Business Class Travel

Traveling for business can become very tiresome if one does it with enough regularity.  Taking advantage of business class travel when you fly can help reduce the stress and enhance your experience.

Many business travelers will say they can’t afford the cost of a business class airline ticket.  Well this is where a niche travel agency like Imperial Travel comes in.  What Imperial Travel offers is years of experience helping business travelers save money by securing discount business class airfare.  This is done by evaluation your travel patterns and then finding the appropriate airlines to reduce your cost on each leg of your trip.  They take into account such factors as what time of day you travel, what day of the week and what month among many others.  They then use their years of experience to put together the right travel plan for you.  Many times this results in savings of 50 to 70%.  Imagine what your boss might say to that!

So the next time you decide you can’t afford to travel in style to your business appointment, think again.  Traveling business class at a discount is certainly within the reach of your computer mouse.

Engagement Rings

Every girl dreams of her wedding day and of course the ring her special man will place on her finger as he kneels and says those magic words, “will you marry me?”  While that may take a couple of minutes, that man of her dreams should really take his time when shopping for that engagement ring.

Engagement rings come in all shapes and sizes and colors so finding the right ring should require some real effort.  First, one should have an idea of what their bride to be likes.  At some point the couple will talk about getting married and this would be a great opening for the groom to be to ask what style of ring she likes.  Is she traditional or modern?  This question could point you to look for a classic style or a current style.  Does she like white gold or gold?  How about platinum?  Finding our which kind of metal will help the man narrow his choices as well.  Second, which could actually be 1a, what is your budget?  The more money you have the larger the size of the diamond or the number of diamonds or … Third, shop around!  When it comes to designer rings, visit their website and see what they’ve got before you go into a jewelry store.  If you’re not sold on a particular designer, try shopping online.  Many online jewelry stores have both custom and designer rings to choose from.

Finally, whatever engagement ring you choose remember it’s not the ring that makes the marriage, it’s the people in the marriage.

Fine Jewelry

I’ve always fancied myself a purveyor of the finer things in life but my budget spoke otherwise so I’ve often had to settle for “second best”.  Well I will have to settle no more when it comes to fine jewelry.  I recently discovered Amoro.com a website that offers fine jewelry at duty free prices which is comparable to up to 60% off what similar retailers like Hearts on Fire would charge.  My first thought was are you kidding me?  But sure enough once I did comparison shopping at other fine jewelry retailers I was convinced I had found a gold mine (of sorts) when it comes to luxury jewelry.

The next time you look for jewelry don’t be fooled into thinking you only have to settle for a budget website, you don’t, you now have Amoro.com to choose from and their wonderful collection of fine diamond jewelry.

Photo Booth Dallas

Our daughter’s wedding is this summer and while making preparations for it we talked about different activities that might be fun and different for her guests.  While talking with a friend about this they suggested a photo booth. My exposure to photo booths in the past has always been in the mall or a bowling alley or someplace like that and the idea really appealed to me so I jumped online and did a search for photo booth dallas and found exactly what I was looking for.  There is a whole industry now serving weddings, company parties, birthday parties and basically any event you could imagine renting a photo booth for.

Living in Dallas, TX I search for a local company and found Photo Booth Rentals DFW which had a great website.  They had examples of their work, easy to understand rates and an easy way to contact them and I learned they offer photo booth rentals in Dallas and throughout the North Texas region. So I contacted them and made arrangement to rent a photo booth for the wedding this summer.  I’m not quite sure how it will be received but I will definitely follow up this post with a review of the wedding how the photo booth went over.

Houston Office Space

Looking to start a business in Houston and need office space?  Looking to move your existing business to new office space?  Want to save time and money?  Try an executive office from Meridian Business Centers.  Meridian offers Houston office space that fit’s any business need.  From a one man shop to a company of 100 or more, Meridian Business Centers can offer a office space solution that fits.

Buying office space is expensive to say the least and then you have to outfit the space to meet your needs, then comes furniture, a phone system, internet, a receptionist …. the list goes on and on.  Why hassle with all of that when you have an alternative?  Imagine signing a lease and walking in the next morning to a hello from a receptionist, stopping and grabbing a hot cup of coffee and then unlocking the door to your fully furnished office?  Wouldn’t that be nice?  Of course it would and the savings you create by leasing a Houston office space from Meridian Business Centers more than pay for itself.  You know your business better than anyone so why take time dealing with office space?  Concentrate on your business and leave the office space up to Meridian Business Centers.

