Dear Balkhis Users,

I am sure you are wondering where I have been. The last post on was Sunday, and nothing since then. Firstly, I would like to apologize to you that I have not been updating this blog, but there has been a lot of things going on in my life.

Monday was a religious holiday, so I drove 4 hours from Gainesville, to West Palm Beach to pray with the family. The same day towards the afternoon, my mother got sick. So we had to take her to the hospital. I won’t go in extreme details of what happened.

But she is getting well. She is still in the hospital. I drove back to Gainesville yesterday because I had an exam today. After my exam, I drove back. So most of my days, I am just driving. So I have no time to update the blog. Considering the final, and my suddenly getting sick. But she will be discharged from hospital tommorrow, hopefully. My finals will be ending by next thursday. So the schedule should be back to normal then.

You guys will see the big list of top 100 blogs of 2008. My New Years Resolution, and the trip that Uzzz Productions staff and I are taking to start our year of.

I still haven’t updated to wordpress 2.7 and you know the reasons. Once I update, I will put out my review.

So yesterday was the day when we stop arguing and start loving our neighbors again. Yeah most people were voting for Obama and the Change to be elected. I was the minority voting for McCain but that is alright. At least our country now have a leader, and we can work on it together to get this country out of the economic crisis.

I will say that I am happy that election is over because now twitter / plurk and all the other social networks won’t have this retarded election tab which is so annoying. So that will not be an issue now.

This election was a historic one because the 44th president of America is the first African American President to be elected for US President.

The resuts was a land slide, all I will say that we will see whether the president will do what he promised all of us.

Ladies and Gentleman if you ever doubted the power of America into being a place where anything is possible. Anyone can be Successful. This is your answer.

Change Has Come to America

Everyone needs some fun in their life. Well Halloween was the perfect time for it. My Friends and I decided to have a little get together. It was like a mini-version of the party. Everyone who was invited was suppose to bring a dessert. I made Fruit Cocktail (NO Alcohol). It had Whip Cream that was mixed with condensed milk, and pineapple/peaches/grapes.

I just turned 18, but it still didn’t stop me from going and collecting Candies from everywhere lol. I actually only went to one of the local Stores (Publix) because they were giving out candies.

I decided to be a Desert Prince.

You might think it is a traditional outfit, but it is not because it is really a costume that I got from Party City. Our party was fun. Everyone dressed up. We had a Scientist, we had a Pirate couple, sailor, devil, tropical girl and I can’t remember all now.

But we played a lot of games. Such as designing a pumpkin. I didn’t win because I wasn’t in all the mood to do any artwork. I gave it a shot by just randomly coloring the pumpkin. Obviously won’t post it here because I didn’t think it was all that great.

Then we played Limbo. I didn’t play that either. You might be thinking what is going on. I might be feeling a bit better, but I am not over the sickness yet. So it has everything off the hook. But I was the judge for the limbo. Beside I always lose in Limbo anyways. I am too tall for this thing.

Then we played made things with Play Doh. I came second out of 6 people. That is because I destroyed my last round entry before the final judge who wasn’t the judge before just decided to watch everyone’s. I think it was biased juding. That was fun as well.

I got good sportsman ship award. Yeah we handed out award to everyone. At least this year, I didn’t win the biggest cheater award. Or maybe I have just gotten so good, that Nobody caught me

Well it was a fun night out. I think people should enjoy life whenever they can and hang out with friends. I hope you all had fun at Halloween at least those who celebrated it.

Now this will sound really off topic, but I think as I was talking about saving money a few days ago, this will help. Uzzz Productions have planned to take a vacation along with some friends to Tennessee. Our dates are final about time. We will be going there from Jan 2nd – Jan 5th 2009. This will be a ski/snowboard trip. And it is in Ober Gatlinburg Tennessee, so if you will be there let me know. But lets get to the point. After the trip was final, I decided to take a trip to the mall to get some winter shopping done.

I went to JCPenny as there was a doorbuster sale that started at 3p.m to close today, and tomorrow it will be from 7a.m to 1p.m, so you have a very good chance of finding some awesome deals. But aside from the awesome deals, there was this coupon that I used which I printed online.

A good habit that I have is that before I go to stores, I always go online and search for coupons. I came across this $10 gift certificate from JCPenny which gets you $10 off of every $10 you spent. So I printed out one page, and it had 3 coupons on one. I said well let me print some extra just in case.

So I head over to the store, and found things that I like. Majority were Buy 1 and get other for 88 cents. So I got some thermals, jackets, pants, sweat pants etc. Well I just made multiple transactions rather than having just one. The advantage of that is I got to use my $10 certificate multiple times because I had about 6 of those. So my pants that was suppose to be $20 ended up being $10. But ofcourse I didn’t stop there. I had another 15% coupon that I found online, so I got the thing for $7.

