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Drown By Debt

Drown By Debt
Personal finance blog tracking my personal progress on fighting and getting out of debt.

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Personal Balance Sheet for July, 2007
2007-07-10 09:43:00
Here's my financial situation for July:Personal Balance Sheet As of July 9, 2007ASSETSCurrent assetsCash and Cash-equivalentsAccounts receivablesTotal current assetsCapital assetsRRSP account balanceNon-registered fundsLong-term marketable securitiesTotal capital assetsOther assetsCredit union member sharesTotal other assetsTotal assetsLIABILITIESShort-term liabilitiesCharge account balanceTotal short-term liabilitiesLong-term liabilitiesCredit card balanceRevolving line of credit balanceAccounts payableTotal long-term liabilitiesTotal liabilitiesPersonal Net Worth$1,984.361069.543,053.90774.883,289. 858,404.6612,469.3930.3230.3215,553.61$65 7.45657.4532,558.568,608.411,531.8042,698 .7743,356.22-$27,802.61
More About: Balance Sheet , July 2007

Job in a Mutual Fund Company
2007-06-13 10:37:00
So I got into this Canadian mutual fund company based in Vancouver - Phillips, Hager and North. I am learning how a finance company is run. There's one thing that I don't like, however - I will need to get approved before I trade in any stocks or stock-related securities.Here are some other websites that I have launched and working on during my spare time: a third online proxy site, an online tool for webmasters to prevent getting spidered by spambots, and a website selling SEO article-writing services. Take a look at these sites when you have the time!
More About: Company , Mutual fund , Fund , Compa , Mutual

Personal Balance Sheet for June, 2007
2007-06-08 05:52:00
Here's my financial situation for June :Personal Balance Sheet As of June 2, 2007ASSETSCurrent assetsCash and Cash-equivalentsTotal current assetsCapital assetsRRSP account balanceNon-registered fundsLong-term marketable securitiesTotal capital assetsOther assetsCredit union member sharesTotal other assetsTotal assetsLIABILITIESShort-term liabilitiesCharge account balanceTotal short-term liabilitiesLong-term liabilitiesCredit card balanceRevolving line of credit balanceAccounts payableTotal long-term liabilitiesTotal liabilitiesPersonal Net Worth$4,049.404,049.401.00614.07117.64732 .7175.3275.324,857.42$1,492.241,492.2429, 456.058,854.441,531.8039,842.2939,842.29- $34,984.87Since there was a period that I was not working, my networth dropped.
More About: Balance Sheet

New Offer and Other New Web Properties
2007-05-25 09:24:00
I had an interview on Tuesday with a Canadian mutual fund company for a data entry position. I like investing and learn about it on my own whenever I have the time. Entering a company such as this could really help me in this area. The company offered me the position and I'll be starting tomorrow (Friday). I'm looking forward to it!I launched a few websites these few days. After buying the domain names, I was looking for some website templates that I could use that are suitable for these sites. Two of them have gone live; they are ipbanned.com and LibraryOfTutorial.com. IPbanned is the second proxy site that I own now. I'm working on my third one, but it's not ready yet. LibraryOfTutorial.com is a tutorial website that provides free online tutorials on software and some programming languages. These are probably the things that I'll be focusing on for the time being. You're welcome to visit them and send me any comments and suggestions through email! =)
More About: Properties , Offer , Prop , Pert , Rope

Finding New Job and Acquiring Internet Real Estates
2007-05-22 06:37:00
My job at the Internet marketing company as a link exchange assistant has ended. I found it way too boring for me. In the mean time I am looking for something that can last for longer. I'll be going to an interview again tomorrow, for a data entry position in a mutual fund company. Hopefully it will be a more interesting position.My proxy website is undergoing constant updates as I come up with ideas. This evening, I bought a few domains to continue building my own Internet real estate empire. I'll be sharing them soon. As last time, the savings that I've received through online research is awesome and I'm going to share some GoDaddy.com promo codes here:Register 2 .net domains for $10Code: gdm0412c$6.95 .com domain name registrationCode: zine3orCode: oyh3orCode: cjcwinner.name domains for $5.99Code: lol57Register .org domains for $5.99Code: gdm0506bRegistering .info domains for 99 centsCode: gdm0513d$5.00 off purchase of $30.00+Code: digg2orCode: oyh2Save $1 on orderCode: geek...
More About: Real , Estates , States , Stat

