Biz Kid

Creating Our Future: A Case Study

2012-01-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

I've been reading That Used to Be Us and it's incredibly thought provoking. I'm not finished with it, but I came across something on page 85 that reminded me of one of my acquaintances, Alvin Chen. He works for Siemens and is exactly what Thomas Friedman says our future looks like.

1) Alvin is American-Taiwanese.
He's fluent in Mandarin and has studied at Tsinghua University in Beijing, but he grew up in Colorado. His dad was one of the engineers that came to the US back in the 70s and recently retired from IBM. Part of our future is made of talented immigrants and their kids.

2) Alvin is an engineer.
Vivek Wadhwa, Thomas Friedman, and others like Senator Lugar are interested in STEM students. Why? These people create jobs. I have more than my fair share of engineers in my family, but Alvin stands out because he's part of my generation, not a Boomer or a Gen Xer. Alvin is part of an increasingly rare breed, because few of us (including myself) are too intimidated by the rigorous coursework in engineering.

3) Alvin is an energy engineer.
That would mean nothing to me, a non-science person, if I couldn't talk to him about what he actually does. When he was in college, he put together a house that would use only wind, solar, and geothermal energy. Now, Alvin is a sustainability professional, which means that he works towards cutting waste and monitoring energy usage in large places. When Alvin was in Kentucky, he did work with the University of Kentucky in Lexington to cut energy waste. He is well positioned in a growing part of the economy.

4) Alvin is going back to school.
Now, a bachelor's degree is par for the course. A master's degree is the new bachelor's. Alvin is going to choose between a normal MBA and an MS in global sustainability. That's what it takes to be competitive today, when we have college-educated kids in my generation totally unable to find jobs as white-collar jobs disappear or are farmed out overseas.

Higher education in a growth segment of the economy will ensure that Alvin will have some security in the future.

5) Alvin is a creative creator.
Friedman says there there are two kinds of workers: creators and servers. Alvin is a creator. He gained company-wide recognition when he put together some programs in MATLAB to do his job, energy analysis. Though it wasn't his job, he did it on his own. He was actually told not to do it by his boss, because his boss was concerned that it would detract from Alvin's actual job, which was the analysis itself. His programs are now saving the company literally uncountable sums of money, because he's made analyzing energy usage very efficient.

Wabi-Sabi

2011-11-04T03:58:00.000-07:00

I've always loved things with one glaring imperfection. The best description of this love until today was found in a book about Jahanara, the daughter of Mumtaz Mahal for whom the Taj Mahal was built. One of her servants did not want expensive, perfect things. He only wanted things with a beautiful, glaring imperfection.

Today, I learned the word for the appreciation of things with faults. It's Japanese: wabi-sabi.

Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, asperity (roughness or irregularity), simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes.

Wabi-sabi encompasses how I feel very well. I also was never taught this word, even when I was exposed to Japanese culture all those summers I stayed in LA. I think appreciation of imperfection is something learned, not taught.

You Can't Make the Horse Drink

2011-10-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

Sound financial advice was given free of charge to investors, but almost none of them followed the advice.

I don't find this advice astounding at all. I've just read Sway, which explains that people chase losses when it comes to stocks. People tell themselves that it will get better; they never think that the stock could tank. When it does, they are devastated. If people simply sold on the initial slide down, they would have recouped most of their money. People are very loss-averse, so much so that they'll continue to take a loss when they should simply sell.

Utpal Bhattacharya, one of the authors of the study and my finance professor, says that Dodds-Frank simply adds a burden to financial institutions. If we truly want to protect consumers, we have to focus on the demand side, not the supply side of investments.

Hypocritical Buddhism: Trying to Impress

2011-08-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

I made a trip to France recently for my parents' anniversary. I've gone to France approximately every 2 years since I was 4 until now.

My aunt, my mother's oldest sibling, was quick to take my sister and me to the soldes. They start on June 24, which happens to be la Saint-Jean-Baptiste. We got to Paris on Bastille Day and we took advantage of our time there to go shopping for clothes that were available at half price 2 years before their emergence in the USA.

I was pressed and urged and generally hassled into buying a lot of clothes, before and during the trip. My aunt was a major factor in all of this, because she's the last word in style in our family and attends many of the fashion shows in Paris. She even sets up galas and fashion shows herself, so she knows quite a few designers and models.

I found something astounding in her house. She had/was reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. This man, who lives in France, is cited frequently by minimalists.

My aunt lectured my entire family about how the world was on a consumerist treadmill and how evil capitalism was. I was flabbergasted by her stance, considering that she had very forcefully pressed me into buying so many things. She spent the week before I came on a silent Buddhist retreat, yet she took the opportunity to take me shopping virtually the moment she could.

She also reprimanded my sister, who is a law student, for an hour for not being accomplished enough, for neither having dozens of published scientific research papers nor a baby. When I tried to protest, "But, she DOES have published scientific papers! She worked on Prader-Willi in mice and-", my aunt quickly cut me off, telling me, "I am not talking about Facebook." She emphasized that her husband was the second-in-command at the conservatoire where he worked while my other uncle was famous for making something known as HDV which is used to process oil. He used to be a director of Total, a supermajor. Our cousin Emilie, a biologist like my sister, has a bunch of articles on her work on the ear, which could someday cure deafness. Her brother writes patents for the European Commission in Belgium. In Paris, two of my other cousins have powerful positions at a bank.

The gist of her speech was that my sister and I are the dark horses of the family, because we have accomplished very little. It does not seem to matter to my aunt that we are about 20 years younger than our other cousins. We should, of course, have done just as much by now.

All the jockeying for position and concern about our family's position has never been a major issue for us. People have always been impressed by my sister and me for being so diligent and focused at a young age ("You are taking 7 classes and have two jobs? Wow!" "You have a degree in Genetic Biology, you worked in private equity in Singapore for a year, and you worked for the House of Representatives by age 23? Wow!") that we don't think that we have to work to accomplish right now as much as what our cousins in their forties have.

Minimalism sort of cuts the need to impress people out of my life. I could care less if other people are impressed by me. I am far more satisfied by doing good work and helping people. I don't live to impress people or to shop.

Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss

ING Direct Alternative Account

2011-07-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have been scrambling for alternatives to ING Direct, especially as many of us have large chunks of savings parked with ING.

There is an account from Consumers Credit Union paying 4.09% APY for anybody with a balance under $10,000 who is willing to make 12 debit transactions per month in addition to choosing one of three options: one bill pay, one automatic debit, or one direct deposit every month. It's a credit union that you can apply to online and it's not bound by geography or employment. Considering the meager amount of interest that I'm collecting from ING and the potential earnings that I could get from 4.09% APY, I am considering switching to this account.

Cutting Down

2011-06-21T14:58:00.000-07:00

I've cut down a lot of the time that I spend reading blogs and news sources. Its appeal has palled. However, for a few days when I didn't have Internet access, I read Find Your First Profitable Idea (which is available for free or $97) by Ramit Sethi a handful of times. It inspired me to create my own business. I read it after I read 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, but 4HWW has a plan that is too difficult. Not only is it long-term, some of it depends on experience that I don't have. I want to make more money without actually going the whole hog and manufacturing stuff or coding sites.

In FYFPI, you take a good look at your strengths. The only things that are slightly remarkable about me: the amount of traveling that I do and the languages that I can read and write. The rest you can find in most Kelley students. I'm sure that I would love to be a peer advisor for Overseas Study, which plays to my strengths. I was invited to apply, but I don't have time to do it on top of 7 classes and 2 jobs. Those commitments are things that I really want to do and enjoy doing or absolutely must do.

One of the downsides of being a minimalist is that I don't actually have a lot of factors in my life. All that's here is what I enjoy. I'm on vacation and all I spend my time doing is reading, checking social media sites and my email, eating great food, swimming, and sleeping. This is idyllic and fairly close to my ideal life. I'll be busy once I head back to my life in the fall, but this is all I really want to do.

I used to read 87 personal finance blogs. I've cut down drastically and I only read a few. Here's one and the author has been sporadically posting as she's been traveling and gotten really busy at work.

I used to read 41 minimalism blogs, but Everett Bogue left a very sour taste in my mouth and now I only read 4. Two of them are Mac-centric. The others are written by Colin Wright and Leo Babauta.

I've cut down on a lot of things and I've never had a TV. Yet, I feel like I can't take advantage of a great opportunity because I actually can't cut down any more to make time for another job and still have a balanced life. I've been told that I am insane for thinking that I can do 7 classes and two jobs. 5 of those classes are part of Honors I-Core, the most challenging semester that I will ever go through in college. Most people don't take any classes on top of it and I'm taking two and doing two jobs. I guess that a third job would be overkill.Thoughts?

Jews and Asians

2011-06-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

I've grown up with a lot of Jewish friends, which is a direct result of spending a couple of my childhood summers at the local Jewish Community Center.

When it comes to saving money, they are very similar. Malcolm Gladwell does a breakdown of Jews in his book Outliers. He says that the first generation is entrepreneurial, the second generation helps with the family business, and the third generation is filled with doctors and lawyers, with the odd professor thrown in. Jews tend to encourage their children to go into the same occupations as Asians do: lawyers, doctors, and accountants.

Jews tend to be able to save money and be frugal, just like some Asians. There are Asians who have been taught to save 30%-50% of their income their entire lives.

I think that it's funny that the happiest person in America is a Jewish Asian-American.

