There’s no question, a budget is the best way to gain control over your household finances and live a life free of financial stress. Here are a few simple steps for planning a budget for yourself or your family:

Step 1: Collect your financial information together. This will include every credit card statement, bank statement and your receipts. Anything that documents your expenses for the last three months needs to be collected. What are you going to do with this information? You’re going to use it to categorize your expenses. What do you spend on your home? What do you spend on your car? Your food? Your health? Entertainment? You’re not tracking your expenses right now, you’re simply coming up with expense categories and sub-categories for your budget. If it makes it easier, begin by drafting the categories and sub-categories you think your expenses will fall into. As you go through your expenses you can verify your category decisions.

Step 2: Gather your income statements or profit and loss sheets and determine how much money you really have to budget with. You can use either your net or gross income as your number, just be consistent. Also, if you choose to use your gross income, make sure to account for your taxes on your list of expenses.

Step 3: Using the same documents you used to create your budget expense categories and sub-categories, now examine how much you spend each month on each. I highly recommend that you write this number down. It may be an eye-opening exercise, but it will also help you predict how much you will spend in the future. You want your budget to be a realistic reflection of your spending habits, not a financial diet.

Step 4: Find a method of recording your budget. This could be a simple spreadsheet where your columns are a list of your categories, your weekly or monthly available spending amount, how much you actually spend and the difference between the two numbers. Your rows will be the income and expense categories you’ve already established.

Step 5: Create a budget, keeping in mind that you will want a budget category devoted to savings goals too. Once your budget is created, spend a month or two following it. Keep your budget close at hand so you can track your finances closely. Assess your spending on a weekly or monthly basis. Re-evaluate your budget if you need to. Your budget is not set in stone and some of your expenses are variable, meaning you control how much you spend on them. For example, entertainment is variable and your mortgage is fixed.

A budget is nothing more than a spending plan. It isn’t a financial diet. It is a tool to control your money and be knowledgeable and smart about where it goes. It’s your money after all, and isn’t it great to have the upper hand?

MySpace.com, the world’s most obnoxious social network, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation won a ruling today to have the domain name myspace.co.uk turned over to them, even though the uk domain was registered in 1997, six year before Myspace was founded. The ruling (pdf) was made by independent expert Antony Gold as part of the arbitration process run by the .uk domain registry, Nominet.

Total Web Solutions (TWS) of Stockport had registered myspace.co.uk in 1997 and used the address to offer mini websites to subscribers and email services. It said that though it no longer offers the mini websites it still provides email services to 18 subscribers at the address. As part of the judgment against TWS, was the fact the domain appears to be parked yet derives income from PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisments displayed to visitors of the page. When contacted by Myspace, TWS had sought up to £220,000 in return for the domain, however, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, being the devouring corporation that it is refused topay TWS for the transfer of the domain and elected to take TWS to court regarding the matter.

TWS claims that it had used the myspace.co.uk page for advertising previous to the News Corp acquisition. “The Respondent has not done anything other than to continue the uses or its domain name myspace.co.uk which it commenced in July 2004 or earlier, before it knew of the Complainant and before it acquired any rights in the descriptive name “MySpace” in the UK. Though TWS recognised that the nature of the advertising changed, it said it did not control the advertisments displayed on the site and that it should not be punished for the popularity of MySpace. Gold said that it was not relevant that TWS did not select specific adverts, that it owned the pages displayed and must be responsible for them and the income it gained from association with MySpace.

“This advantage and the use made of the Domain Name by the Respondent is unfair,” he ruled. “The income the Respondent is deriving from its pay per click links at the site of the Domain Name derives in part as a consequence of it being able to trade off the reputation of the Complainant. Accordingly the Domain Name in the hands of the Respondent is an Abusive Registration.”

This case is unprecedented in that it shows sufficient evidence that (in the UK at least), registration of a domain name does not constitute a copyright or informal trademark based on conception date. Although common sense would dictate that TWS should essentially own the informal trademarks to the term “MySpace”, it just goes to show how a corporation like News Corp can bully anybody around. The fact that News Corp refused to pony up a measley £220,000 for the co.uk domain name is ridiculous considering how much money the corporate giant rakes in with their sensationalistic news networks. Shame on MySpace and News Corp for trampling on entrepeneurs and shame on the people who ruled in favor of MySpace on this judgement.

