Coke, one of the hardest addictions to break. I’ve had a Coke addiction since I was 13 years old and it’s been very hard to quit. You know I’m talking about Coca Cola right? Haha! I thought I’d better mention that before people start assuming things, even though the whole idea of title was to catch you!

Anyway, back onto my story. I’ve never been able to assume addictions like smoking. As many teenagers go through their adolescent years trying new things and learning what they like, don’t like and unfortunately, addictions, there friends also get involved and the chain effect grows. My {awesome} friends smoked various things, taken absolutely crazy things and yet I’ve never found it to be addictive…only Coca Cola, why?

Firstly, if you’re asking the exact same question, let’s put a few things into perspective. Coca Cola has the following:

• High Sugar Content (65g per 600ml)
• Caffeine
• Food Acid
• Flavour
• Mixture of “Spices”

Any of the above gets tasted by a child or a young adult will send their brain into a mind altering state. Of course, the younger you are, the easier your mind gets used to it… i.e. Like when we practice walking at a young age — we never forget, do we?

So what are my recommendations? It’s clearly simple: Reprogram your mind.

Before you start attesting this etc, It’s hard to reprogram your mind, especially as you grow older with certain habbits and addictions. However, It’s always easier to help another than yourself so let’s hope this helps me along the way too!

Step 1: Don’t go cold turkey. The receptors in your brain will go absolutely nuts because they’ve been used to something for so long, it’s part of the daily grind. You need to back off slowly and surely, positively moving forward every day, every hour and minute.

Step 2: Transform your mind into a new routine. Stop doing your usual things, mix it up. Get a calander and write down which days you will drink and stick by it. Then two weeks later, scribble a day off and have 1 “Coke Day” less.

Step 3 – Important: Water, water and water. This is the most vital step as our bodies are always craving water, we just don’t admit it. The more you drink water, the less dehydrated you are and the less you crave because you’re getting needed minerals etc.

I have just started this and will keep everyone informed on my progress but do something for me, let me know how you are going — I will post you up here so you can see it! Just make a comment and we can go from there!

Here we go….Bye Bye Coke!

The US economy has been in turmoil for much longer than most actually know. Dating back to the horrific event of 9/11, the US have never really recovered to a feasible level and ever since, has been on a slow downward slide. Financial advisors yelling and screaming about this current time wasn’t enough for people to realise the possible catastrophic effects it will have on the economy, and ultimately on themselves. The US being the strongest economy for decades distilled comfort in most which has made people simply not acceptant of the possibility of a crash. Though, as many still fail to realise, a lot of life events are still connected with physics with the popular saying going, “What goes up, must go down”.

So how does this affect us Aussies? Well, unfortunately it has already effected us very hard but all hidden below the surface. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) firstly cut interest rates by a whole 1% to help inflation, though the banks only declared a 0.8% cut, holding onto their “well earned” money. To non-financial savvy people, this means, they simply don’t wish to get into bad debt. I’ll give you a short explanation:

Firstly, a bank in Australia will borrow money from a large corporation (e.g. US Bank) at a specific interest rate for a particular term, like 5 years. They then loan that money to consumers (us) at a higher rate in order to pay back their loan and make a profit. However, as many know there is good debt and bad debt and unfortunately, much bad debt like Lehman Brothers is floating around. Large corporations with good money surplus don’t wish to loan their money around as it can easily become a liability and turn into bad debt.

If you have recently gone into a bank to apply for a loan, credit card or a new bank account, you would’ve noticed new “restrictions” and the possibility of being declined far greater. This has been put into play to only allow people with the proper financial backing to become eligible. You might have certain assets which are valuable to you, however they could be easily deemed liabilities by your bank, depending on circumstances. A good explanation of assets vs liabilities can be found here.

So in result of the US economy crashing, the biggest economy in the world, other countries will of course follow suit. Our dollar hit a 5 year record low of 0.65 cents (0.6584) to the US dollar.

As you can see above, just before 6AM, it hit the record low and then climbed strongly from thereon, nearly hitting 0.68 before finishing just under 0.67.

Kevin Rudd and 20 finance ministers are working with Washington to provide relief to the Australian economy. More can be read at the Sunday Morning Herald here.

All I can suggest is to be cautious, not frugal. As history repeats itself, especially like in this occasion (1980 recession), we will eventually get through it. We will live and evolve into a bigger and better world…

Stay tuned for more updates.

As you may have noticed, I have two bars on my sidebar (right). The first one is how much money I have placed in my savings account, the second, my debt accumulation. I don’t wish to focus on having debt or even the thought of it, however the more I visualise no debt and money saved, the easier I will keep out of it.

Being young and in my first “full-time” job so to speak, is hard focus on saving. I won’t lie, I want to head out every weekend and party till dawn, unfortunately waking up Sunday and looking at what I spent the previous night isn’t always pretty.

