Avoid The Sticker Shock Of Relocating – Real Estate
Avoid The Sticker Shock Of Relocating
Dan The Roommate Man
To avoid the sticker shock of relocating, moving Americans can use the results of movecentral.coms annual moving survey to plan their spending. The new survey finds that movers spend $9,400 on purchases during the three-month relocation period, while renters spend $3,700.
Conducted by movecentral.com and Boston-based Atlantic Marketing Research, the survey polled 22,000 relocating Americans and yielded an average response rate of 4.1% percent. movecentral.com president and CEO Rick Libby presents the results as spending guidelines for relocating Americans to follow throughout the 90 day relocation process.
"Most people dont realize how much theyll spend during the course of a move," says Libby. "Our survey reveals how and where people spend their money, making it easier for them to plan a budget that anticipates surprises."
The survey found the following:
# During 1998 and 1999, 42 million Americans moved, spending $102 billion on move-related goods.
# Homeowners spent an average of $9,400 on purchases; renters spent $3,700.
# 15% of homeowners and 12% of renters stated that they bought a computer within the 8 weeks surrounding their move; homeowners spent an average of $2,160, and renters spent $1,340.
# 12% of all moving homeowners bought a car; 66% of these carbuyers made the purchase within four weeks after moving.
# 57% of owners and 37% of renters bought furniture within the 12 weeks surrounding their move; owners spent an average of $3,500 and renters spent $1,220.
# 35% of owners and 40% of renters bought bedding; of these individuals, 72% did so within three after their move. Owners spent an average of $420 and renters $240.
# 55% of moving homeowners purchase at least one appliance when they move, and 57% of homeowners buy furniture.
# 12% of all respondents with Internet access researched moving companies on the web; 8% researched real estate sites, 7% researched appliances/furnishings and 2% researched electronics, computers and banking services.
# 6% of movers using the Internet for research actually made online purchases; those buying goods and services spent an average of $600.
About The Author
Since 1989 Dan The Roommate Man has helped 1000s of people find roommates. Need help Contact him at 800-487-8050 or www.roommateexpress.com
info@roommateexpress.com
3.5 Tips To Help You Avoid Becoming The Next Search Engine Outlaw – Site
3.5 Tips To Help You Avoid Becoming The Next Search Engine Outlaw
Mike Cheney
Want to avoid being blacklisted by the search engines and banished to the sin bin never to receive a single search engine visitor ever again Thought so. Heres some tips to help you..
Tip 1 - Hide And Seek
Do not use hidden text on your website. This means having words and phrases in your pages somewhere that cant be seen to the naked eye. The tactic of having text on your page that is the same colour as the background, and is therefore hidden, will almost certainly result in your wanted poster being pinned up by most search engines.
Tip 2 - Your Website Is Not A Turkey
Do not cram your hands full of keywords and phrases and start trying to stuff them into your websites... pages. You need to have some phrases in there, yes, but dont overdo it. The search engine owners spend millions every year on their software so guess what - they know when youre trying to beat the system!
Tip 3 - Man vs. The Machines
Do not build your website for the search engine robots - build it for those squishy pink things - human beings! If you focus too much on having a search engine optimised site you can quickly lose track of why your website is there in the first place - to generate you business by people visiting it and doing what you want them to do. Would you create a new reception area in your office that was tailored specifically to the floor-waxing machine so it could get the best access No. You would build it for people - do the same with your website.
Tip 3.5 - Dont Be A Bunny Boiler
Do not start pinning up pictures in your dark room of each search engine and then start stalking them by submitting your website every day, week or even month. Search engines hate this - if you over-step the mark youll be well on the way to that blacklist.. You only need to submit your website to most search engines just one time - ever. Once its done, its done. Despite what some experts might tell you - you dont need to constantly re-submit your site.
Mike Cheney
www.magnet4web.com
About The Author
Mike Cheney
You can get lots more free articles on search engines plus a Free Bonus Special Report "How To Turn Your Website Into A Customer Magnet" worth a value of
Avoid These Five Common Weight Loss Mistakes – Diet
Avoid These Five Common Weight Loss Mistakes
Hristo Hristov
Mistake #1: Not changing your calorie plan as you lose weight. The fallacy of the "1200 calorie diet" plans and the like.
Most people fix their calorie intake to a given number and expect to lose weight at the same constant rate over a period of weeks. Hence, dieters look for 1000 calorie or 1800 calorie diet plans on the internet. The fixed calorie diet plans dont work. If you burn 3000 calories a day at the start of a diet, after a week or two of losing some weight, you are no longer burning 3000 calories. Now you might be burning 2800 calories. If you fix your calorie intake in the face of a decreasing calorie expenditure, your weight loss will slow down more and more as you lose weight.
