Advertise with SocialSpark

I have been doing some sponsored posts through the opportunities provided by SocialSpark.com for about two months. From the blogger point of view, the results have been phenomenal. Within two months, I have been able to bring in average $100/month additional income. But if SocialSpark is only beneficial to the bloggers, it will not be as successful. For any advertiser, it is one powerful marketing tool. First of all, it is the fastest way to create a buzz for your new products or services. After the advertisers published the opportunities, the bloggers have 12 hours to complete the post, which means within 12 hours or even less time you will be able to bring thousands of potential buyers to your products/services. Secondly, it is more cost effective. Even if you do not have large budget for your product promotion, with SocialSpark you will be able to maximize the result. It is like having thousands of bloggers working as a marketing team for you.

As a personal finance blog, in the future, I hope I can see some financial services companies, such as broker firms, can join SocialSpark to promote their new products and services. That will be a perfect fit for my blog.

My NetWorth Update - June

It is the time of the month again to update my net worth. My total net worth is up exact 2% from the month of May. Let's take a look at the number:

Assets:

Cash: $1100 (-88.25%)

Stocks: $27569 (+47.97%)

Retirement: $18533 (+1.27%)


Car: $26400(-1.12%)


Debts:
Car loan: $20318（-2.10%）


Total NetWorth: $53284 (+2%)


We see a big drop on the cash part of my assets. That is because I transfered $10,000 to my Questrade Account to balance my portfolio. I have also added $400 to my RRSP. Again, my company pension is included in my net worth calculation.
The market has been pretty bad now. Therefore, even with several hundred dollars added, I did not see a big increase for my retirement funds.

The NEW! Dirt Devil

Do you like cleaning? I know I do not. And I believe most of people do not like cleaning either. It is a boring, time consuming, and labor intensive job. It takes me a long time to just make the decision to clean. Let alone the actual cleaning job. I live in a two-bedroom apartment with my two roommates. Different from me, they seem to like cleaning. I do not know how, but they have decided that every Saturday morning is the time that we should clean our apartment and have the vacuuming job assigned to me. I usually do not wake up until noon on weekends. Our heavy, noisy, and energy inefficient vacuum makes the job even worse for me. In order to save energy, I opt to mop our laminate floors in our apartment instead of vacuuming. Sometimes, I even try to avoid the cleaning job by not waking up on time. J My roommates are nice enough not to knock at my door and drag me out of my bed to clean! To thank them, I will usually cook the dinner for them.

Today, I have found out that Dirt Devil is introducing its new AccuCharge Stick Vac and Hand Vac. It seems to be a new way to save energy. The new vacuum that Dirt Devil brings to us has the first cordless cleaning technology that earns Energy Star approval. The AccuCharge technology with their new vacuum enables a 70% reduction in energy consumption compared to other cordless vacuums. I might just find a better way to save energy during cleaning. To find out more, please visit their website.

GCR Weekly Report

Today is the day before July 1st, Canada Day. It is super quiet in the office. Most of the people is taking the day off. Anyway, let's look at the special from Great Canadian Rebates for this week:

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 5.0% Cash Back Rebate and shipping starting at 3.99 per Order for purchase on Barnes & Noble.com Today. If you are looking to pick up some books, it might be worthwhile to do it within this week.

I Hit My Target for Side Income This Month!

If there is an equation to rich, I would put it this way: Spend Less+Make More+Invest Intelligently= Wealth. I am living within my means. In fact, I could not find any more ways to stretch the dollar, not until I am ready to be starving anyways. In the meantime, I am investing. Hopefully, I am doing it intelligently. Having said that, I think I can be working towards making a little bit more.

Early this month, I have set a goal for myself to generate $80 additional income. Up till now, I am proud to say that not only I hit my target, but I am actually making additional $102 for the month of June, more than 120% mission accomplished.The money mostly comes from blog sponsorship and the sponsored posts I have been writing. Here I really want to thank SocialSpark and PayPerPost for all the wonder opportunities. I hope that it is sustainable for me to bring in about $80-$120 each month by continuing doing this. Considering the money is after tax, it would be equivalent to about $1370~$2057 annual pay increase to me. (My marginal tax rate is around 30%) Not bad at all!

