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When it comes to money, some people are more adept at handling it. There are those who use their paycheck to pay off bills, put some away for savings and spend a little to have some fun. For others each paycheck deposited in their bank account is the beginning of a challenge. When they have money to spend it’s a race to get to zero balance and start the process over next payday.

Given the different styles of money management, there are still expenses that come out of the blue and mess up with your spending routine; it’s no wonder there is always someone looking for a loan. And whether the loan is for a large purchase like a house or car or just enough cash to get to the end of the month, there are different lenders who have different styles. What style works for you?

Here are 3 simple tips for looking for the best money lending company.

1. However tempting it might be, don’t use your credit card. Your credit card is designed for purchases you don’t have cash on hand for, not a loan. Given the extremely high interest rate of most credit cards you would be far better to get a loan from virtually any bank. 
2. While it’s not a good idea to borrow large sums of money from your family, it is a great idea to work with institutions that are familiar with your family. Maybe you are out on your own. You want to buy a fixer-upper home because it is so much less expensive than a new house. But you are young, have only been on your own for a year and you’ve been employed for less than six months. To a neutral bank or credit union you have little to no credit history and might be perceived as a risk. But what about the bank your parents use? They have a long history with them. Perhaps they borrowed money from this bank for some student loans or to refurbish your room when you left? To this bank, you aren’t such an unknown quantity. You are a second-generation customer.
3. Determine how long you will need the money. This will go a long way in determining the best lender for you. If you want a loan to renovate you house, you probably want to go to a bank. If you need a quick $200 to tide you over until the next payday you probably want to visit one of the myriad of cash advance lenders in your town.

If you need to get a loan, use these tips to help you get started finding a lender.

It’s going to be difficult for me to travel with my daughter being a single mom, and I’m sure everyone knows how hard it is to fully enjoy a travel if your eyes are always stuck looking after  a 4 year old kid and chasing her around alone, but I’m after the bonding moments so I’m sure it will be all worth it. Or I might take the nanny with me, although that will be an additional cost on my part. *decisions, decisions…*

But maybe for the next few years, the next travel destinations would be to other countries. I’m hoping to go to places around the Asia first because it’s nearer, plus the fare is cheaper than those on the other side of the map. But of course, this entails a lot of money, so again, I might also put this off, until I get myself a lot of money to spend for this kind of trips.

Out of curiosity, I was doing some researches on where to go to and places to stay, and I came across iBilik, which is basically a Malaysian travel website where you can find affordable places to stay during the travel period. The website is actually very user-friendly where you can choose the place you’re going to stay, and it will show you a list of available rooms for rent (both long term and short term). It even has the option for you to choose based on your heritage. The website is actually very easy to use and for those who wants to travel to Malaysia should use it to get a place to stay.

I’d most likely do my bookings from this website someday when I’m finally prepared to travel overseas financially.

Actually, it’s not just the lightning that scares the bejesus out of me, it’s more on the sudden flashing lights. For one, I have a hard time plugging in a cord to an outlet because I fear that a spark would come out, although that’s something that I can still handle, however, things like a welding rod can make me cross to the other side of the road. This is why when I see a place with argon cylinder and carbon dioxide cylinders, I would know that it’s a mechanical and engineering area with those people who work with welding rods in which I have to get out of as soon as I can.

This is just my dream wedding, but before this happens, I need to get the partner to do this with

Although I can blog about her here, I feel that this blog is more about me and my “life encounters” than of her. And as she progresses each day, I feel the need to capture every little things about her that I’m sure are going to be worth a lot when I revisit them.

I already have plans for the blog, but I’m a bit busy with my online work as of the moment, so I’m afraid that I might not be able to maintain it as often as I should. I already planned to categorize it under the “kids” niche, however I’m still anticipating some expenses, specifically her tuition fee, which lead me to venture on to a new business opportunity (will talk more about that in another post).

Maybe if GoDaddy would offer another $1 .com domain anytime soon, I’d most likely grab the opportunity to make my long awaited julierayne.com domain up and running!

Some companies ask too much from their employees that sometimes it’s just too impossible to meet their target goals. This happens when there hasn’t been any discussion between the company and their employees, this is where contractor management comes in. With this, companies can set a better and achievable goal for both their business needs as well as their employees. Companies can assess their staffs every few months or weeks to overlook on their developments, and then decide whether or not to renew an employee’s contract.

