As you already know, I love love love using Zazzle as a creative outlet…and of course, to make a little extra money 🙂 . So when a new and somewhat odd product is introduced, I usually jump on it right away to see what I can create.  And to my delight, occasionally these products actually make me some money.  Which I LOVE.
I know this sounds ridiculously corny, so I’m hesitant to even write an entire post about it, but I’m telling you – this one simple activity is how my husband and I have (and are) achieving all of our dreams in record timing.  It’s why I’m able to stay at home with my son, how we bought two investment properties, are learning a second language, have spent our summer traveling, have become vegan, the list goes on and on…
So here’s the really simplistic, dumbed-down gist of how we’ve made it all happen:  Every few months (if we’re lucky, weeks), we sit down and formally Goal Set.  I’m emphasizing formally and capitalizing Goal Set on purpose – it’s that big of a deal and that big of an event for us…it’s better than a date night (actually, we love it so much that it basically is a date night). But most importantly, it consistently and reliably always works – sometimes it’s scary how much so.
So here’s what we do, and how you can (and should) do it too:
For the most part, the classic American dream includes home ownership. A comfortable job, a vacation once a year, and a place to call home. What’s funny is that the vast majority of us are relying on 30-year mortgages to “own” our homes…but no one ever talks about the reasons to pay off your mortgage early.
So, in some sense, we really aren’t owning our homes – we just feel like we are. And it’s so commonplace to have a mortgage that nobody really second-guesses it.
To be fair, there are some benefits of having a mortgage. But does that really mean that it’s a good idea for everyone? Should it be the norm?
I’m not convinced. Here are some of the biggest reasons to pay off your mortgage early (and why we’re doing it):
Related post: How to Pay Off the Mortgage Early
Investing in real estate is an amazing way to diversify your portfolio and ironically it is much easier than most people think. Â In this day and age it can be nearly impossible to build wealth from a paycheck alone, so most of us need to think outside of the (career) box if we really want to live the comfortable lifestyle that we all dream of.
My husband and I purchased our first investment property 3 years ago and it was one of the best decisions we ever made.
We rarely even think about it nowadays, yet it is still making money for us behind the scenes.  We aren’t handy-types or real estate experts, yet it still was a great investment choice.  I
t is honestly something that anyone can do, as long as you make smart decisions in the beginning.
So here’s what we did to buy our first investment property:
There are a ton of roadblocks that make starting a blog intimidating and setting up the actual website is certainly one of them – especially if you’re a writer at heart. Thank goodness for WordPress!  If you’re still in the very early stages of setting up a blog and haven’t picked a platform yet, please take this one piece of advice – CHOOSE WORDPRESS.  If you don’t, at some point in the next year you will be migrating your site to WordPress and it will be a pain in the butt.
The reason is plain and simple – WordPress makes everything extremely easy.  And one of the ways they do that is by offering thousands of plugins that add special functions, bells, and whistles to our sites.  All of the plugins listed below are free, so I highly recommend you just add them right away.  I use each and every one of them, so everything I’m telling you is from my own experience.
Here we go! The best WordPress plugins for beginner bloggers:
Ok, it’s probably no surprise to any of you that I love using my photography to make a little side income (I use Zazzle to do this, but there are other similar sites). It has been one of my favorite hobbies for a really long time and over the past few years it’s been a nice source of extra spending money.
I’ve written a few times about the different ways you can actually use Zazzle to make money from your photography (I’ll list them below for reference).  But I thought it would also be worthwhile to tell you exactly why it is worth your time to add sites like Zazzle to your portfolio of hobbies and/or income sources. And more importantly, why you should be using your photographs (that you’re already taking!) to make some extra money.
Here are the other articles to check out if you’re as excited as I am about this:
I recently wrote about some quick and easy ways to pay off your mortgage early, but talking to everyone about that made me realize one important thing – there are some really good reasons to NOT pay off the mortgage too.
In fact, for some people paying off the mortgage may do more harm than good. And for lots of people hanging onto the mortgage may actually help to grow their bottom line.
Here’s why:
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