Just Asian

2011-05-18T07:47:00.000-07:00

I went to public school until 8th grade. During an ice breaker activity when I was asked to choose 3 adjectives to describe myself in 9th grade, I could only come up with a single adjective: Asian.

This isn't rare. Asians are part of a faceless mob.

When I was in high school, the most important part of which was finding my adjectives, we had the normal senior buzz: Where are you going? What are you majoring in?

One of my classmates, the CFO of Fortune 100 company's son, was going to Wharton. In our predominantly male economics class with a grand total of 2 girls, he boasted about how much money he was going to make. He also claimed that he was going to marry and keep his woman in her place because women don't know how to manage money.

I piped up and said, "I'm majoring in accounting."

He quickly replied, "Well, you're not a woman. You're Asian."

He had gone to the same public school system that I had. He had the same expectations that I had when I entered my private high school: everything would be the same.

My high school, though, stripped away the Asian part of my identity. In my grade, there was one Korean girl and 4 half-Asian kids. Because I didn't talk to any of them, I couldn't exclusively spend my time with Asians.

It took me most of freshman year to adjust to shedding my "Asian" identity. I became far more relaxed about grades as it quickly became clear to me that my parents could care less if I had a 4.0 or not. I stopped asking about other peoples' scores on tests or stressing before every quiz that we had. In fact, I stopped bringing my Spanish textbook home at all when I was 14.

I was not the most popular kid in school by any measure, but I did make a solid group of friends. My freshman year at university, I had to make new friends. But, during my second year, I reaped the benefits of being friends with a large amount of juniors in high school when I was a senior.

I had to fight everything that the NY Magazine article talks about, but it makes you stronger and more capable of dealing with it in the future. And my senior year of high school, the captain of the basketball and baseball team made me a huge list of wonderful adjectives that described me. None of them were "Asian."

Multiple Majors

2011-05-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

In 2003, Penelope Trunk wrote a post asking college kids to stop triple majoring.

The comments section of the post is probably more notable than the post itself. Many people wrote down, essentially, "I am/was a 3+ major. You are stupid."

It might be surprising, but I have 3 majors and I may pick up a minor in Psychology or a major in Operations Management or Legal Studies. This is confusing, I'm sure, as I am a huge proponent of minimalism.

It's not a conflict in values. Minimalism is about taking the time to focus on what is important to you. I am studying these topics because they are all important to me. Additionally, my very first fall semester of college, I walked onto campus as a junior because I had taken 10 AP tests. Naturally, when you have two years already done, you have a lot of extra time.

Part of having so many majors is choosing to pursue a personal interest and realizing that that work will count towards a major. For example, I like Spanish. I've spoken Spanish since the summer of 2008, when I was in an immersion program in Valencia, Spain. Two of my teachers from my program that summer, IU Honors, teach at Indiana University. They both encouraged me to take Spanish.

When I decided to study abroad, I couldn't do it. The business school does not allow its students to study abroad for a semester before I-Core. So, I was going to be stuck at IU, taking the classes to finish out my Legal Studies and International Business majors. I would have finished my majors before taking I-Core. That meant that I would graduate after 2.5 years in college. I was not a fan of that plan. Who would hire a 20-year-old double major with no professional experience?

Instead, I scheduled an appointment with the fabulous Spanish adviser, Sioux Hill, and talked to her about pursuing a Spanish degree. I had read many articles which talked about how a liberal arts degree helped in the business world. I had already signed up for Business Spanish for the fall semester, and she told me that I would only have to take 8 more classes to get a Spanish degree.

When school started again, I got approved to get a Spanish degree by Jim Brown. It was a very pleasant, short visit. He asked me if I had transferred in when he saw how many credits (101) I had. (The College of Arts and Sciences requires 122 credits to graduate.) Getting his formal approval for my major in the COAS took about 5 seconds, as Sioux had sent me in with her approval. We spent the rest of that meeting talking about what Kelley students tended to double in (language or Economics) and the large number of Jacobs students who doubled in physics or math.

With my International Business, Legal Studies, and Spanish degree, I was still going to finish in 7 semesters. I dropped my Legal Studies major and picked up an Accounting major. I also realized that Operations Management fits in very well when you are an Accounting major, as there is some overlap. The Accounting major requires a very strict course of study, because one major requirement is the prerequisite for the next, which is the prerequisite for the next. So, I have stretched myself out to 8 semesters, but the Accounting major only requires one course my senior spring.

I can fill in the rest of my senior spring with two major options: Operations Management or Legal Studies. Or, I can fill it in with a Psychology minor. That's still up in the air.

But getting back to Penelope, one of the funniest parts of her post was:

"A triple major is for the timid. A broad education teaches you to learn diverse topics quickly. Practice learning something totally new by taking courses in each of the departments in your college rather than cowering in the safety of topics you’re majoring in. Business requires a wide breadth of knowledge — writing, finance, technology, psychology, sociology."

Because of my third major, I am exploring writing and sociology. (In fact, I'm enrolled in an ecology class right now, which is a departure from my business major.) I chose to study psychology entirely on my own and my business major is educating me about finance and technology. My triple major is achieving what I should achieve in college. Being 19 and living in a Spanish-speaking third world country for 5 months while teaching impoverished, beaten kids in the poor part of town is not for the timid.

Waking Up in the Future

2011-05-02T04:19:00.001-07:00

I went to bed last night and the world was much as it had been.

But I woke up in the future.

Colin Wright, from Exile Lifestyle, wrote a post more than a year ago about this same phenomenon. I've missed a couple hours when everything changed.

I woke up in a world that is free from Osama bin Laden. I know this is not the end of taking my shoes off everytime I go through airport security, but I do know that this is the end of his particular reign of terror. We have been frightened of him, the symbol of extremist terrorism, since 2001. And today, almost a decade later, he is dead.

I am thinking of all of my little relatives who have grown up in a world where Osama was a major threat. He was a reason not to go to the airport but to drive. He was a reason why you could never be too careful in public places. They've never known a world as free as it was in 2000.

Now that he is gone, what are the possibilities?

Moving to Bloomington from LA

2011-04-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

Dan Kadlec observes in his article on moving to a low-cost region for retirement that the lifestyle that a working person in LA has on $75,000 is only $47,505 in Bloomington, Ind.

This is absolutely true. Bloomington has much lower costs of living than LA. It's a fun, vibrant town. Our music school, Jacobs, is ranked higher than Julliard, which means that there are free music concerts that sound like professional concerts. The Musical Arts Center hosts high quality ballet and opera performances which I attend frequently. People drive down to look at the leaves in Bloomington because the fall is unbelievably beautiful; IUB has one of the top five most beautiful campi in the nation. Because it's a college town, it has usable bus lines and a walkable downtown district.

However, Bloomington is a nightmare during January and February. Those are the 2 months where there is notable snowfall. No retiree wants to move from sunny LA to two months of not seeing the sun for the snow.

If someone is absolutely set on moving to Bloomington, my advice would be to move to Bloomington for 10 months of the year and to travel for the two months when the city is not at its best.

Waorani in Ecuador

2011-01-25T14:33:00.000-08:00

My desire to engage in some kind of international business has resulted in spending a semester in Ecuador. I'm enrolled in classes that don't count towards my business degree, but it's still amazing. I am in a class titled "Environmental Diversity of Ecuador," which has absolutely nothing to do with my majors.

I'm still really excited to be here and to learn everything offered by IES here. There is a good reason why a solid 25% of the people here are studying the environment: Ecuador is one of the megadiverse countries and it's only the size of Colorado.

After a slight snafu during the first week with my Ecuador and Globalization teacher, my schedule solidified. Now, I have Andean Literature, Ecuador and Globalization, Service Learning, Cultural Diversity of Ecuador, and the aforementioned Environmental Diversity of Ecuador.

I've never taken an anthropology class before, but I'm really enjoying it. My teacher showed us a video of the Waorani, who basically had a perfect society that only survived until today because they kill all the outsiders. In fact, they kill each other; 70% of the males that Yost wrote down in his genealogy of the Waorani were killed by other, neighboring Waorani in raids.

They recognize individual accomplishment, but all the products are shared. The men have their place, chopping down trees and hunting, while the women cultivate gardens and cook. Both roles are viewed as equal.

One of the strongest statements that a parent makes is giving food to his or her children. The children receive no formal education; they are encouraged to observe and participate in life. As they grow older, they learn how to make the blowguns by hand. Their sense of the forest is very acute. They can identify animals 40 feet away by the scent of the urine dripping on the leaves. As graphic as that is, it's incredible that they can hunt by scent.

They don't want to come out of the forest and take part in what the outside world has to offer them. I cannot blame them; while I thoroughly enjoy the comforts of civilization, they have spared themselves all the problems that come with being "civilized."

They are happy as they are. I have come to realize that being happy and wanting more are mutually exclusive.

Distractions

2010-11-02T19:04:00.000-07:00

When I downloaded Leo Babauta's book, Focus, I was reminded of a phenomenon that had recently begun to bother me again.

When I was on the bus today, everybody was on a phone playing Tetris, texting, or listening to music. There was no social engagement.

When I go to the gym, everybody has iPod buds in and nobody talks.

When I walk between classes, nobody looks up from the sidewalk.

I think this is a very sad state of affairs. I know that confidence is attractive, and actually noticing the world around you looks very much like confidence. Have the courage to be where and who you are instead of wishing you were not there.

