Living (and loving) Life

If you’ve made the transition to working at home, you’ve probably come across some challenges you weren’t expecting. While there are certainly a ton of benefits to working from home, there are a few stumbling blocks that many beginners face.

Here are seven tips that will help you work through the challenges that tend to come up and keep on going down the road to success:

1 – Find opportunities on “gig market” sites

Upwork, Fiverr and other online “gig” markets are some of the best places to find work you can do from home, especially when you’re just starting out.

These services typically feature an escrow payment system, making it a safe place to do business for both contractors and clients. This is so useful, since it can be hard to pick out the work at home “schemes” from the legitimate opportunities when you’re first starting out. [Read more…]

Are you considering a career change, perhaps as a freelance entrepreneur? Maybe it has stalled in the ‘thinking about it’ stage due to the fear of losing the safety net, or steady paycheck, that your current employment offers right now. However, the fact is nothing about the workforce resembles a safety net these days.

Every time I look at the news it seems that another business is downsizing, if not closing. Or, perhaps you work for a company that will soon join others in the trend of replacing senior employees with new employees to lower their cost.

Sure, the pendulum might swing back…eventually. But, why wait until it does? It’s possible that even when it does, you might do far better on your own anyway. Not too long ago I started freelance writing, and have enjoyed the flexibility it allows me. [Read more…]

As social media is becoming more and more popular, many businesses are opting to blog about industry information on their corporate websites. While blogging works great for some businesses, it’s not necessarily for everyone.

If you’re on the fence about whether to blog or not, let’s talk about some of the primary pros and cons that should help you make that choice.

One of the main advantages of blogging is the ease in which you can reach your target audience and connect with your customer base. For example, maintaining a blog is an extremely convenient way to write a post and get it in front of numerous people who are interested in your business.

Rather than trying to reach people by email, telephone and a variety of other ways, you can simply write a blog post where everyone who is interested can easily find it. This is especially beneficial if you operate your business on a national or global scale. In this way, you can maximize your impact while minimizing your effort. [Read more…]

Sometimes your debt is so massive that you cringe and get a sinking feeling in your stomach at thought of even checking your credit card bill. You can no longer afford payment on your debt with your current income and all the balance transfers in the world won’t make a difference in the amount of debt you owe.

That is when you need to start thinking outside the box about how you are approaching the debt problem. All is not lost. If you are in a dire situation that is similar to what I have just described, here are some creative ways to pay off your debt: [Read more…]

Perhaps you just checked your credit score and were pleasantly surprised to see that the three-digit number has jumped up since you last looked at it. Or maybe you peeked at your report, and to your dismay found that your score dropped from where it once was.

In the worst of cases, perhaps you are actually too afraid of the outcome to even order a credit report, even a free credit report at that, for fear of what it will reveal.

The fact is that sooner or later you need to confront it, and if it’s lower than you prefer, take some smart action to get the numbers moving up.

As you know, what is listed on your credit report has a direct influence over your credit score, and your credit score carries some serious weight. It’s what lenders look at to determine whether you are a responsible borrower, and you are rewarded for a good credit score by lower interest rates. A bad credit score can earn you higher interest rates and can even prevent you from taking out a mortgage or a loan. [Read more…]