5 Smart Holiday Shopping Tips That You Should Follow

Holidays are a great time to shop because you have all the time in the world to explore your favorite shopping hangouts. You can step into your favorite brand stores or browse the sites you love. The festive mood may even coax you to shop impromptu and buy some stuff that you had not planned. The excitement never seems to end with holiday shopping but there is a flip side as well. You may not want to be in the overcrowded malls on the big sale days. Also, online shoppers may find that websites load slowly due to excess traffic. But this does not mean that you should skip shopping at the favorite time of the year. Here are some smart holiday shopping tips that you can follow.

Plan in advance

If you think that you will have plenty of time to shop during the holidays, the truth is that you won’t. The best way to prep up for festive shopping is to plan well in advance. Have a list of stuff you want for yourself and for holiday gifts ready and penned down. Beyond just listing your favorites, draw up a budget as well because you would not want to overspend.

Keep track of prices

Once you know all the products you want to buy, keep track of their prices. Brands often start dropping prices well before the holidays and products may go out of stock sooner than expected. So it is always good to follow your favorites as you would not want them all to be gone because you waited too long. Go for the pick when you think that the price is optimal and within your budget.

Explore online and in-store

Even if you have a preferred mode of shopping, don’t confine yourself during the holidays. Do explore online and in-store because you never know where you may find an amazing deal. It is a good idea to check https://mersgoodwill.org/ because of the endless options you can access them. They have retail stores that give you the option to buy great products at budget prices. Plus, you can explore the website to shop from leading online marketplaces as well.

Avoid credit card debt

You may be at your generous best during the holidays but the best advice is to steer clear of credit card debts. You may end up buying useless stuff and piling on the debt that may be hard to clear later. The best approach would be to set some cash aside and stick to the amount you have decided for shopping. After all, the holidays are all about happiness, not stress.

Don’t shop on weekends

Holidays and weekends make a woeful combination for shoppers. You may find it tough to squeeze through the aisles on Black Friday. Moreover, the traffic can be troublesome on the big sale days. The best days to shop during the festive season are weekdays because you will probably find smaller crowds outside.

Be sure to follow these smart holiday shopping tricks and you will have a great time. Also, these will help you shop smarter and get better deals this season!

Tips for Better Small Business Cash Flow Management

If you are trying to run a small business without looking at or managing your cash flow, then it can be like trying to shovel your driveway when it is still snowing. Even if you get to do it all, it is going to be a lot of hard work and a lot of wasted time. Cash flow is important for all businesses, but for small businesses that are just starting out, it is something that is really critical. If you can’t manage your cash flow well, then it can be hard to keep the business afloat, as that is what you need to keep things going. 

When thinking about cash flow for your business, there are a few key elements to be thinking about. These include:

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• Accounts receivable: the money that customers and clients owe to you.
• Accounts payable: the money that you owe your suppliers and others, like insurers.
• Shortfalls: this is something that you want to aim to not have, but they can and do happen.

In order to effectively manage all three of these elements then you need to navigate your business to be a success. Your business is going to be much healthier when you are looking closely at the cash flow and can help steer it towards profit. So here are a few tips to help you to manage cash flow much more successfully:

Break Even Point

You need to know at what point your business is going to start to become profitable. This is  not only because it will impact your cash flow, but because it helps you to have something to work towards. If you’ve not worked out how much more your income needs to be compared to your outgoings, then you won’t know where to start with business. Negative cash flow and having negative profits can make for a pretty grim combination. So instead, focus your efforts on being better at managing your cash flow, and having a focus on what that number needs to be for profit.

Encourage Customers to Pay up Faster

When customers pay late, then it can be really difficult for you to then pay people on time. So you need to look for ways to get your customers to pay faster, before you start to look at a collection agency for help. You could offer your customers a discount, for example, if they pay by a certain date in the month. Just make sure that whatever you choose, you enforce the standards rigidly. If you’ve said that you will charge late fees, then make sure that you charge late fees. 