This practice is mainly used in the sales department, wherein agents are asked to meet their goals monthly to maintain a steady income for the business. Every now and then, there will be performance reviews for each agent and most often than not, trainings are done for those who need to improve their numbers. However, should these employees still slack and not perform well even after series of training and coaching, then that’s the time when companies have to let go of them and look for better ones.

This is part of a blogger campaign by Bucks2Blog for contractor management and was compensated. However, the views and opinions are my own.

Thanks to one of our common friends, he reminded me of the stages of moving on which I can’t believe I forgot about. I learned about this few years ago when I had a leadership development training which I would like to share with everyone (yeah, I used to want to be a supervisor and for that to happen, we had to complete all leadership development training programs. Actually the one that I learned before only came with 5 stages, but as I was doing some research online, I got to see that there are 2 more additional stages which are the most important part of moving on.

Before anything else, let me share to you this funny video of the 5 first stages of moving on:

If you have a slow connection, here are the first 5 stages:

1. DENIAL – “this is not true, this is not happening to me”
The main reason why we deny the truth is because of FEAR. Fear of what is happening and what is going to happen. Denial has become an innate self defense mechanism to block the truth behind what’s really happening. This is also done by every liars who fear being caught.

2. ANGER – “d*mn you, motherf*cker, I don’t deserve this kind of treatment from someone like you”
When we finally accepted the fact that something bad has happened to us, most of us would be in the stage wherein we feel that what is happening is unfair or unjust, and that we think that we don’t deserve the pain, and we even think that whoever caused the pain should be the one feeling the pain and not us, which makes us angry.

This is also the stage where we feel the need for revenge.

3. BARGAINING – “if you let me be yours again, I promise to…” or “I should have done this when I had the chance…” or “if I could turn back the time, I shouldn’t have loved him”
This is usually caused by guilt, or some might say self-pity. We usually think it’s our fault because something bad had happened, or a relationship didn’t work out right. This may be true for some, but most of the time, it’s more of asking for another chance. This is also where regret is felt. Thinking if there was a chance, that we should have done this or should have not done that.

4. DEPRESSION – “nothing is left for me to do, I might as well die along with the pain…”
We would feel very low once the first three stages didn’t work. We would feel like we did the best we could, but nothing seemed to work, and in the end, getting depressed. Now comes in no interactions with peers, suppressing feelings towards other people, and losing hope to gain back the once happy life.

We should all be very wary of this stage, because this is also where people start thinking of suicide. So whenever we feel like we are on this stage, we have to make sure that we keep someone close to us as much as possible, not only to cheer us up, but to keep us company. This is also the stage where we can find out who are real friends are.

5. ACCEPTANCE – “okay, it was a bad experience…”
After burying ourselves under the pillow, crying our hearts out, there will come a time when we will accept the fact that “this is reality” and face the world as it is.

—————–

So after accepting the loss and grievances, there should be these next 2 steps to finally move on:

6. REBIRTH – “I need a change; I’ll start again but this time, with more precautions…”
We don’t just stop by accepting what happened, rather, we have to go on with life but of course, this is where we have learned our lessons from the past experience and applying what we have learned along the course. Then lastly,

7. A NEW LIFE – “I’m moving on”
After finally accepting and personally wanting to change and move on, we start a “new life” and meet other people along the way, keeping in mind the lessons learned from past experiences.

People from all over the world have been playing poker for centuries and with the help of technology, online poker games were invented. One of the popular online poker gaming sites would be Party Poker in which a player can download the game for free. They offer 24/7 customer support, accepts 50+ payment methods, and best of all, they have the most responsible operators who are GamCare Certified so players are sure that they are not being scammed.

I know that some people who have been playing poker games through casinos and have both won some and lost some. Honestly, I’m glad that they are not totally addicted to these gambling vices, because personally, I’m against it. However, if it’s just for fun and as long as they are responsible gamers, then I guess there wouldn’t be any problem, since I know quite a lot of people who got addicted and are now buried in debt because of too much gambling.