Auto Body Expert

The following is a sponsored post

Try to repair your car from a collision? Need to have some auto body shop job done to your car? Although there are many auto body shops to choose from, very few of them are expert collision repairers. You certainly do not want to take a chance with your vehicle and your safety. Check out this website, auto body san jose, to find experts in the field of collision repair and bring your car back to the pre-accident condition.

Reply from GCR

I sent an e-mail to Great Canadian Rebates yesterday about my cheque request yesterday. Within 24 hours, they have replied me. It looks like I won't get my cheque until July 15th, the earliest. Here is the reply from them:

“Greetings,
Cheques are mailed on the 15th of each month, your request was received on the 16th of June and thus will be eligible for payment on July 15th.”

Therefore, if you would like to request the cash back payment by cheque, you probably want to pay attention to your request date and make sure it is before the 15th of the month.

Hollywood Love

Are you a fan of Hollywood movie? Do you love watching those romantic stories on the big screen? If you do, you must have some favorite quotes and memorable lines from the movies. My vote will be the one from the 1970 movie, Love Story. It goes like this “Love means never having to say you are sorry”. I am sure all the memorable lines from the movie sound beautiful and romantic. But what is the possibility of using these lines in real life and them actually working? If you are curious about that just like me, why not got to the Ultimate Flirting Championship provided by Extreme Style by VO5 to test it out? Based on my own experience, although those lines from the movie did help me a bit, it is still not easy to achieve the Victory Hair if you do not play with your own style.

Try the game using the widget embedded in this post. I am sure you will have fun playing!

Still No Cheque from GCR

I still have not received the cash back cheque from GCR yet. I submitted the cheque request around June 12th. After the submission, they did send an acknowledgment e-mail to me about the request. I just shot them another e-mail asking the estimated date when I can receive the money. Hopefully, it will be sometime next week. :)

Excuse me?

How do you start a conversation with a stranger or someone you would like to know? Do you use pick-up lines? What is the worst pick-up line you have ever heard? Here is the worst one I have heard many years ago: “My love for you is like the Energizer bunny, it keeps going and going.” Humorous, current commercials, slogans and jingles are great pop-culture references to start conversations. These puns, however, are not great pop-culture references to start relationships. Your hair will never been turned into Victory Hair if you use pick-up lines like that one just mentioned.
The Ultimate Flirting Championship is sponsored by Extreme Style by VO5. You can test your skills with the flirting widget embedded in this post!

My ETF Dividends Payout

iShares Canada has finally published the quarterly dividends payout for their ETFs. I currently hold the following ETFs in my portfolio: XRE, XBB, XIU, XIN, and XSP. The dividends payouts are:

XRE: $0.22096 per share
XBB: $0.33506 per share
XIU: $0.49049 per share
XIN: $0.35008 per share
XSP: $0.12630 per share

Based on my average cost of each ETF and the percentage of each one in my portfolio, the current yield of my portfolio for this quarter is around 1.07%. If this rate is sustainable through out the year, my overall yield for this year will be around 4%. Not bad at all.

I have been thinking about adding XTR to my portfolio due to its high dividends payout ratio and VWO to diversify myself into BRIC. However, I still need to do more research on both.

Meet the Victory Hair

Have you ever heard of Victory Hair? If your answer is no, don’t worry! Let me explain it for you. Victory Hair is the messed up state that hair gets after magic happens between good looking couples with great hair style.
One of our sponsors, Extreme Style by VO5, has created a website with an online game called Ultimate Flirting Championship. With this game, you can test your flirting skill and see if you can achieve the victory hair in the virtual world. This game allows to you to be the judge, choosing questions, best answers, and picking winners. If you don’t want to be a judge and believe that you can provide the best flirtatious answers, you can play as a contestant too. It is a great game which could help people to pick up some new skills in flirting. In order to achieve your victory hair, you need a plan. Mine will include something like inviting her to dinner, chatting on the phone or online a lot, helping her with anything you could, and sending her some flowers. ：）

So what is your plan? Can you achieve the victory hair? Click on the widget in this post and test out your flirting skill! Most importantly, have fun!

