As more and more businesses are striving to become “green,” they are realizing there is actually a monetary benefit to keeping the World clean. By reducing waste and conserving energy, we can save money and allow the economy and world to run more efficiently.

Here are 5 simple ways you can become greener and save money:

Ditch the Bottle Water: Rather than paying $2 for every bottle of water you purchase, make a one-time investment in a home filtration system. You’ll save money over time and contribute to eliminating the problem the millions of plastic bottles is producing.

Conscious Auto Use: There are many ways you can save money by altering your driving habits. From checking your tire pressure to planning your trips in order to eliminate traveling the same route twice, you can shave a significant amount of wasted money and energy. You’ll reduce gas cost and needed maintenance on your car along with oil consumption and stuffing pollutants in the air.

Go Paperless: Just about any account you may have has an option to go paperless. Just think about how much waste you’ll save by eliminating all your paper bills. If you ever need to refer to an old statement, you can just look it up online and print what you need. Set up automatic bill pay and you’ll no longer need stamps, no longer have to write and send checks, and you’ll never receive a late payment fee.

Turn Off What You Don’t Need: Changing your thermostat when you leave the house, turning off lights not in use, and keeping the refrigerator closed – all of these little things add up to big savings. Just unplugging items that are not in use will save you money on your electric bill. So don’t leave that cell phone charger in the wall and be sure to unplug the toaster and coffee maker when you’re done.

Always Reuse: Nearly anything you can think of can be reused or recycle. There are organizations that will take your Christmas tree and recycle it into mulch. Used cell phones can be donated, old clothes, and even broken down cars. If you don’t get cash up front for your used items, you can donate it for a nice end of year tax write off.

What ways you do you save money by being green?

When it comes to pursuing your dreams, there are many challenges and obstacles that can get in the way. While your goals might adjust over time, you can’t allow some small hurdle to prevent you from achieving something that you’ve been dreaming about for a lifetime.

When these obstacles get your way, you have a choice:

1. Accept That You Will Not Achieve Your Goal
2. Alter Your Goal to Make it Realistic With Today’s Reality
3. Eliminate The Obstacle

These goal achieving roadblocks can be anything from lack of funding to a personal relationship that is holding you back.

The people you spend the most amount of time with are a reflection of who you are. If you all of your friends spend their time chowing down buffalo wings and chugging beer, chances are you are not going to be the healthiest person in the world. If your goal is to lose weight and become fit, you will likely need to change the people you spend your time with.

Your association with the junk food crowd will hinder your ability to become healthy, but spending your time with those who have a “healthy mindset” will accelerate your ability to reach and exceed your goal at an incredible rate.

Likewise, if you have a passion and desire to become a successful entrepreneur, you may need to make some tough decisions about the people you associate with. The people your are with can either contribute to your success or prevent it.

At the very least, you need the support of those people.

An entrepreneur may be faced with having to make a significant amount of sacrifice — particularly when starting out a new business venture. For example, the time you put into your work may be your most valuable asset with a new start up. But if the people you spend your time with are unable or unwilling to give you the time you need in exchange for your chance to achieve your life long dream, a tough choice needs to be made. You either flush your dream down the toilet or find a way to eliminate the distraction.

You don’t want to live life with regrets of what could have been and resentment towards those who held you back.

Any time someone talks about a way to make a boat load of money, it will probably at least make you stop and think. Cash gifting programs are one of those things that to me sounds like you want no association with. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but my interpretation of cash gifting is anything but a good idea.

I’ve heard this idea come up in a few recent discussions, and wanted to find out what it is myself. I’m no expert on the topic, but from first glance it screams “SCAM.” Maybe there are some legitimate cash gifting programs, but I don’t see anything legitimate about these programs at first glance.

There may be some loopholes that make it completely legal, but that doesn’t make it safe or necessarily a legitimate way to make money.

What is Cash Gifting?

Interestingly, when you search Wikipedia for “cash gifting,” it redirects you to “pyramid schemes.” That’s no good.

With some further research, here’s how I think cash gifting works…

• Legally, cash gifting is a tax strategy to give money away in order to reduce your tax bill. In a calendar year, you can give $12,000 to as many individuals as you like, and the receiver does not have to pay taxes on the gift.
• Now for the shady approach: You join a “cash gifting program” by paying an enrollment and monthly membership fee disguised as cash gifts to the people who joined before you. As a member, you receive money from any new members that you recruit.

Typically, members get roped in by the hype. They probably know it is a risk and not exactly legitimate, but the “what if…” factor makes people act irrationally.

These programs are doomed to fail from the start. Once the program begins to grow, the number of new members required to sustain the system cannot be achieved. Managing who gave how much money when also becomes increasingly difficult. As a result, the most recent members “gifted” money, but never receive any. There goes the life savings.

Do you see why Wikipedia simply refers to cash gifting as a pyramid scheme? There can’t possibly be any good that comes out of this other than learning a lesson the hard way.

I can be sympathetic to the people that get caught up in this program, as the people recruiting can be very good “marketers” (eh hem, scammers) and play on hope and emotion. Sadly, it seems like they prey on the desperate who risk everything they have for a chance to fix their lives.

If these cash gifters just put this amount of energy into building a real business, they wouldn’t have to worry about destroying people’s lives or worry about how long the gravy train will last.

That being said, this is my interpretation of cash gifting programs. If I’m completely off here or missing important details, please do correct me.

I think that it was Stephen King who said he liked studying serial killers and criminals not because he wanted to become one, but so he knew how to avoid them. If you ever get approached about this or any other money making system, remove yourself from the emotion involved in your decisions and think about what your gut and logic tells you.