Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Help Our Friend Give Her Birthday Gift Away...

Our friend Ronne (Veronica) will be celebrating her 50th birthday in September. To celebrate she wants to give her gift away. Her words say it best...
I've been looking forward to my 50th birthday for so long now - there's something regal, beautiful about the number. I've been blessed with moments bright and dark, all woven into an amazing tapestry of life and love.

So, to celebrate the arrival of my big day on September 27th, I'm asking you to do something special for me.

Give my gift away.

Nothing would make my celebration brighter than for you to give $50 (or whatever you can afford) to give others life. A billion men, women, and children in the world are living without clean water. 45,000 people will die this week alone. The lucky ones won't, but still walk hours each day to get dirty water to give to their families.

How wonderful will it be to know you helped give clean and safe drinking water to some of the billion living without it.

Thanks for celebrating life with me.

Peace and grace,

Ronne

please note: Because of charity: water's unique model, 100% of all donations go directly to direct water projects costs, and each donation is "proved" and tracked to the village it helped when projects are complete.
Click on Ronne's picture above to go to the site and learn more.

Thanks For Sharing This With Us Ronne!

Death, Taxes & Fees...$943 Per Year On Average

An interesting article on fees.

Fees used to be an occasional expense, an additional charge in exchange for an additional service. But in recent years, they’ve become a common way for companies and governments to juice up revenue without raising the price that everybody sees.

Consumers still pay more, of course, and the extra fees make it harder to do comparison shopping, which may be one objective. Last month, my electric retailer added a $5 monthly fee but kept the same variable-rate formula for calculating the bill. Try figuring out how that affects kilowatt costs — and whether a switch is warranted.

A 2006 study by the Ponemon Institute estimated that Americans were paying an average of almost $943 a year in fees, with the biggest amounts going to banks and credit card companies.
Click the image above to read the full article.