I should have confirmation in the next few days.

Meanwhile here is a hint. BEer. The community that has been selected has one brewery for every 11,500 residents. This may be the highest brewery-to-resident ratio in the known universe. I am hoping to hold the Official Beard Team USA Somewhat Annual General Meeting as a progressive meeting, starting at one brewery and then progressing through each brewery in town. Stay tuned.[Spoiler alert: the city with the most breweries is Portland, OR - editor]

Wanna be in the movies?

This summer Epic New Era Productions will be filming a film about beards. Epic needs beards to be in the pic. For more info, contact the Producer -- Joshua Trujillo, josh@eneflix.com, 218-839-9242.

BTUSA nationwide discount at Red Roof Inns:

All members of Beard Team USA are entitled to a 15% discount at any Red Roof Inn in the country! Just click here to book:

http://www.redroof.com/partners/beard-team-usa

Thanks to John Murray, National Account Executive for this generous offer!

Coming events:

Organizational meeting of the New England Chapter of Beard Team USA.
December 10, 2009, 8:00 p.m., Flat Top Johnny's, 1 Kendall Sq., Cambridge, Massachusetts. Everyone is invited. Just show up. For further info, please contact Matt Quierey (btusanewengland@gmail.com) or Kevin Smith (madeofmedal7727@gmail.com).

St. Croix Chapter Beard and Moustache Contest, Christiansted, Virgin Islands.
January 16, 2010 -- See http://www.bigbeards.com/scrapbook.htm#Events

Southeast Regionals, Charleston, South Carolina.
Valentine's Weekend, 2010, hosted by the Holy City Beard and Moustache Society. http://www.myspace.com/holycitybeardsociety

All-American City Beard and Moustache Contest, Somerville, Massachusetts.
February 13, 2010. For more info, contact Todd Easton (todd.easton.gmail.com).

Third Annual Misprint Beard Contest, Austin, Texas.
February 20, 2010 -- Hosted by the Austin Facial Hair Club. Special three-month and six-month sprint categories.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Phil Olsen
Founder and self-appointed Captain
Beard Team USA