Women prefer gift cards to cash

I have 3 daughters, now grown up women. Buying birthday gifts for them is a real headache. What should I get for them? A dress? It may not fit them or they may not like the fashion. Perfumes? They may not like the scent. A pair of shoes? Again, fashion will play a great role here. Get the wrong pair and it may lie in a forlorn corner, unused. Headache, headache, headache.

Receive an alert from Gift Card Mall^TM which offered a possible solution to this headache. Here is the possibility - give gift cards.

The alert also mentioned something - news circulating that a great many retailers are closing (probably due to the sub-prime crisis and the economic crisis following it?) and not accepting gift cards. Another headache? No, read on. The message from Blackhawk Network says the above is not true and there still is a great majority of retailers who are still accepting gift cards as they do not want to disappoint customers and want to retain loyal customers. It also claims that consumers, both givers and receivers, prefer to give and receive gift cards as the recipient gets to choose what he or she wants and thus the money is not wasted. In fact according to a survey commissioned by Blackhawk Network, 70% of respondents are of the opinion that it is useful to give gift cards as the recipient can choose what he or she wants and thus no gift are wasted. More than half of the respondents in the survey says they would prefer to give gift cards in preference to giving cash.

Now the part related to women. More women (62% as compared with 58% for the population in general) plan to buy gift cards as presents this coming holidays season.

Informal wear for women

Women should wear clothing according to occasions. For example, if you are just graduating and going for prom night, then you should wear a formal gown. On the other hand, if you are just visiting friends or relatives, an informal and comfortable custom t-shirt will do, unless it is on occasions like Christmas etc. If you want to feel and look feminine, then go for women's styles

Feeling a bit sexy? How about American Apparel Baby Rib Tank like the one in the photo below:



Perhaps you have a message to convey via the t-shirt you wear. In this case cheap custom t-shirt printing is available.

Prom: graduating from girl to women

In the United States and Canada a prom, short for promenade, is a semi-formal (black tie) dance held at the end of an academic year (Wikipedia) and for a girl, perhaps it is also an event where they graduate from teenage to women hood. It should be an event to be remembered. So if you are going for prom night, this is the great opportunity for a girl to dress to kill. Girls will be dressed in beautiful formal Prom Dresses.

How about this ravishing red prom dress?



Here are more photos of beautiful prom dresses:







Perhaps to drive home the message that a girl is now graduating to a woman, you may even want to opt for an even more formal wear, a full-skirted ball gown

Interesting Free Reverse Auction Game where you can win prizes

Found this interesting site Sweepstake which offers a free reverse auction game that gives you an opportunity to win attractive prizes. All you need to do is to sign up for an account. I found it so interesting that I wanted to test it out myself, so I tried to register for an account. I found that they offer 2 types of membership - Standard Member an Premium Member:



If you want to play for free for an opportunity to win those attractive prizes, you will have to settle for a Standard Membership and put up with the advertisements. If you are a more serious player and don't want advertisements, just pay $9.99 per month and get extra benefits.

Standard Members can only submit 20 advertiser supported online bids per day but cannot bid via mobile. However, they can play arcade games to redeem points for prizes.

Premium Members get a total of 20 mobile or online bids per day without advertisements. They can also play arcade games to redeem points for prizes.

I tried registering for a Standard Membership but was disappointed to find out that I have to input a mobile phone number plus select from a list of mobile phone service providers from a drop-down menu which are all Americans. So looks like even though the site never mentioned it is only for residents of the United States, in practice, non-US residents are not eligible to play.

Anyhow, it looks very easy to play the bidding game. All you have to do is to sign up as a member, go to Free gifts where you will see a series of open bids, one of which will have only hours to go and that will be the daily grand prize. The one I saw when I went there really looks interesting. It was a DVD Home Theater System which I am sure is an expensive piece of equipment:



If you go to Cash prize and click "Next", you will see other bids but with longer time remaining, and on the day I went there, I saw



which was for bidding for a Cash Prize of $500 but with a longer time remaining (12+ days). As the bids with shorter time remaining expire, this will eventually become the next daily grand prize. This may be more interesting to you if you are not looking to aquiring more material stuff, but want cash (note: this is decribing what I observed on the day I went there. What you see may be different as the daily grand prize will expire and be replaced by the next one, and so on, so this is not a static site).

To play, you bid enter your cell number and bid for the prize. The lowest unique bid for every prize starts out at one cent - if more than one person bids a penny, then that penny is no longer the lowest unique bid and 2 cents is the new low unique bid. If more than one person bids 2 cents then 3 cents is the next lowest unique bid. And so on and so on. The winning bid could be anything, it could be a cent, a dollar even 500 dollars! Whatever is the lowest UNIQUE bid wins the prize!

But as mentioned earlier, winning the bid for the daily grand prize is not the only way you can win prizes from this interesting site. You can also play arcade games to redeem points and when you have enough points, you can redeem them for prizes at Free gifts.