Use Technology to Your Advantage

It is such a good idea to have a spreadsheet of cash flow, as that will be helpful on a daily basis, as well as for when tax return time comes around. But use some accounting software and it can really make a difference. Also, make sure that you keep your files as secure as possible, as it will help keep things protected.

At the end of the day, as long as your cash flow stays in the positive, your business can survive turbulent times much more easily. 

Sure Signs You've Found The Destination Of Your Dreams

Why do we travel? The answer might be slightly different for each of us, but there are also certainly some reasons which most of us could agree with. In many cases, people will cite the famous idiom of travel broadening the mind; it is certainly true that it does that, even if only because it forces you to keep your eyes open and your wits about you. That might be reason enough to go out and see the world, but there are still many other reasons that you might find yourself ascribing to. One which is probably very common too is that of discovering new places, merely for the sake of discovering them. If you are someone who loves to tick off countries on the map, then you will understand this, along with the feeling of discovering a part of the world that you love. So what are some of the signs that you have stumbled upon a great destination? As it happens, there might be many.

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You Could See Yourself Living There

This is probably pretty much the gold standard here, as it implies that you have really fallen in love with a place profoundly. It’s one thing to enjoy being there for the short duration of a holiday, but if you start seriously thinking about living there then you know that you have got a real fascination with that place. Have you ever experienced this? It can be quite strange, especially if you are someone who is used to being at home in your own country, and you can’t quite see yourself moving all that much. You could be holidaying in Indonesia and then before you know it you are looking for rumah dijual and wondering what part of the country you would most like to live in. Of course, getting this feeling about a place does not mean that you need to move straight away, nor that you necessarily should. But it’s worth considering that it is a possibility, and one which you are certainly within your rights to consider as much as you like. If nothing else, it really indicates how much you love a place.

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You Get On With The People

It is hard to really love a place if you don’t always love the people. In fact, the people and the place are really two sides of the same coin, in that one can’t exist without the other. So in order to love the place, you have to love the people, and vice versa. So it is a clear sign that you might love a place if you find you are getting on well with the people there. It can be enjoyable to find yourself in a strange culture which doesn’t seem strange at all to you, and is in fact very much more suited to you than home. That can mean that you suddenly start finding yourself considering moving there, and that is a sure sign that you love it, as we have already seen. When you feel that you have really found your people, it’s a great thing to experience, and in many ways it is ultimately what people are searching for when they go travelling in the first place.

You Don’t Want To Go Home

You might find that you rarely want to go home from a holiday anyway, for the sheer fact that it is a holiday. But there is that, and then there is the feeling of really not wanting to return, just in case you should miss being out there quite so much. If it gets towards the end of your trip and you find yourself reading the return, then you know this is somewhere you are probably going to be revisiting at some point in the near future. Whether or not you can really afford to do that is another matter, of course, but it’s something that you will think about if you really fall in love with a destination. Of course, it’s important to distinguish this from just not wanting to go back home and to work!

You’re Telling Everyone

Some of the biggest clues might be those that persist after you have returned home with your travel staple, hardside luggage. If, for instance, you find that you just can’t stop talking about the place in question, then you - and probably everyone around you - will know full well that this is a place you are going to love forever. It’s great to find such a place - it means that you have somewhere in the world that you can think of as your home away from home, and that is an incredible thing for anyone to have.

Must Have Tests For Your Health

Image by kalhh from Pixabay 

There are certain milestones you will reach where you are sent for medical tests. However, despite this, it is important to take care of your own health and make sure that you know when you need a test or when you think you should go for a check-up. Don't put these things off either, many problems, if caught early enough can be treated, some can be reversed, or they can be stopped from getting any worse. 

Your Weight

While it's important not to get obsessed with weighing yourself and relying too much on what the scales say, it is also important to know where 'you're at weight-wise. You might have been happily going along about your life and not realize that your weight has crept up to an unhealthy amount. As you get older, it is easier to gain weight, so you need to watch it carefully and fight back with healthier eating and exercise. Being overweight puts you at high risk for developing a number of diseases.