Reading up On Ajax + Other Web Tech
2007-05-14 06:35:00
Except hanging out with my friends, I am learning some web technologies like Ajax , PHP these few weeks. I didn't think I would really get back into web technologies after learning them from school (I didn’t expect myself to be in this field anyway), but obviously that's not the case anymore. I'm working in an Internet marketing company, but that's not the reason why I'm brushing up these website-related tools. After buying my first webpage on the Internet, I think I'm probably going to invest in some web sites. I want to learn the technologies in order to understand what is achievable using these technologies. The updates that I've done to my proxy website are some sort of exercises on what I've been learning. When I have finished learning the basic skills, I'll be launching a few other websites to expand my Internet real estate business.
More About: Reading , Tech

Little Behind on Finances and Learning Database Essentials
2007-05-07 08:07:00
Except for my new SEO job, I've been spending most of my time learning some new stuff. I thought I may need databases in the upcoming websites that I'll be working on, so I'm starting to read on MySQL and PHP lately. They are both useful backend/frontend database-related software that I'll probably using, since they're open source (basically free to distribute), and highly popular (translates to great supported). It took me quite sometime to figure out how connecting PHP 5.2 with MySQL 5.0 support on Apache sever. Usually the PHP setup file comes with the necessary software to communicate with MySQL database; but obviously not the latest version of it. I spent a lot of time researching on how to solve this. Because I couldn't find one single useful tutorial on the Internet for this version's integration, I wrote a short tutorial with images on showing how to connect PHP 5.2 to a MySQL 5.0 database. The tutorial is currently located in my proxy site. I hope new users that are ...
More About: Finances , Database , Learning , Taba , Finan

Tax Season & Beginning of My SEO Position
2007-05-02 08:04:00
If you have been visiting this blog lately you'll notice the site wasn't accessible. I was trying to configure it so only domains DrownByDebt.com and www.DrownByDebt.com would forward to my blog. However, looks like it's not working properly and the domain without (www) is not directed. I'll see what I can do.Tax was due yesterday and it took me a while to finish up filing my tax. This year's tax is pretty complex for me... got lots of forms to fill in. I prefer filing myself, as oppose to paying an accountant to do it for me. This way I know more about items that I can claim for tax credits etc.I got offered a position by the SEO firm that interviewed me. Today was my first day and everything went smoothly. I was filling out employment-related forms and reading documents most of the day. It's not a very interesting job but I think there is quite a bit of stuff to learn here. I hope I can stick with this company for a while, at least longer than 1 year. :P
More About: Season , Posi , Seas , Position

Changes to Drown By Debt Blog + Updates
2007-04-26 09:12:00
I'm planning to use the domain www.drownINdebt.com for some other purposes. Since I've got www.drownBYdebt.com for this blog, both of them are not generating enough traffic, and drownINdebt.com (without www) is actually not redirected to this blog, I'll only use drownbydebt.com to forward visitors here. This is probably going to happen in the next few days.The SEO company that interviewed me called me for another interview for tomorrow. I was also invited to go to an IT company's interview for the coming Monday. I'll need to make up my mind as to which one to pick if both of them offer me a position.In my MySpace anonymous proxy site, I've added a simplified Chinese section so users from China could understand the site easily and know how to navigate around. I haven't done a lot of promotion yet for the Chinese version, but I'll be spreading words around pretty soon.
More About: Blog , Updates , Debt , Changes , Chang

