Couples Paid To Stay Married

Couples who sign up with uTango spend online and get cash back each year for spending habits as well as larger bonuses for every 10 years they stay married.

Many married couples are signing up for a program that offers them big rewards to stay married. The program called uTango is an online rewards program that urges couples to stay together through financial perks. As they spend money online at one of 300 companies, they earn points. These points add up to cash back bonuses at the end of the year and even larger bonuses when couples reach marriage milestones. These bonuses can add up to a million dollars. All they have to do is stay married.

The company is headed by CEO Jim Miller who believes that couples who stay married deserve extra perks for their accomplishments. Single and engaged couples are also permitted to join as well as newlyweds. If and when these couples do decide to marry, they can use their cash back bonuses to pay for their wedding expenses. Married couples who join must be married less than three years.

Different plans require different online spending requirements each year, promoting online spending as often as possible. There are three types of plans that users can choose from. These include the $250,000, $500,000, and $1,000,000 rewards plan. Each plan names the amount that couples receive when they hit their 30th anniversary. Each has a different yearly online spending requirement with $5,000 being the minimum on the lowest plan and $20,000 with the highest plan. Once married, couples get $10,000 on their 10th anniversary, $100,000 on their 20th anniversary, and those who sign up for the most expensive plan can get up to $1 million on their 30th anniversary. If they get divorced, the cash stops coming.

There are 15 shopping categories to choose from on the site to help couples reach their spending requirements. These categories range from clothing to travel and include toys, jewelry, electronics, and lawn and garden. Such a service is likely to be a success in this country which has growing numbers of online buying practices. According to a recent online shopping survey conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project last year, online buying increased from 22 percent to 49 percent since June 2000 to September 2007. In fact, about 66 percent of Americans who have internet access have purchased at least one item online. The uTango service may be one of the services that help increase the number of online spenders as well as promote long term marriages, blending modern technology with traditional values.

Ten things you probably didn't know about Africa:

  1. The Nile is the longest river in the world, flowing through Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt - if all the bends in the river were straightened out, it would flow from the Equator right up to the Scottish Highlands.
  2. Many children in Africa don’t get the chance to go to school. If you grew up in Mali in west Africa, for example, you’d only have a one in three chance of being able to go to primary school. Puts things in perspective rather yes?

  3. Four of the five fastest land animals live in Africa – the cheetah, which can run at an amazing 70 miles per hour, wildebeest, lion and gazelle.
  4. Lake Malawi in southern Africa is home to around 500 different types of fish. That’s more than anywhere else in the world! Gosh!
  5. Africa is almost an island. Its only connection to other land is the tiny Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.
  6. Africa is the home of the Human species, which developed there about 5 million years ago.
  7. More people are killed in Africa by crocodiles than by lions. We probably should include crocs on our scary stuff page .. oh well, too late!
  8. The banjo as we know it originated from a single-string, gourd-bodied African lute (sometimes called the "hodu") which the Griots of West Africa played to accompany storytelling. Now, bet you feel better for knowing that!
  9. Only three countries in the world are bigger than the Sahara Desert – Russia, Canada and China. The Kalahari Desert in southern Africa covers an area larger than France.
  10. The only street in the world to house two Nobel Peace prize winners is in Soweto, South Africa. Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu both have houses in Vilakazi Street.

Facts on languages worldwide

Widow is the only female form in the English language that is shorter than its corresponding male term (widower).

Victor Hugo's Les Miserable contains one of the longest sentences in the French language 823 words without a period.

There is only ONE word in the English language with THREE CONSECUTIVE SETS OF DOUBLE LETTERS.... Bookkeeper

There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs five times: "indivisibility."

There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."

There are thirteen languages spoken by more than 100 million people. They are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Malay-Indonesian, French, Japanese, German, and Urdu.

There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers. The most widely spoken language in the world is Mandarin Chinese. There are 885,000,000 people in China that speak that language.

There are only two sequences of four consecutive letters that can be found in the English language: "rstu" and "mnop." Examples of each are understudy and gynophobia.

There are only 4 words in the English language which end in "duos": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

There are at least two words in the English language that use all of the vowels, in the correct order, and end in the letter Y: abstemiously & facetiously.

There are 41,806 different spoken languages in the world today.

The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.

The word "honcho" comes from a Japanese word meaning "squad leader" and first came into usage in the English language during the American occupation of Japan following World War II.

he shortest word in the English language with all its letters in alphabetical order is the word "almost."

The Philippines has more than 1,000 regional dialects and two official languages.

The only MLB team to have both its city's name and its team name in a foreign language is the San Diego Padres.

The longest word in the Finnish language, that isn't a compound word, is 'epaejaerjestelmaellistyttaemaettoemyydellaensaekaeaen'. In English it means 'even with their lack of ability to disorganize'.

The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters ispneumonoultra-microscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.

The longest word in the English language is 1909 letters long and it refers to a distinct part of DNA.

The longest one syllable word in he English language is "screeched".

The letter most in use in the English language is "E" and the letter "Q" is least used.

The computer programming language ADA was named in honor of Augusta Ada King. The U.S. Defense Department named the language after the Countess of Lovelace and daughter of Lord Byron because she helped finance and program what is thought to be the first computer, the “analytical engine” designed by Charles Babbage.

The Chinese language does not require punctuation.

The "huddle" in football was formed due a deaf football player who used sign language to communicate and his team didn't want the opposition to see the signals he used and in turn huddled around him.

South Africa used to have two official languages, now it has eleven.

Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say 'many things' and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the bible -in many places -refers to '40 days,' they meant many days.

Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means "the capital" in the Korean language.