Escaping

2010-10-09T22:36:00.000-07:00

I was reading ERE and stumbled upon a guest post by someone who had taken Jacob's advice and gotten out of the consumerist society.

Saving everything sounds tiresome, and that's why most people don't do it. Telling people that they cannot spend 80% of their income is not going to win any quick support, unlike Penelope Trunk's blog, Free Beer.

Hearing the story of someone who has escaped from a white-collar job inspires me. Working in an office somewhere just like a normal person is what my parents expect from me. To be honest, I've always expected more of myself than to be an insignificant cog in the American industrial machine.

Frugality Is Like A Misunderstood Adolescent

2010-08-24T12:45:00.001-07:00

Ramit is anti-frugality. He's all about big wins, which are psychologically helpful, and not about counting pennies.

Trent of The Simple Dollar is his polar opposite. He's all about focusing on the minutiae of each day so that you save more money every day on things that don't matter to you.

For both of them, the message is very simple: I can help you have more cash. But their approaches are radically different.

Ramit invited Trent to a showdown, which Trent politely refused. In the past couple days, Ramit went and posted one of Trent's posts on how frugality fails.

I agree with Trent that the big problem with the connotation of "frugality" is that it's about denial. It's not.

It's about giving yourself what you need. That's why personal finance and minimalism go hand-in-hand. Minimalism is about having what you need when you need it. Most people never have the courage to cut themselves down to the bare bones and take a clear look at their true needs. They would rather sit in their leather couches, watching their plasma-screen TVs, and complain at lunch that they never have enough money. They make enough money, but the outflow exceeds the inflow. I wonder if they ever truly cared to change that.

Hawaiian Handyman Shortage

2010-07-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

In Hawaii, it's basically impossible to find a plumber or an electrician who can service you quickly. Everybody is booked through 2011. That means that if you are a plumber or electrician, you have a plum job: you can pick and choose your customers and you can do everything in your own sweet time, at your own price, because everybody needs your services desperately.

Looking at this labor market, I realized that if you had the skills of a plumber or electrician, or both, then you could capitalize on the market. So I immediately looked up the requirements to set up shop as a plumber or electrician in Hawaii.

It turns out that the barriers to entry are the reason for the massive shortage of skilled laborers who do things like make sure your house has running water or working lightbulbs. In the beautiful state of Hawaii, the standards are exacting and the bar is too high. You must take a business and law code test followed by a trade test. You are scored by computer.

So, the workers in Hawaii are well-protected, though the customers are dissatisfied with the market and wish that they could have services done faster.

Is this what the citizens of Hawaii truly want? How much simpler would their lives be if they could simply call an electrician when their power went off and he would come the same day? In Indiana, this would work. But Hawaii won't allow this to happen.

I'm moderately surprised that the citizens haven't risen in an uproar. How is this fair to them? These services, necessary for their basic standard of living, are nearly impossible to obtain. In a true democracy, the Hawaiians would instantly demand that the government license electricians and plumbers who have 5 or more years of licensed experience on the mainland and that the government expedite the business process so that these laborers could enter the market and lower the total time and cost.

This hasn't happened yet, but I imagine that the outrage caused by the annoyance of time and money will soon spur the Hawaiian citizens into action.

Education, Carnegie, and Godin

2010-07-29T19:44:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin posits that Carnegie, as a capitalist, is largely and deliberately responsible for the factory of school. This is honestly completely untrue. Carnegie, when he was 8, asked to go to school and he only attended for a few years until he was 13, when he first worked in America. He adored his teacher, Mr. Martin, and wished that he could have had more time in school. When he got access to his first library, he fell in love with books.

How could he read when he had to work 80-90 hour weeks as a messenger boy, telegraph operator, railroad man, and business owner? He read because he made time for it. He said that he would give up his millions in exchange for retaining his enjoyment of books and the written word.

Carnegie has definitely influenced education, but I would not argue that he intended to mold factory workers in the public school system. Rather, his good intentions eventually morphed into what we see today. Seeing this evolution makes me wonder what consequences my actions will have in another century.

Summer and the Length of the School Year

2010-07-24T13:12:00.000-07:00

After reading an article in TIME, I realize that a good step forward for Americans lies in changing the school year. Lengthening the school year is not the answer. Rather, take summer as the time to revolutionize learning - to make it more informal and more fun. During the summer, you aren't subjected to cold measures like grades. Instead, utilize project-based learning and reading to bring your kids to and beyond grade-level.

Every summer, my room would be filled with books. The library was far away, and during the summer I regularly checked out 30+ books in one go. I read and read and read. I can blame my attainment of college-level reading skills at age 11/12 to the books I read and the older sister who made me read all of her school books.

Being in Gifted and Talented, I was able to do an independent research project twice during elementary school. The first time, I learned about horses and the second time I learned about Elizabeth I. When I did those projects, they cultivated my writing skills and my research skills, which have help me today.

I wish that all kids were able to do the same; I wish that it hadn't been confined to the "gifted" students and that all the kids could spend time learning what they wanted to learn. I'm not a fan of unschooling, but I am a fan of child-directed learning. Why shove geometry down a kid's throat when he'd much rather learn trigonometry? Let the children decide where they want to go.

Optimizing Me: Minimizing and Maximizing without Goals

2010-07-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

Being a minimalist is about cutting everything down to what really matters. Leo Babauta is firmly against lessism and, as a fairly prominent figure in the online minimalist community, he's taken seriously. One of his recent posts on mnmlist, he talked about giving things up that he never thought he would. That doesn't mean that you cut yourself down to 10 things and live a miserable life. It means that you cut your life down to what matters to you and don't leave any excess.

But, if your life changes, then you add things. I know that I've read a quote about the value of eliminating one thing a day and adding one thing per day. My life is not operated in a clear in-out fashion, as I'm not near capacity with my storage space, but I have an enormous bag of clothes to donate that haven't made it out of the house yet. Did I buy clothes to fill the empty space in my closet? No, I haven't and I won't.

As a business student, I learn about maximization. This last week, I took a test over optimization. In one part, I had to maximize profit. In another, I had to minimize costs with a stated demand. Beyond teaching computer skills, the class showcases what is valued in today's business environment.

It translates into minimalism. In minimalism, you're trying to minimize costs. However, unlike a spreadsheet model, you're looking beyond filthy lucre. You're minimizing costs of time, of resources, and of externally unfavorable effects.

You're also trying to maximize. However, it's not about the money. It's about maximizing the utility of your resources, including time, space, power, etc.

Penelope Trunk says that maximizers are never happy. I disagree. Maximizers are happy if they can stop for a moment, appreciate how content they are, and still be curious about optimizing.

Leo is a curious maximizer. He seems fairly content with his life, but he never stops leaving himself open to change.

I've been making my way through Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now and I understand now why so many people recommend it. Leo's message is similar to Tolle's [and Stephen Fry's]: don't set goals.

When you set goals, you project yourself into the future and you stop living in the moment. You say, "Oh, I'll be happy when I..." And then you get there and you look around and you think, "Now what?"

CONCLUSION

Being a happy minimalist means that you take things as they come and you evaluate them in terms of your current state. You minimize and maximize things now. You don't know what the future will bring and thus cannot maximize future things.

What you can optimize is you, right now.

Mutually Exclusive: The Pisces in All of Us

2010-07-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

I watched a video of an interview with Stephen Fry today. With my interest caught, I looked him up on Wikipedia and found his blog. It's fun and thought-provoking, as many of the blogs to which I subscribe are.

In a striking article entitled "A Tale of Two Cities," he talked about the seemingly strict dichotomy between those who enjoy the East Coast and those who enjoy the West Coast. Why is enjoyment of one exclusive of enjoyment of the other? He talked about spending time in LA and people telling him, "Oh, you strike me more as an East Coast person."

It reminded me of looking up the description of a Pisces. According to one site, Pisces fight internally. Symbolized as two fish going in opposite directions, there's a dual nature and a tension between the two parts of a Pisces, an internal struggle that every Pisces must handle.

In the interview, Stephen Fry says that creativity is a result of that tension, that struggle. On one hand, you want to be a complacent, conforming sheep; on the other, you want to be an alien, a total individual who does things sui generis.

The best things are borne of the artist who is aware of what other people think and can take the individualism and make something new.

It's not necessary for artists to be starving or for corporate drones to not have a creative spark in them. Having money and creating art are not mutually exclusive, though the consensus seems to be just that.

At JOCRF, ideaphoria is one of the most important aptitudes as an indicator of what you should be. Those with ideaphoria must release it or explode from not creating. But ideaphoria gets in the way in jobs which are high in mere graphoria, which includes figure-checking. You waste time in those jobs innovating, because the systems are set and immutable.

In the many supplemental handouts JOCRF sent home with me, one sheet discussed having too many aptitudes. There is no way to get a job that uses all of the aptitudes, and each one is like a tool in your hand that you cannot put down. So, there is going to be tension when aptitudes are not used. They suggest having a hobby or an external outlet for aptitudes that you do not use in your job.

To me, this approach is the best one. You're not excluding any part of yourself, but you can be content and satisfied with your job.

Emotional Intelligence: Understanding Yourself

2010-06-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in my communications class, I learned about the four quadrants of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. I think Goleman is fascinating.

It came into play because my teacher was talking to us about working in teams. Emotional intelligence plays a huge role in how teams work together.

