Over the last few years, it has become easier to find stay at home jobs. The expansion of the internet has meant that many more people are able to work from home and connect to their employers via a computer connection.

The range of jobs that you can do from home is wide. You can still find traditional stay at home jobs such as assembly work, by phoning large local manufacturers and asking them for work. You may find that there is a waiting list and that work is only available at certain times of year.

Manufacturers who are looking for people to do piecework, assembling furniture or other products, do not usually have to advertise. So if you see an advertisement for this type of work, be careful. Check out the company very thoroughly, because it could easily be a scam.

Be especially suspicious if they ask you to pay for anything - equipment, deposits, shipping, any kind of payment at all. A reputable manufacturer would not normally ask you for any payment, and will usually provide any special tools that you need.

Piecework jobs are often very badly paid. Manufacturers are able to pay low rates because there are usually enough people willing to work for low pay. Keep in mind that as you become more used to the work, you will get faster, and this means earning more per hour. However, stay at home jobs like these are not easy money.

To make a better return on your time, it is worth thinking about whether you have special interests or skills that people would pay for. What are you good at, that other people struggle with and might pay you to do for them?

Many of us have trouble thinking about our positive points, so you might find it helpful to ask a supportive friend or a former work colleague to list your strengths for you. They will probably say some things that will surprise you, and some may turn out to be marketable skills.

An interesting way to make money from home is to become a stock photographer. You need to be able to take good, professional quality digital photos, and then you simply upload them to the internet for others to purchase.

You will register your photographs with one of the many stock photograph sites online. They have customers who visit the site to find photos that they can use on their websites. This means that you do not have to worry about marketing, it will be done for you by the stock photo library.

Each picture that you take may be downloaded by many different customers. The amount that you earn per download is small, but when you have a large number of photos available on the site it can add up to a good income.

This is a good example of a way to work from home that capitalizes on a person’s individual skills. Even if you are no photographer, you probably have some skills of your own. Make a list now and investigate whether some of them could be turned into stay at home jobs.

Money making opportunities are constantly being advertised everywhere from the internet to the street corner. You will find them all over newspapers and magazines. If you actually look for them, you will find so many that it can be hard to decide what to go for.

On the internet, showing people how to make money from home is now big business. In fact, the sheer number of money making opportunities online is making people wonder whether these systems, programs and schemes can be for real. Do people really make money with internet marketing, or is it all hype?

The answer depends on what you do and what you expect. Anybody going onto the internet thinking that they can make millions in a few days is going to be disappointed. However, some people do make serious money within a few months or years.

The secret - and most people do not want to hear it - is that it takes hard work. It is true that some people are lucky and strike gold pretty quick, but they have usually worked hard in that time and maybe had some experience of business or the internet before they started out trying to make money online. They may also have had money to invest, or perhaps they had no other work and were able to be developing their online business 12 hours a day. Necessity is a great motivator.

However, working harder does not necessarily result in success. ‘Work smarter, not harder’ is a tag that you will often see. Successful online businesses usually outsource at least some of their work.

Outsourcing means that you hire somebody else to do the grunt work or the parts of your business that you cannot handle or do not like doing. An example would be that if you are not technically minded, you could hire someone to build websites for you. This does not mean that you have to have an employee sitting in your house working with you. People are usually hired over the internet to work from their own homes, which may be on the other side of the world.

If you see something advertised as a business opportunity, be sure to do your due diligence before investing your money or time. While some of these are genuine businesses, in many cases you can find yourself in competition with thousands of other people all trying to sell the same service to the same people. You need to have an edge to stand out from the crowd to make good money with multi level marketing, for example. That is a hard business for a beginner to break into.

Often, the secret to making money is ‘Do what I do, not what I say’. In other words, you take a good look at how the successful people are running their businesses. Instead of buying into their program along with thousands of others to try to make money the way that they say, model your business around what they are actually doing. Then you may find that instead of struggling to make money with these money making opportunities, you may have thousands of customers of your own.

Legal & General Mortgage Club has launched a new mortgage where applicants do not need to be credit scored. The two-year fixed-rate mortgage, which has a rate of 3.35pc, is the only offer of its kind available to borrowers.

Martin Smith, head of mortgages at Legal & General, said: “Credit scoring has its place but complex prime cases are not always catered for by this approach. There are many reasons why an otherwise creditworthy borrower might generate a low credit score. Ditching credit scoring is an innovative, back to basics way of looking at lending and the rate on this product is extremely competitive too.”

The product, which is provided by Hanley Economic Building Society, comes with a £100 booking fee and a £1,399 administration fee and is available to a maximum loan-to-value (LTV (LTVCQ.PK - news) ) of 75pc.