Four years of home gains have been wiped out

Home prices in 20 major U.S. cities have dropped a record 15.3% in the past year and are now back to where they were in 2004, according to the Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's. Real Estate market has longer life cycle than the stock market. Let't not forget what goes up must come down. In the end, it will be back to its true value.

Here's the city-by-city breakdown in the Case-Shiller index:

Las Vegas, down 26.8% in the past year; Miami, down 26.7%; Phoenix, down 25%; Los Angeles, down 23.1%; San Diego, down 22.4%; San Francisco, down 22.1%; Tampa, down 20.4%; Detroit, down 18%; Minneapolis, down 15.5%; Washington, down 14.8%; Chicago, down 9.3%; New York, down 8.4%; Atlanta, down 7.5%; Cleveland, down 6.8%; Boston, down 6.4%; Seattle, down 4.9%; Denver, down 4.7%; Portland, down 4.7%; Dallas, down 3.4%; and Charlotte, down 0.1%.

Crazy Gas Price

This is the first time when I filled up the tank of my car and the total bill came to more than $40. The gas price is going crazy at 1.40/l here and well above $1/l over the border. I am not driving a fancy car with 6 or 8 cylinders. But the gas price has actually started to hurt.....

Gear Up This Summer

The following is a sponsored post

Have you ever wanted to buy the police gear such as Luminox watches, Sunfire LED flashlights, tactical boots and so on? Check out LA Police Gear website on which you can find a lot of those kinds of stuffs.

LA Police Gear was founded by Los Angeles area Police Officers. They have branded the company on extremely fast shipping, low prices, and outstanding service. LA Police Gear is a factory-authorized dealer for most of the brands you see on its web site.

So if you are interested, check it out using the link in this post and gear up in the summer.

GCR Weekly Report

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 15 Day Free Trial and $18.00 Cash Back Rebate for joining the Privacy Protection Plus Today.

You will be able to get your FREE credit report and credit score by joining Privacy Protection Plus. Also, you'll have a full 15 days to try Privacy Protection Plus FREE. I think it is a great time to find out what your credit score is. Join Privacy Protection Plus, know your credit score immediately, cancel the plan within 15 days, and pocket the $18 cash rebate.

If you are interested, please check it out here.

Abra Cadabra

Have you ever watched the show about Criss Angel on TV? This guy is awesome. To provide you a little bit background information if you do not know who he is. He is a young magician or illusionist just like David Blaine and Harry Houdini. When he is performing on TV, seriously, I could not believe what I have seen. This guy seems to be able to read people’s mind! There seems to be nothing that he could not achieve, such as walking on the water, telling what is in YOUR mind without you telling it, driving with his eyes covered (do not try this yourself) and so on..

If you are a big fan of Criss Angel just like me and would love to witness his magic. Here is your chance. In Luxor Hotel Las Vegas, there will be the new Cirque Du Soleil performance featuring Criss Angel called CRISS ANGEL Believe. Different from the traditional magic-themed shows, Criss Angel Believe transcends any preconceived notion of what it means to be emotionally engaged by the arts of mysticism and illusion. The stunning illusions in CRISS ANGEL Believe will not be presented as standalone elements, but as interdependent components using heightened imagery, fantastical creatures and impossible feats of legerdemain, all of which will be integrated into the dazzling, colorful fabric of the story.

If you are interested, you should try to enter the Text Message contest- just type Text 'Believe' to 22122 to win 2 tickets to CRISS ANGEL Believe

Prepaid is the Way to Go

Early this year, at the end of January, I switched my cell phone plan to the prepaid service. Now, five months have passed. What is my cell phone bill each month? $4.2!! Yes, you read it right. Now I am paying only $4.2 each month for using my cell phone. Compared with the monthly plan I used to have and pay $37 per month, I am saving $32.8 more each month which adds up to $393.6 per year(about half of my auto insurance annual cost). Not only I am saving tons on my cell phone bill, I am actually getting more features with prepaid service as well, such as caller ID which I have to pay extra to get with the monthly plan.

