When you buy products online, especially from Chinese websites like Aliexpress or Gearbest, you might be a bit doubtful of whether the products they sell are original.

This is especially the case for small electronic goods like camera batteries. The best way to determine whether a good is fake or not is to do the following.

First, before buying, closely inspect the wording of the seller’s description. Sometimes they will write the model number in the title and use the wording “original”, but in the finer print details further down below they will not include the brand or the words “genuine” and “original”. This would usually mean it’s not an original item.

After buying, closely inspect the packaging and item and compare it to the originals. If that seems to be the same (any differences should make you seriously doubt the authenticity of the product), you can check the weight of the product. This is usually a clear giveaway. For example, I have some original Sony and Canon camera batteries, and the fake ones I bought are just a few grames lighter, while all the originals are exactly the same weight.

Diversification is one of the basic tenets of investment, and in general, it’s a good idea to invest.

Rich and successful investors typically diversify across the following:

• Stocks and bonds
• Real estate
• Ownership of businesses

Others might diversify further into commodities, cryptocurrencies, peer-to-peer loans, precious metals etc. but the above three are the really big ones.

On this blog, I’ve written quite a bit about the high returns that can be obtained on P2P loan platforms, and if you read other European FIRE and finance blogs you will see that platforms like Mintos, Grupeer and Peerberry are all the rage at the moment.

A frequent question that new investors have is the following:

“Should you diversify your investment across many P2P loan platforms?”

Now, if you read some other blogs you will see that these bloggers keep investing in new platforms, claiming that they want to try out more platforms for the benefit of their readers.

However, you should be aware that keeping a handle on your investments is a time consuming task, and is exponentially more time consuming the more platforms you add.

I would therefore be of the opinion that you should select a maximum of 5 platforms to invest in, and that is only if you have a substantial amount to invest, say €100,000. For smaller amounts reduce the number of platforms accordingly.

If I had €10,000 I would only put it on one platform, and that platform would be Mintos.

If I had €25,000 I would spread it across 2 or a maximum of three platforms. They would probably be Mintos, Grupeer and Bulkestate/Peerberry.

Keep in mind that your reporting costs will also increase with each platform you add. At the end of the year you will most likely engage an accountant to help you prepare your personal tax return, and the accountant will bill you according to the time spent. He will most definitely spend more time on your tax declaration with every platform you add.

If you’re investing through an audited company, every platform you invest money in (irrespective of the amounts invested) will increase the cost of your audit, as the auditors will need to spend time getting to know the platform and performing impairment checks on the loans invested in. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to invest small amounts in any platform as the audit cost per platform might actually be higher than the expected returns.

If you see bloggers that are invested in more than 10 platforms, you can be pretty sure that the only reason they are doing so is to be able to review all those platforms and land more affiliate commissions from new investors. So their main goal is to make money through affiliate commissions not from the investments themselves. The potential returns from affiliate commissions are many times the multiple of what they can get from the interest on their meager investments, hence it justifies the long hours spent every month in compiling detailed reports and regular reviews of all these platforms.

Looking for a new theme for your WordPress website or getting started with WordPress? There are thousands of themes out there and your website creation journey can get stalled right there as you search and search for the right theme, possibly making some bad choices.

I’ve been in the WP space for more than ten years now so I’ve seen it all.

Here’s what I consider the best themes for 2020:

• Astra
• GeneratePress
• OceanWP

I would pair these with a page builder, and the number one choice right now is Elementor.

If you can’t decide between the three themes above, consider the following:

• OceanWP has the most design options and flexibility, although the others come close.
• Astra and GeneratePress focus more on being lightweight and speed optimized.
• Astra has integrations that the others don’t yet offer, for example, LifterLMS and LearnDash.
• GeneratePress has the best public support forum so if you’re a beginner building your first site this could be an important consideration.

In the end, you won’t go wrong with any of those three themes.

For activation, I like to use this set of resistance band glute exercises at home and at the gym.

For building muscle I like this great set of exercises for glutes that can be found on Bret Contreras’ (The Glute Guy) website.

You should also be aware of how many times to train glutes per week. You should be doing more exercises than just squatting to built great glute muscles.

The world used to be a small place. Before the modern era, people grew up and lived in a small geographic area. Even holidays were enjoyed a short distance from home.

The 20th century changed all of that. By the 1950s, advances in flight made it possible to cross oceans in hours, not days or weeks. As we moved closer to the 21st century, the rise of computers eventually led to the internet.

The wellspring of advances that have flowed from this innovation has made a truly international lifestyle possible. We can hire low-cost contractors to scale businesses quickly. Thanks to wi-fi, we can get work done from the cafe down the street or a beach bar halfway around the world.

More people than ever are becoming citizens of the world. However, just as a parachute exerts resistance on a runner, one issue holds many back – international money transfer. Even cheap money exchanges are expensive, adding up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars lost to fees annually.

In an increasingly globalized world, these differences hold growth back. Some are touting cryptocurrency as a mass disruptor to this broken system. Can this innovation can provide universality to the global financial system? Or will nation-states mercilessly defend the status quo? We’ll search for the answer in today’s post.

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