He emphasized self-awareness, because by understanding ourselves, we can communicate where we stand.

They found that people with very good self-awareness did very well in corporations; they got promotions, sealed deals, boosted profits, etc. They understood their strengths and weaknesses and were able to find people to help them compensate.

And people who had very bad self-awareness got to a certain point in their career where their other skills could take them, but then stagnated and plateaued at that level. By telling themselves that they knew everything, they wasted time and resources. And the results they generated were not phenomenal.

The people who didn't think they could do anything? They went two ways. The first way was to shut down totally, telling themselves that they could never succeed. The second way was to commit to self-improvement, to be there for every single developmental opportunity. Guess which of these 2 has as much success as the people with very good self-awareness?

Putting yourself in a position to expand and develop is the way to succeed.

Global Potable Water

2010-06-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

The degree that I'm currently pursuing is not related to my passions, but it is related to my aptitude for numbers.

In the future, I want to make a social enterprise. (Actually, I want to make several businesses, but the social enterprise that provides clean water worldwide takes the top spot on my list.) Clean water is something that everyone needs, but I'm still not clear on how I will be providing potable water globally. Water technology is not my passion, but helping others is one of my values.

When I create or join an enterprise that can fulfill my objective, I hope that a combination of my life experiences can help others.

MAKING CHOICES

When we are faced with too many choices, we resort to the status quo. For me, that's providing clean water to as many people as I can.

The other two ideas that round out my top three are an Asperger's [utopian] community [starting with an Aspie business ] and an safe off-med mental health facility for creatives, such as bipolars who can only paint when they aren't medicated. These ideas are a result of my middle school and high school experience.

I recognize that water is the one that will have the most widespread impact, and that's one reason why it has beat out the other two. All three are complex and I feel like water is the one that has the most popular appeal. Water is my biggest goal, but it's not my only one.

Revolutionizing B2B Marketing

2010-06-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

On both sides of the B2B relationship, businesspeople are making micro decisions. The easiest example is Toyota's manufacturing. Mr. Toyoda said that he learned more from Wal-mart than Ford in setting up his business. He has focused on getting the cheapest supplies possible and boosting profit. Unfortunately, this has led to the recent pedal crisis. This emphasizes that we should definitely care about both sides of the exchange.

Viewing Success

2010-06-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

At my age, there are a lot of voices telling me how to be successful. At business school, these voices are telling me that I have to change myself dramatically to be successful; when I am successful, I will have a good job and a lot of influence. In my family, these voices are telling me to get a good, marketable degree so that I can get a stable job and have a stable life making a lot of cash.

Is that what success is?

I have an e-Book dedicated to defining the nouveau definition of success. Like a children's book, it was fun to read and full of pictures. It defined what my generation, or the tail end of the generation before me, thinks success is.

And I have to agree.

Jonathan Fields, someone who has turned his back on a lucrative career, explains that working for just money will not make you happy. We always think that it will make us happy, but predicting how we feel in different circumstances is significantly flawed. We are not the same person 25 years into the future; how can we predict what that person wants? We work hard to achieve goals but are never satisfied with the results.

We have to take a hard look at the generations that have come before now - the ones who are focused on work. We look at Gen X and the baby boomers and we see whom they call successful.

"We look at a man who makes millions, but along the way has estranged his wife, children and family, yet we call him a successful man. We look at a woman who has chosen a driver, a seasonally-glorious closet and an arrestingly-powerful job over friends, family and fulfillment…and we call her a successful woman. We look at an investment banker with a fabulous summer estate in his late fifties, stress-riddled, obese, unfit and a doctor’s visit away from a diabetic diagnosis and we call him a success."

--J. Fields

Paulo Coelho, one of my favorite authors, wrote a succinct Tweet: "Remember: you can sell your time, but you cannot buy it back" 7:18 PM Jun 17th @paulocoelho

My peers and I have grown up around very unhappy adults, people who have spread their unhappiness. We analyze their lives and we think that we don't want to be like that. That's the reason why we search for jobs that will fulfill us in some way without sacrificing what older people have told us we'll regret sacrificing: friends, family, and free time.

Life 101: The Course That No College Teaches

2010-06-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

Is it true that today's college graduates are woefully unprepared for life?

Cat Kovach thinks so.

Then again, is it the education system's responsibility to teach us life skills?

I may have been educated at school in some of the things that Cat thinks should be taught in school like grocery shopping and how to fill out a check [in French as well]. I taught myself how to do taxes [ 1040s are really easy and I enjoy reading IRS publications] and my parents taught me the rest of what Cat seems to expect college to teach.

Yet I do not think that I am better prepared to face life. I'm sure that Cat knows things that I don't know.

Life's all about gaining experience and learning empirically how to do things.

Why Traveling is Boring (or the Reprise of Can Money Buy Happiness?)

2010-06-16T23:26:00.000-07:00

Can Money Buy Happiness? @ Money Funk

I was drawn today to explore the theme of money and happiness again. Money is for creating happy experiences.

I'm not an average lifestyle designer, wanting to travel and be a location-independent entrepreneur. My idea of happiness is simple contentment, mostly alone with an Internet connection.

Then again, I'm spoiled when it comes to traveling. I went to Europe 8 times between the ages of 4 and 17. I came back from Beijing recently. People have always wanted to travel as much as I do, but every time I go somewhere, I've been urged by my family. Maybe it takes deprivation to create hunger.

Jacob at ERE has talked about rejecting the mantra TRAVEL IS AWESOME!!!

We'd gain more from talking to someone who wasn't in our socioeconomic class than traveling somewhere else to interact with people who were just like us. Volunteering at a hospital made me interact with a wider range of people than I'd ever encountered before. It was a little scary, but I opened my monkeysphere.

Traveling to Beijing also reinforced this lesson. Going abroad to study at a top university and interact with millionaires' kids is the same as it's always been. People are always the same, even in China.

Going to Toulouse was the same. Yes, I got to see fantastically cool historical stuff and buy a LOT of violet stuff, but in the end I mostly interacted with students at the school that was ranked third in the entirety of France. I stayed with a famous urologist and his awesome wife who worked with the CDC because she's an epidemiologist. Some of the kids I went to school with had parents who were executives at Airbus. Did I really gain that much perspective?

In the end, I've realized that international business is going to basically be the same as domestic business. Even though there are language barriers, the people behind them will always be the same. Truly, everyone is the same behind the superficial barriers.

Paying For Your Kid's Car

2010-06-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school, almost everybody had a car. The parents at my school would give their kids a car as soon as the license was procured. Parents went about doing this in different ways. Most kids inherited their moms' cars (Lexus SUVs). Some kids got new Beemers, Audis, or Mercedes. As soon as they crashed their car at 3 AM doing 100 mph on the highway, their parents would replace the car. It was disposable to them.

There was a subset of kids that didn't act this way. These were the kids who inherited their wheels from an older sibling and/or had to pay for the car (gas, maintenance, etc.) themselves. They were far more careful about their cars and how they treated them. This placed a lot of stress on the kids because if they could not pay, then they would drive old cars sans bumpers and insurance, putting themselves at risk.

A good compromise was enacted by some wise, self-made millionaires. They made their kids work and went fifty-fifty on car expenses. The kid had to pay half of the insurance, half of the maintenance, half of the car payments, etc. They were given a gas allowance; if they used more gas than was budgeted, they had to pay for gas themselves.

While going through my potential savings goals, I realized that savings for my kid's car isn't one of them. It's not a long-term goal. If it comes to it, I will go fifty-fifty with a gas allowance. Teaching kids that they have to pay for what they use isn't a bad lesson at all.

Being Rich and/or Being Happy

2010-06-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

I was just checking out a relatively new blogger, the Financial Student, who seems to be about a year younger than me. He included a link to an article from the Financial Samurai, talking about the relationship between money and happiness.

A great comment from Jacob Lund Fisker:

"Seriously though, sure money can buy some happiness, the kind of happiness that has money as a limiting factor, but money can’t buy all happiness, say, the kind of happiness that has time, good friends, skills, achievements, good looks, etc. as a limiting factor.

In short … money has decreasing marginal utility like everything else."

I completely agree with Jacob from ERE. The marginal utility of salary increases decreases. Yes, with $10,000 more a year you can buy more things. That really doesn't make you much happier when you're already making $250,000. That's not a "big win" a la Ramit Sethi anymore. When you make $30,000 and get that pay increase, it's a HUGE deal.

Happiness does depend on how you define happiness and/or your ideal life. There's a rumored Chinese curse that goes, "May your fondest wish come true." In the classic story, The Monkey's Paw, the father wishes for a huge sum of money which he receives after his child dies. Is it worth it to you? (It was worth it for one Mexican dad. Sad story.)

Money can't make your world stress-free. Let's say that you get $400 million after taxes in a huge lottery win. You'll stop worrying about your living expenses, but start worrying about your brother hiring a hitman to kill you so that he can inherit your money.

There is a threshold where you become reasonably comfortable. Apparently, in America, that threshold is around $60,000 a year. But it changes depending on where you live. The happiness/overall contentment list bounces around between countries that have high GDP/capita numbers and those that have low numbers.

That list supports an article written by Dr. Ken Dychtwald that says that money and happiness do not go hand in hand.