Another Week of Job Search And Proxyds Developement
2007-04-23 02:29:00
After a week of finding jobs I've still got nothing yet. I'm a little bit picky on finding jobs because I usually look for above average wage with a good benefit package. To me, that benefit package would need to have dental, medical and optical coverage, RSP contribution; for the last couple of jobs I've been getting jobs with stock options and full tuition reimbursement (in related subject areas) as well. But because I never work long enough, they didn't quite kick in. This time I'll be finding jobs that I enjoy instead of settle for a high value "job package".I usually look for positions on Craig's list only; because their Vancouver listings are free for employers (not true in other areas, like New York), there're lots of small businesses posting. Just last week, I found a work-at-home typing request. It wasn't those kinds that ask you to pay by credit card before you even get hired; I got the package of 10 documents and returned the type-outs in Excel. I even got my chec...
More About: Search , Week , Proxy , Develop , Developement

Frequent Credit Report Check
2007-04-19 09:32:00
After knowing more about debt, I find it useful to check my own credit report periodically. It helps to make sure that I have not missed any payments to my accounts, and confirms that my own credit identity is not being used fraudulently by third parties.In the US credit reports can be accessed for free online. In Canada, however, citizens have to either mail in to one of the 2 credit bureaus (without charges), or view their reports after paying some fees. Credit report itself doesn't come with a credit score, but you can always pay the additional fees to include that in your bundle. Because I'm a frequent borrower, I mail in to the 2 credit bureaus once a year, and review each report every 1/2 a year.The 2 credit bureaus in Canada are Equifax and TransUnion. You'll need to find the companys' address to mail your personal information into; that includes your name, address, employers etc, and you'll also need 2 photocopies of your IDs. I personally think it's worth the hassle t...
More About: Report , Check , Credit report

Interview with SEO Firm; Stats on Proxyds
2007-04-17 06:36:00
I was late to the interview today, so that might not give my interviewers a very good impression :| The interview was pretty short and standard; nothing fancy. Overall I'd say it was ok. I'm concerned about the amount of knowledge that I could gain from the position though.Over the weekend, I've cleaned up my anonymous proxy site a bit. Banners that were floating around every page in Proxy ds are now rearranged in the link section. All the pages conform to the xHTML 1.0 standard, and I have applied a fresh style sheet to the entire proxy site to give it a new typographic look. Traffic has been steady and satisfying for me for the last week, as shown in the Google Analytics screen shot. Weekend didn't attract a lot of users because most proxy users are using it for bypassing the blocked sites at work places or in schools. Majority of Proxyds' visitors are from the Stat es, followed by Canada visitors.Compared to my proxy site, this blog is doing wayyy worse. It rarely attracts any...
More About: Interview , Stats

Job Interview on Monday
2007-04-15 07:35:00
Yesterday I received a call from VKI Studios, a Vancouver SEO/online marketing firm. The caller invited me for an interview on monday morning. VKI is a fairly young company, which is good - if it's much younger it'd be better though. So I'll do some research on them over the weekend.Also over the weekend, I'll be working on proxyds; it'll need some finishing touches in the first renovation phase.On another note, I'm going to brainstorm different website (maybe e-biz?) ideas that I could actually start. The server that proxyds is hosted on has lots of spaces and bandwidths. I might make some other proxy site purchase (since proxy sites needs a special kind of server to be hosted on) to share the cost and usage, but it's good for me to experiment on other types of sites as well.
More About: Interview , Monday , Onda

Proxyds & Job Hunts Keeps Me Busy
2007-04-13 05:12:00
One of my recent website purchases turned out to be a lot of work for me. There is actually no routine maintenance required for proxy sites, since they're supposed to be passive income sources for owners. However, I'm working on promoting and restructuring Proxy ds. My time in the last couple of days has been spent on fixing lots of the xHTML code of just the homepage. The homepage should now load a lot quicker. The most valuable fix that I've done to Proxyds is the "Favorite us" link. I'm surprised that quite a few visitors have clicked on it (I thought most people would use the favorite functions from the browsers instead... but looks like it's not the case)! I've also promoted the site through a few forums and joined a couple of proxy networks to increase its exposure.The traffic of Proxyds has climbed in the last two days. I wouldn't expect that to sustain in the long term, but I would still keep on promoting it. I find buying websites as an investment is pretty fun and I...
More About: Hunt , Busy