Your Hearing

Having a hearing test should be part of your annual physical examination every three to five years. Hearing loss often occurs gradually so it can be difficult to recognize when you have it which is why it is important to have checks to make sure that you can catch any issues before they get too bad. Click here to find out more about how testing is conducted. 

Your Blood Pressure

If you have high blood pressure and it goes untreated, it can be a danger to your heart, your heart, your brain, your eyes, and your kidneys. It can easily creep up on your, so stay on top of it and get it tested. 

Your Cholesterol 

Do you know if you have high cholesterol? How would you know? 'It's important to know, so get it tested because controlling your cholesterol can add years to your life.

Your Blood Sugar

If diabetes is left untreated, then it can destroy your health, it can cause heart disease, kidney failure, and blindness. So, don't let it. Get a fasting blood sugar test at least once every three years and take control of diabetes early.

Your Skin

Your skin is something you need to take really good care of and not just so that it looks and feels good. Always look after your skin and while doing that, look at it, study it, and check for any unusual spots or moles. Make sure you ask your doctor to check your skin for you as well. 

Your Eyes

Make sure to get your eyes examined regularly to make sure that you are not suffering from anything undetected or that your eyesight isn't deteriorating. Again, this is something that can happen gradually, so it's important to keep one step ahead and make sure you detect any issues early. 

Keep an eye on your health, you're in control of it, and sometimes it just has to take priority over other things. 

Designing FOR Kids, Not AT Kids

Photo © Kirill_grekov - Dreamstime.com

Children are unique.  They may look like small adults, but they behave quite differently.  The great W.C. Fields was once quoted as saying “Never work with children or animals.  They are … completely unpredictable”.  He of course meant that working with children was difficult for an actor or director, but many designers feel the same way when it comes to designing FOR children (I don’t know how they feel about animals).

Illustration © Blueringmedia - Dreamstime.com

Whether you are building a website, educational materials, game or “marketing” messages aimed at children, it is critical to understand how kids process and use information differently from adults.

Photo © Ipek Morel Diplikaya - Dreamstime.com

Let them Play

Kids learn through play.  They are quick to use the knowledge they have from everyday life, and apply them to the challenge or “game” at hand.  Use interfaces that are intuitive and self-explanatory. The more a child can relate to the task at hand the faster they will develop new skills to accomplish the task.  Give clear directions by making the goals specific and clear.  And of course, make it fun and engaging with multiple levels of “rewards” built in while accomplishing tasks and goals.



Be Clear and Concise

Stating objectives or goals of the exercise to a child can help prevent them from getting confused or discouraged.  And while it is important to give specifics, it is equally as important to not  “lecture” or be too demanding on how they approach the goals.  It is important to encourage kids to explore on their own to tap into their natural curiosity.

Illustration © Evgenii Naumov - Dreamstime.com

Pick the right level

The ability to learn new skills, follow directions, and infer information varies differently within a few years of age for children.  In everyday conversation, you talk differently to a 6 year old than you would to a 9-year-old.  Take into consideration the target age group for your design and the limitations that come at that age.  Talk at the right level – not above or below it.





Engage the senses

Regardless of your users age, information is learned and processed differently depending on how it is delivered.   While there are no hard and fast statistics – every individual learns uniquely – it is generally agreed that people learn more from doing something than they do from simply seeing or hearing something.  Creating designs that encourage interactions will be far more effective that ones that only present information in a static manner.

Photo © Yarruta - Dreamstime.com

Don’t Dictate the Pace

All children are unique.  Using an interface that assumes how fast or how slow a child will learn or process information can lead to discouragement and disengagement.  Set up your design to let the kids set their own pace, giving them options to slow down, speed up, or go back in the process.



And while designing a fun and engaging environment for children can be challenging and rewarding, it is important to always maintain ethical standards when targeting such a vulnerable population.  Keep it fun, keep it safe.



Thanks to Dreamstime.com for the illustrations and images used in this article.