How To Live Well With Relatively Little Money
You don't need much cash on hand to lead a good life. I'm not
talking about credit cards. If you are a resident in U.S.A., you
can live well without having a big salary or load of cash in the
bank. Ok, you can live comfortably if you know how, and have
internet access.
You can have your heating bills paid for, which would keep you
warm. You can even own gorgeous designer handbags. You can dine
at fancy restaurants and get paid to live the good life.
How is that possible?
Let's start with the really cool part about eating at fine
restaurants and getting paid for it. Ever heard about myster
y shopping?
Basically, the company wants to check on their sales staff or
service staff. Obviously, the staff would recognize the big boss
or top management people if they were to show up. The management
wants to know whether the sales staff or service staff are doing
their work properly.
In the case of a restaurant, the management wants to know if the
waiters please the customers, if the chef cooks well even when
the management is not looking. So they get mystery shoppers to
do these spot checks.
That means, the fancy restaurant pays you to wine and dine
there, like a regular customer. The restauraunt will pay for
your meal. You then feedback to the management your experience.
Imagine. Getting paid to be treated like royalty. Now that's
living it up.
Besides restaurants, many service oriented companies hire
mystery shoppers to keep their staff on their toes. Carpet
cleaning companies could pay you to get your carpets cleaned.
Pizza delivery companies pay you and give you free pizza. You
get to live it up and get paid for it.
Besides mystery shopping, you can get a lot of your bills paid
for by filling in surveys. These could be as simple as between 2
products, which do you prefer. Or what you like or don't like
about a product. It could be your demographic information. The
company may be trying to get in touch with the likes and
dislikes of their customers, or potential customers and are
willing to pay your bills or give you useful gifts in return for
your participation in their surveys. The company might be trying
to build a customer profile for their product, or simply trying
to understand the market better. At the end of the day, you
benefit with free stuff and better service or products as the
company makes adjustments in line with the results of the
surveys.
You can see some of the things they are giving away in return
for your participation in their programs or surveys at cheapestsale.com
- free gifts
The implications are rather cool. You can get what you want at
kmart or walmart by joining their programs and getting their
gift cards. You can get $250 gift cards that can be used to by
your groceries or your thanksgiving food. If you have a sweet
tooth, you can get $100 worth of chocolate for free. Gas bills
too high, there is even a program that lets you have free gas
for a year. Fancy your own laptop? You can get yours for free
too. Not from an unknown brand but the good laptop brands like
IBM, Toshiba or Gateway. You can get a Tiffany bracelet, carry a
Fendi bag, go for a vacation without paying a cent. While you
are on vacation, you can take great photos with you new digital
camera, listen to music on your new MP3 player and call home
with your wireless phone, all of which you got for free.
Want to lose weight, go to the gym, with a free 1 year gym
membership. Even your pet gets to eat for free with a year's
supply of pet food.
So you see, you don't need much cash to live it up. If you spare
the time to fill in some forms, you could basically live a good
life... for free.
Another way you can stretch the dollar is to get what you need
at discount prices. I like to go to warehouse sales or closeouts
to get branded goods at below retail prices. Big sales may be
crowded but if you can stand the crowds, they are well worth the
trip. Some of the items could have been brought in specially for
the sale to attract crowds. These would probably be the first
items to sell out. You might want to go to the sale as early as
possible to ensure you get the best deals before they run out.
You can also find lots of great stuff at below retail prices
online. Why? For one thing, online stores do not have the high
rental overheads that a real brick and mortar store would have
to pay for. The savings could then be passed on to the customer
in the form of discounts. Even some brick and mortar stores have
web only discounts which are well worth a look at. By paying
less than retail prices for your purchases, you can live it up
even on a small income.