Melanie Bien, director of mortgage broker Savills Private Finance, said: “A product that uses old-fashioned underwriting rather than a formulaic credit score is welcome as this is very rare in the mainstream market, and the rate is also quite competitive.”

However, Ms Bien pointed out that borrowers should be wary, as the lender is likely to be more cautious if it is considering applications on a case-by-case basis than it would with generic credit scoring.

She said: “For example, it may take a harder line with regard to existing debt, loan multiples, and other properties in the background.”

Making money on eBay (R) may not be as easy as it used to be, but it is still possible. There are many people earning a good living from their eBay businesses.

Many people start out as eBay sellers by selling things around the house that they do not need. That is a great way to get experience of the eBay selling process and if you are just starting out with auction sales, you should not skip this step.

However, once you have learnt the basic selling process and built up some seller feedback, it is time to move on to something that can earn you more money with less effort.

When selling individual items, you will have noticed that it can take a long time to write and design a good eBay listing. Not only that but you have to take a photo and then edit and upload the photo. All of these things take time and it is not going to be worth your while selling a lot of different small items for 99 pence if you have to photograph and describe each one individually.

This means that the best way to be making money on eBay is to sell a lot of the same item, or just a small range of items. Then all that you have to do is write one listing, take one photo, and keep on repeating the listing.

It will also help buyers to trust you. This is because if you are listing a lot of the same type of thing, they can see that you are a serious seller of whatever you have decided to specialize in.

In fact, if you have two very different ranges of goods, such as children’s toys and domain names, you might want to set up different eBay accounts to sell them from. Otherwise there is a risk that somebody who is on the point of paying you £1,000 for a great website might change their mind when they check out your eBay store and find that it is full of furry toy animals.

What you sell will depend on the space that you have available in your home. Established sellers may rent warehouses but this is not usually an option when you are starting out. Of course, you can use drop shipping, but be aware that many others may be doing the same and these people will be in direct competition with you on eBay. Often it is better to use a site like alibaba.com to source imported goods.

Many business sellers find that it works out best to list items under Buy It Now. You can experiment with this for your particular range of goods. With auctions, it is true that you may sometimes have keen bidders pushing the price up high, but this is not so likely if you are selling repeat items.

Often, buyers are prepared to pay a little more to save the hassle of coming online to bid again and again before an auction ends, or missing out on the item completely. Buy It Now is often a simple and effective solution for both buyer and seller and can help you build a good business making money on eBay.

Making money at home is easy when you know how. That is what anybody would tell you. It is getting started that is always the difficult part. Get through those first few months and you will find that once the money starts coming in, it is easy to make it grow.

However, in the beginning it can be tough. It is important to understand this from the start. If you are relying on being able to make the equivalent of a full time job income in the first month, you are probably going to be disappointed. There are usually some costs associated with making money at home and it takes time to build up the returns. In the first few months, you may even be spending more than you earn.

This is a real problem for many people when they start working from home as a self employed person or starting their own business. The way to deal with it is to make sure that you have some money coming in from another source while you build your business.

Let’s take an example. Say you have decided to build websites with Google Adsense advertising on them. This is a fairly simple internet business plan, especially if you use an interface like WordPress.org where the technical base of the sites is already built for you and you only have to tweak it. However, it takes time before you start to see a lot of visitors to the site. Your advertising revenue will depend very closely on how many site visitors you have, and so it may be a few months before you have enough sites and enough visitors to make anything more than a few pounds.

The good news is that there is always a way around this, that will cover your expenses and make some income right away. In this example you could immediately sell every fifth or every tenth site that you build. You can list them on marketplaces such as flippa.com and find buyers. Depending on the domain name, how much content you have on the site and whether the content is original, you could earn anything from $100 to $1000 for a new site.

That’s just one example. Another way to finance your new business would be to spend some of your time working for somebody who will pay for your time. You might do some market research, customer support, article writing for website owners, or even babysitting.

This may not be what you want to do in the long term, but it will get you through that initial rough period and help your business to survive. When you start out, it is important to find and easy way of making money at home so that your new home business has time to develop.

What is the best online home business opportunity? It is kind of hard to say, isn’t it? There are so many of them out there. Some may be scams, but a lot are legitimate business opportunities.

Look at any of these opportunities in detail, ask about them on internet marketing forums, and you will almost certainly find that all of them have their positive and their negative points. What is more, some people are making money with them and others (probably the majority) are not.

So it quickly becomes clear that there is no ‘holy grail’, one size fits all, best online home business opportunity. Different people have success with different programs. And that, of course, is because we all have different skills, experience and preferences.

A woman who loves going to parties and having fun with her girlfriends could do very well with a party-based multi level marketing business opportunity in something like lingerie or kitchenware. Another, who is less sociable but used to be a school teacher, might be good at selling children’s books to parents and schools. Could you do one of those businesses? The money is there if you can.

