Shoppers in North Carolina and South Carolina will have the opportunity to enjoy a break from taxation this weekend, allowing people a much-needed chance to save money. Throughout the weekend, no tax will be collected from sales of clothing, shoes, school supplies, computers, and linens, amounting to as much as 9 percent savings.
 
For retailers, the weekend is a popular time to stock up and advertise specials that draw even more shoppers in for a chance to save money. Many stores have extended hours during tax-free weekend, while many customers plan to purchase more expensive items at that time in order …read more

Find free stuff from Offers.com.

K-Mart to offer discounts to the unemployed.

Creative CDs for saving.

Because of the scope of the economic stimulus bill passed last month, it is practically impossible to find a succinct summary of everything offered in the bill. However, it is possible to find out in bits and pieces. One of the more interesting stimulus measures includes payment to those on Social Security right now. If you are receiving Social Security Income or Supplemental Security Income, you will receive $250 without doing anything. There is more information on the official Social Security Administration Web site — including a video.
This is a nice bonus for seniors and others already receiving Social Security. …read more

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
The other day a writing buddy of mine called. He was tempted to take a writing gig that paid way less than half of what she normally gets. True, it was a rather unique opportunity with a major trade publisher. If he did this job well he’d have an excellent contact which might lead to more lucrative work in the future. It wasn’t, however, a book, nor did it earn royalties. In my mind, the “might lead to more lucrative work” some day, some time down the road is, well, most often futile.
We’re close so I asked him what …read more

If I got everything my way, someone else would handle the business side of my freelance writing business… and probably do the marketing too. Or maybe not. Now that I’ve learned more about managing my money and have gotten mostly out of vagueness about my income and expense, it’s actually kinda fun keeping track of it all.
I’m learning to plan ahead a bit too. And play closer attention to my intuition as well. For instance, I’ve noticed my current computer is taking a bit more maintenance than it used to. I’m running disk cleanup more often because it’s slowing …read more

Although there are real advantages to freelance writing, there are also some problems. The biggest is the feast or famine nature of the work flow. There are several approaches, including:

Residual income from book and other royalties, web site affiliate income and the like. The goal is here is to continue to earn income from work already done.
Regular gigs – work that is performed weekly or monthly or some other repeating and predictable fashion.
Savings to fill in the gaps.

There are challenges to each approach. For example, royalty income tends to taper off over time; building affiliate income takes time and …read more