I spent last weekend in Florida, jumping out of airplanes. When I had some downtime (no pun intended,) I was doing some quick homework as to my expenses last year. I came up with ten reasons we waste money, and how to prevent them. A ton of them I’d already been doing, but I thought of a few new ones, as well. Hope they help you, too.

Why you’re always broke:

10) You’re broke because you mistakenly believe that coffee served by a person in a green apron tastes better than coffee you make yourself at home. $4 a day, $20 a week, $80 a month, $960 a year on the cup of coffee you get at Starbucks. Buy a good coffee machine. Even if it costs you $300, plus $100 in beans for the year, you’re looking at a savings of $560 if you make coffee at home and take it with you in a reusable mug.

9) You’re broke because you take cabs to or from the airport, or park at the airport. I get it, if you live in a place with no transportation system. But for everyone else, this is a needless expense. NYC, DC, Boston, San Francisco, and San Francisco are just a few of the places where the transit system is more than good enough to get you to and from the airport. NYC: $15 for the AirTrain to Newark, $2.50 from midtown to LaGuardia, $7.50 to JFK, vs. a minimum of $35 for a cab, average rate $50-70. EACH WAY. Don’t even get me started on parking costs. Use mass transit, not only for airports, but for the majority of your travel.

8) You’re broke because you prefer Seamless.com to FreshDirect.com, EVERY WEEK. In other words, you prefer to order in than to cook. I get it. Cooking is hard. BUT… Cooking just four hours on a Sunday can give you enough meals for the week. Cook half a dozen skinless chicken breasts on a Sunday, keep them in the fridge. On Monday, add a sauteed onion and nuke some spinach. Tuesday, add a small serving of pasta, and a vegetable. Wednesday, unfreeze some frozen pre-cooked shrimp, with a vegetable. Thursday, chicken with hot sauce and rice. Friday, go out. There. One meal out vs. five. Money saved – A lot, or REALLY a lot, depending on where you live.

7) You’re broke because you waste time talking on your mobile phone. The way I see it, we learned to use the mobile phone backwards. We should have started out sending texts, then learned to talk on it. Because we did it the other way, we spend way too much time talking about crap we could totally avoid if we were limited to 160 characters. If you have a low monthly minute plan, you should use your phone for emergencies and when you absolutely can’t text. (When you’re driving, for example.) If you put texting before talking, chances are, you can drop your minutes even more, lowering your bill that much more each month.

6) You might be broke because you still have a land-line. If you work somewhere other than your home, and you still have a land-line, do you have a reason for it? The only reason to still have one is in case of a massive catastrophe, when all the electricity goes out – chances are, your corded phone will still work. But other than that, you could be saving $40, $50, or even more by simply losing the land-line.

5) You’re broke because like your mother probably used to say, you actually DO think you live in a barn. When you leave, are you turning off all your lights? What about your TV? Muting it doesn’t count. Do you shut off your desktop monitor? Screen savers don’t save you that much. Shut off the monitor, if not the entire computer. Electricity doesn’t have to be as expensive as it is. Heat and AC? Same thing. Put on a sweater, or get a thinner comforter for your bed. You’d be AMAZED how much lowering the heat and AC can save you over the course of a year.

4) You’re broke because you wear one outfit, then dry-clean it. Hang a blazer on a hanger, and put it out your window for an hour. Brand new. Buy a lint-roller (all cat owners know this trick) and your blouse is ready for another day. Jeans? I wear them till they can walk on their own. I’m not saying don’t stay clean and neat, but on the same note, the only things that should be washed after each use are socks , underwear, and gym clothes.

3) You’re broke because you prefer a treadmill to that amazing thing called “The outdoors.” Take a run outside. Drop halfway through for pushups. Want more? Do them with your feet on a bench. Last tenth of a mile of the run? Squat to the finish line. Then do some sit-ups on the grass. Boom – $60-150 a month saved.

2) You’re broke because you don’t know your credit score, and aren’t negotiating lower rates. Go to annualcreditreport.com – (The only free one) and download your credit report. Got a good one? Call your credit card companies and ask for a lower rate. Bet you get it. But don’t close your accounts if you pay them off – That can actually hurt your credit report. Keep a hundred bucks on the card, and you’ll always get good interest rates, and make your score even better.

