Finance - 10 Ways To Make More Money

No.10 Ask for it

If you're worth more than you're currently being paid, ask for it. If the company agrees with your assessment, you can often secure more money immediately. There is definite tact required in asking for a raise, and you should read up on the process before trying this one. Furthermore, timing is a huge factor, so you should learn the best way to go about asking. Despite all that, many men have started earning more simply because they asked for it.

No.9 Work late

Studies show that people who work 45 hours a week earn 44% more than those who work 40. Start building that sweat equity; if you're dropping your pencil at 5:00, you're leaving money on the table. Don't just put in mindless hours, however, because the true measure isn't the number of hours you man your desk, but the work that you do. Focus on creating valuable overtime work. If anything, it's easier outside of normal business hours, since the phones stop ringing and you're less likely to be interrupted.

No.8 Learn to negotiate

Any time you receive a promotion, take a job offer from a new company or just rework your current compensation, you're in a negotiation. And just because a company knows what they intend to pay you doesn't mean that it's set in stone, especially if you make a compelling argument that you're more valuable than they originally thought. Learning the basics of negotiation could earn you a bundle over the course of your career. It will pay off in other areas of your life too. Lower rent, better car payment and much more can all be yours if you spend time mastering the fine are of the deal.

No.7 Dress the part

We love the old advice to “dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” We've said many times that you don't need to glide around the office in a tux and tails, but you shouldn't come to work looking like you've met the absolute minimum standard for workplace appearance. Having a sharp, professional look conveys volumes about whether you take your job seriously, and it's easy to project ambition when you look the part. If you want a coveted position or a leadership role, you want people to be able to picture you in that role.

No.6 Become an expert

Develop a reputation for being wise on the workings of your industry. Most industries have trade magazines, which are often ad-driven and free to subscribe to. Get a couple of relevant magazine subscriptions and have them delivered to your workplace. Learn the movers and shakers of your field. Contribute an article to a paper or magazine read by those in your industry or correspond with authors who cover the field you work in. Offer quotes and feedback to magazines that cover your field, and get your name out there.

No.5 Become a specialist (learn to do one thing very well)

There's a reason brain surgeons make more than baristas. One has skills that took years of costly, grueling study and dedication, while the other has skills that any adult could quickly learn to do -- if not perfect. In terms of supply and demand, the surgeon has skills that are in far lower supply and, thus, in higher demand. By learning to do skills others around you cannot or will not, you separate yourself. A great way to begin is to look around your field, or the field you hope to work in, to see what uncommon skills are valued or rare.

No.4 Get connected

You already know this one: Often it's not what you know but who you know. Getting to know others’ needs and wants, as well as their interests and passions, will give you a group of people with whom you can work and grow. Be pleasant to others at all times, even when you need to disagree with them. Build your network, and help them any chance you get. If people in your network are excellent at what they do, refer them to as much business as you can. The good you do for other people is its own reward, but a strong network will help you for your entire life, often in surprising ways. You don't have to believe in karma, but social karma is the law of the jungle.

No.3 Change companies

The way to get a truly large pay increase is to change companies. A worker who's hired away to another company is enticed to switch by offers like a bigger office, better working conditions and more money. If you've proven yourself and you have a good name in your industry, you may even find that offers come looking for you. And don't discount the idea that your current employer will counter-offer to get you to stay -- it happens more than you think. Just don't jump ship too often; when your resume shows a history of short employment it looks like you don't invest yourself in your job, aren't reliable, never happy, or don't know what you want.

No.2 Go back to school

Education is a crucial factor in earning potential, with college graduates earning an average $1 million more over the course of their careers than those without a degree. So a good degree from a known university is a giant head start in a career. If you didn't earn your degree, consider going back to school, at least a few courses at a time. And even if you have your degree, you can pursue a graduate degree or obtain a specialized certification in your field. Either way, devoting your evenings and weekends to increasing your education will gain you new abilities while opening the door to higher wages.

No.1 Do great work

This is obvious but powerful. All the negotiating, networking and personal branding in the world won't help you if your work is crap. If you spend half your day cruising YouTube or chatting with coworkers, you aren't delivering. If you are trying your hardest but still struggle, read up on ways to organize your work, prioritize and accomplish what's most important. Volunteer for the tough assignments, and find ways to help your company and make your bosses look like superstars. Develop a reputation for great work and develop the know-how to back it up. In the excellent words of Zig Ziglar: “Do more than you are being paid to do, and you'll eventually be paid more for what you do.”

Finance - 11 Steps to Save $134,987

Way too many money-saving tips fall into the category of "Brown-bag your lunch and save thousands." They're not wrong, just not very helpful. We already know we can save money by not spending. And besides, the sandwich always gets squished. Conversely, too many money-making tips amount to "Get a second job." Hey, a man needs some downtime!

These painless money-saving tips won't give you flashbacks to fourth-grade lunchroom trauma, and they will give you time to watch the game—er, spend quality time with the kids.