His perspective:

"Some years ago I was helping Jimmy Carter gather his thoughts for his book Virtues of Aging, and at one point I said to him, "President Carter, I have a crazy question for you. I'm about the age now that you were when you were president. Have you come to any new perspectives about what matters in life, now that you're older?" His answer was to the point: "Earlier in my life I thought the things that mattered were the things that you could see, like your car, your house, your wealth, your property, your office. But as I've grown older I've become convinced that the things that matter most are the things that you can't see -- the love you share with others, your inner purpose, your comfort with who you are."

So here's the thing. At the end of the day, it may be wisest to judge each of our own life successes not from the outside looking in but from the inside out. It's not about the material things I can show the world, but about how I feel about the work I do; it's about the relationships I have and the love I share.

It may well be, as novelist Edith Wharton said, that "if only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.""

There are much more important things than money, but only after you have enough to cover your basic needs.

Clue Wagon

2010-06-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

I read Ask A Manager (AAM) frequently. I sometimes read Evil HR Lady's. Through AAM, I've found Kerry Scott's blog. It's a fun blog to read, especially when going through Tales of the Clueless. There are some very funny stories about job candidates there.

While browsing through her site, which covers a variety of topics, I came upon resume tips. They are honestly pretty standard things. Any recruiter or headhunter will drill these tips about the job search into your head because they are tired of dealing with, for lack of a better word, shenanigans.

My thoughts on her resume tips on what to leave off the resume:

Objective Statement - This is antiquated. She supports what everyone else has told me and says that, unless it is amazing, the objective part is better left off of a resume.
References Available Upon Request - This is implicit and pretty much unnecessary.
Health, Height, Weight, Marital Status, and your Picture - For American recruiters, this always is treated as if it is bizarre. But, as I learned in my French class, the etat civil is a pretty important part of the resume. It is part of the format to include a picture and marital status. If you are married with kids, your French employers want to know. This annoys recruiters/hiring managers on this side of the Atlantic, though, so it is not on my American resume.
Links to your MySpace Page or other home page - That would be embarrassing, unless it was some sort of blogging job.
Interests - I was actually forced by my undergraduate career services office (UCSO) to add this to my resume during my mandatory resume work session. Later, another UCSO employee/coach told me that I have to put in a skills section on my resume as well.
Deception - This is an accepted practice in France. In America, we are taught to "maximize" our achievements, but not lie. In France, a bit more deception is acceptable, according to my French teacher. Getting caught in a lie, though, makes everyone uncomfortable. However, false accusations of lying also make things uncomfortable. My UCSO coaches from my resume session said that my claims about my study abroad experience in Spain were "erroneous." I submitted ample proof to my teachers that I had gone and it was never mentioned again.
Typos - This is the standard diatribe about grammatical errors and typos.
Made up words, or words you had to use a thesaurus to find - "Bigger words do not make you sound smarter...Don't say 'utilized' when you mean 'used.'" Obviously it is a pet peeve of hers. However, I use what other people consider "big words" in everyday conversation, so this is a tricky area for me. I am not trying to sound smarter; that is actually how I think. I normally try to turn it down. Personally, I do utilize "utilize" because it translates better into other languages (utiliser, utilizar, etc.) and my English is battered by foreign influences. I say things such as "au contraire" or call things "drole" all the time. I use foreign terms because those expressions (to the contrary/droll) are not used in English anymore but are still used elsewhere. My writing is influenced by Jane Austen and the Brontes, as well as others, and it does not sound 100% American. It is not typical, but I do not think that my resume should be penalized because I sometimes think in other languages or in the language of other times.
Exclamation points - Guilty. Unlike the language issue mentioned above, though, I try to keep these to personal correspondance.
Text-message-speak - I would be mortified if there was text-message-speak on my resume. This is also something that all the recruiters have said. In addition, they encourage us to have non-embarrassing e-mail addresses. tallerhollerballerxmagnum is less likely to get a callback than someone with an e-mail screenname like EllenJaffe.

Maybe I am just a clueless campus hire, but my resume does not comply 100% with her tips.

Teaching High School Kids Personal Finance

2010-06-04T20:24:00.000-07:00

Because I'm being hit with a bunch of marketing e-mails for one online course that teaches you how to earn $1,000 a month on the side, I've come up with a source of supplementary income.

A while back, I posted my reflections on being taught personal finance when I was younger.

Putting those two together made me think about teaching a very quick summer course to high school kids. It would be modeled after some highly successful, short classes that I've taken during the summer.

What would I teach the kids if I started this class?

First, I would teach them about the job search. Then, as everyone pulled in an equal income, I would teach them about what to do with that money. That could be a course that would span years, but I'm confident that a quick overview would suffice to whet the students' appetites.

Second, I would discuss life events and how they can affect personal finance. For example, Ramit did a post about stupid mistakes like traffic tickets. There are also medical emergencies and family emergencies. Most kids aren't included in family decisions on how to handle these and having them happen to them in a simulated environment would put them in the driver's seat, enabling them to see through their parents' eyes.

I have a lot of specific ideas on how to implement this, but I wanted to ask: What would be good for high school students to learn?

What Is Nobility?

2010-05-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

When I was in Beijing, I talked to someone about my long-term career goals. His query went something like, "So you're 18. What are you going to do with your life?" Thank goodness that I've already thought about that before the question was posed or it would've stressed me out. I replied with the standard spiel, "I'm going to distribute clean water in Asia and eventually the world. Etc."

This is a relatively normal exchange. However, the response that I get is normally, "That's cool. Why?" And I give them my speech about my bedtime stories being replaced with there-are-less-fortunate-children stories and how, when I was 7, I funded two wells in Vietnam and got to go to Disney World as a Millennium Dreamer as a result in 2000.

But Steve's response was, "That's very noble of you. Have you looked into Siemens?"

That gave me pause.

1) What is nobility? Why is wanting to help others "noble"? Aren't we all born altruistic? Has our capitalistic society discouraged helping others with their basic physiological needs?

2) I've looked into GE, because I read about their program in India that uses corn husks as part of the water filtration. I did look superficially into Siemens, but only superficially. As soon as I got back on a computer, I looked up Siemens Water...which turns out to be an actual part of the company that deals with water.

I'm not saying that I will work for Siemens, but at this point I have already realized that a kid with a business degree's ideal environment is not that of a nonprofit. I know that I will eventually start my own enterprise, but I need to have experience in the field and an idea of what I'm doing before I begin so that I am not flying blind. A corporate job in the area that I want to enter would be a perfect solution.

Re: 5 Entrepreneurship Rules B-Schools Don't Teach

2010-05-29T05:13:00.001-07:00

Tim Berry's article, was very thought provoking. I am currently exploring which major I want to pursue in school and entrepreneurship is on the short list. Naturally, I have some opinions in his insights.

Caveat: I can only speak from my own experience, which is that of one girl at a Midwestern top 20 school.

1. Dealing With People

At this point it has not been taught to me at all. None of my classes incorporate learning how to do this. In order to get this, I would probably try to take business psychology or a similar course.

2. Right and wrong

My school is focusing on incorporating more ethics cases into our curriculum because a common complaint among our graduating seniors is that we do not deal enough with ethics. Also, the financial crisis has incited many to say that b-schools should teach it. Therefore, my school has tried its best to start putting it into classes.

3. Having a life

This is actively discouraged at my school by almost all of the teachers that I have had, save one. I am being taught that the only way to start a business is to get outside financing.

Nobody has taught me what to do when a crucial meeting conflicts with a kid's soccer practice. But I speak from experience when I say that most parents in my hometown just hire babysitters and drivers to take care of the kids' extracurricular lives. Once in a while a parent will show up for a game or performance.

4. Managing risk

This hasn't been taught but it's something that I have learned from reading a lot of personal finance blogs. They talk a lot about having a financial cushion and not sinking all of your cash into one place.

5. When to hold and when to fold

I learned this from Ramit Sethi. To be fair to my b-school, I was taught to have SMART goals, so if I fall short of where I want to be when I start my business, I will definitely take the exit option into consideration.

I also enjoyed his first article about what the schools can teach. My school does a good job of teaching all of them, though I will admit that we do not focus on developing writing skills.

Forty Billion Dollars - Other Peking University Students

2010-05-26T18:04:00.000-07:00

I interviewed other students doing the Doing Business in China program with me about what they would do with 40 billion dollars.

One guy, MBL, has a dream similar to Andrew MacPherson's adventure. He wants to just get in a boat and sail the world.

Another, HSR, would buy many luxury cars and a driver.

A girl who I go to school, YJR, would make a bakery with her sister, travel the world, and move to a hotel to live like Eloise. Then she would make a company like Toms Shoes.

Another girl from my school who is my roommate here, MJL, has had me ask her this question at random intervals. She has the most developed answer of everyone. She would travel around Europe. Then she would focus on donation and invest in education. She would also study abroad in Europe and study art and fashion. Then she would get a stable full of horses and take up horseriding. Then she would travel the world, stimulate the economy, and invest in medical solutions. She would also support her parents in retirement, buy an iPod with more memory, and get Lasik. Then she would put some money in investigating global warming. After all of those priorities, she would go on a small (relative to her assets) shopping spree. The final desire was to find a way to provide electricity on a global level and solve the water problem.

The last is a 21-year-old Singaporean named GSH. She would buy a house, then cars, then go to Harvard to get a law degree. After obtaining her "cert" she would travel.

The best thing about asking everyone about this, beyond passing time during a long bus ride, was to see what their priorities or "outlandish" desires were.