Although some of you might say why not just get rid of your cell phone completely, it is not an option to me since I need it once a while especially when driving.

If you do not talk a lot on your cell phone, you might want to consider to switch to the prepaid service as well. Keep your cell phone for emergency and occasional use only. If you feel that you really want to talk, pick up your land line or chat using Skype.

The Victory Hair

Have you ever heard of Victory Hair? If your answer is no, don’t worry! Let me explain it for you. Victory Hair is the messed up state that hair gets after magic happens between good looking couples with great hair style.

One of our sponsors, Extreme Style by VO5 , has created a website with an online game called Ultimate Flirting Championship. With this game, you can test your flirting skill and see if you can achieve the victory hair in the virtual world. This game allows to you to be the judge, choosing questions, best answers, and picking winners. If you don’t want to be a judge and believe that you can provide the best flirtatious answers, you can play as a contestant too. It is a great game which could help people to pick up some new skills in flirting. In order to achieve your victory hair, you need a plan. Mine will include something like inviting her to dinner, chatting on the phone or online a lot, helping her with anything you could, and sending her some flowers. ：）

So what is your plan? Can you achieve the victory hair? Click on the widget in this post and test out your flirting skill! Most importantly, have fun!

Guiding People to A Correct Direction

Do you feel good when you can provide some good advice and suggestions to other people? I think most people do. Since I am so obsessive about personal finance, I talk about it quite a lot when I am hanging out with my friends. Last couples of months, I have seen some of them actually changing their spending habit and behavior towards money issues. Two of my friends have finished reading The Wealthy Barber and one of them have finished The Automatic Millionaire. Moreover, many of them have started to ASP(automatic saving plan) to pay themselves first. I think it is a good start. It does feel good when you can guide people to a correct direction. :)

Ultimate Flirting Championship

How do you start a conversation with a stranger or someone you would like to know? Do you use pick-up lines? What is the worst pick-up line you have ever heard? Here is the worst one I have heard many years ago: “My love for you is like the Energizer bunny, it keeps going and going.” Humorous, current commercials, slogans and jingles are great pop-culture references to start conversations. These puns, however, are not great pop-culture references to start relationships. Your hair will never been turned into Victory Hair if you use pick-up lines like that one just mentioned.

The Ultimate Flirting Championship is sponsored by Extreme Style by VO5. You can test your skills with the flirting widget embedded in this post!

GCR Weekly Report

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 50 Free Prints and $9.50 Cash Back Rebate for joining Snapfish Today.

Also, I have sent the cheque request today to them for my cash back, in a total amount of $50.05. Let's see how long it will take them to mail it to me. I will do an update when I receive it.

Toronto Condo

Do you live in Toronto and try to find yourself a condo? On the website, toronto condos, you can find all kinds of information about the condos and lofts in Toronto including various toronto condo reviews. This website is designed to help you with the process of locating your desired property in greater Toronto area. It offers one of the largest and most extensive search engines in the Toronto market. Their search engine is a quick and effective tool to find detailed information and the latest pictures concerning the newest available listings on the market.

On the website, there is an original, first of its kind review section. This section is created solely for the clients who require an unbiased feedback about the property they are interested in purchasing. The tenants and owners can rate their Toronto Condominiums and state their honest opinions about the building they are living in. I think it is extremely useful for someone who is looking to buy a condo.

Want to communicate with your neighbors and maybe make friends? The forum section is designed for owners and tenants who reside in the same building to communicate with each other. It can be utilized to plan sports events, meet new people or discuss meaningful subjects.