In December 2007, Bloggers around the world were introduced to a new comment spam bot that seemed to bypass Akismet’s spam filtering leaving strange comment spam on their blogs. The bot, identified as Idetrorce, had left the ambiguous comment “Very interesting, but I don’t agree with you Idetrorce.”, however no link was supplied, leaving bloggers scratching their heads as to what the true intentions behind the Idetrorce bot are. Some believe the wave of Idetrorce comment spam is a precursor to some larger scale attack scheduled for later deployment while others claim it is the work of a geek who forgot to include their link when spamming blogs on a mass scale. While the speculation as to the nature of Idetrorce is still circulating through the blogosphere, the uncanny connection to the scam clearinghouse TalkGold.com has been revealed unknowingly by a twist of fate. Uncovering the mystery behind Idetrorce, one commentor on a Digg.com thread entitled “Who is Idetrorce” had the following to say …

OK, the real question to ask might be: whois Idetrorce.com From which we see it was registered this weekend, Registrant: Brian Krassenstein, … Fort Myers, FL 33908, United States edbri871@gmail.com That name and email address, also edbri871@cs.com seem to get frequently accused of mischief and scammery, eg. see http://www.webservertalk.com/message157514.html http://www.hyipdiscussion.com/unmoderated-fight-forum/20405-talkgold-full-scammers-now-6.html http://wwsnforums.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=271 http://web-life.org/vb/archive/index.php/t-6484.html … etc Could just be a coincidence though, don’t rush to conclusions

For anybody who doesn’t know who Brian Krassenstein and Eddie Krassenstein are, they promoters of numerous online ponzi and pyramid schemes on their forum Talkgold.com, where their shadowy activities date back to 2003. Before that, they were well known for their incessant spamming, Paypal schemes and other dubious online activities. It comes as no suprise to find out that the domain Idetrorce.com had been registered through them. Typical to the Krassenstein brothers’ methodology, as soon as the heat was on regarding the Idetrorce fiasco and as soon as they were outed as the people behind this massive comment spam wave, they conveniently dropped the domain name.

All of this ties together with the Krassenstein brothers recent activity. In November 2007, a rouge “scam busting” organization known as CattyShaq sought to shut down TalkGold.com but two days before the ringleader of CattyShaq was to file a complaint with the FBI, Brain Krassenstein publicly announced that TalkGold.com had been sold for $500,000USD. The alleged sale [article here] to Akmed Malakar, who coincedentally has no information about him available on the internet, was announced by a person named Peter Gant on Articlebase, a person with no past history of writing articles for the ArticleBase, which is not suprising because the article was written by Brian Krassenstein himself using the identity Peter Gant. Just look at the signature of the author Peter Gant (About the Author: information found at: http://www.talkgold.com/forum and http://websalesdb.com). Krassenstein is well known to write articles under the pseudonym of “Brian Berg” [article here] and with the impending scenario brought about by the Cattyshaq minions, the phony sale of Talkgold.com was a smokescreen to thwart the actions to be taken against the Krassenstein brothers’ cash cow. In conjunction with the alleged sale of Talkgold.com, numerous blurbs of information praising Brian Krassenstein have turned up on forums and websites across the interenet, such as this blurb from hubpages (http://hubpages.com/hub/Brian_Krassenstein)…

Brian Krassenstein is a web entrepreneur whom I interviewed last year for an ebook I had been writting. He has authored several ebooks himself and is also a webmaster of over a dozen websites and directories. From what I gathered Brian spends numerous hours a day following the latest SEO tactics and publishes his findings in the electronic books he sells as well as several websites which he shares and helps individuals who are looking to start a career online.

The blurb was posted by a person named rgrise45 and even more interesting is the fact this person, rgrise45 has posted a blurb about Edward Krassenstein (http://hubpages.com/hub/Edward_Krassenstein)

One thing that Eddie regrets about his online business is that he was too open about some of his personal information. He explained, ” There are some terrible people out there. Jealous people, and competitors who will go extremely low to cause you and your business harm. There are people who make up lies, distort facts, and slander your name just to cause harm. If I could change one thing that would be not using my full name when dealing with competition in a direct matter. There are things said about me on internet discussion forums that aren’t true, yet there is nothing you can do about them to have them removed. The internet is a broad array of website located in thousands of legal jurisdictions accrossed the planet. It is impossible to track who makes up these lies, so you just can’t let them hurt or discourage you.”