SEO & Research on Proxyds.com
2007-04-10 06:29:00
I've been focusing on increasing the visibility of my anonymous proxy server site. In order to rank higher on search engines in an organic manner, I need to brush up and learn more about search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. It wasn't long ago when you could build Google bombs effectively to raise your website's ranking on Google to the very peak of the search results -- not anymore. A genuinely organic SEO site would have to have number of valid quality inbound links, built up in a period, to earn a better rank among search engines (just like how it takes time to amass a great financial foundation!). Other than that, there are still a number of changes that I would like to make to the site, and hopefully it will be totally revamped when I'm done.During my research, I've notice a lot of people searching for the term "proxy" have been searching for "MySpace" and "unblocked" as well. These are very likely to be the keywords of focus in my SEO campaign.After a long break, i...
More About: Research , Proxy

My First Internet Property - Proxyds.com
2007-04-09 01:27:00
After spending lots of time learning and configuring my virtual dedicated server, I'm happy to announce that my first Intern et real estate is ready. It's a proxy surfing website. A proxy site allows users to surf the web without releasing sensitive information such as IP address, physical location and browsing habits to the Internet. Your boss won't know which website you've visited during 9 - 5; students can also quietly check out MySpace and facebook during class. People afraid of their sensitive information being spread throughout the net can surf sites behind my proxy site without letting your Internet service provider track which sites you've accessed.There are lots of opportunities for improvement though. The previous owner kept the banners at the bottom for traffic attraction purposes; but they're really not that aesthetically pleasing. Layout of the site can be simplified to welcome and keep visitors. All the pages can be search engine optimized. The destination websit...
More About: Property , Proxy , Prop

My First Internet Property - Proxyds.com
2007-04-09 01:27:00
After spending lots of time learning and configuring my virtual dedicated server, I'm happy to announce that my first Inter net real estate is ready. It's a proxy surfing website. A proxy site allows users to surf the web without releasing sensitive information such as IP address, physical location and browsing habits to the Internet. Your boss won't know which website you've visited during 9 - 5; students can also quietly check out MySpace and facebook during class. People afraid of their sensitive information being spread throughout the net can surf sites behind my proxy site without letting your Internet service provider track which sites you've accessed.There are lots of opportunities for improvement though. The previous owner kept the banners at the bottom for traffic attraction purposes; but they're really not that aesthetically pleasing. Layout of the site can be simplified to welcome and keep visitors. All the pages can be search engine optimized. The destination websit...
More About: Property , First , Roxy

Google Odd Sense
2007-04-07 06:04:00
The Ad Sens e banners are finally working (partially) - not showing any public service ads. For readers that don't know, Googl e AdSense would show public service ads if it cannot detect the content of the webpage. Although they're working, they're not showing Ads that are related to my blog. I'm not sure how AdSense figured my blog is about eating disorders; there's a way to fix AdSense but I think it's pretty cool to have some totally irrelevant sponsors on my site. :POver the Easter holiday I'll be spending some time on 2 websites that I've recently purchased. One of the sites will base earnings on active income and the other on passive income. Both deals have been closed but I still need to learn how to fully operate my active income site, and have 100% control over the passive income site. I'll disclose both sites on Drown By Debt once I have access from both the original owners.Enjoy your Easter long weekend!
More About: Ense

Should I Take on Additional Debt... If It's Good Debt?
2007-04-06 08:20:00
Today I went with my parents to a showing of an apartment unit in my neighborhood. I was curious in the quality of that unit, since it's selling at kinda a rock bottom price at our "bull" real estate market in Vancouver.The apartment is 40 years old; it's around 700 - 800 sq ft, with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom; and it's been rented to the same family for 3 years for $900 per month. Management fees and property tax for the unit is $300/month. There's also a contingency fund for the apartment units (maybe over 100 of them?) of over 100K to cover maintenance costs. All for a price tag of $148,000. The owner currently owns 2 units in the same apartment -- and the owner is willing (or motivated, as per the agent) to sell because (s)he would like to purchase another investment property. It's also possible for the owner to finance/transfer the mortgage at around 5%, which is lower than prime and very attractive.As for an investment property, it can provide a fairly good positive cash f...
More About: Take , Debt , Should , Good