We were supposed to go to SM Mall of Asia on December 30, but something came up so we had to postpone and decided to go there on December 31 instead. It was a great day for both Julie and me because there were quite a lot of firsts for both of us. Anyways, first off, when we got to the mall, we saw a big advertisement of “Mang Guo Bing” (Chinese for Mango Snow Ice) just before exiting the parking area and entering the elevator to the mall (yeah my cousin got a car!). My cousin and her boyfriend were dying to try the Special Mango Snow Ice so we headed to Xin Wang Hong Kong Café. I’ll make a review of the restaurant on my food blog later (update: here’s the review – Xin Wang Hong Kong Café – SM Mall of Asia) . It was one of the funniest day of my life because it was also the first time someone made me “steal” a Chinese spoon from a restaurant, LOL! More details on the food blog once I posted it. I felt like I was a culprit back then although I didn’t really do anything. It was my first time I took home a Chinese spoon from a restaurant out of sheer necessity. It was embarrassing yet totally hilarious on my part.

So after having a few munch at the Chinese restaurant, we headed over the baywalk area. While the two were having their smokes, Julie and I just enjoyed the scenery… Look at her having her “emo moment”:

Oh, don’t worry, she actually enjoyed pointing at different things and asking me what those were (eg. seagulls, floating hello kitty balloon in the ocean, a helicopter that flew just above use, etc.)

Then we headed back to the mall and my cousin got herself a lip balm from Watson’s. I think I should get one too! Hope I could remember what it was though, but I’m sure I’ll remember it once I get the chance to smell it (it smelled sooo nice)!

Got tired of roaming around the mall, so we decided to go to Manila Ocean Park instead, but not for the ocean park itself, but just the mall there because my cousin wanted me to experience the 4D ride (if you are familiar with Rialto in Enchanted Kingdom, it’s the same concept, only you get to wear 3D glasses). It was definitely fun, especially when we had Julie with us inside the ride. We were laughing like crazy while making sure Julie stayed safe throughout the ride (she’s brave for a 4 year old girl). In the end, we all enjoyed it.

Then we decided that we should try the fish spa, but unfortunately, the fishes looked “too full” to even want to nibble on other foot (like they were feeling lazy to even swim towards the customers or something) so we decided not to go for it, and just looked around.

They took us to the Whitemoon Bar where I got to see the beautiful sunset while drinking a few cocktails (And thanks to my cousin’s bf, I got to finally try a shot of Absinthe! Tasted like medicine, but I think I would love to know its effect on me after I have few more shots, they say it seriously makes you hallucinate! But of course, I wouldn’t want that with my daughter with me… so I stopped with one shot.) Anyways, here’s a few shots of the last sunset of 2011:

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Few hours after, we went back to my cousin’s place and spent the night there. Fireworks displays were great but not too amazing, I’ll upload the video of one of the best fireworks that evening soon when I find the time, which was almost just right in front of us Here’s the video of the fireworks captured from my phone (had to stuff our ears with cotton buds so we won’t get too scared of the firecracker noises):

That night, I was also able to try out a Blue Tanduay Ice. Seriously YUMMY! No kidding. Seriously became my favorite budgeted alcoholic drink!

So yeah, that’s how I spent the “media noche” – with my cousin, her bf, and my daughter. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much to both of you for the day, and I’m sorry for any disruptions or anything. *wink* I love you both.

No, it doesn’t mean that I’m going into a crash diet, nor starve myself just to lose weight, in fact, I don’t think I even need to lose weight, but I would be getting myself ready for more physical exercise, eating the right kind and amount of food, and probably have a daily routine of making sure to have at least 15 minute walk. I might also go back into playing airsoft, but I need to check on my funds first before I jump into buying a new airsoft gun, after all, I’m trying my best to forget a lot of things this year.

I also know quite a lot of friends who are into staying fit and healthy as part of their 2012 goal. Some of them are from Arizona and they told me that they are into this Arizona weight loss program that they found out from searching the web, and they say that it’s doing them a great job in terms of motivating them with their goals. With just a few days of starting after the consultation, they already feel fabulous and happy. I would love to try that out too but it’s not available in my country. If they would offer this here, I’m sure I’ll be the first one to try it out!

Anyone has the same goal this year?

image from Google