I won’t get rich by saving money, however it’s definitely a start to wealth, especially at my age. The quote “you need money to make money” is true in some respects, however it’s more training and discipline. My goal is to save money consecutively, to get my mind in a habit of saying, “when we put money away, you don’t touch it”, it’s that simple.

My Dad, we’ll call him Jack for now, isn’t a millionaire in monetary form however, is a billionaire in experience which has ultimately led to wisdom. He has taught me the importance of learning how to manage money (amongst many other things) at a young age which I’m very grateful for, even though I’m far from any landmark currently.

My first goal is small, $1,000. Actually, tiny to a lot I’m sure though it’s clearly a testing and learning phase. I save $1,000 in 2 months, I then save $2,000 in 3. The snowball effect grows bigger when your mind has adopted a new habit, like exercising. It’s hard to start, but when you do it for more than a month consecutively, it becomes natural and needed.

So, keep an eye on it and watch it grow…hopefully!

I’m always looking at finance, saving and investment blogs so if you stumble across mine, give me a link and I’ll return the gracious favour! (Just contact me)

After Google finished with its little dance in the rankings (a.k.a The Google Dance), Chris Hamilton and I finally rank No.1 again for our phrase break, giving joy to both Chris and I. However, the sweet must come with the sour and in this case it’s true for Chris. Typing “Chris Hamilton” in Google, Australia will display a map of Hamilton in the UK with a landmark or business starting with the name of Chris then followed by his blog. This has taken a big chunk out of his visibility and has now been named “The Man Ranking With The Map” (TMRWTM).

It will be an interesting test on how long Google will display the map. It must be determined by how many searches are made with the word “Chris” and “Hamilton” performed in Google Maps, Australia.

To all people who have a vague understanding of search engine ranking positions (SERPs), number 1 spot is vital. 70-80% people will click the first website they see, giving the number 1 website most traffic for the keyword.

Looks like people who have the word Chris in their name in Hamilton, UK are going to be jumping for joy..but then again, who the hell would search for Chris Hamilton, I don’t know the jumping jelly jiggly monkey.

Recently a ringtone commercial came on television for the popular “Silence, I kill you!” phrase from Jeff Dunham’s “Achmed The Dead Terrorist” ventriloquist act in 2003. From there on, I knew this was an act I must see again. This is comedy at its best, just going over 10 minutes, this is a movie you don’t want to miss. If you have seen it, it’s still worth another watch!

Google has just released another PR update, sending my unranked blog to PR1, effectively immediately! This was bound to happen of course, however I would’ve preferred to be ranked higher like my friend and work colleague, Chris Hamilton. His blog shot from PR0 to PR3 due to two high PR backlinks, from what we can tell anyway. Well done Chris!

To give you a simple idea, Page Rank ( PR ) has been important in the past due to it defines your websites worth. People were selling links on their website, anywhere from $10/month to $300/month, depending on their PR. Problem being, Google was aware of this, (for a long time I believe) and hit a lot of blogs hard, banning their website from Google and shooting their PR to 0.

There are certain ways of increasing PR and traffic to your website and this is generalised by two categories, White Hat SEO or Black Hat SEO. As you can probably already tell, White Hat is natural where Black Hat is done illegally. I don’t condone Black Hat SEO, I believe it’s pointless. You can gain higher returns over the long term using simple White Hat SEO techniques and various marketing strategies. Google is the biggest search engine in the world, why risk banning your website and losing 70-80% of your traffic?

To find more about White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO and SEO, click here.

Rockstar officially released a month ago they would be bringing the multimillion dollar game, Grand Theft Auto IV to PC and have just announced it will be using “Games for Windows Live” for its multiplayer mode. GTA4 PC which hits shelves this November 18th, will not only boost sales for Rockstar once again but will allow users to seamlessly translate the multiplayer console experience for PC gamers with their strong belief it will help build a strong foundation for the PC online community.

I personally own a copy of GTA4 for PS3 and have found the experience to be excellent as always expected, however there are always limits on consoles, not being able to modify certain aspects like graphics and downloading expansions/mods for the game like skins, new missions etc.

If you’re one of the unfortunate ones who didn’t have a large amount of cash lying about for the latest beefy consoles and have been waiting for GTA4 to be released on PC, you will undoubtedly be impressed by the features coming exclusively to PC.

GTA4 PC will include DirectX, expanded online multiplayer and in-game recording — about time? Now you can record all those superb moments where previously you would’ve said, “Oh did you see that?!” and followed a short reply, “No?”.

From my experience, playing a game with a good storyline, loads of missions and a endless amount of free gameplay is great, but going that one step further and adding multiplayer, allowing you to connect to the rest of world will make any game an enjoyable one, especially GTA4. Previously, online was only obtainable by a unofficial 3rd party who wanted to create a whole different world, now Rockstar has inbuilt that into GTA4 and has made it just that much better.