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T H E G R A N D R A P I D S P R ES S
A good marketing idea and one for marriage Dave Says
daveramsey.com
I’m a small-business owner with a lawn care franchise. It’s common in our industry, after the season is over, to send out pre-pay letters for the upcoming season. If we send out these letters offering a 5 or 10 percent discount for early payment on next year’s services, is that too similar to borrowing money from our customers at 5 to 10 percent? Not at all. I definitely would send pre-pay letters. It takes some of the seasonality “ouch” out of your financial equation, and it gives them the opportunity to take advantage of a bargain. It’s not a bad plan from a marketing standpoint, either. You might even be able to add some new customers with an offer like this. You obviously have to be really secure and confident in your ability to provide the service. Otherwise, you could end up in a really bad situation. Your equipment, staffing and track record will all come into play. But if all this is strong, and you’ve been in the business for a number of years and plan on staying in, this is something I’d do. I’m 29, and I have no debt. I’ve gotten a good start on my savings and retirement, too. My girlfriend and I plan to get married in the next couple of years, and she has about $90,000 in debt. I’m not paying on her debt yet, but I think together we can save up enough to pay it off by the time we’re married. Should I temporarily slow down saving for a house and start saving toward paying off her debt? Yes, I would have a “girlfriend debt” account. That way when she becomes your wife, you two can write a check the moment you get back from the honeymoon and be debt-free — or at least knock out a huge portion of the debt. After that, the two of you — as in we — resume saving for retirement, a house and so on. That is exactly what I would do. Best of luck to you both. — Dave Ramsey is CEO of Ramsey Solutions. He has authored seven best-selling books, including The Total Money Makeover. The Dave Ramsey Show is heard by more than 12 million listeners each week on 575 radio stations and multiple digital platforms. Follow Dave on the web at daveramsey.com and on Twitter at @DaveRamsey.
Housing hampers spending The current economic recovery, while durable, is the weakest of any since World War II. One little-noticed reason is that Americans are no longer using their homes as piggy banks. In the three decades before the recession, American consumers lifted their spending on average by 3.4 percent a year. In the seven years since the downturn ended in 2009, spending growth has averaged just 2.3 percent a year. That’s important, since consumer spending drives two-thirds of the economy. What’s behind the slowdown?
Consumers don’t shop like they used to:
US consumer spending growth hasn’t fully rebounded since the recession ended in 2009.
Business Tips from SCORE Taken a look at your website recently? If not you’d better, because you may not like everything you see. And if you’re not happy with it, it’s quite likely your potential customers won’t be, either. While websites remain the anchor of most small business marketing strategies, the way visitors access and interact with them has changed. More than just electronic billboards and menus for your product or service, websites are now considered repositories of information that visitors use to learn more about you what you do, specifics of what you sell and examples of how you’ve helped people. If you’re blogging and want to direct readers to a specific section of your website, you want that information to be complete, timely and relevant. You also want to make it easy for visitors to find related information (e.g., similar products or client case studies) and move around on the site. Don’t leave them on an island in cyberspace. Search engine optimization (SEO) has also never been more important in raising a website’s profile, which is why your content should be filled with the keywords that prospective customers are likely to use. In addition, your information should be updated regularly. Fresh content is more likely to be spotted by a search engine than something that hasn’t changed in decades. Sites such as Search Engine Watch (searchenginewatch.com) are great resources. Finally, don’t forget mobile devices. Because more web searches are being performed with smartphones and similar “on the go” tools, it may be worthwhile to develop a dedicated mobile site, or at least make your current website more readable on those small screens. Entrepreneur.com technology editor Jason Fell recommends displaying your company’s important information (name, address, contacts, etc.) at the top of the page in plain text, and configuring other pages so that visitors don’t have to jump from one to the other. Flash-based videos should be avoided on mobile sites, as their large size can take longer to download—something that may tax a visitor’s patience. — SCORE is a nonprofit association of volunteers who provide free and confidential counseling to small-business owners. Find a chapter near you at score.org/chapters-map.
Annual consumer spending growth rate
4
2
0 7 years since recession
30 years before recession
-2
’70’s
’80’s
’90’s
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
’00’s
’10’s
Christopher S. Rugaber; Alex Nieves • AP
Six tech hacks you could use Kim Komando
Don’t leave your website on autopilot
6%
New York Federal Reserve president William Dudley notes that Americans are no longer borrowing against the value of their homes to finance their purchases. Before the recession, such borrowing enabled roughly $200 billion of spending a year. Home prices plunged in the recession, but since 2012 they have risen roughly 40 percent. Yet Dudley points out that homeowners, perhaps scarred by the housing bust, are no longer responding to higher prices by borrowing more. That has improved Americans’ household finances and may help the economy in the long run. But in the short run it has slowed growth.