1) The number one reason you’re broke? You just assume fees “have to be.” Guess what – They don’t! Keep $100 in a TD Bank account, and all fees are GONE, including ATM fees for other ATMs. Negotiate EVERYTHING. ASK what the fees are when you rent a car, and ask to have some of them removed. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. And trust me – You CAN get. Ask your utility provider how to lower your monthly bill. Ask your cell phone provider if you’re actually using all your minutes, and if not, drop down. Ask. Trust me. You CAN get.

What am I missing? Tell me your best tips below – The top ones get a prize.

With that, I offer these ten tips as a way to get out of town painlessly this holiday, whether you’re going to Grandma’s, back home, or to an island off the coast of Portugal.

These tips work. Trust me. I travel close to 250,000 miles per year on Unitinental Airlines. (My name for the Continental/United merger.) As such, these are things I do daily. Use them. They work.

11) The flight is not the time to be cheap, if you can afford not to be. Yes, it’s great to get a flight for $60 each way from NYC to LA. But know this: You’ll board last, you’ll be charged for everything, and you’ll probably wind up being miserable enough to make that $120 r/t fare cost you hundreds more. If you can afford it, pony up for economy plus or similar, at the least. It’s worth it, and usually have enough perks (first bag free, earlier boarding, more legroom) to make it the price worth it. Besides – ask yourself: How much are you really worth? Enough to be cramped for six hours, or enough to have some room, be able to get some work done, and have a drink?

10) Book the first flight out in the morning. Yes, it sucks to get up at 3am to make a 5:45am flight. But it’s worth it for the following reasons: First flights out are the ones that are usually the most on time. There’s nothing blocking them, the planes are usually already at the gate from the night before, and the skies are the least crowded. Chances are, you’ll get out on time, and make any connections you need to make. The later in the day your flight, the more of a chance of a delay, a missed connection, and one less day of actual “rest.” Bonus: Getting to the airport at 4:30am for a 6am flight means hardly any TSA lines.

9) Hubs are your friends. If you live in a city without an airport hub, your flight choices are limited, at best. Airports like Newark, which is like, 90% Unitinental, have multiple flights to the same destination over the course of the day. If you miss one, you have a better chance of getting the next one. If you live in Boston, for example, an airport without a “home” airline, it could pay to leave the night before, take Amtrak to NYC, have dinner with friends, and fly out first thing the next morning. More options equals less chance for delays or cancellations that affect you.

8) Look for alternate security lines. You know how buses, car rental shuttles, and cabs all seem to go to the same place? Chances are, the thousands of people they’re dropping off will just move like sheep from the curb to the ticket counter to the TSA line, without questioning anything. I like to walk to one end of the terminal or the other – More often than not, there’s another security line there, with much, much fewer people there.

7) When everyone is elite, no one is elite. At some hub airports, they have special checkpoints for elite travelers. The problem is, as any elite traveler will tell you, at those hubs, almost everyone there is elite, and the people who aren’t are crowding the lanes because they don’t know they’re not allowed to use them. Chances are, the non-elite TSA checkpoints will actually move faster, if they’re separate checkpoints. If they’re three LINES, and one is elite, get on the elite line. But if it’s an entirely separate checkpoint, you might do better in a regular lane.

6) A coin is metal, as is a cell phone, jewelry, and your business card holder. Be smart. Put everything you have into your jacket pocket, and put the entire jacket through the x-ray. This includes your belt. You’re allowed to take it off before you get to the security line, you know. The less you’re wearing on your person, the less likely Joe-TSA is going to direct you to the Anal-Probe corner.

5) Don’t check bags. If you’re going to California for ten days, yes, it’s understandable that you’ll need a suitcase. But guess what? It’s not a requirement that you travel with it! If you use FedEx ground a week before your flight, not only will your entire suitcase be waiting for you when you get to the hotel, and not only will you be out of the airport, on average, 30 minutes before those checking luggage, but with the fees that most airlines are charging for checked bags, using FedEx ground will actually save you a decent amount of cash! Just don’t check bags. It’s not worth it. I’m a huge fan (and on the board of) the ScotteVest. I’ve actually traveled to Asia for four days with nothing more than my vest holding everything I could possibly need.

4) Being a dick will NOT get you a better ANYTHING. A note about gate agents: They’ve heard it all, and they’ve been abused worse than Michael Vick’s childhood pet. There’s nothing you can say to them, no way you can threaten them, that will make them help you. BUT – Being nice, understanding that the holiday season brings out the newbie travelers which they can’t stand, can go a long, long way. Nod knowingly. Smile. Heck, bring chocolate. Gate agents have the power to make your next six hours a ride in a limo, or the equivalent to being kidnapped in Kandahar. BE NICE. It’s beyond amazing what being nice can get you. In general, this rule goes for life, as well.

