At Yielding Wealth, Miranda’s got a fun video feature that captures my heart – and the essence of my own financial values.

Miranda also wrote a post called Me and My Cash Flow Problem – where she discusses a financial mistake she made and shares a lesson we can all learn from.

On TaxGirl, Kelly gives us the DL on health insurance premiums and how to deduct them. This is an oft-overlooked writeoff so check it out.

At StartupSpark, Shannon starts a conversation about business insurance – and how it can CYA in a dire situation. Chime in with your insurance experiences.

I love just about everything Glen at LifeDev writes, but this post is exceptional (I mostly wish I’d written it myself) and highlights the 10 ways history-makers kept focused.

And lastly, lively conversations about taming email continue at HomeBizNotes and The Golden Pencil – with great tips and ideas from all sides.

This weeks featured blog: Pimp Your Work. I must admit the name turned me off initially, but I spent some time checking out the content and was impressed. Get great info about how to make your work easier and your day more enjoyable.

Check out Celine’s suggestions for taming email (what a theme we’ve got going!) at Pimp Your Work.

Post from: My Organized Biz

If you’re bending under the load, beware of the lurking kind of email that you get and don’t even know it. It’s the kind of message that stays in your Inbox for weeks on end. You might have a star by it. And it. won’t. go. away.

Today’s tip of the week: Look out for “assignment emails.”

This type of message requires more than just a simple reply. Instead, you get an email that has the audacity to add to your workload.

Some examples:

• A cohort emails you and asks if you’ll write a testimonial for their new program.
• A friend asks you to read their latest thing and tell them what you think of it.
• Someone asks you to write a guest blog about a topic you’ll need to research.

In all of these cases, the message in the email requests that you do something, in other words, an email with an assignment embedded in it.

What to do?

1. Start to recognize when you get them. If you can easily fritter away a few hours answering email – without ever getting to your own work – you’re getting a lot of assignment emails. Start to notice whether you’re doing work you need and want to – or if you’re bouncing around doing other people’s assignments.

2. Determine whether you have all the details. If someone asks you to do something, you must have all the details before you can say yes. If they haven’t included the who-what-when-where-why and how, send a reply requesting when it’s needed by, how much detail they want, and other essential info.

This does three things: It communicates your caring for the person who sent it. It helps establish parameters for the agreement. It also buys you a little time so you can get back to doing your own work.

3. Ask yourself if it’s something you actually need to do. Once you have a reply with all the specifics, you can decide if it’s something you want to do and are able to complete within the timeframe.

Bringing awareness to emailed messages can cut down on your frustration and overwhelm. Remember that you’re your own boss first.

Do you get assigment emails? How do you like to handle them?

Post from: My Organized Biz

Does anything peeve you more than getting calls, emails, and snail mail that you didn’t ask for? It wastes time and resources that you’ll never get back.

Good news? There are 4 easy things you can do to stem the tide drastically, complied here for your pleasure.

Fake plastic cards and insurance offers

Under the US Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), there are four credit companies (Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion) that may include your name on lists used by creditors or insurers to make “preapproved” and “prescreened” credit or insurance offers. Nice.

Fortunately, this same act permits the consumer to opt out from this service. So, if you want your mailbox devoid of credit offers and those little simulated cards, go right to www.optoutprescreen.com.

There, you can complete the form electronically for a 5-year reprieve or get a permanent one by mail (see site for address). I did the 5 year electronic option. I admit it felt a little odd giving my SSN and DOB, but it’s a VeriSign secure site (I checked) and I figure they probably have this information about me already anyway since they run credit reports.

This took less than 2 minutes to complete and removed me from all 4 lists at once.

Junk mail

The Direct Marketing Association manages consumers’ information which enables businesses to send out direct marketing mail. Like junk mail. They also train companies to use their information strategically and they lobby in DC. Yikes.

Don’t want what they have to offer? Here’s the site.

There you can choose to opt-out electronically or by mail as well. However, they will ask to verify your identity by using your financial information. Meaning: you can either submit your info online with a credit card number (no charge) or you can snail mail your info with a check for $1 which covers the processing.

Personally, I get annoying direct mail pizza coupons and non-profit solicitations all the time, so this seems like a great list to opt-out from. However, I was unwilling to hand over my credit card number. I’m sure it’s fine, but I just felt skeptical – as well as irritated by this arbitrary hurdle.

All told, the process took less than a minute without actually getting out the credit card.

No more email “enhancement” offers

Now, this is cool. DMA also manages this email “preference service” in which you can opt out of unwanted email solicitations. It’s good for 5 years and was a breeze to complete. Note: Not all people who send spam subscribe to this DMA service, but with the daily barrage of spam, we can use all the help available.

You complete a double opt-in by clicking the link they send to your email address. A day later, I’m actually seeing less spam.

 It took way less than 1 minute. Easy peasy. The site.

National (US) Do Not Call List

Lastly, there’s my favorite US government site: DoNotCall.gov. This is what I proudly call “my tax dollars at work.” I love this service.

You can add three phone numbers at a time to opt out of receiving those annoying dinner-time and Sunday morning phone solicitations. It’s all about quality of life, folks!

They also do the double opt-in by email and it took one minute to complete. Job done. (Note: If you’ve a vindictive streak, the site also has a page where you can rat out companies that defy the NoNotCall order.)

Now that you’ve completed these 4 steps in under 6 minutes, go out and enjoy doing something fun with all the free time you’ve just created for yourself!

All information presented here was obtained from the websites themselves and the opinions are from my own experience. You know, in case you were wondering.

Post from: My Organized Biz