If you prefer not to do any selling at all, then you can work online and never meet your customers or even talk to them on the phone.

However, most multi level marketing plans require you to have some contact with customers. It is true that you can do most of the actual marketing online, setting up a blog and getting traffic to it so that people are calling you wanting to sign up to your business, but you still have to be prepared to talk to them when they call.

So if you are extremely anti social, avoid MLM. Instead, the best online home business opportunity for you would be something that is entirely internet based where everything is automated or can be done by email. For example, you could set up a website selling ebooks and drive traffic to that.

Or, to get rid of customer support issues entirely, look into affiliate marketing or build websites that bring in advertising revenue from Google Adsense. Google will pay you every month direct into your bank once you reach a certain level of income and you never have any contact with customers and do not even have to write an email.

So the first step in finding the best online home business opportunity is to figure out what you want to do and what you are good at, and find something that fits.

The second step is to work at it consistently, not giving up and not being distracted into trying something else instead just because you have not gotten rich after 2 weeks. This is probably the hardest thing and the reason why some people seem to make money with any type of program and others cannot make a cent. Focusing your efforts is the biggest secret in finding the best online home business opportunity.

I’ve written before about the Lulu postage scam. For those readers who haven’t read my previous post about this self publishing company, they basically provide an excellent service in publishing your book into print and paper from a PDF upload. And the books are good.

But, around the time of the postal strike in the UK late last year, they increased their delivery charges to an extortinate amount. This is crippling, both to the self publisher himself, and to his consequential sales.

Bottom line? I can publish a book with this company that costs me £2.52. Fine. Such a book comes with a retail price of around £5.00 for selling on, making an healthy profit. But, since the postal strike, Lulu.com now charge £12.00 delivery per book.

I’ve made some decent sales, worldwide, through Lulu.com. But not any more. I haven’t sold a single book for three months now, despite having worldwide distributor channels. Who’s going to buy a £5 book and pay £12.00 delivery? Especially when these books cost 75 pence to post out to customers when I sell direct?

Lulu have ruined hours of my time getting these books into print.

So, I’ve developed a work around. I now print my own books. I’ve learned how to bind. My local printer prints and laminates the covers for me for just over £1 each. And the books, when they’re finished, look brilliant, now I’ve taught myself how to do it.

So, I can still sell my books through Amazon & eBay and such places. I still have to use Lulu at the moment for ISBN number allocation and their worldwide distribution cataloging and sales channels. But I’m working on this.

Basically, I now only have to order a proof copy of a book (complete with £12.00 postage) to approve it after ISBN allocation. As soon as it’s listed on Amazon (who only sell books with an ISBN number), I sell the books myself undercutting the official publisher price.

And it works!

For singles, creating a budget is relatively easy. They tend to have a good handle on how much money they have coming in, and when tracking expenses, they only have their self to think about. But creating a family budget is a whole new ball game.

Most families have multiple sources of income. And when there are multiple spenders, that makes things much more confusing. This is one of the main reasons that families lack a formal budget. But having a budget and sticking to it can greatly improve a family’s financial outlook.

Making a family budget may be tricky, but it can be done. Here’s how.

1. Take stock of all income. If a certain source of income fluctuates from month to month, use the lowest amount or average it out.

2. Keep track of all expenses for a month or so. Keep all of your receipts, and ask all family members to turn theirs in to you each day.

3. Add up your monthly expenses. Be sure to include bills, debt payments, groceries, and everyday expenses such as lunch money and transportation costs.

4. Get the family together and discuss ways you can trim the budget. Getting input from other family members will help you determine which expenses are necessary and which ones could be cut down or eliminated. Maybe you or your spouse could start taking lunch to work instead of eating out, or maybe the kids can drop an extracurricular activity.

5. In addition to individual expenses, discuss how you can cut down on the electric bill, groceries and other necessary family expenses. Consider such things as carpooling or taking public transport, buying more generic foods and adjusting the thermostat.

6. Estimate how much you can save on regular expenses, and cut the completely unnecessary items out of the budget. Then rework it and see where you stand.

7. If you end up with a surplus, allocate a portion of it to savings. If you’re in the red, go back and rework the budget until you have more income than expenses.

Being Realistic

One reason that family budgets often fail is because they’re just not realistic. It’s great to cut down on expenses, but sometimes we tend to go too far. For example, cutting entertainment out of the budget completely might look good on paper, but we all need a little diversion every now and then.

Instead of cutting such things out of the budget completely, consider finding ways to lower the cost. Going back to the entertainment example, maybe you’ve been going to dinner and a movie as a family twice a month. But eating in and renting a new release would be much cheaper, and you would still get to spend quality time together.