The website to go if you want to save money at JCPenny is Printable Coupons.

Note: The coupon that says it may not work, it works just to confirm. But it expires tomorrow, so use it tomorrow. And the sale is tomorrow at JCPenny, so head over there with the coupons. Both 15% and the $10 off ones.

Next event is at Macy’s. I got inside news that Macy’s will be giving out $10 gift cards again to their first 150 customers. And as you guys know that what it means exactly is that first 150 customers on each gate, so they have about 1000 of these to give away. Go and take advantage of those.

And aside from that gift card head over to printable coupons, and get the additional coupons from there.

I hope you guys get just as good of a deal as I got. I mean heck I spent $40, but I saved $120 lol. Ain’t that something. The lady at the counter said she needs to learn how to shop from me.

This post is actually sponsored by JCPenny and Macy’s in Gainesville Oaks Mall.

United States is suffering a budget crisis, and the economy is dropping. But that is not just the USA, it is a global issue right now. Unemployment is rising, businesses are failing, people are not getting any raises, but price for almost everything is increasing. Banks are not giving out loans etc etc. So well how do you survive this economy. Some people say savings is the right choice. It is, but it is hard to do that. So the key is you save money by cutting down your spending. So I was asked by Etienne to share some of my tricks on cutting spending.

As you all know that I am a college student. Our group is the most broke out of all, but we manage to survive. I mean I am pretty well off because of the awesome income, but If I don’t spend the way I do, I wouldn’t have good savings. So no matter how much you make, learn how to cut down your spending.

Reduce your Electric Bill

I don’t live in dorms because I just never like them. You don’t have enough privacy. So I live in an apartment and have to pay my own electric bill. Just like most of you guys. Electric bill is a pain in the ass. I have four roommates, so it shouldn’t seem that big, but considering the company just increased their base rate, and the other rates. Our bill ended up to be about $342 for last month. Then we sat and analyzed what could be the biggest problems. Well we have a soon to be best Alternative Rock Band coming along, so the apartment have over $20,000 worth of music instruments. But that is not the problem. The problem is that they are always left plugged in. Do you know that even if you are not using some electronics, and they are plugged. They are using electricity. That was our main problem. The next problem that probably caused the bill to be so high was doing so much laundry.

Solution

As for all your electronics, if you are not using it unplug them. Such as piano, or old television. The best way to take care of that is get a surge protector. Plug them all in in one surge protector. When you are not using the supplies, just unplug the surge protector from the outlet. That is what we are doing for this month, and it should be much better. Laundry is a main problem when there are 4 guys and all go to gym. But the way to fix that is do full size laundries. Rather than just doing half laundry. Don’t use too much lights. If you are leaving the house, then turn of the light. During day time, use sunlight. By doing the above you will reduce your electric bill.

Reduce Gasoline Spending

Sometimes people don’t know how much they are spending on their gas prices over a year. People like to go in their own car. Everyone just go to the gas station, and fill up the tank before it even reaches down the half. People like to accelerate really quick. People are freaking lazy, so they drive almost everywhere. People like to buy show off cars, and they don’t always look for the fuel efficiency.

Solution

Start car pooling or riding the bus. My roommates and I go play basketball every day at the gym. We always go together, so we don’t spend too much gas. Let your car go down to almost empty tank. That way you actually know how many miles you get per tank. You need to drive under 2 RPM, so that means don’t accelerate fast. Whenever you fill your car tank, make sure you reset the odometer trip reading, so you can measure how many miles per gallon (mpg) you are getting. If you are thinking of buying a car, buy a car that is more fuel efficient rather than buying something that is not fuel efficient.

Reduce Grocery Bill and Other shopping Bills

You guys like to eat right. Oo yeah I like to eat too. Eating is one of the necessity which you can’t really reduce. So it is stupid to say to cut down on your eating habits because that would be unhealthy. You buy clothes, I am not going to tell others to do something that I don’t do. So I won’t tell you not to buy brandable clothes or what not. But you can change your way of your shopping style.

Solution

Look for coupons. That is the solution. Change your shopping style. Wait for good sales, and use the coupons. Now you will say how would you know what sales are going on. Simple, as you walk in the store just grab their catalog. You won’t believe how many of those actually have good coupons in the back. So use those coupons. Try to get good deals. If you ask the employees sometimes they can help also.

Reducing Net Spending

Sometimes you spend money. But if you spend and get some of the money back then technically your net spending is reduced. How do you reduce net spending?

Solution

Simple, Don’t pay CASH. Why would you pay cash. Just use a credit card, and pay your credit card bills monthly. This way you get cash back. I mean 2% is better than nothing. It helps your credit score as well because you pay your bills on time.

Now those are the ways that I use to cut down my spending. I hope now you can save a little bit more money. Secure your future from the bad times. If you have any more tips feel free to add them in the comments.