Prepare to be bombarded with Christmas sales, decorations, endless stress, and other holiday cheer. Even though Halloween is still fresh on the mind, you need to think about the coming holidays. Of course if you run a retail shop of any kind, then you probably already have.

What kind of sales are you going to have? What products are you going to promote? How will people who don’t already know about you find out? Will you have enough of the hot products in stock?

Christmas is coming quickly, and you will need to take care of any preparations right away, because once the holiday spirit comes and everyone begins thinking about the Holidays, it might be too late!

It’s easy to anticipate the holidays equating to more traffic, more customers, and of course more sales. If you haven’t already begun your holiday campaign, you have a bit of catch up, because you can bet your competitors already have!

If you are in a business where you need to ship, get the materials to ship. If you are in the service industry, get any extra help you might need. If holidays even remotely matter to your business, then get ready.

The National Realtors Association keeps an up-to-date database of recommended books on real estate and personal finance. Check out their Weekly Book Scan for some good reads, many of which you may never have heard of before.

Sometimes that is good enough, not always, but sometimes knowing more than everyone else will allow you to advance. Of course it helps to know what everyone else is thinking before you claim to be smarter than them.

I just ran into a site called Buzzdash. They constantly run polls and about all kinds of things. The stock market, business, and finance being one of them. While I wouldn’t be using this information directly to invest, it can possibly help you determine some trends of everyday people.

Personally I will be sticking with Motley Fool’s CAPS, as that holds people accountable for their predictions and any market analysis that they make. Although with the market’s recent turns, I am not so excited to log in and see how my ratings are doing!

Last night, I picked up “The Everything Homebuying Book” at my local library. As a real estate agent, I expected this book to be as dry and mundane as my real estate courses were. But the book was surprisingly to the point with tidbits scattered throughout.

The book covers everything from buying a fixer upper to selecting your town (with consideration to taxes, schools, and community programs) and determining the perfect home and finance strategy. The only thing the book lacked from my opinion was sample paperwork. What does a deed look like? How about a buy/sell agreement or rental contract when I rent out a bedroom?

We have an article on Aridni that might be useful to you, too.

And when you’re thinking of buying a home, this book may be invaluable to you… especially if you can get it for free at your local library, too!