3) For God’s Sake, board when called, and not before. I can’t TELL you how many times I’ve been ready to board, and they start with First Class and Top Tier elite. I then have to push past 100 idiots who are sitting in 34-K, but figure “Hey, if I’m close, I can get on first.” NO, YOU CAN’T. What will happen is you’ll block everyone else, make the flight board late, and possibly cause us to miss our wheels-up window, potentially delaying us for hours. If you do this, those who WERE in the right place at the start of boarding will KILL you, and it’s totally allowed. Yes, it sucks to not have overhead space because you boarded last. But you could have chosen a seat closer to the front. And besides, if you listened to me in tip 5, that won’t be a problem anyway.

2) When you land at your destination, and you’re walking out of the plane, compliment the pilot on a good landing. The landing is the one thing that has the least amount of computer control – it’s pretty much all-pilot. You want to make a pilot happy? Compliment him or her on what they actually did, as opposed to complimenting them on a good flight, which just means that the auto-pilot computer wasn’t running Windows XP.

1) Lastly, give yourself tons of extra time – Download some good apps, good books, or good magazines. Bring them, and know that shit happens. Don’t look for people to blame, don’t post to Twitter how much something sucks and how inconvenienced you are. You’re not alone, you’re not the only one to whom this is happening, and contrary to popular belief, it’s not in an airline’s best interest to not get you to your destination on time. They’re not doing this on purpose. Smile, know that things might go wrong, and try not to be “that guy” that bitches and complains, and without fail, gets recorded and sent to YouTube under the tag “douche.”

Happy flying, and happy holidays, my friends.

Any other tips? Leave them below – I’ll give a discount code for any ScotteVest product to the best one.

Think about it – If we have the power to be mobile, we have freedom. We don’t need to be in our offices, or at a desk. We can create, explore, produce, engage, and yes, make money, from wherever we are. That, my friends, is true freedom. The freedom to be anywhere and everywhere at the same time.

The problem is, we don’t allow ourselves this freedom. For some reason, we spend almost all our time locked into our desk chairs, staring at a computer screen, when in fact, we don’t need to.

I’ve written several posts about how to jailbreak your life – I encourage you to read them – and today, I’ll add this.

Vocus, the company for which I’m Small Business Evangelist, has released a new tool designed to help you do everything you need to do to run your business, all while staying mobile.

And don’t worry – I’m not going to sit here and pitch it. I am, however, going to give you examples of ways to work while being mobile. If you choose to use the Vocus Mobile Marketing Suite to do it, awesome. If not, the tips still help, and I hope you find value in them.

Understand this first: There are two types of downtime – Long-Burst Downtime and Short-Burst Downtime. I coined the phrase “short burst downtime” a few years ago. It’s the opposite of long-burst downtime. What are they?

Well, long-burst downtime is the downtime you have on a plane (like where I am now, headed from Chicago to LAX.) It’s several hours in a row, that you plan for, knowing you’ll be able to get a certain amount of work done in a finite amount of time. Long-Burst downtime is planned for. It’s how we write blog posts, work out spreadsheets, and get the majority of our “busy-work” done.

But Short-burst downtime – That’s a lot more fun. That’s the kind of downtime that we don’t plan for. It comes in… you guessed it – short bursts. Six minutes on line at the bank. Four minutes waiting for your Mochachino. 19 minutes waiting for your significant other to finish getting dressed because they only need “one more minute.” Short-burst downtime, when used wisely, lets you take care of ove 90% of marketing your business, during times you’d otherwise be wasting because you only see them as wasting time, not as opportunity.

What type of device do you have? Android? iPhone? iPad? They’re called “smart phones” for a reason. Guess what you can do while waiting on line at the bank or as you’re waiting to check out of Lowe’s: You can tweet. You can post to Facebook. Get this – You can answer HARO queries! See who’s talking about you. Respond to pissed off customers. Thank happy customers! Retweet those happy customers! These are all the things you should be doing over the course of your day, but you just “never have the time.”

This morning, while waiting for a 45 minute ground delay, I was able to, from my Droid Incredible II, answer six emails, retweet three messages, post on my status, wish six people on Facebook happy birthdays, give away a back massager, and even update the invite list for my upcoming wedding. (Hint: We’re inviting WAY too many people.)

