TessMore Finance Blog

In a perfect world, artists wouldn’t have to worry about making money. They would spend their days creating, and cash would simply appear. Last we checked, we don’t live in a perfect world. But print-on-demand services make it a little bit better by giving creators a way to share their work and let the payments roll in. How Print-On-Demand Sites Work You upload an image of your creation. The site walks you through the steps of setting up an online store displaying products printed with your image — depending on the site, you can pick anything from posters to keychains to framed art prints. Customers buy your products. The platform handles manufacturing, shipping, and returns. You get paid. For Scotland-based freelance illustrator Flora Kirk, who makes bold, colorful illustrations inspired by ancient Mediterranean mythology, these services helped monetize a passion. “I was creating art anyway, so why not make some profit from my work!” she told The Penny Hoarder. Kirk can sell ever...

I always say, “Show me a person’s calendar and I’ll show you their priorities.” Well, I have a newer version of that: Show me a person’s spending , and I can show you what they love. I spent years talking to people about their spending habits, and I boiled them down to 10 “Money Dials.” They’re called Money Dials because you can “tune” them up or down — just like a dial. If you were to look at someone else’s spending for 10 minutes, you would instantly know what their Money Dial was. And if I were to look at your spending, I could tell you what yours is. Money Dials allow you to understand why people make the choices they do … and then go deeper than you ever thought possible. I find Money Dials fascinating for several reasons: People go where their time and money go. For example, fit people spend time and money to be fit. Fashionable people spend time and money reading fashion magazines and shopping. The most fascinating part is when we’re misaligned. For example, some people say...

Some of the links in this post are from our sponsors. We provide you with accurate, reliable information. Learn more about how we make money and select our advertising partners . As easy as it is to make money filling out surveys online, it’s just about as easy to stumble onto a scam that’ll waste your time, at the very least — if not take your money. But we’ve found a company that actually pays what they promise, and there are no hoops to jump through. It’s called Branded Surveys , and it will pay you up to $5 per survey, just for answering honestly. How to Get Paid for Sharing Your Opinion If there’s one thing you can appreciate about Branded Surveys, it’s that they’re forthright. They’ll tell ya, you probably shouldn’t quit your day job to fill out surveys for a living. But if you want to give yourself a raise of sorts, their most engaged users make up to a few hundred dollars every month. What they ask for in return for their honesty is yours. After creating a fr...

We’ve already told you about cheap Halloween decorations for your house. But what if you’re more of a trunk-or-treat, turn-the-car-into-a-Halloween-ghoul type of person? Well, we’ve got you covered there too. Whether it’s fake limbs hanging from your trunk, or a full-on trunk or treat car theme that won’t spook your bank account, we’ve scoured the Internet to find some of the best cheap Halloween car decorations out there. 16 Budget-Friendly Halloween Car Decorations Get ready to rule the trunk-or-treat. We’ve also got ways to have a decked out car while driving around town. Halloween Decorations for Moving Cars Remember, don’t go so nuts with your Halloween decor that you interfere with your ability to drive. 1. Hanging Bloody Arm Hang this $8 bloody arm from the back of your trunk or a side window to creep out passers-by on the road. Go buy a bloody arm 2. Hanging Witch Legs Same idea but a little less gory. Apparently this $9 witch was chasing after your car, got a little...

A segment of student loan borrowers recently received some good news thanks to a major overhaul to the Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness program. The Department of Education announced this month that up to 550,000 borrowers will see “accelerated forgiveness” of their loans, and that would mean immediate loan forgiveness for tens of thousands. But if the past is any indication with this long-struggling government program, borrowers might want to take a wait-and-see approach. The program, also known as the PSLF, was created in 2007 by former president George W. Bush to help public service workers – healthcare, education, social services and so on – get out of student loan debt quicker as long as they followed some strict, and often confusing, guidelines. In the past, the program had four requirements to qualify: A full-time job in the public sector. A specific type of federal loan. A specific type of repayment plan. 120 on-time, non consecutive payments. In theory, if yo...

Definition: Average Total Assets can be defined as the average amount of assets that are recorded on the Balance Sheet of the company, at the end of two given financial years. This can either include both, the current year, as well as the preceding year. Alternatively, it can also constitute two different time periods across which a company wishes to calculate the Average Total Assets. Average Total Assets are an indication of the total wealth that is possessed by the company, and how it changes across two different timelines. Average Total Assets is used in conjunction with other metrics, like Total Sales, to calculate how these projections change with the course of time. Average Total Assets directly indicate the financial standing of the company. It is preferred to be used in place of Total Assets because it helps companies to determine a more reasonable and accurate analysis regarding the actual financial standing of the company. Explanation of Average Total Assets The basic ...

Whether you put in full- or part-time hours, it’s difficult to be a parent who works outside the home. Add the stress of finding — and paying for — reliable child care to accommodate your work schedule, and it can be absolutely soul-sucking. The Penny Hoarder recently surveyed 2,000 parents about the cost of child care , and about two-thirds of respondents said they’d consider switching jobs to work for a company that provides child care assistance as an employee benefit. Stringent daycare regulations and expensive overhead costs make free on-site child care a no-go for most companies, but there are some businesses that realize the key to happy employees is helping them find work-life balance through the magic of child care benefits. 17 Companies With Child Care Benefits Here are 17 companies that get it right when it comes to helping companies with child care — and one bonus because… well, you’ll see. 1. Clif Bar & Company Clif Base Camp is an aptly-named, on-site child ca...

People tend to talk about being financially savvy in a black and white way. You’re either good with money or you’re not. But as with most things related to your finances, it’s a little more complicated than that. You could be great at earning money and terrible at saving it – or vice versa. You could have an impressive net worth and a terrible credit score. You could be the world’s greatest budgeter and the world’s worst investor. In other words, being “good with money” can mean a lot of things. Let’s take a look at some of the most important factors to consider. Metrics to Track While there’s not a single figure that shows you’re good with money, there are some numbers you can track to see how you’re doing (Mint tracks these for you): Net Worth Your net worth is your total assets minus your liabilities. Assets include the money in your bank accounts, investment accounts, collectible items, home equity and more. Liabilities include what you owe, like your credit card balance, aut...

A new Get Rich Slowly subscriber emailed me yesterday to alert me of two problems. First, all of the free resources I share on Google Drive have magically switched from publicly-available to private. Second, the automated email sequence for new readers is broken (which means that folks aren't receiving The Money Boss Manifesto ). Fixing the email sequence will take some work. It wouldn't take much effort to make it functional again, but while I'm in there mucking around, I might as well make a pass to revise it. The info and examples are five years old. (Meanwhile, the current version of The Money Boss Manifesto can be downloaded here.) Fixing the shared documents on Google Drive was easy, though. They should once again be publicly viewable. Please let me know if they're not. The Get Rich Slowly File Vault This seems like a good time to remind readers that the Get Rich Slowly file vault exists. The GRS file vault contains a whole host of free resources that I...