Besides the review and forum sections, there are also Listing and Blog sections where you can locate your dream property and check out the real estate news in Toronto. This is a great website for potential condo/loft buyers in Toronto. You should check it out. :)

Timing the Market

We all know that market timing is bad and does not work in the long term. But can we eliminate it completely? I don't think it is possible though. I have just come to realize how difficult it is to try NOT to time the market.
Currently, I have around $10,000 in my Questrade trading account. I plan to use the money to balance my ETF portfolio that I have set up by following the couch potato approach. But I have not done it yet. Every time, when I saw the market went up, I said to myself,"Um, it might go down tomorrow. I probably should not be buying today. I should just wait." Then, it did go down the next day. Did I pull the trigger? No, I did not because I am afraid it might go down further.
The similar thing could happen when you try to sell. People keeps post ponding the selling because they always want to sell for more. Fear and greedy are really the worst two enemies of individual investors. We can only not to time the market when we have overcome them.
Um......Should I balance my portfolio today?

Every Little Steps Make a Difference

As many of you have noticed, I have been doing some sponsored posts quite a lot recently. First of all, I am sorry for that many sponsored posts if it annoys you. To be honest, I hope I can generate some income while doing post on this blog. I agree with Brown Eyed Girl and Money. Sometimes you need more than one motivation to get you going. And the possibility to make some money out of it is one of them.
I have set up a goal to make around $80 this month from doing sponsored posts. Currently, I am half way through($45 right now). I think $80 a month is a quite realistic and achievable goal. At the end of the month, I will be doing another update on this and see how I have been doing.

NEW! Dirt Devil® AccuCharge™

Do you like cleaning? I know I do not. And I believe most of people do not like cleaning either. It is a boring, time consuming, and labor intensive job. It takes me a long time to just make the decision to clean. Let alone the actual cleaning job. I live in a two-bedroom apartment with my two roommates. Different from me, they seem to like cleaning. I do not know how, but they have decided that every Saturday morning is the time that we should clean our apartment and have the vacuuming job assigned to me. I usually do not wake up until noon on weekends. Our heavy, noisy, and energy inefficient vacuum makes the job even worse for me. In order to save energy, I opt to mop our laminate floors in our apartment instead of vacuuming. Sometimes, I even try to avoid the cleaning job by not waking up on time. J My roommates are nice enough not to knock at my door and drag me out of my bed to clean! To thank them, I will usually cook the dinner for them.

Today, I have found out that Dirt Devil is introducing its new AccuCharge Stick Vac and Hand Vac. It seems to be a new way to save energy. The new vacuum that Dirt Devil brings to us has the first cordless cleaning technology that earns Energy Star approval. The AccuCharge technology with their new vacuum enables a 70% reduction in energy consumption compared to other cordless vacuums. I might just find a better way to save energy during cleaning. To find out more, please visit their website using this link.

Western Union®* and Scotia OnLine

Scotiabank, the bank I am using, has been pretty innovative currently. Earlier this year, they have introduced a new service called Bank the rest. Now, it is partnering with Western Union to allow you to send money to friends and family in over 200 countries and territories using ScotiaOnline.
I don't know how much they will charge for the service yet. But I really like it. Since I have many family and friends overseas, it just make sending money to them so easy. Also, I have been thinking about those who want to retire outside Canada. Now they can send money to themselves with a matter of several clicks online. It is a pretty cool feature from Scotiabank, I will say. :)

Shop Shield® New Identity & Fraud Protection

I am a lazy person and tend to buy everything online if I could. Personally, I have kept three credit cards. One of them has only $1000 credit limit which is the card I will use for shopping online. The reason why I keep such a low credit limit for the card I use for shopping online is that I am worried about the identity theft and fraud which I might encounter online. With the low credit limit, I feel that I will be able to minimize the damage if that would happen. Today, I have found another way to protect myself from identity theft and fraud. It is called Shop Shield. Shop Shield® is a new consumer service offering complete protection against identity theft and fraud when you shop online. This is a free, new, unique, complete, and cutting edge privacy solution to protect your identity when shopping online. It can protect consumers’ credit card numbers, bank accounts, billing address, Email address, and login information. With Shop Shield, the consumers never have to worry about hackers and insiders gaining access to customer databases, stealing their name, credit card number, password or even their email address, because this information is never entered into the databases of web sites they are shopping. Companies they buy from will not be able to sell their information – because consumers never give it to them. There’s no risk your information could be compromised at a merchant site, because it’s never sent there. Shop Shield is able to guarantee that because of the following technologies it is using:

* Consumer data is stored in a fortress of security systems
* All personally identifiable information is broken into undecipherable fragments, then encrypted
* Encrypted data is stored in multiple independent databases.
* Every transaction is monitored and recorded using technologies that exceed even federal banking standards
* Hardware that stores data is modeled after Department of Defense security standards.

Currently, Shop Shield is conducting a live beta test. You can Visit Shop Shield® to Learn More

Road to Wealth

I still remember the question from one of my professors in university."Do you care to be famous or rich?" You answer might be both. Unfortunately,I only have some points to share with you on how to be rich.

1. Live within your means. It does not matter how much you make. What it matters is how much you keep. You are not anywhere better off if you make $70000 per year and spend $70001 per year than those who merely earn $35000 per year and manage to only spend $30000 per year. Simple?

2. Make more. It is difficult to make a lot out of single source, but relatively easy to make some from different ways. Each little step makes a difference. You might think $40 extra per month is small. But I look at it differently. If you can bring in $40 more each month, that simply means you can use your cell phone free for the rest of your life. I think it is pretty damn good.

3. Invest intelligently and REGULARLY. Keep the investment simple. Don't buy those products you don't understand. Make regular contributions to your investment. Wait and see it grow. Speculation is exciting, but investment should be boring as hell.

4. Pay attention to cash flow. Will loads of gold and antiques do you any good if they do not generate any positive cash flow? Those articles are probably important and inflation protected. But you can only achieve your financial freedom with POSITIVE cash flow.

5. Diversify. Don't put all the eggs in one basket. Trust me on this one. 10% drop in your assets hurts so much more than 10% lost in potential earnings even if they are equivalent amount of money.

6. Stick to your plan. People tends to talk about their investments when they are making lots of money from it. When a sector got so many people talking about, it is usually too hot already. Do you own due diligence to protect yourself from catching the falling knives. Set your goal, draft a plan and stick to it.

Hensley Arrow Anti-Sway Trailer Hitch

Summer is officially here. It is the time again to pull the RV out of your garage and go camping with your family. When traveling with your family, you should pay extreme attention to safety. One of the safety concerns regarding RV is that sometimes it sways! Trailer sway is the #1 cause of trailer accidents.It is very dangerous for you, your family and any people in the car behind your RV.

Well, I have a solution to the problem. Hensley Arrow Advanced Towing System Guarantees Trailer Sway Elimination. And only Hensley can make that statement! It is the ONLY towing system which can guarantee that you will not have any sway problem when towing your RV. It eliminates any possibility of trailer sway. That’s not a misprint or an exaggeration. It is physically impossible for a travel trailer to sway, fishtail, or jackknife when outfitted with the Hensley Arrow. There are several benefits to have your travel trailer outfitted with Hensley Arrow Advanced Towing System, such as level floor plan, easier hook ups, lower trailer cost, lower center of gravity, stress free towing, lower fuel costs and so on. You can easily transfer the Hensley Arrow Advance Towing System to any trailer you have. Also, you will receive a lifetime warranty on it. Therefore, you will have it for life. If you are interested and would like to get more information, you can click here for a free video.

GCR Weekly Report

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 15% discount on all orders over $99 , plus get 4.5% in Cash Back Rebates on purchase from Foot Locker. Time to get some sportswear?

Money Saving Tips for Travel

I love to travel. I hope I can travel to at least one new place I have never been to before each year. Not only I like to see many different places, I also love to save during my trip. Here are some money saving tips I would love to share with you:

1. Go traveling with a group of people. There are many costs you can share with others when you are traveling, such as gas, parking, hotel room and so on. I typically go on vacation with my roommates who are my friends as well in a group of three or four. Besides the savings, I also find that traveling in a group is more fun and less stressful sometimes since different people have different strength. For example, some people might be good at finding the direction while others are good at searching for deals. Having different people responsible for different parts of the trip makes things so much easier.