Could rgrise45 be Mario Degryse, the scammer behind 2003’s biggest scam, WeeklyGold? Mario Degryse was well known on TalkGold.com and is/was a close associate of Talkgold.com moderator Frederik Laguese from Belgium, who goes by the handle me222 and runs the ponzi scheme affiliate site Autosurfs.net which is advertised across the TalkGold.com network of sites.

The Krassensteins themselves were alleged to have operated the large scale ponzi scheme “Please-Invest” in 2007, again, the proof behind the allegations are clear for anybody who analyzes them with a rational mind. The Krassensteins are also currently involved in the pre-launch of another pyramid scheme called “Team Earners” (http://www.teamearners.com) which is, as usual, claiming “This type of program will be 100% real, 100% legal in all jurisdictions, 100% reliable, and best of all 100% exciting!!”. Team Earners is plastered all over TalkGold.com forums yet it has still to launch but why the temporary placeholder website must make these claims of legitimacy is a sure indicator of the ponzi underbelly of the beast.

That being said, brings this article to a closing speculation. Could the whole Idetrorce spam bot wave be a herald for Team Earners? After all, having a monster spam bot that bypasses Akismet’s spam filtering could be a huge boost to any pyramid scheme the Krassenstein brothers plan to launch in the future?

Feel free to share your opinion here or at our forum : Talkgold.com Found to be Behind Idetrorce SPAM Bot

Today I had a request from one of my readers to start a series of articles about how families can save more money by cutting down on expenses. In particular the request was from a reader in the United Kindgom who was struggling with heating bills on her old boiler system. Being from the US and having an old oil heating system in my Florida winter home, the first thing that crossed my mind was to tell her to contact a boiler service to have a technician come out and perform boiler servicing. At the time I was reading her request, I had had a technician in my home performing the bi-annual servicing of my heating system. One thing homeowners often overlook is servicing their heating or cooling systems on a regular basis. In boiler and oil based heating systems, it is critical to have the burners, ignition and heat exchanges serviced as well as having all of the seals and visible pipework checked out for leaks. Servicing will not only cut down on heating expenses, it’s absolutely essential for the safety of your home and family. Many home fires are caused by faulty heating systems and depending on the type of system you have, a system with leaks can cause carbon monoxide poisoning. Recently, in the news here in Florida, a woman and her family were poisoned and almost died because carbon monoxide was leaking into their home from a faulty system and they hadn’t replaced the batteries in their cardon monoxide detector. In another event, an old lady in my neighborhood who has a similar system as mine kept trying to restart her system when it failed. She kept pressing the ignitor to restart the system and eventually the system exploded sending the poor old lady to the hosiptal. Fortunately she was not killed and only a small portion of her home caught on fire. The lady didn’t know that it is dangerous to keep resetting the ignitor because after three presses it usually means the system is out of fuel or needs to be serviced.

For my reader in the United Kingdom, I did some research and contacted a friend who lives in Telford who recommended I visit website of Northern Gas Heating who are a CORGI certified boiler servicing firm offering boiler service at just £55 + vat. Their service is the cheapest on the UK market at this time of writing and their website has a wealth of information regarding options for not only service but for replacing old boiler units with new high-efficiency condensing boilers that could save a homeowner around a third on their fuel bills. The website also features a section on heating system troubleshooting that covers numerous topics for troubleshooting a boiler system. For any UK based readers interested in boiler service or boiler servicing, you can contact Northern Gas Heating via the information below:

Northern Gas Heating
Harrison House
Marston Road
Wolverhampton
WV2 4NJ
Phone: 08707 66 40 70
Fax: 08707 66 40 71
Web: http://www.northerngasheating.com

Over the next few months I’ll be continuing this article series about “Cutting Down on Expenses”. If you have a question you’d like to ask, please feel free to use the contact form and I’ll respond to your question as best I can here on the blog.

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