Property Tax Consultants Texas

Property taxes drive me nuts!  I’ve got property taxes on my home and business and the rates and laws governing them seem to change daily so how can I expect to keep up?  I won’t, especially as it relates to my commercial property taxes, for those I’ve decided I’m going to be using a Texas property tax consultant to guide the way for me.  By doing so I’m confident my taxes won’t be levied unfairly and if there is a question or concern my consultant will have all of the answers.

Texas is larger than many countries and has too many counties and cities to mention so you can imagine a business owner with properties in multiple locations spread over multiple counties and cities must feel overwhelmed by the tax laws in those cities and counties.  With a Texas property tax consultant I’m assured they are well versed on each and every city and county within the state and what the property tax laws are in each one.  So if you have the same issue I do then I would suggest finding a property tax consultant.

Dallas Business Phones

We opened a branch office in Dallas and one of the things we had to look into was a phone system.  Now having never had to do the dirty work and figure out what we needed and what was available and by who, I got a rude awakening.  So the first thing I did was have a meeting with all of the department heads and asked what they were looking for in features, accessories, etc, then I did a search for Dallas business phones and got a ton of results as you can imagine so my only choice was to go through each listing and find one that fit my needs.

With technology advancing so quickly today there are so many options available for small business office phones.  You can have regular phone lines, or VoIP which is Voice over IP (kinda like Skype) and you can have digital or PBX or …. anyway lot’s of choices.  Now since we are moving to a specific city I knew we needed a business that sold and serviced phone systems in Dallas so that was my first requirement.  My second was we wanted to go with the VoIP phones and my third was that they have a very good reputation so I looked for companies that had won awards for service and were with the Better Business Bureau.   Believe it or not I found a couple of choices and from those we found one that handled everything we needed.

Structured Settlements and You

You see the commercials on tv and hear them on the radio… “I want my cash now”!  So what are they talking about?  Structured settlements.  A structured settlement is basically a court settlement, for instance if you get in a wreck and sue the person who hit you (actually their insurance company) and win the court will typically give you a settlement but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get a giant check cut that day.  Instead what is create is a structured settlement that will pay you the court awarded damages over time.  You might get a check a year for 25 years or something similar but you won’t get one big check.

So if you have one of these structured settlements and you have a need for cash now then you need to engage with a company who will buy your structured settlement.  There are many of these companies out there and quite frankly many of them are crooks.  So you need to make sure to find a company that is a Better Business Bureau  member or has a third party validation affiliation.  Check their references!  Check the company out anyway you can before you engage with them.  Structured settlements are a good thing and can be easily cashed out but don’t get taken advantage of.

Cheap First Class Travel

I would love to be able to charter a plane and head off to my own private island anytime I want, the problem is I’m not rich enough to charter a plane or own an island but I found out I can book cheap first class travel anytime I want.  When I say cheap I mean first class airline tickets for up to 70%, in my world that’s a huge discount.

Discount first class airline tickets are nothing new but it seems very few people take advantage of the companies that offer this service.  Well, believe me, the next time I travel I will look for discount first class airfare and nothing else.  So just because I’m not a multi-millionaire with my own jet and island doesn’t mean I can’t travel like one… I can!

South Padre Island

The family is already talking about our summer vacation and one place that keeps coming up is South Padre Island.   So one of the first things I did was find out what I could about South Padre Island.  Besides the obvious, which is its in Texas, SPI as many of the natives call it is really two places, North Padre Island and South Padre Island.

North Padre Island is just that, the north section of Padre Island.  It is separated from South Padre Island by Port Mansfield Channel and offers one of the longest undeveloped beaches in the world.  South Padre Island is the developed part of Padre Island with 34 miles of barrier reef and is 1/2 mile wide at its widest.  Finding South Padre Island rentals is fairly easy so booking a condo or home rental or a hotel won’t be that difficult.  There is also a lot to do, swimming, surfing, fishing and boating as well as a vibrant nightlife.  Looks like this summers vacation to SPI is going to be fantastic.

Dallas SEO

My boss was looking for a Dallas SEO company so I got online to see what I could find out.  Turns out there are a lot of companies who offer seo services in Dallas & Fort Worth.  From what I could tell most of them were pretty small companies and I wasn’t sure which one I could recommend to the bossman so I put a short list of requirements together and looked them over again to see who would qualify.

SEO or search engine optimization is the process of making changes to a website (both off page and on page) to impact their position in the natural or organic rankings of search engines.  So a good Dallas SEO would have to be doing this for a while, they would probably have very good references and of course would rank well themselves.  With those simple requirements I contacted three companies and after more in-depth interviews we’ll pick one of them.