2. Take the trip during off season. You can find many awesome deals if you go during an off-season. For example, you can go to Disney World in Orlando in September which is hurricane season for Florida. Since Orlando is in-land, the most you will get is probably just rain. If you are going for a week or so, the possibility to have rain all week is pretty low. Also, you can try to go to Vegas during June or July. There are plenty deals to find for Vegas during that time as well, from Free hotel stays to Free gift cards, etc.

3. Find a place with lots of free activities. Vacation does not have to be expensive. Try to find some places with lots of free activities. Have fun and save money too. One of the great examples is Washington DC. Almost all of the attractions are free there. It is a great get away place for the whole family, from various museums to the lovely night life in Georgetown. You will just love it.

4. Plan ahead. Sure, you can find some last minute's deal. But it only works if you don't care where you want to go. If you would like to take a vacation in a specific place, planning ahead will save you a lot of money. When we go traveling, we usually plan the trip at least a month ahead. Search online for deals and ask people about the place we want to go. Two online forums I use a lot to search for the price of airline tickets and hotel rooms are www.betterbidding.com and www.biddingfortravel.com Pay attention to how much people are paying for their vacation in the place you want to go. You will score big rewards by planning ahead.

That is about what I can think of to save some money while traveling. Do you have any to share?

Living with Diabetes

My dad has been diagnosed with Diabetes since I was around thirteen years old. It has never been fun to live with the disease. I think anyone not just people with diabetes should pay attention to their blood sugar level and learn to live a healthy life. On RD.com - Managing Diabetes, you will find a lot of information about how to manage your blood sugar level. The topics include Understanding Glycemic Index, Exercising with Diabetes, Foods to Stabilize Blood Sugar, and Diabetes-Friendly Recipes.

Exercising is one of the most effective ways to lower your blood sugar level. Sometimes, my dad just can’t go motivated to go out the door for a walk. I pointed him to the article named 11 Ways to Sneak Exercise Into Your Day for suggestions. Also, I mind him that exercise works so well at bringing down his blood sugar that he needs to make sure that it doesn't drop too low. He will want to time exercises to his medication or insulin schedule, but he should also be prepared to deal with hypoglycemia if it occurs. Exercising with Diabetes is a good article about how to deal with that problem.

Besides exercising, people should pay attention to what they eat as well. On RD.com - Diabetes Friendly Foods, you will find all kinds of diabetes-friendly recipes. The diabetes-content on RD.com is not only robust, but frequently updated. So it may be helpful to add rd.com/managing-diabetes as a bookmark. You will find it helpful to return frequently for new and updated information and hundreds of recipes.

Your Junk Car= $1200 for a bicycle + bus tickets

If you live in BC, you might be interested in this:

Bring your old car to the junk yard , you will get $1200 for a bicycle + bus tickets

your old car MUST have insurance on it and MUST be driveable.

you can choose
- lots of bus passes AND $1200 for a bicycle
or
- no bicycle, but more bus passes
or
- up to $2250 towards a new car, depending on how green it is


http://www.scrapit.ca/incentive_choices.htm

You might ask what the catch is. The catch is that your car has to be 1995 or older. Nevertheless, I think it is a good move for BC government. I hope other provinces will follow.

Make Your Mark at RD.com

Reader's Digest believes in the power of the individual to create change. At RD.com - Make Your Mark, you can find all kinds of the stories about what people are doing to make a difference. I have read a really inspiring article about an incredible woman who has made 41 trips to Haiti to help those less fortunate than herself. The lady’s name is Helen Little who is 77 years old and will make her 42^nd trip to Hati in July to help the poverty-stricken country in any way she can. She has tried everything she can to help this Caribbean nation. When she is not in Haiti, Helen spends her time in North Carolina going to yard sales to gather up cheap clothing and any shoes she can find to send there. She also spends a large portion of her time fundraising. Since she began her work two decades ago, Helen has seen improvements in Haiti--the streets are cleaner, more children are attending school, and the generation growing up seems more aware that things need to change. And Helen plans on helping them continue that change for as long as she can.

