How to spot a scam

Spotting scams is a difficult thing to do even when you've been identifying them for years!
I just ran into another one of those "This is a scam, mine is not. Go to this website, my web site!
Let me explain: This is for those of us who research a website we find. We go looking for other peoples reviews of that website. We see one that says it's a scam so we open it to find out why. It will usually say only that what you're researching is a scam and that you should go to another site that is not a scam. Sorry but this is a no sell for me! Even though  it might not be a scam, I would not do business with anyone who advertises like that!
Remember when junk mail came in an unmarked envelopes that had a red stripe across the front? I opened these just so I would know who not to give my business too!

Candle making

Candle making takes patients. Of course the first thing I did was research the art of candle making. I would really like to make them with either renewable or reusable resources. I've read a lot about candle making and I love some of the products I found. Bees wax is a renewable resource but my favorite so far is paraffin! Yes it is a petroleum product but it is a by product of refining petroleum. After making crude oil into fuel and oil for our machinery the only thing left is this glob of stuff that is unusable to sell the world to make energy and keep our machinery operating properly. So what do they do with this stuff? Nothing. Paraffin just sits there, like tin or anything else that can't be turned into a reusable resource. So what can you do with it? Use it and hopefully deplete the product from the earths surface. I decided to exclusively use paraffin in the beginning at least. I'll use glass, not plastic containers but one thing I cannot mess with is the wick! It has to be the highest quality to burn correctly. I want candles people can depend on.
One of the really cool things about candle making is how you insert the wicks! You use the barrel of an old, broken, or used up old fashioned barrel pen. You insert the wick inside the barrel to keep it straight and slowly pull the barrel while filling the container with material!
So my candle making will be performed by recycle and reuse. Talk about greener!

Retirement income

My husband and I have a few years to go before we actually retire. In the mean time we are thinking of everything we can to make our retirement as enjoyable as possible. We know we are both very visual and enjoy a "hands on" experience rather than sitting in front of a computer. However having internet access is still a wonderful tool to communicate and keep track of our income and expenses. So while he polishes agates I pour candles and together we find these activities fun!
Because we run these enterprises and have fun doing it I know we have "overhead". Buying and replacing the material and tools to do this is pretty much all of our overhead. We spend about $100 a year in advertising looking for the most inexpensive ways to do it.
If nothing else, we have fun experimenting with ideas for our future. I don't know that we will need the income but we will have something fun to retire to. We know retirement is unpredictable. No one can agree on how much money we need to retire. Some are suggesting a million dollars may not be enough money to retire on. People have lost or have had their retirement savings or greatly reduced by the "Great Recession". Who's to say it won't happen again!
We know for sure we won't have a mortgage. We have other property to live in and is more fun than keeping a house we bought to raise our children in. We don't and will never have credit card debt. After the house is sold we will have only association dues and a couple hundred dollars in property taxes. At the most we will have a car loan.
We just know we won't be content just sitting around reading books and watching TV. We will have to do something to stay interested in life. We love making something from nothing, so we are researching more than anything else right now!

web site scams and reviews

It’s official! I’m getting enough traffic to my site that I am now getting hate mail! Apoximately 1% of the people viewing my site hates it! In the online world that only means one thing! People are interested in what I have to say! Positive or negative about what I say, people are reading the site!

I welcome all opinions and leave them on this site for your information. Leaving anything out would be nothing less than lying. Everything here is up to your own decision and experience! However I am concerned about one thing; making it clear what my intensions are in this site, so I am going to say again the value I place on each of the websites I review:

I’ve placed a value for each being:

1.  A full tilt scam, backed with the facts I used to judge that. Just because I say an online opportunity is a scam doesn’t necessarily mean it is! All opinions here come from someone in the human race. All I can say is my personal take on something or my own success or failure with an online opportunity. So with that said we go to:

2. Not sure which way an opportunity should be labeled. In these cases I haven’t even tried to join. I list the reasons why I didn’t just so you get the understanding how I based my decision not to try it out. I tell you what I learned and list the facts that supported my decision. Again, I may be right or I may be wrong. I welcome the input of any kind that either supports or disagrees with my decision which leads me to:

3. I make money from a website opportunity; I’ll tell you what it takes to be part of their program. I’ll tell you how much I earned. However, just because it works for me doesn’t guarantee it will work for you!

Why do I make so many disclaimers you ask? I do this because I’m the mother of three grown boys. If anyone will make a liar out of you, it’s your children! I don’t know how many times my oldest told me I was wrong and backed it up with facts! By the way he got that from me. I always told my children if you know for a fact you are right, back it up with facts. I also told my children not to give me half stories. Half stories are so close to lying they might as well be a lie. But more importantly giving me a problem to solve with only half truths gives me nothing to stand on!

I hope this clarifies what I’m trying to do here. It’s up to you to use your own judgement.