Free Online Dating Site

Still single and lonely? Looking for someone to date? Try a Free Online Dating Site where you can find a match online. It is a 60 second process. If you are not already registered, you first have to sign up. To do that, you have to give your email address, your date of birth, whether you are a woman looking for a man or vice versa, country (US or Canada), Zip code. You then have to tell a little about yourself. Your height, hair color, body type, ethnicity, your marital status, whether you smoke and drink or not, whether you have children, whether you want children, your religion, what you are primarily interested in, your profession, your interests, select a username, a Headline (eg. Looking for Prince Charming), upload a photo (optional), select a password, do a word verification, agree to their terms of service, and the final step - click COMPLETE MY PROFILE.

An email will be sent to you for verification, and after you click on he verification link, you are done. A 60 second process and completely free. I did that and it was done in a jiffy.

At the Free Online Dating Site, you can actively search rather than passively waiting for a response. Click SEARCH, then FIND MATCHES and you will be shown a gallery of profiles that matches your requirements. If the gallery does not match your expectation, just click CHANGE PREFERENCES and there you can put in greater details of your requirements. Nothing can be easier than that.

That is not all at Free Online Dating Site. you can also join the Community which is a forum where you can participate actively and make friend.

The Smart Woman Manifesto: What is a Smart Woman?

The Smart Woman Manifesto: What is a Smart Woman?
by: Vicki Flaugher

A Smart Woman uses her entire toolbox of experiences, talents, feelings, logic, intuition, education, and yes, even her mistakes, to live her life authentically engaged. She takes the time to care for herself, evaluate what she really thinks and feels, and acts and reacts from a place of patient love, energized compassion, and balanced accountability. Choices are opportunities and she welcomes them. Opportunity leads to her future and she faces that future with a ready and willing heart and a nimble and open mind.

A Smart Woman respects others’ points of view while still making her own choices. She gives generously to others while nurturing herself. She knows the value of boundaries and is skillful in using them to build stronger relationships. She speaks up when she needs to and she knows how and when to supportively listen as she keeps her vision of peace and tolerance in sight. She knows when to walk away, wishing luck and best wishes to those who are on another path. She knows and values her true worth.

Adaptable, caring, capable, and clever, a Smart Woman embraces life and triumphantly whoops and hollers her way to joy. She claims her power and her divine birthright, as each of us do, in a myriad of infinitely beautiful and unique ways, creating a fulfilling life as a Smart Woman. She's not out to prove anything to anybody. She is here to learn, live, love, laugh, and contribute.

I believe we all have a lot to share, to communicate, to witness, and to celebrate. I would feel honored and thrilled to know you are by my side. So, what do you think? Are you ready to explore? I hope so, because today, I am making firm plans and those plans include you. I am a Smart Woman with firm plans. Are you?

Here's to you and your Smart Woman path!

About The Author

Vicki Flaugher, creator of http://www.SmartWomanGuides.com, is on a mission to nurture and empower the 35-55 year old Coming of Age female audience. Her website is a worldwide community site where Smart Women everywhere can submit articles about their own experiences surrounding topics like aging, health, entrepreneurship, relationships, spirituality, and sex and sensuality (to name a few). You can join in the fun at her blog at Smart Woman Guides

Why women should have life insurance

In the past, man commonly is the sole provider for the family, and if he dies, his family will be deprived of an income. To provide for this eventuality, it is common for a man to buy a life insurance so that should something untowards happens to him, an amount of money equal to the sum insured will be paid to the family so that they can continue to pay for the mortgages, educate the children, and in general, continue to have the same standard of life.

Now, with the liberation of women, it is common for both to be working and providing for the family. It is wise for a woman to also purchase a life insurance to protect the family. However, shopping around for a suitable insurance can be a hassle. Advantage One Insurance can make this task much easier with accurate quotes you can get online from many insurance companies to compare.

The simplest life insurance policy you can purchase is a term life insurance, which is pure insurance just like a car insurance. You purchase a term life insurance for a fixed term (number of years), and you normally pay the premium yearly. If nothing happens, you don't get anything back, but it is also the policy with the lowest premium. In my opinion, if protection is what you want, term life insurance is the policy to go for.

Life insurance companies, however, have found that getting people to pay for a term life insurance and not getting anything back in return if nothing happens during the agreed term can be difficult. So they have introduced a saving element into life insurance policy and created insurance like Return of Premium Life Insurance where you pay a higher premium, but you get back the premium you paid over the years if you survive the term.

There may also be special circumstances to be taken into consideration. For example, you purchase a house with the help of a mortgage. This means that every month, you have to repay a certain sum of money back to the bank providing the mortage. It also means that as time goes by, the amount owed to the bank is reduced. Now you may want the burden of having to take care of the monthly repayment to be taken off the shoulder of those you leave behind by purchasing a Mortgage or Reducing Term Insurance which will pay the amount outstanding to the bank in the event of your death, and your family would not have to worry about paying the monthly repayments. There are many other types of insurance like Wholelife Insurance, Diabetes Life Insurance (if you have diabetes), etc.

If you want to just find out more information about life insurance rather than getting quotes, Advantage One Insurance have also prepared pages for your perusal. For example, you can find out more about the Types of Insurance, guidelines on what to consider when buying life insurance online, comparison between Whole versus term life insurance, etc.

To find out more, to get information and online quotes on various types of insurance, the best is if you surf over to Advantage One Insurance and find out for yourself.