Save Money on a Split

If you're getting divorced, we're sorry she betrayed you. But if you can convince your soon-to-be ex to agree to use a mediator instead of a lawyer to work out the details, you'll save at least $5,000 and lots of suffering. Look in the yellow pages under "Divorce mediation" or contact the local bar association. And once the nice, civil discussions begin, float the idea of having most of any payments you'll make take the form of alimony, which is tax deductible, rather than child support, which isn't.

Share Your Nest

Here's a money-saving tip for those who happen to live near a site where people gather every year—close to Augusta National or the Brickyard, near a campus where parents or alumni gather for graduation-week revelry, or near the beach, a lake, or a national park—consider renting out your digs briefly. The IRS lets you pocket the money on a rental of up to 14 days, tax-free. You don't even have to report the income.

Rather than doing your own marketing, simply let the right local brokers or organizations (Chamber of Commerce, public-relations department of an event, alumni affairs department if it's a college, tournament director's office) know you're willing to split the dough. Then plan your vacation for Masters week, or move in with the neighbors for a few days. The earnings of course depend on the swank quotient of the event. But those golf guys have deep pockets, and leasing a beach house for 2 weeks in July could mean a real, actual, untaxed $5,000 in your pants.

Organize a Tax Revolt

There's now a whole specialist group of lawyers who appeal property-tax assessments and then charge fees based on the savings they win you. Most of these tax-certiorari firms charge a small, sometimes refundable, up-front fee of between $100 and $200, then take the first year's savings. But it may be worth a gamble. You risk a couple of hundred for a possible four-figure abatement that could last for years. And these guys don't take cases unless they think they have a good shot at winning.

Buy Pets on the Cheap

When it comes to dogs, we prefer mongrels. But if you, due to some deep-seated insecurity, need a Spanish weaselhound, please don't spend the thousand dollars it's easy to pay a breeder for a purebred. Contact the local club of breed owners and ask about adopting a rescue animal. These clubs are foster homes for purebreds that have been abandoned or returned, or whose owners can no longer care for them. For a donation of less than $100, you may get the Siberian waltz poodle you long for.

Be Patient with Upgrades

Lots of guys always want to be the first with the latest. We wouldn't, of course, dare to suggest that maybe the DVD player you have is perfectly good, that you don't need to see Angelina Jolie any more clearly. But we would advise that if you can be just a little patient in buying new toys, you can save a lot of money. Pick up the previous generation of technology after the new models hit the stores and you'll save 25 percent, since stores are trying to clear out inventory. New electronics products are introduced in January and June, so start cruising the shelves in March and August.

And if you're capable of waiting a bit longer still, order big-ticket items online from retailers with no real-world location in your state; you'll save sales tax, which could be as much as 8 percent, or even more. Then pick the cheapest delivery option to maximize the savings. Add it all up, and a guy who buys an older camcorder from Amazon.com in August could save enough for a weekend getaway on which to capture some interesting footage.

Carry a Wad of Cash

When you're hiring someone to do renovations, repairs, or construction work, ask whether he offers a cash discount. All it will take is a quick trip to the bank and you could save up to 10 percent. Yes, he may be planning to be less than completely frank with the IRS, but his tax return is not your business.

Resist a Refund

Way too many men feel good about receiving a tax-refund check. If you got one, you messed up. While Washington has held on to your money, you've lost months of compounding interest. Go to bookkeeping and have them increase the number of dependents you claim on your W4 withholding form. For every $500 in refund you got, add one dependent. The number of dependents on your W4 doesn't have to match your actual number of dependents.

Transform Your Debt

You know there's no smarter financial move than paying off credit-card debt by taking out a home-equity line of credit or pulling cash out of your home equity by refinancing. But you can save thousands more with some legal sleight of hand. Ask your lawyer to arrange it so any mortgage refinancing is actually a mortgage reassignment. That means rather than your old mortgage being torn up and a new one created, the original paperwork is simply transferred from one lender to another. This will save you from 0.5 percent to 2 percent in state mortgage tax. It doesn't sound like much, but on a $150,000 loan, it could mean $750 to $3,000 in your pocket.

Raise Your Rates

Employees know they have to ask for a raise to get more money. But sometimes the self-employed forget that. If you haven't raised your fees in the past 6 months, send out a letter doing so now. Blame it on the increased costs of doing business. Assume half your clients will accept the increase without batting an eye. One-quarter of them will call to negotiate. Try to work out a compromise figure with these folks, but don't fall all the way back to the original rate. The final quarter may threaten to bolt. Express your desire to keep them, indicate your willingness to compromise, but don't back down. If you're good at what you do, most will stay on board.

Finish in the Ivy League

A motivated kid can get a good education at almost any college. But, fair or not, being a Yalie comes with certain prestige points. Remember, only the diploma matters. So, if your daughter is a good student, consider the option of having her build a great academic record at a state school and then transfer to Yale in her junior year. Your net savings: well over $50,000.

Become a Union Man

Community credit unions aren't just for union members. They offer services identical to those of banks, are fully insured, and often charge lower fees and pay higher interest. You can easily save $100 a year in fees and earn maybe another 0.5 to 1 percent interest on your deposits. You can find a community credit union at the Web site of the Credit Union National Association: www.cuna.org.