If you want to lose weight at a constant rate, you must repeatedly:
decrease your calorie intake to accommodate the calorie expenditure drop
increase your calorie output by exercising more
do both
I would like to note that you must set realistic slow weight loss goals. If you go for fast weight loss you would not be able to sustain it for a long period unless you go extreme in the calorie reduction and exercise a lot. For people who have to lose more than 20 pounds 10kgs, the goal should be a loss of no more than 2 pounds or 1 kg per week. People who need to lose just a bit of weight should go for weight loss of 1 pound or half a kilogram per week.
Why does my calorie expenditure drop as I lose weight The most important factors are:
You weight less. A smaller body burns less calories both at rest and while active
You may involuntarily burn fewer calories. Dieters often lack energy and move less
Calorie restriction suppresses the metabolic rate
You have less body fat, which may further suppress your metabolic rate
These major factors contribute to an ever-decreasing energy expenditure as one loses weight. The more a dieter cuts calories, the bigger the calorie expenditure drop. The leaner the dieter, the greater the calorie expenditure drop.
Now you must understand that if you want to succeed in losing weight, you have to make changes in your nutrition plan. I recommend burning more calories, because being more active facilitates smaller calorie restriction and milder calorie expenditure drop.
It is very difficult to estimate the rate of the metabolic drop. Here is the general rule: the bigger you are, the smaller the rate of the metabolic drop. The more weight you lose, the more you have to cut calories or increase exercise. If you are overweight you might need to cut just 10 more calories for every lost pound, while if you are lean you might have to cut 60 calories for every pound lost. I picked these numbers just as an example.
Mistake #2: Overreporting the "extra" calorie expenditure of exercise
Most people count the calories they spend exercising as "extra" calories. There is a difference between calories burned while exercising and "extra" calories burned exercising. Here is an example: you burn 300 calories on the treadmill instead of your usual activity watching TV at home; in reality, you have to subtract the calories you would have spent watching TV from these 300 calories to calculate how many additional calories you burned. Lets say that watching TV, you would have burned 80 calories. In this specific case, you have expended 300 calories while exercising, and 220 "extra" calories.
Calorie counters mindlessly add the calories burned exercising as "extra" and in some cases, this practice can significantly influence the calorie calculations. Hence, calorie software counts the part of your usual activities that overlaps with the extra activities twice.
How to estimate the "extra" calories burned exercising
In order to make the calculations more accurate, I shall first introduce the concept of MET values. MET values are a convenient way to calculate the calorie cost of activities. MET values are multiples of the resting energy expenditure per time. In plain English, a MET = 3 means burning 3 times more calories than resting. A MET = 1 signifies how many calories you burn at rest your Resting Metabolic Rate or Basal Metabolic Rate. Whatever you do, you burn calories at a rate of at least MET = 1 with the only exception being sleeping which has MET = 0.9. During the day, most activities include sitting and walking which have MET values between 1.2 and 3. Your total daily energy expenditure is calculated by multiplying your Resting Metabolic Rate by the average MET of all your activities. Is your head spinning
Lets use a real world example. Consider a female person with a Resting Metabolic Rate of 1200 calories a day. One day has 1440 minutes. Our example lady is burning 1200/1440 = 0.84 calories per minute at rest, which signifies a MET = 1. Lets say our example woman just returned from an aerobics class, where she exercised for 30 minutes. General aerobic class training has a MET = 6. Our example lady has just burned 30 minutes x 6 MET * 0.84 calories per minute = 151 calories while exercising. Suppose our lady would have chatted on the internet instead of exercising MET = 1.5. In this example, the woman substituted chatting on the internet with aerobic exercising. Remember, that every time you do something you substitute one activity for another. In order to get the extra calories, we have to subtract 1.5 chatting from 6 exercising. Now lets calculate the extra calories: 30 minutes * 6 - 1.5 MET value * 0.84 = 113 calories.
Lets consider what a standard calorie counter would have done. First, it will assume an average calorie burn rate of 1 calorie per minute. Then the counter will find that exercising for 30 minutes will yield 30 minutes * 6 MET * 1 calories per minute = 180 calories. The calorie counter will add these 180 calories to your daily expenditure without considering that a part of these 180 calories is already accounted by your usual activities.
Do you now see the difference between 113 calories and 180 calories If that woman spends 5 hours a week in that aerobics class, the standard calorie counters will overreport her calorie output by: 180-113 * 10 = 670 calories a week. The woman will be fooled that her metabolic rate has dropped while she just overestimated her calorie expenditure. Enter weight loss plateau, wasted time and efforts. Do you have the time for trial and error calorie estimations
Remember these two rules:
Report only extra activities to your calorie counter. If your walk to your office every day, do not log "walking to office for 30 minutes" as an extra activity. Consider only unusual activities that contribute to extra expended calories!