komando.com
“Life hacks” are addictive. Maybe you fixed a running toilet with a paper clip. Or you turned a ruddy old door into a makeshift coffee table. You looked at your invention with pride, because you foraged in the garage and jerry-rigged something together that worked. There are many “tech hacks” that offer simple solutions to everyday digital setbacks. Here’s a list of some of my favorite tech hacks. Most are easy and immediate, but there’s one to embrace your inner MacGyver that should take you a few hours. AMPLIFY YOUR PHONE’S SPEAKERS
Smartphone speakers aren’t very powerful, which is why most people connect the phone to ear buds or Bluetooth stereo gear to really enjoy their music and podcasts. But if you’re in a pinch for sound, place your phone into a dry cup or bowl. Aim the speakers downward, and you’ll be astonished how much louder your audio will sound. The hack only takes a second to set up. Just remember to use clean cups. CREATE DIY SPEAKERS FROM HOUSEHOLD ITEMS
Let’s take it to the next level: You can make your own speakers. All you need is an empty cylinder, such as the cardboard tube you find in the middle of wrapping paper, a Pringle’s sleeve or a two-liter soda bottle. Cut out a hole or add a notch that fits your smartphone’s body. Make sure you’re affixing the phone so that the speakers are facing into the tube. The sound will resonate inside the vacuum, and the increased volume and higher quality will surprise you. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can use pretty much any building material, including PVC pipe. Remember, each material and shape will affect sound in different ways. TURN YOUR OLD TABLET INTO A DIGITAL PICTURE FRAME
Most tablets get updated every year or two, so once you’ve purchased your most recent one, what do you do with the old device? You can turn some tablets into a digital picture frame, which you can easily place on any dresser or hearth. Show off your vacations and family photographs, and switch the scenery whenever you like. Simply load up a site like Photosnack. It pulls photos from your online accounts like Facebook and Flickr and automatically assembles a slideshow for you to enjoy. You can also use the photos already stored on your tablet and create an ongoing slideshow. Not sure how to do that? There are numerous dedicated slideshow apps that make
it easy. BOOST YOUR WI-FI SIGNAL
Would you believe you can use an old CD and a coat hanger to improve the Wi-Fi signal in your house? Sounds crazy, right? This trick is a little more sophisticated than dumping a phone in a bowl, but if you’re patient, you can pull it off. You’ll also need a plastic CD case, a glue gun, a pair of wire strippers, and a coaxial cable. In short: You have to fashion an antenna out of the clothes hanger, which will look like an angular figure eight. Glue the CD to the plastic container it came in. Then stick the antenna onto one end of the coaxial cable and string the cable through the middle of the CD case. The final product should look like a miniature satellite dish. And for a full video tutorial, visit bit.ly/WifiTrix. TEST YOUR REMOTE CONTROL’S BATTERIES
Normally, when you want to check the batteries on your remote control, you have to remove them. Maybe you have a tester, or maybe you just want to stick your double-As in another device. If you have an iPhone, you can skip that step altogether. Just switch on your camera and aim the remote at the lens. Looking at the iPhone screen, you should see the tiny light that brightens when you press a button. A camera phone can register that light better than the naked eye, so if your remote has any energy left, your controller should emit a dim light. If you don’t see any light at all, that means your batteries are officially kaput. For a video demonstration, visit bit.ly/BatteryDown. USE ALEXA TO FIND YOUR LOST PHONE
You’ve looked everywhere: the kitchen, the den, the car and even underneath the couch. But you can’t find your phone. There’s no one around, so you can’t ask someone to call you and wait for a ring tone. Luckily, you can turn to your Amazon Echo and simply say, “Alexa, trigger find my phone.” Echo will then call your phone, and you can follow the ringtone or vibration to its location. Copyright 2017, WestStar Multimedia Entertainment. All rights reserved. — Learn about all the latest technology on the Kim Komando Show, the nation’s largest weekend radio talk show. Kim takes calls and dispenses advice on today’s digital lifestyle, from smartphones and tablets to online privacy and data hacks. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website at Komando.com.
Twitter will start weeding out abusive tweets before you see them Hayley Tsukayama The Washington Post
Twitter knows it has a problem with online abuse, and on Tuesday it announced three more changes it’s making to help users deal with it. The social network said in a blog post that it’s cracking down even more on repeat abusers who make new accounts to continue trolling people who have blocked them. This “whack-a-mole” problem is a big one for Twitter, which many critics have brought up as a consistent weakness in its anti-harassment policies. Twitter started to address this before. In 2015, the company said it would start asking users suspended for abusive behavior for their phone numbers to reinstate their accounts — phone numbers being somewhat more difficult to obtain than an email address. Twitter did not elaborate in the post on how it will expand its efforts to crack down on repeat abusers or give an exact timeline of when users will see this feature.
The company also said it is working on altering its search function so that tweets containing “potentially sensitive” content — messages that may contain, for example, violence or nudity — won’t show up in a normal search. The altered search function will also ignore messages from people a particular user has blocked or muted. “While this type of content will be discoverable if you want to find it, it won’t clutter search results any longer,” the company’s post said, although again, it didn’t say when. The third change deals with a filter for conversations. Twitter, by default, will show what it has judged as the most relevant replies to a tweet. Others will be hidden behind an expandable bar, labeled “Less Relevant Replies” — messages that may be “potentially abusive” or “low-quality.” The hope is that the most thoughtful and relevant replies will rise to the top. But if you want to see the spam, abuse or other messages that don’t make the cut for some reason, you’ll still be able to see them by expanding the conversa-
tion all the way. The ability to weed out tweets by relevance will roll out in the “coming weeks,” Twitter said. Twitter has touted itself for years as a network that supports freedom of expression, which can put it in a tricky position when trying to judge what constitutes abuse. But the social network has responded to criticism that it hasn’t moved quickly enough to fix its abuse problems. Twitter’s vice president of engineering, Ed Ho, made this clear last month in a series of tweets that included a promise to move faster to deal with these issues. “We heard you, we didn’t move fast enough last year; now we’re thinking about progress in days and hours not weeks and months.” Ho said that he and his colleagues know that Twitter users want them to do more to combat online abuse — and fast. “We’re thinking about progress in days and hours not weeks and months,” he said.