What I Would Do with Forty Billion

2010-05-25T20:09:00.000-07:00

I would devote almost all of my resources to the water issue. I think that it's a crying shame that we have the technology to ameliorate the conditions of so many but we haven't taken action to improve their living standards. Water is essential for life and depriving people of clean water is depriving them of a basic human right. Therefore, about 98% of my funds would go towards global water distribution that is sustainable and renewable.

The rest would go into a trust fund for college funds for my family and a home for my parents.

40 Billion

2010-05-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

What would you do if you had 40 billion dollars legitimately?

This is my personal version of the classic high school counselor's question: "What would you do with one million dollars?" However, at this point in time a million is not sufficient to live on for the rest of your life for the average consumer. (If you want to be atypical, then you can live happily on a million.)

Therefore, I made it so that you would be one of the top 20 or so richest people in the world.

What would you do?

I will post my answer soon plus the answers of other idealistic young adults who are attending Doing Business in China at Peking University with me.

Case Study in Intrinsic Motivation: Me

2010-05-12T18:48:00.000-07:00

A while back, Ashley Ambirge wrote a blog post about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. She encouraged all of her readers to do things simply because they wanted to do them and to cut all the other actions from their lives. It made me think.

I haven't cut everything that I don't want to do from my life, but I have reflected on what I truly want to do, the things that I am not doing to please anybody else.

One of those things is learning about minimalism and thinking about how to apply the tenets of minimalism to my life.

Another thing that I am doing for my own pleasure is researching how to make sure that more people have access to potable water. Eventually, I want to spend my life working on global clean water distribution. I wouldn't be doing it for fame or fortune. I wouldn't be doing it for power. For me, it's mostly about the kids who suffer because clean water isn't readily available. For me, a kid raised in America, that's incomprehensible. Whaddya mean kids in Third World countries die from diarrhea contracted from impure water?

Those two things are clearly motivated by my own desires, but what about everything else? More specifically, what about college?

College?

Is college something that I'm doing for me or is it something that I am doing because I've been raised to believe that going to college will take me somewhere? Part of it is making myself a strong job candidate, as shown by the fact that I'm in business school. But there is more to it.

One part is that I take pleasure in learning. Learning, for me, takes place inside and outside of the classroom. At college, I learn by attending class and by interacting with people to whom I have never been exposed before now. It's been good so far.

Part of my positive experience with college was started during my very first class at school. It was a science class that had a dynamic med school professor who still amazes me with his fantastic teaching methods. I took the final for that class even though it was optional. In fact, the last day was completely optional. I still stayed the entire time.

The semester that I just finished ended with a final in every class that I took. One of them, my psychology final, was entirely optional. I had an A with and without taking it. I had 4 other finals to take. Yet, I still took it. Why would I waste my time at a final that ultimately didn't impact my grades?

The Answer

I did it for me. I'm not sure why taking two optional finals would satisfy me, but it did. Is this my childhood knocking? Maybe. But in the end I did those things without extrinsic motivation.

I guess that means that I'm an intrinsically motivated student. Dunno how that happened. :)

Paying Kids to Learn

2010-05-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

There was a recently published TIME cover article that got a lot of attention. While I object the use of the word "bribe" in the title, it posed an interesting question: should we pay kids to do well in school and how should it be done?

Roland Fryer, Jr., a Harvard professor, did a study on this. He focused on areas where there was room for improvement. He grew up on his own and, as the article discusses, was a drug dealer for a while. He got a scholarship to college and went on to eventually get his PhD.

He wanted to do a study on the effects of cash incentives on learning. The result, after several years, was this study.

What I found the most interesting was the city that had the best results: Dallas. In the TIME article, Fryer comments that these second-graders' grades increased more than the grades of the students who were paid to have higher grades. The second-graders in Dallas were paid $2 per Accelerated Reader (AR) test that was passed with a score of 80% or above. They could get compensated for a maximum of 20 books per semester, for an annual maximum of $80. This city received the least money and the least management of all of the cities, which came to $360,000 from the funds and one project manager. A total of $42,800 was distributed to the kids.

The reading comprehension scores were increased across all areas except for the Spanish-speaking kids who took their standardized tests in Spanish. They took the Logramos test instead of the Iowa Tests for Basic Skills (ITBS). The ELL kids' scores actually decreased after the study. The author of the TIME article calls this a "mystery."

In the published study, Fryer suggests that another study be conducted where the Spanish-speaking students are paid to read books written in Spanish. Wait a minute...what? ELL students were paid to read books in their second language and their Spanish reading comprehension skills were measured? AR tests for Spanish fiction number 3142 while AR tests for English fiction number 27921? There is no mystery.

But, looking back at the overall positive results for the Dallas program, I like the idea that kids can be paid up to $80 a year to read books. (If I had been paid in school to read books, I would definitely have hit that maximum every year.) I do think that the kids should have gotten more immediate results for reading, however. Paying kids only three times a year makes a disconnect between the incentive and the task. Kids at the other schools and kids in other programs that try to provide incentives for kids to learn and behave well in school pay kids weekly or biweekly. I acknowledge that paying a kid $2 every 2 weeks would not make a lot of sense from the administration side of things, but they could make a threshold on paychecks that were issued once a month and settle the rest at the end-of-year payment.

I also have another issue with the Dallas program: I hate AR. Accelerated Reader really only measures what could be found in the CliffNotes for any book. Yes, motivated by prizes from the librarians, I got hundreds of points through the system, but I don't think that it made me any better at reading comprehension. Because I cannot suggest a viable alternative to this metric, I cannot really call for abolishing its use, but I wish that Fryer, with all the attention he has garnered, could inspire people to come up with something better than AR to motivate kids to read books.

Educational reform is on its way and I hope that the Obama administration pays attention to these results. I know that money is a big issue when it comes to education, but this shows that the results here are comparable to kids spending another five months in school per year. Paying kids to read is a lot cheaper than putting them in school for an extra five months and it leads to the same kinds of improvements.

The Current American Model For Education

2010-05-01T20:13:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of problems with our current educational model. These have left us trailing behind several other countries in math and science.

My history teacher told us (many times) about how the launch of Sputnik resulted in her history classes being cut down and math and science being heavily emphasized in its stead. As a historian(/lawyer/ELF member), she thought it was a travesty to force children to learn more math at the expense of other areas, namely her favorite subject, history.

But the truth is that we're trailing behind a lot of other countries in our math and science. So what can we do to ensure that our next generation is competitive in a globalized world?

First, we should lengthen the school day. This has worked in France, China, and Japan. There is no reason that we shouldn't do it besides the funding issue. I highly advocate teaching children for longer each day. In France, kids go to school at 8. They get an hour or so for lunch starting at noon. Then, they go back to school until 5. This is sensible and looks moderately like a work schedule. (Could this prepare them better for entrance into the workforce? Perhaps.) They also have a half-day each Wednesday and Saturday. This model should be implemented in suburban America at the very least, because it enables parents to get kids out the door before the parents have to leave for work and gets the kids home around the time that their parents get home.

One major argument against implementation of the French model is the fact that kids have a huge half-day off each Wednesday without parental supervision. However, many kids either go home to a stay-at-home mother or play sports on Wednesdays. It really ensures that every kid has at least some time each week to exercise. Considering that the French child obesity rate is below ours, adoption of this model may be prudent.

Second, we should encourage independent learning projects. I had two in elementary school and they were integral in teaching me how to research. To say that I research in the same way that I did in elementary school would be a lie, but it definitely started me on the path of a great deal of personal research. I was taught that if a subject ever interested me, I could learn more about it.

When I was younger, Google was just emerging. That's when I did my very first independent study project (about horses. Yeah, I'm such a girl, I know...) The experience with my bibliography (forty-seven sources, much) taught me how to cite EVERYTHING. (I'm pretty sure that I consulted more sources than anyone else in my class.) I was taught to evaluate online sources for their validity and to use the library catalogue to research anything that I really needed to.

Later, I did a project on Queen Elizabeth I. That project taught me how to outline a paper after finding all of my sources. That paper was much more cohesive than my horse paper that it was ludicrous. (It also coincided with the beginning of my love affair with historical fiction.)

Learning how to research on your own is invaluable. There is a limit to what can be taught to a classroom full of children. I'm not a big proponent of unschooling, though I can see some of its merits. I am a big advocate of letting children choose something that they want to learn about and then letting them learn about it to their hearts' content.

Third, we need to change the way that teachers are paid. I'm not going to get into the whole tenure issue. That's been covered by many other people and is for someone else to decide.

What I will talk about is merit pay. I don't think that it should be measured in likability or standardized test scores, but in actual impact on children. My third-grade teacher scared the daylights out of me and I can say that I didn't learn a lot in her class other than the fact that not doing my homework would still snag me a B.

On the other hand, my eight-grade English teacher was a total inspiration to me. All of her students seem to agree with the opinion that she's a saint. She encouraged me to write to my heart's content and told me that I could be a published author. (That happened after I wrote an extensive essay about Henry David Thoreau, a topic assigned to me.) She engaged us in every class and used the Socratic method to discuss books. That year, I loved English class every day.

That's why I think that some teachers should be encouraged to continue their efforts, while others can be asked to review their teaching methods. Everyone seems to get certified in the same way, but some are more effective in teaching than others.

I've only talked about three of the things that I would change about our education system, but there are many more facets which I will cover in the next post.