Always subtract the calories you would have burned instead of exercising. A general rule is to subtract from 1.2 to 1.5 from the MET values. In some cases, you need to subtract a greater MET. If you substitute 30 minutes of bodybuilding MET = 6 for 30 minutes of slow jump rope MET = 8 then the additional MET would be 8 - 6 = 2.
How to find the MET values of activities based on standard tables
In order to make the above calculations, you need to know the MET values of activities. Standard tables give: name of activity, duration and calories. Standard tables assume an average calorie expenditure of one calorie per minute. To find the MET you just need to divide the calories by the duration.
Example: "Bicycling, stationary, general", "20 minutes", "140 calories"
MET of "Bicycling, stationary, general" = 140 / 20 = 7
I know these calculations are somewhat tedious and in many cases the standard calorie calculations are close to correct. However, in some cases they can significantly over or under-calculate the calorie expenditure of activities and compromise your weight loss plan with daily miscalculations.
Mistake #3: Training with light weights and lots of reps
I have seen countless number of ladies come to the gym, get the lightest possible dumbbells, crank out some hundreds of reps and go home. Most often, these women do not get the results they want. The problem with this type of training is that it does not burn many "extra" calories unless you spend a considerable amount of time in the gym. Hefting Ken and Barbie weights in the gym has a MET value of 3, which means that it burns 3 times more calories than resting in bed. Almost anything you do during the day has a MET value of 1.2 to 2. Browsing the internet on your computer has a MET value of 1.5. Realize that almost anything you do during the day average MET = 1.5 has about 50% overlap in calorie expenditure with training with very light weights MET = 3. If you pump super light dumbbells in the gym, only about half of the calories burned are "additional".
Of course, you can burn a considerable amount of extra calories training with light weights but you have to really extend the duration of this type of training. Curling 5 pound dumbbells for 4 sets of 20 reps and chit-chatting for 20 minutes in the gym is not going to burn many extra calories.
Remember the rule: the less intensive the activity smaller MET, the greater the calorie expenditure overlap with casual activities; the less intensive the activity, the more time you have to spend doing it to expend a good deal of extra calories. Always subtract a MET of 1 to 1.5 to arrive at the additional expended calories.
Mistake #4: Using "average person" calorie estimations
You can find all kinds of tables showing the calorie cost of different physical activities on the internet. These tables dont show your calorie expenditure. They actually tell you the calorie expenditure of an "average person". These tables assume you are an average person that burns one calorie per minute at rest. Yes, we covered this in the first part of the article and it needs repeating. Most men burn more than one calorie per minute and most smaller women burn less than one calorie per minute at rest. In reality, these standard tables overestimate the calorie expenditure of smaller people and underestimate the calorie expenditure of bigger than average people. Combine this with the common mistake of counting all burned calories as "additional calories" and you have a wide range of possible miscalculations.
Mistake #5: Going on very low calorie diets VLCD
Research has shown little to no difference in the weight loss rate of 1200 calorie diets and 800 calorie diets. The 1200 calorie threshold is the point where further calorie restriction does not yield faster results. Diets in the range of 800 to 1200 calories a day suppress the resting metabolic rate from the very first day and after some weeks on these diets, the metabolic rate has dropped by up to 20%. This metabolic drop is just a consequence of the calorie restriction factor; other factors such as the level of leanness may further depress the calorie expenditure.
A big percentage of the quick initial weight loss on a VLCD is water. VLCDs create an illusion of fast fat loss, while in reality most of the weight loss is water. It is hard to continue a very low calorie diet for a prolonged time because the harsh calorie restriction makes you hungrier than ever. People on VLCDs often lack energy and move very little. When you stop the diet, you are prone to instant overeating. Eating a very low calorie diet is the ticket to yo-yo dieting.
Instead of using very low calorie diets, I recommend diets with a mild calorie restriction and an emphasis on exercise. Overweight people who know what they are doing can employ VLCDs for a limited time. It is important to get enough vitamins and minerals from supplements, because such low calorie diets are woefully inadequate in nutrients. Water intake should be high.
Bodybuilders, powerlifters and athletes must stay away from very low calorie diets because the large calorie restriction causes a greater proportion of the weight loss to be muscle loss.
If you want to automate these complicated calorie calculations, try our training and nutrition software Fitness Assistant FREE for 30 days. Get your trial copy at www.x3msoftware.com
About The Author
Hristo Hristov is the owner of X3MSoftware, a company specializing in developing training and nutrition software. Hristo has a degree in Computer Science and passion for powerlifting. In his spare time, Hristo gives training and nutrition consultations.
hristo@x3msoftware.com