Solution for Debt - Robert Allen's Way
2007-04-04 09:19:00
When I was pretty deep in debt, I started to look for ways to get out. I like going to seminars where companies are selling financial products and listen to what they have to offer. The only one that I have actually paid and attended was Robe rt Allen institute's 3 day workshop: "Creating Wealth with Real Estate".If you have read "Rich Dad Poor Dad", the multiple-year New York Times best seller, you should have heard of Robert Kiyosaki. When I was in Robert Allen's 2-hour seminar (a free one before you register for the 3-day workshop), the speaker mentioned Robert Kiyosaki was one of the students attending the workshop from Robert Allen. I was surprised because I have just finished "Rich Dad Poor Dad", and Kiyosaki had explicitly mentioned a real estate workshop he went to (without any referencing of names) in his book. I wanted to know more and so I signed up for the workshop.It was a tight and intense 3-day with rich content. I learned how to evaluate real estate deals, especial...
More About: Debt , Solution

Personal Balance Sheet: Mar, 2007
2007-04-03 00:03:00
Here's my financial situation for March:Personal Balance Sheet As of April 1, 2007ASSETSCurrent assets Cash and Cash-equivalents & nbsp; Total current assetsCapital assets RRSP account balance Non-regist ered funds Long-term marketable securities & nbsp; Total capital assetsOther assets Credit union member shares ; Total other assetsTotal assetsLIABILITIESShort-term liabilities Charge account balance &nbs p; Total short-term liabilitiesLong-term liabilities Credit card balance Revolving line of credit balance Accounts payable &nbs p; Total long-term liabilitiesTotal liabilitiesPe...
More About: Balance Sheet , Alan

Personal Balance Sheet: Mar, 2007
2007-04-03 00:03:00
Here's my financial situation for March:Person al Balance Sheet As of April 1, 2007ASSETSCurrent assets Cash and Cash-equivalents & nbsp; Total current assetsCapital assets RRSP account balance Non-regist ered funds Long-term marketable securities & nbsp; Total capital assetsOther assets Credit union member shares ; Total other assetsTotal assetsLIABILITIESShort-term liabilities Charge account balance &nbs p; Total short-term liabilitiesLong-term liabilities Credit card balance Revolving line of credit balance Accounts payable &nbs p; Total long-term liabilitiesTotal liabilitiesPe...
More About: Balance Sheet

Mistake on Day Trading; Blog Ideas
2007-03-31 07:50:00
Day trading stocks is one of the areas that I'm constantly self-educating on. I wake up early (Vancouver is on the west coast) daily to watch and participate in the market. I have recently found a tactic that's suitable for my trading personality. Today, however, I've made a few terrible mistakes by breaking the rules that I have set up, and losing $600+ (the worst day of trading ever for myself)! There is no one that I can blame except myself. These are my weaknesses, and I should not violate them again:Not following my trading indicators but to enter a trade because of greedNot setting up my stop loss point right awayNot getting enough sleep the night before and making bad judgment calls during tradingThat was a good lesson for me, but one with a hefty tuition. :(I have spent some time brainstorming which topics to blog on that could supplement one's income. For those that didn't know, bloggers can setup Google AdSense banners around the blog; if the blog generates enough tra...
More About: Ideas , Trading , Blog , Day Trading , Mista

ROI - Research on Investment
2007-03-29 06:20:00
I've been looking into different opportunities lately - either to start or to buy "investments" on the web. Here are the few options I'm considering:Selling products on eBaySelling products on an e-commerce websiteCreate a web page to provide service (fee or ad-driven)Buying existing web pages for streams of income from sponsor advertisementsThe first one is easiest for me since I've been selling on eBay for quite a while (thanks Abby for all the great eBay selling tips!); what I'll need to focus on is product sourcing. I'm looking for the right products and trust-worthy providers. Looks like I'm going to use a few drop shippers in order to fill my needs in this area.The rest will need more researching for me to get my feet wet. I have to develop or learn how to run an e-commerce website. The last option appeals the most to me. It's like owning real estates on the internet and collecting "rents" from the banners.Hopefully I can begin selling on eBay using drop shippers at the...
More About: Research , Investment

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