At Reader’s Digest, you will find more stories like this. Stories about how individuals use their own power to create change and make their marks. If you would like to participate, you can join the weekly challenge at RD.com. The Weekly Challenge is a chance for you to get involved! Each week, rd.com selects an issue and gives you meaningful ways to take action around it. For each issue, such as Cut Down on Car Pollution, you can pledge to take a Step, Stretch or Leap. For more information, please check out this page.

DC Trip Expenses

Finally, I have all the expenses for my DC trip calculated. We have spent $435 each person for a three days trip to Washington DC during May long weekend. The following is the break down(for each person):

1. Airline Ticket: $185.78. This includes all the tax and fees for a round trip flight to DC.

2. Hotel: $128 for three nights at a 4 star Hotel downtown DC.

3. Parking at the airport: $9

4. Gas: $28

5. Train to Baltimore: $6.1, our return flight was departed from Baltimore Airport. So we had to take the train to the airport.

6. Miscellaneous: $96.12, this will include food, metro pass, tips for the housekeeping in the hotel, etc.

Overall, I think we have spent wisely on our trip.

Bleach The Movie

Bleach the Movie is the latest Manga hit. NCM Fathom and Viz Media present Bleach the Movie: Memories of Nobody to select movie theatres nationwide for two nights only - June 11th and 12th at 7:30 PM!

I absolutely love Manga and if I would need to come up with my own powerful Manga Character name, I would name it Hikari (to shine / shining). It is a great name for smart characters. And it sounds cool as well. :)

Advance purchase tickets for this movie are available NOW by entering your zip code in the "Find Theatres" box on this page or at the theatre box office. Seating is Limited - get your tickets EARLY!

Is Tax Refund Good or Bad?

I have finally got all my tax refund back yesterday, both Federal and Provincial. Some people might have argued that tax refund is a really bad thing because you basically give the government a free loan for a year. However, I prefer to receive a tax refund at the end of the year than getting it each month.
Spending habit is hard to adjust when you are trying to go from extravagance to thrift. At least it is a very painful process. Having the tax refund at the end of the year actually works as a forced saving. If I receive the tax deducted each month from my pay cheque, I might just allow myself to spend more rather than save the money.
Also, receiving a big sum of the money at the end of the year allows me to better utilize it. I can either put them into my mutual fund, ETFs, Stocks or Cash component based on my overall assets allocation.
What is your preference? A big sum of money at the end or a little bit each month? No matter what your preference is, saving it is the key! :)

Laugh out loud – at RD.com

Do you like jokes, cartoons, funny photos and videos? If you do, you should check out RD Laughs Main page. With Reader’s Digest Laughs, that’s exactly what you'll get! RD.com has a huge library of jokes and anecdotes (including those submitted by readers), humorous Stand-up Videos, Funny Cartoons, funny photo contests, and more!

The cartoons, jokes and videos are all organized by their categories. As a software engineer, I like to read those jokes under the “Computer Jokes” category such as this one:

Erred Error

“Usually there's no computer problem I can't solve. But I met my match when I turned on my machine and was greeted with the message "Keyboard not detected. Hit any key to continue.”

With RD.com, you can not only read jokes but submit your own as well and possibly win 100 dollars in cash! If you would like to submit your joke, photo, or video, you can go to their main page and scroll down to the bottom. On the right hand side of the page, you will see “Helpful links”. Click on those submit links. You are on your way to create smiles.

If you would like to sign-up for their jokes’ RSS feeds to keep the laughs coming your way, please use this link.

GCR Weekly Report

Great Canadian Rebate is offering 4.75% in Cash Back Rebates for purchase made on the new Zellers website.

"Zellers is the mass merchandise division of Hbc with locations in communities nationwide. The chain offers customers value, stylish brands, service, price competitiveness and great value through Every Day Low Prices"