Nagel Family Website

Just got notification that my Kiva loan has paid back $102 of the original $150. I lent the money to Venta de Tortillas, a tortilla sales company, back in September and it’s scheduled to be repaid by June. Then I’ll take the $150 and loan it out again.

Kiva allows individuals to make $25 loans to low-income entrepreneurs in the developing world (microfinance). By doing so, individuals like you provide affordable working capital for the poor (money to buy a sewing machine, livestock, etc.), empowering them to earn their way out of poverty.

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 9:56 am and is filed under Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

When looking to reduce our expenses, the one thing that really bugged me was our phone bill. With Verizon, we were paying (on average) $48.72 per month for simple phone service! I’d been using Vonage for my business lines, and after switching from DSL to cable, have had no problems what-so-ever. So I decided to move our home line to Vonage as well.

We started with the unlimited plan ($24.99 per month), as I didn’t know what our usage would be. But after 3 months, I was easily able to switch down to the lower plan as were were using approximately 300 minutes per month (on average only using 58% of the lower limits). Changing plans cost me $11, but I’ll recoup that after a couple months at the new rate. For 500 minutes, the cost is only $14.99 per month (turns out to be $20.62 after taxes & fees, and fees for paying taxes and taxes on the fees).

So I’m saving $28.10 per month, or $337.20 per year on my phone bill! The switch was very easy, especially since all of our phones run off of 1 base unit. The hardest part of the switch was getting our 3 DVRs plugged in properly.

Click here and receive up to 2 months free when you switch to Vonage!

This entry was posted by Eric on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

With 2008 right around the corner, I’ve come up with a list of my goals & resolutions for the year

Affiliate Marketing

• I’d like to win a contest. The type where the top affiliates win something, not a luck-of-the-draw type contest. I haven’t found one yet, but I’ll keep looking
• I’m hoping to go to Affiliate Summit East in Boston this summer

Fitness

• I’d like to get to 11% body fat, or lower. Based on my previous 3 measurements, I think that’d doable.

Finance

• I’d like to have enough money in 2008 to max out my IRA, Laura’s IRA (after she opens one), and the kids 529 accounts.

Other

• I really need to watch less TV. I did this back in June and got so much done! But then I fell back into watching TV, and became a mindless blob. I’m not completely cutting out TV, but limiting what I watch. Of course, I’ll watch LOST, and football, but all that other junk can go.

I’m sure there should be more, and hopefully I’ll add to this list as the year goes on.

Happy 2008!

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Finance, Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Nearly 1 year ago, on December 13, 2006, I bought some OXPS. It went down, I bought more. Today, it hit my target price and I sold my initial investment, pocketing 30 shares as my profit.

If you search this blog for OXPS, you’ll see I’ve talked about them a few times in the past. I was sold on this stock, and it paid off. However, it now rates a -8.3741 on the NetNagel Stock Index. Time to get out!

Look at the post where I told you about OXPS, PRAA, TIVO and IRBT - each one of them has given me 33% and I’ve sold 3 of them already, pocketing the profits. (I’ve got a 10% trailing stop order on Tivo now, as I’m trying a new strategy - more on that after Tivo sells, but it’s up 44.07% for me so far)

So from the principle that I’ve gotten back, I averaged-down GPIC. They rate 97.0948 on my stock index, and after being down a few times present a great buying opportunity today. I’ve got enough cash in my IRA to either average-down another pick, or open a new position. Still undecided.

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

All the news I read & listen to today is about the plan by Bush (and others) to help borrowers with their subprime mortgages. However, the plan, as I understand it, is to simply freeze rate hikes for 5 years.

How does this fix the problem? Isn’t it just delaying the problem?

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 8:55 am and is filed under Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

My eBay auctions are moving right along! Each one has a bid placed, and a couple of them have a lot of watchers. I have a feeling I’ll get a lot of bids Friday & Saturday, as the auctions come close to an end. My strategy of post on Saturday for 7 days, collect payment Saturday, Sunday & Monday and ship on Monday seems to be a good one.

I’m being a little tricky when posting my auctions - see, the auctions have thumbnails of the images, but when you click them, they come to my website. Then if you click again to return to eBay, I set my affiliate cookie. So far, it’s given me another $5 in revenue, and I haven’t even sold anything! The $5 comes from people winning other auctions, after viewing mine.

Don’t worry - I checked the eBay terms & it states:

(5) Affiliate Links. You may use affiliate links to promote your own eBay listings or eBay Store, those of your Agents or those of anyone else with whom you are affiliated. eBay may terminate this provision at any time with 7 days notice. You may not include affiliate links on any eBay.com page or eBay-owned page, such as an eBay listing or eBay Store.

So I’m not breaking the rules. Think outside the box & earn more!

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 10:03 am and is filed under Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.