Using a Zipcar

2010-05-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

I love being in college.

I don't live the kind of life that Asher Roth talks about. But I do live the responsibility-free student life.

Everyone always tells me that I should enjoy what I have now, because in the "real world," I will have bills to pay.

(Let me tell you something: I already have bills to pay. I have financial responsibility for what I do. So stop telling me that I am going to have to be more responsible for myself; I already am.)

There's one bill that I pay entirely out of my own pocket: my Zipcar bill.

I came to college without a car. I have had to walk everywhere on foot. But that's allowed me to appreciate the amazing beauty of my campus.

What happens when I can't get to the place I want to go on foot or by public transportation? Until this semester, I was stuck begging other people for a ride. Thankfully, this semester Zipcar came to campus.

I can now Zip wherever I want to my heart's content. It's very nice to have a car. Walks that take me 15 minutes are a 2-minute drive because of traffic. It's amazing to see how much faster life goes when I'm in a car.

Today I'm Zipping to a storage facility as everyone packs up. It's awesome to be able to go somewhere off the bus route.

And I'm paying for it myself.

Starting an Investment Account

2010-04-28T20:54:00.000-07:00

Up to this point, I don't have my own investment account.

Is this shocking in someone who has read as much about personal finance as I have? Yes and no.

Ramit Sethi, in his book and on his blog, frequently derides people who read 500+ personal finance blogs but have no Roth IRA. Just by acting, you can get ahead of the pack who can talk the talk but never walk the walk.

On the other hand, I am getting my first job offer next week. Truly. That means that, while I've been paid for my training, I haven't really been hired.

So it might be understandable that I don't have a Roth IRA. If I had been able to have one in high school, I would have. However, when you have a Roth, you have to have taxable income. I had none.

I have no idea of how much money I will make this year. Consequently, it's hard to predict how much I should put in my Roth when I get it. Roths don't require you to have earned the money by the time that you deposit the money, but the total annual contribution cannot exceed your taxable, earned money.

While pondering which brokerage I should go with, I went through Mint's list of sponsored brokerages. At this point, it's going to be either Scottrade or Schwab. I know that Zecco and TradeKing are widely touted as good choices, but I apparently cannot get approved for TK without credit history, which I do not have, and Zecco is overpriced. That leaves me with the two choices I have.

What should I do? Which one should I go with? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Mancession: Girls Are Better

2010-04-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

After reading Ninja's article about the economy, I reflected on the current domestic economic position.

One of the best things that is happening right now is that women comprise pretty darn close to 50% of the labor force. That's amazing.

This is a proof that the suffragettes knew where it was at. This is proof that allowing women into the workplace was a good idea. This is proof that we are valuable as workers.

Unfortunately, with the expansion of male-dominated industries like manufacturing and construction, women will no longer make up 50% of the work force. But getting this close to that number is something for the history books.

Learning How to Make a Fidelity-Based Business

2010-04-25T00:20:00.000-07:00

If I were to make a business, I would focus a lot on the customer experience.

I'm sure that everyone is supposed to do that; that's the reason why Customers comprise a part of the business balanced scorecard.

However, Kevin Maney wrote a book that received some attention online. One afternoon, I was hitting the bookstore with some friends. I always drift over to the business section when I go into that particular bookstore, so I picked up his book, Trade-Off.

It was an interesting and fast read. It basically argues that there's a dichotomy in what a business can do: either it can cater to have a rich, full experience or it can make it as convenient for the customer as possible. At one end you have La Grenouille and at the other is McDonald's. Each specializes in doing a part of the customer experience to the best of its ability.

This brings me back to my point: I want to have a high-fidelity business. What I learned during my summer being a receptionist at a high-convenience business is that it's exhausting. I cannot form meaningful relationships with people who are there just because it's the cheapest game in town.

High-fidelity businesses also require a lot of effort, but I think that they pay off better in the long run. By enriching the customer experience and making it the best it can be, I can create a product with real value.

Right now in my career perspectives class, I am doing an enjoyable market simulation game. It's all about introducing the personal computer into the marketplace. It's a lot of fun, but beyond that it's supposed to simulate for us the decision-making that goes into a real business.

One of the major decisions is deciding which market segments to target and which products to produce for those markets. I initially decided on the low-margin, highly competitive segment and the medium-sized, high-margin segment. Later on, I realized that I could easily expand into the high margin, noncompetitive segment because I could customize my computers better than the existing producers for that market.

My business model will be all about customization. I could, indeed, churn out an amazing number of widgets that were uniform and identical. I could use process costing instead of job costing. Everything would be neat and tidy.

Instead, I'm actively choosing to individualize everything that I produce. Whether it is a service or a product, I believe in fitting whatever I'm offering to each customer. Does this consume more of my time? Indubitably. But will it pay off in the end in terms of forging customer loyalty? Yes.

I've already seen evidence of this. I've grown up looking at the inner workings of a luxury spa. Customization of the customer experience is labor-intensive, but, as a result of it, customers forge lasting relationships with the staff. I've seen a lot of customers come back regularly to the spa. The staff remember details about each customers life. The spa is tapped into the city's gossip. If gossip at the spa were water, we would be drowning.

The value in having a business like this is that you don't have to go out and search for new customers to lure in. Instead, you can rely on word-of-mouth to find new customers. "Did you hear about that place on Michigan? Suzy told me that this masseuse was great and so I scheduled an appointment. The masseuse just had amazing hands! All those knots that I get from playing tennis were gone after an hour! I think that she could help you with your back problems during this pregnancy. Listen, just tell her that I sent you and she'll take care of you."

Therein lies the beauty of a high-fidelity business.

I've decided to pursue something like this so that my business is actually worth something. While it's arguable that McDonald's adds something to the world by feeding people and selling the real estate around each restaurant, I would much rather add worth to the world by making a difference in peoples' lives.

Moving from Traditional Business to Minimalism

2010-04-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

I haven't started working yet, but my tastes of the "real world" have left a very bitter taste in my mouth. I do not want to work 14-hour days and wake up every morning to the same soul-crushing job. I am willing to work 14-hour days and I am capable of doing it, but I do not want to sit at a desk for 40 years doing the same thing. I read an article about freedom a long time ago and it made me realize that being at a soul-sucking job would destroy me, drain me of everything I have to offer.

I think, instead, that I want to move towards this minimalist movement. It is incredible to watch the number connections online in the blogging community. And perhaps this is where I belong. So many people saying the same thing that I am thinking must mean that it's right, right?

Not necessarily. I've scratched the surface of group psychology, and I can clearly see that following the crowd is not the path to success.

It is the path to mediocrity. It is the path to the 4-door car when I am a DINK and a minivan when I become a mother of 2.5 kids. It is the path to stifling in suburbia behind a white-picket fence, leading a life of "quiet desperation." I do not want to follow the crowd.

That is the reason that I love the minimalists' movement: they don't follow the crowd. In fact, they actively discouraging following any crowd, even their own. Everett Bogue clearly states that his expression of minimalism is about focusing on what is important to him. There are plenty of other bloggers who are minimalists who do not live like him, but what they have in common is a focus on the essential part of their lives. Every minimalist blogger whom I follow has made it completely clear that their strain or brand of minimalism is not a one-size-fits-all deal.

In fact, they abhor the idea that it might be. They like to think that their lifestyle design is unique (and it probably is). We're not Bo's "goth kids who look exactly the same [who] never want to conform." We're the grown-up versions of those goth kids, who think that sticking with the sheep is not where the fun is.

Re:Seth Godin's Linchpin Talk

2010-04-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin's Linchpin Talk

It seems to me that a lot of life is about reaching for what you want or need. The majority of the time, you're going to have a lot of naysayers. These may be the guardians at the gate in Joseph Campbell's monomyth or DreamZappers a la Ashley Ambirge. And these naysayers hold you back from what you could become because of the potential of failure.

Today, Seth Godin made me really consider what I'm looking for.

Can I save the world? No. I am not saying that because everyone has told me that; from what I know of the world, I cannot save it. The complexity of saving the world is immense. After reading a lot of dystopian literature and historical literature, I can see that, indeed, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

So I chose a more realistic life goal that nevertheless seems unattainable: clean water for everyone. The smaller goal within that is clean water for children. It seems a veritable shame that we cannot provide children with potable water.

Seth urges people to get out and launch their product, to act on their passions. "Carpe diem!" he shouts (figuratively), as if seizing the day is what everyone should do. And it is.

The only thing that holds people back is fear of failure, the little lizard of social conditioning that asks, "Who are you to be a genius, a success? Why should you go out and try to change the world?"

So today I attach my own name to my blog. It is my step towards beating back the lizard.

Re: Education Reform or Some Children Left Behind

2010-03-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Some Children Left Behind

I agree completely that the US needs to revamp its policies. Unfortunately, these reforms could go the way of No Child. It sounded great; we were going to pull people up to standards and education was going to be better.

Now that it's been enacted, we've seen the pitfalls. What do we have to ensure that No Child isn't repeated under another administration. The need for reform is clear, but the projections of what will happen need to be vastly different.

For one thing, standardization seemed to be a great goal several years back. Yet the outcome of those measures resulted in teachers teaching to the test and not actually helping student acquire the skills that were theoretically tested. Thus, this was ineffective in encouraging real learning.

