Million Dollar Ninja

Enjoy your summer

That small bead of sweat rolling down my back indicates that it is indeed summer.  Coming from a tropical island where it’s always hot, I love summer. Maybe not those days where it goes above 100F (>38C for the rest of the world), but I like when you don’t need thirty seven layers of clothing just to go outside.

I like summer because everybody seems happier – when they’re not complaining about their shoes melting.  And the reason is because they get to come out of hibernation.

This might not be a problem for folks living South of D.C., but I live in New Jersey and it gets pretty cold in the winter.  And besides those days when we get to go skiing, ice skating, or break our backs shoveling snow, we really don’t get to hang out outside too often.

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Show some Luv

I have been blogging for a little over two months now and my only regret about blogging has been “Why didn’t I start doing it earlier?”

Blogging has been a lot of fun.  It has driven me to gain more knowledge and to improve in ways I didn’t know I could improve.  It has also given me the opportunity to meet different people that I otherwise would have never met.

I’m talking about other bloggers.

Okay, I have never physically met any other blogger, but by reading what they have to say I feel like I’m getting to know them – slowly.  I am the new kid on the block but I feel like I’m starting to become part of a community – a blogging community. Read more

Head over and read my Guest Post.

I want to thank Joshua Rodriguez at CNA Finance for giving me the opportunity to guest post on his site.  Please head over to CNA Finance and read How Haggling Saved Me $1,200.

Here’s an excerpt of the post.

Some people don’t like haggling or negotiating because they don’t want to come off as rude or disrespectful, but that’s because they haven’t mastered the art of haggling.  Okay, haggling might not be an art, but there is a right way to haggle and a wrong way to haggle.

Before we get into the right way to haggle and why you should always do it, let me first tell you a little bit about myself.

I come from the Dominican Republic and like in any third world country, haggling is the norm.  Granted, there are places where you just don’t haggle – restaurants and supermarkets – but everything else is up for negotiation.

Read the whole post at CNA Finance.

I want to take this opportunity to help a family friend who is going through a life threatening event.  Victor Koryagin is an Ukrainian artist who has been very close friends with Kate’s mom since they were 19 years old.  Unfortunately he was diagnosed with Stage 3 sarcoma in his right knee. There is no medical insurance in Ukraine so he has to pay for the treatment himself.

Victor runs a small publishing business, which provides for his family, but it doesn’t make enough money to pay for the medical treatment that he needs.  This is where we come in.  Kate’s mom – Yelena – started a fundraiser at youcaring.com titled An artist in Ukraine fights cancer where she has been able to raise over $11,000 and she personally also gave thousands of dollars towards his treatment.  She’s doing all she can, but she can’t pay for all of it on her own.  Both Yelena and Victor are grateful for all the donations, but they’re still short of their goal.

In part one I mentioned the steps I took to get out of debt.  Part two concentrates in building an emergency fund and laying a foundation for a comfortable retirement.  I never really thought about retirement before because it is so far away.  Now I realize I was just wasting time and money.  You might not be thinking about retirement either but you’d be surprised how fast time flies.  I mean look at me, I know I look good and all but I AM 33 years old already!

Three to six months emergency fund

Paying off your debts might take time depending on how much you owe and how much you are able to pay each month.  It took me less than six months but I put every single extra penny that I had into my debt.  Hopefully you will too.  How ever long it takes doesn’t really matter, the point is that now you should have zero debt, except for the mortgage if you have a house. Read more