Individual expenses can also be tricky. This can be resolved by allocating a certain amount for each family member to spend each week. If someone spends his entire amount before the week is up, re-evaluate his expenses and adjust if necessary.

Creating a family budget can help keep spending under control, leaving more money to pay down debts and save for future goals. But in order to succeed, close monitoring is essential. Your efforts will be rewarded, however, with less financial stress and more money in the long run.

Debt has a way of creeping up on us if we let it. It’s important to keep our debt at reasonable and manageable levels, or we could end up incurring insane interest charges and scrimping & scraping to make our payments. Even for those who manage debt well, unexpected life changes can result in difficulty making ends meet.

When we find ourselves having problems with debt, the first course of action is to take a look at the budget. Finding ways to cut back on unnecessary expenses can help us pay down debts and keep monthly bills current. But what happens when we can’t solve our debt problems with budgeting?

Sometimes we need outside help. It’s hard to go to someone else when you’re having money troubles, but if you don’t gain control over your debts, your credit rating will suffer. So it’s important to take charge before it’s too late.

Some debtors turn to debt consolidation as an answer to debt problems. They transfer high-interest debts to a lower interest credit card, or they put up the equity in their homes to get the money to pay them off. While these options can provide lower payments, they are not without drawbacks.

Closing numerous accounts and putting all of your debt into one account can negatively affect your ratio of debt to available credit, lowering your credit score. And if you use your home equity to secure the money needed to pay off debt, you’re putting your home at an unnecessary risk.

Another popular option for those with debt problems is credit counselling. Credit counselling agencies offer help with budgeting, and in some cases, they will set you up with a debt management plan. A debt management plan involves negotiation with creditors to obtain lower interest rates and lower payments. The debtor makes one monthly payment to the credit counselling agency, and the agent forwards payments to each creditor.

A debt management plan can help you get out of debt faster, but it can also impact your credit. A note is added to your credit report stating that you are undergoing credit counseling. This means that you can’t get new credit. However, the notation is removed once you’ve paid off your debts.

It’s also important to make sure you’re dealing with a reputable credit counselling agency. Some charge high fees or fail to make payments to creditors on time. There have also been some that were found to be outright scams, keeping the money that debtors sent them to pay their bills with.

When considering credit counselling agencies, make sure they’re members of the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counselling Agencies (AICCCA) or the National Foundation of Credit Counselling (NFCC) if you’re American, or members of the FSA (Financial Services Authority) if you’re British.

In England, the Citizens Advice Bureau can advise further - for free. These organisations regulate and monitor member agencies, making sure that they operate legally and ethically.

An overabundance of debt can wreak havoc on our finances and our credit scores. It can also be the cause of undue stress. By seeking help at the first sign of trouble, we can often prevent our debts from spiraling out of control.

UK households will spend an average extra £350 on essential bills over the next 12 months, equating to needing an extra £430 in income before tax. Families struggling with rising inflation and pay freezes face rises in the vcost of the called ‘Must Pay’ bills such as water, phone calls, postage stamps, council tax and the television fee. Motorists are again facing record costs as the government prepares to increase fuel duties after a major spike in oil prices.

From April, 2010, fuel duty and VAT (Valued Added Tax - the British version of sales tax) is expected to increase both petrol and diesel fuels to £1.24 per litre, equivalent to around £5.37 per gallon ($9.00 USD). For an average family, the UK’s AA (Automobile Associuation) service estimates this will cost an extra £201 a year.

Road tax is next. This will increase for 21 million UK motorists, rising £65 for Band H Vehiclesto £245 per year, although new, low polluting cars will fall by up to £35 per year.

British Telecom’s off peak period will shift to an hour later, from 6pm- 6am to 7pm - 7am. This means 4.7million BT customers will lose an hour’s worth of free phone calls every evening. All BT’s pricing plans are also increasing by £2 per month. Basic estimates of such a move mean that the average BT user will spend an additional £57 per year to maintain the same service.

Council Tax is also increasing from April 1st, with the UK average increase of 1.6 percent5, resulting in an additional spend of £18.72

Postage Stamps are increasing from April 6th to 41p for first class and 32p for second class. The Post Office say we spend an average 50 pence weekly on postage, resulting in a yearly increase of £1.56 for most.

The television licence is also rising from April, with the Colour licence now costing £145.50 per year, an increase of £3.00 per year.

And finally, water bills. It is widely predicted that water bills will increase by an average £11.00 over the next 12 months.

The question every one of us now needs to ask is where this extra £430 (pre tax) income is going to come from just to stay exactly where we are now. The chances of a pay raise in the midst of this recession are esxtremely unlikely to say the least.