Plane took off, and that’s when my long-burst downtime kicked in. I’m writing this post on the plane, as well as a bunch of other blog posts. I’m working on my next book (stay tuned, it’s gonna be pretty good, I think) as well as playing the occasional game of Bejewled. OK, and maybe watching the last episode of Season One of Dexter. I know, I’m five years behind, but OMG how good is this show?!

Anyhow, as the plane lands and rolls to the gate, I’ll be on my Droid again, checking to see what happened as I was in the air. Who mentioned me? Who talked about HARO? What queries came in that I may be able to answer?

The key is to be able to use those short-burst downtime moments in the ways that benefit you (and your business) the most. Like I said, the new Vocus mobile app can help you do that. But even if you don’t use it, focus on making your life more productive by doing one simple thing: Not wasting any second of your day.

Two of those tabs are Facebook. Facebook.com, and my (I hate this term) “like page.” I go through the people in my network, then look at any posts or comments on the “like page,” and respond accordingly. This is a daily thing. I do it every morning, whenever morning happens to fall in the part of the world I’m currently in.

This morning, though, something was different. I’d been invited to try Facebook’s new “Timeline” profile. This meant that not only did I get to see the thing they’d done this whole press conference for (hey FB, take a tip from Apple, bring Zuck on immediately, let him do his thing, and move on, the 30 minute anti-buildup didn’t help anything) but I got to see it as it would affect me personally. And for as much as I like tweeting funny, sarcastic comments during FB press conferences, I’ve got to say this: The Facebook Timeline will radically change the way you use Facebook, and the way you think about “time” as a concept.

Now before you dismiss me as a Facebook fanboy, know that I’m not. FB has done some stupid stuff in the past, (anyone remember “Beacon?”) and I’m the first to call them out on it. That’s why their Timeline is going to be so interesting. Note that I didn’t say “revolutionary,” because as cool as it is, let’s face it – it’s still just something in Facebook. It’s not discovering Einstein might have been wrong or anything.) But it’s still quite interesting.

Here’s why: When I log onto Facebook, I do so because I want to know what my friends are up to. I want to know what my colleagues are doing. I want to know what people within my world currently consider interesting. And that makes sense. Deep down, that’s the purpose of Facebook.

But, think back – That’s not why we used to log on. We used to log on to Facebook because it was cool to find out what our friends, family, and colleagues were doing, and what they thought was interesting. Lately, though, doesn’t it kinda feel like an obligation?

So last week, I checked out my profile as a timeline, and the first thing I saw was a link to “Born.” I clicked on it, and sure enough, it went back to August 6th, 19-cough, cough, and asked if I’d like to add a photo. “But Facebook wasn’t around when I was born! Why would it have a link to that,” I asked.

And then it hit me – This wasn’t about Facebook – This was about our lives. This was about a company figuring out a way for us to put our entire lives online, regardless of when we became a part of Facebook. Rather, Facebook was offering us a place to store our entire lives, from beginning to now, to the eventual end. When we became “digital” is irrelevant, we can simply add more data later. Think about it: Would we ever post the photo our parents took of us at one day old for the heck of it? Of course not. But if Facebook gives us a link on our timeline called “born,” and asks us to fill in the relevant media, chances are, we just might.
There’s a lot more about the Timeline I can share, but for now, I wont. Rather, I’ll just say this – I know that we love to complain about new changes in Facebook because, well, that’s one of those things we just love to do. But don’t. And don’t bring up the whole “Well, they can now advertise to us with even more clarity and pinpoint relevancy!” argument. Yes, they can. And that’s why Facebook is free. And the better it is for advertisers, the better it’ll actually be for you – the ads you DO see will actually be worth your while! How about that! Ads that can actually improve your lives! That, my friends, is not a bad thing, despite our overwhelming desire to automatically say it is.

Remember: As long as Facebook is free for you, you’re NOT a customer of Facebook. You’re a user of Facebook. The advertisers are customers.

If anything, the new changes, as well as Facebook’s new “frictionless sharing,” will teach us to be much more careful about what we do online. This is NOT a bad thing, at ALL. This is actually a GOOD thing, and can prevent future Congressman Weiner outbreaks by making us all smarter, collectively.