Finance : 4 ways we keep wasting money

You may be paying for unnecessary, unused or even unwanted services. Here's how to find -- and zap -- expenses that give you little or no value for your cash.

The prepaid debit card promoted by the surgically enhanced coven of Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian will no longer occupy tweener wallets. Recently the reality show trio yanked the MasterCard-branded plastic that bore their images following consumer group outrage and a threatened investigation by Connecticut's attorney general.

Among the laundry list of fees attached to the card (which, a statement from the issuer showed, had only about 250 takers) were $99.95 for the initial card purchase and 12 months of fees, a $7.95 monthly fee after the initial purchase period, $1.50 for ATM withdrawals, $2 for bill pay (each item) and $9.95 for a card replacement.

Even canceling the card would set you back $6.

• Estimate your credit scores -- free!

Before one gets too amazed at the audacity of these fees, keep in mind that millions of Americans lose thousands of dollars every year in equally unnecessary expenses, fees, interest, convenience charges and paid for, but unused, services.

1. Credit cards

Any conversation about wasted money will inevitably turn to credit cards and the hefty price paid for their convenience.

There are approximately 610 million credit cards held in the United States, and the average credit card debt per household that has such debt is $15,788, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and CreditCards.com, part of the Bankrate Online Network.

The site crunched out that the average APR on a credit card with a balance is just shy of 15%. Total U.S. revolving debt (98% of which is made up of credit card debt) was $852.6 billion as of March.

• Compare rates: Find a better credit card

All of these factoids add up to megabucks being handed over to credit card companies each year. Even with regulations imposed by federal reforms this year, it is unlikely Americans will stop carrying balances, and paying the price for doing so, any time soon.

2. Overdraft fees

Once considered a devastating and embarrassing faux pas, consumers these days actually seem to relish the opportunity to kite checks. As many as 75% of bank customers have opted to keep overdraft "protection" and the fees incurred, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Illinois-based Moebs Services, a banking analyst, estimates banks will collect upward of $38 billion in overdraft fees next year, up from this year's estimated $35.4 billion. Last year, $37.1 billion was collected from overdrawn consumers, and the median overdraft price increased to $28 per check this year from $26 in 2009.

Economist Mike Moebs points out that overdraft fees are so high that consumers hit by them the most frequently could save money by instead taking out one of those much-maligned payday loans.

"The average amount overdrawn on checking accounts by about 70% of consumers, according to the General Accounting Office and the FDIC, is less than $100," Moebs says. "Consumers who use a payday advance loan for $100 or less will pay an average of $17.97, which is 33% less than the $27 it costs for an overdraft of that same amount from a checking account."

3. Unused memberships, gift cards and rebates

According to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, there were 45.3 million gym and health club members last year, and health club attendance averaged 102 days.

That means on average, up to 263 days of each annual membership go unused. Assuming that a monthly membership, on the low range of things, is about $30 a month, that's $258 a year being paid by the average customer for unused days. One way to cut the waste is to increase gym attendance.

One more day of gym attendance would reduce the per-visit cost of a membership from $3.53 to $2.38. But if you really don't plan to use the gym much, or you feel it's not worth the per-visit price, you may be wasting money.

Massachusetts-based research firm TowerGroup, a subsidiary of Corporate Executive Board, issued its annual overview this week of the gift card industry.

Spending on gift cards for this year's holiday shopping season will increase for the first time in three years, reaching $91 billion in sales, it estimated, and could hit $100 billion by 2012.

The good news: In addition to the increase in spending on gift cards, "breakage" -- industry jargon for the value left unused on gift cards -- is expected to decrease by almost 50% since 2008, to 3.1%. The change is owed to new federal regulations.

The bad news: That's still $2.5 billion consumers will never collect on.

How about rebates? Those deals on electronics and cell phones sound great -- $50 off if you just clip the UPC symbol and mail it in. Blame procrastination, forgetfulness and tricky fine print for the fact that up to 60% of rebates are never filed and billions of dollars will never be collected.

Though numbers aren't readily available, consider other services you pay for but don't use -- unused cell phone minutes and data allowances, lingering over one Netflix movie all month, paying for premium cable channels that go ignored until the next season of "Entourage" starts and all those impulse buys from Amazon that you'll only glance at on your Kindle.

4. Airline fees

Ever-multiplying airline-imposed fees are another costly modern convenience. A typical bag of checked luggage will set you back at least $25 to $35 each way on many airlines.

Baggage fees charged by airlines totaled a mere $464 million in 2007. For the first half of this year, nearly $1.7 billion has already been collected in these fees, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Delta Air Lines led the pack with nearly $474 million in fees. Rounding out the top five were American Airlines ($280.5 million), US Airways ($256.3 million), Continental Airlines ($167.6 million) and United Airlines ($155.9 million).

It's not just extra baggage that has us paying through the nose. Fees related to canceling and changing reservations earned airlines more than $1.1 billion in the first half of this year.

To fight the fees, however, you must first know what they are.

A survey earlier this year by the National Business Travel Association found that 61% of those who responded said it was "very important to know the total cost of the trip," but 58% said they were "unable to track the total amount spent on ancillary fees."