Also, 99.9% of the world won’t see these changes as a bad thing, and they won’t care that they’re giving up more privacy. Why? Because Facebook has done an amazing job of making convenience matter more than lack of privacy. They’ve always been good at that, and that’s why they continue to win. Remember that crowd-funded company that wanted to compete with Facebook last year? What ever happened to them? I don’t even remember their name.

So, in the next week or so, when the new Timelines populate into your profiles, give them a shot – Take a look, and try to look past the changes you see on the screen, and imagine what these changes mean for the future. Learn to be more aware of what you post, and realize that privacy died 30 years ago – Some of us just happen to be noticing it now.

As far as I’m concerned, the future of Facebook is pretty damn exciting.

Know your audience. Before you even look at taking photos and posting them to Twitter, you have to ask yourself the most basic of questions: Is your audience on Twitter? According to eMarketer, only 20 million Americans visited/used Twitter last month. While that’s a decent number, that leaves a few hundred million potential customers choosing to get their information in other ways. If you’re not finding them where they are, all the best practices in the world won’t help you. Find out where your audience is before you start posting anywhere with reckless abandon.

Assuming you have a decent audience following on Twitter, it’s time to start implementing photos. Here’s how:

1) Throw out the old Instamatic. Nearly every decent phone has a built-in decent camera. iPhones, Droids, even Blackberries are fine – But do some basic homework. Make sure your lighting is decent. Try not to have to use a flash if you can avoid it. Natural light works best. Avoid harsh shadows, as most camera-phone cameras don’t have the ability to distinguish light from dark in anything more than a primitive way. Soft, natural light is best for whatever your subject is. If you have basic photo skills, by all means, use a good digital camera, drop the size, and upload. As good as a cameraphone camera is, nothing beats a decent SLR.

2) Size matters. Remember that your photo quality, while it needs to be good, doesn’t need to be a billion megapixels. You’re posting to Twitter, not to the front page of the NY Times. Use the best quality resolution you can without requiring each photo to use a T3 hardline to upload. Chances are that Twitter, much like Facebook, will auto-compress the photos once you upload them, so large file size won’t kill the network. That said, it’s even more important to make sure your lighting and focus are stellar. Bad lighting on a huge file is easier to fix than bad lighting on an already-shrunk image.

3) Who cares? Before every photo upload, ask yourself “Why am I posting this?” Is it a fun photo? Is it something that will entice my audience to buy my products? Will it engage them into further conversation, leading to conversion?

4) Don’t be a product-whore. Posting a continual stream of photos of every product you sell doesn’t make you a power-Twitter user, it makes you a catalog. And no one wants to see a catalog in their Twitter stream. Be selective. Overposting, just like oversharing, is a guaranteed way to lose followers.

Tweeting at Bon Jovi? Totally acceptable.

5) Keep it interesting. “Games” Magazine used to have this really cool page where they’d post extreme close-ups of every day products, challenging the reader to figure out what they were for a prize. Can you do the same? Of course you can. New line of purses? Show just the clasp. Shoe? Just the heel. Dog leash? Just the loop. Have fun and experiment, and engage with your audience to encourage them to buy, as well. (But don’t market TO them – audiences hate that.) Include a link to the product page if you’d like, but again, not every photo needs to be product.

6) Offer “backstage access” with your photos. Got an event? Show scenes people normally wouldn’t see. One of the coolest photos I ever saw came from a NASA tweeter, who posted a photo from the wheel of the pad that rolled out the shuttle. So cool to look at, and encouraged me to follow not only him, but a ton of other NASA tweeters. Events and the like are made for Twitter photos, but again, be selective.

7) There’s “sharing,” then there’s “bragging.” It’s great if your product is in the Oscar gift bag and you get to go, but 75 photos in a row of every celebrity you’re meeting is bound to annoy the hell out of people. Again, it comes down to being selective. A handful are fine. Any more, and you’re going to start losing supporters.

8) Engage, engage, engage. Remember: an ad is a one way street, Twitter is a boulevard. If you’re launching a new product, post photos of the design – Encourage user feedback – Make the audience a part of the new product build. You’re encouraging user participation, and making your audience feel like they had a hand in the new build. What happens then? They’re more likely to purchase, leading to revenue generation and sales.

9) It’ll always be about the Benjamins. Finally, remember that photos are just another part of social marketing, which is just another part of the marketing channel as a whole. If you can’t tie everything you’re doing back to revenue and sales, you need to reevaluate how you’re using social. Remember: No CEO or beancounter believes that “cool” trumps “revenue,” and they never will.