Another thing was the stress on teachers. While it is necessary for teachers to be challenged to provide the best education possible for their students, there have been impossible and unreasonable demands upon them. In my managerial accounting textbook, it clearly states that all goals should be tight but attainable. This is what needs to happen here. Teachers need to have a voice in what's happening on the micro level.

Because we are already speaking of teachers' needs, let's take a quick peek at tenure. Many are familiar with this idea and the fact that it ensures stability for teachers. Critics say that it protects bad teachers. Members of my family are in the teaching profession. They say that it's the only way to protect your job against one disgruntled parent or retaliation for enacting new teaching methods. That's why tenure needs to be preserved.

However, tenure and merit pay should work together. There needs to be stability as well as incentive to drive students to higher achievement. Merit pay is a wonderful idea and students, parents, and administrators should have input on this. Popular teachers can be popular for a variety of reasons; personable teachers are more likely to be popular, but adorably eccentric teachers can have rave reviews as well. Some teachers are popular because they teach well. The evaluation for merit pay should focus on those who are popular because they teach well. Administrators should certainly take the reins in deciding how merit pay is distributed, but there needs to be student and parent input as well. Administrators are only able to view a small slice of the action that happens in classrooms, while students come in every day. Parents are also external observers. They see the homework and the effect the teacher has on the students. While one disgruntled parent may spoil the bunch, generally the parents in a classroom are a good indicator of teacher popularity.

These are just a few ideas that I've had about the current education debate. There is definite room for reform, but we'll have to look for the right things.

Re: Why You Should Stop Not Traveling

2010-03-02T08:46:00.000-08:00

Why You Should Stop Not Traveling

What you're really advocating here is finally taking something that you've always wanted to do. In your case, and in the case of many people, this includes global travel. Props to you for seeking new experiences.

I've read a lot of posts that tell you to get down to the core of what you really want to do and finally do it. This, for me, is spreading clean water around. It's something that I take for granted as an American, but my bedtime stories included children dying from dirty water. (Yes, I had an unconventional childhood.)

There are tons of ways to get involved with these organizations, and I already have moved in this direction. However, I'm currently a business student and I'm trying to figure out how to throw this into the mix.

Follow Up On My Changes

2010-02-13T22:30:00.000-08:00

My intentions were the best, but everything changed very rapidly.

I started off with the schedule that I planned.

8 Wake up

8:30 Go to SRSC

9:30 Go back home

9:45 Arrive and shower

10:30 Apply makeup, get dressed, dry hair.

10:48 Catch bus to Jordan/Do homework.

11:15-4:25 Classes

Recreational

Bed Time

You can see clearly that the study time definitely lost out in this race. Some days I spend more than an hour on my homework and other days less. It was simply too much to try to keep up a consistent application to my homework.

This lasted for two weeks, then the best laid plans changed. Instead of hitting cardio every morning and taking a shower afterwards, I started going with a gym buddy: an athlete.

So, since I began hitting the gym with her, I have been spending approximately two hours working out every morning. We get up in the dark and then eat breakfast when we get back. She pushes me to my physical limits. Then, in the evening, she exercises with her team for another two or so hours.

Nothing worth having is easy to get. I'm not even working towards being more attractive; my real goal is probably to be as strong as her. She insists that we do all of the same things, so it's pretty simple to see who is more fit than the other. But another effect of this is that she has pushed me to the very edges of what I am capable of, which I appreciate when I've stopped hurting.

Everyone needs someone like this in his life: someone who pushes them to the best they can be, even though it's far beyond his comfort zone.

How to Kill Buzz

2010-02-13T22:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, that's right: I'm a Buzz killer. As soon as I learned that Buzz could be killed, I took it off my Gmail screen. While hitting it every time that I opened Gmail was convenient, it still does not replace Facebook and Twitter in any way and, for some reason, all my incoming posts were from Leo Babauta's Buzz. This was uncomfortable; I read his minimalism posts but otherwise don't keep tabs on his activities. I felt like I was unintentionally stalking Leo.

So what did I do? I looked up how to get rid of Buzz and there's a fix for it. All you have to do is go to Settings then the Labels tab. Buzz is right there and you can hit Hide.

Getting rid of it was a huge relief. Now I can go back to Twitter without having to reread my own posts when I hit Gmail/Buzz.

Setting Up Specialisterne in America

2010-02-08T06:43:00.001-08:00

It has long been my ambition to set it up in the US. I understand that Asperitech already exists, but I want to recreate Specialisterne. I was reading Penelope Trunk's article and found another one which was basically patently obvious but got me to thinking about my plans to create a haven.

I'm surprised that nobody has yet realized the potential of working with Aspergerian children to develop the next generation of electronic schooling. We already have online courses for children, so why not take the logical next step and focus on using the iPad and things of that ilk to develop electronic or online schooling?

Asperger children are ideal to test this on because they don't perform well in the normal school environment and attempting to socialize a typical Asperger kid in a typical school environment is a recipe for disaster without major intervention on the part of counselors and/or parents. Therefore, I would suggest moving the majority of Asperger kids to the Internet, which is the interface to which they're the most responsive in any case. I remember well what it was to go to gifted camp and have everyone seated in the same room while in an online chatroom together.

This would remove most Asperger kids from the school system. Yes, this will inhibit the diversity to which our children are exposed, but we would be protecting the Asperger kids from the worst of the scorn. Asperger children will never fit into the normal box perfectly, but keeping them protected until they are ready to face the music doesn't sound like a bad idea. They shouldn't have to go through the torments of "junior high hell" or high school. College might be an ideal place for them to interact with people who operate at their intellectual level while discreetly learning social skills.

2010-01-29T18:52:00.000-08:00

From Jacob's post at Early Retirement Extreme

Imagine that ice cream was the sole purpose of life. Now, most people would be working hard to make 4 ice cream cones. They would then proceed to drop one on the ground on their way home (that’s the cost of transportation, more of less, at 20%), lose another one in one of their many bedrooms (that’s the cost of large housing, another 25%), and after eating one, decide that that was good enough, put the one in the fridge and then forget it was there (that is pretty much the stuff everybody buys and never use). Now excuse me for being dense, but what would the purpose be to ask your boss for more responsibility or negotiate a higher salary, for instance, a 5th ice cream cone if all it did in general was perhaps to allow you to lose it on the way one, forget it in the bathroom, or drop it in your garage?

Yes, I know it is an affront not to want to make more of them. If I say I only make one ice cream cone, people will think I am starving and eating dirt because clearly I am a clutch like everyone else and drop my food all over without getting to eat it and with only one cone it seems impossible that I would get to eat it. I know that. I have tried to explain that one only needs to be careful with the one cone and then that’s all you really need and we both have ice cream, but apparently I am not the only one being dense

IU Spanish Tutor

2010-01-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

Ramit Sethi's Post on Finding Clients

I have a few talents that you wouldn't expect in an aspiring businessperson. One of these is my ability to write. Over winter break, for the first time, I was actually paid to write. It felt great.

I applied to IU's Writing Tutorial Services and I got accepted by WTS. I'm currently in training.

When I went to WTS training, I realized that many of the tutors are multilingual, which makes sense. After all, people who are strong in language skills tend to pick up languages more quickly in my experience. I wondered then why there wasn't a special section of WTS that addressed foreign language compositions. The director, Jo Ann Vogt, is a wonderful woman who used to speak French. She says that she was formerly able to tutor in French, though she has lost that ability now.

There is a real need for foreign language tutors. In almost every class, there are a handful of compositions every semester.

It would make a lot of sense to keep up a foreign language division, but there would be several obstacles. The biggest would be that the graduate student who was tutoring would have to speak the foreign language at a native level. This means that the availability of foreign language tutors would fluctuate constantly.

I now want to be an IU Spanish tutor, though I'm not a native speaker. I'm at a level where I can read and edit 100- and 200- level Spanish compositions. It's something that I have done and am currently doing for my friends in S105, S200, and S280.

Discussing Finances With My Dad

2010-01-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

As I continue to learn more about money, I talk about it more. This means that my dad and I had an interesting discussion about household expenses. Without the nonessential variable costs, our "fixed" costs (utilities, insurance, household expenses, AT&T bill, food, and gas) come to about $400 per month per person for our little family of four. Now, in other places in this blog you've seen that I'm used to spending a lot of money sometimes. That's where the variable costs come in. But something beautiful about my dad is that he's learned to live minimally because he came here with literally the clothes on his back and hungry mouths to feed. He's never really stopped. The variable costs (aka shopping) don't really come from him but are generated by my mother, who loves to shop. So we went over how the average family spends their paycheck and discussed all the annual expenses that our family incurs. It was enlightening and a great discussion.

Review of Start Over, Finish Rich

2010-01-06T09:38:00.000-08:00

When I realized that David Bach's new book, Start Over, Finish Rich, was available for one day for free, I was completely ecstatic. I thought about buying it and he's fairly famous for his financial advice. I always meant to get around to reading his work and offering his book for free was a way to get me started.

The most important disclaimer that I should mention is that I don't think I'm in his target audience. I don't need to start over because I'm just beginning. With the information contained in this book, Bach intends for people to actually start anew after the recession.

I'm 18. All of my money is in liquid form--in cash--in a bank. I just got a credit card that is cosigned by my mother a few days ago. I have no debt at all. I'm a tabula rasa.

I've got no expenses, little income, and basically few worries beyond my GPA and resume. Almost all of the techniques in this book are heavily touted in other blogs or useless to me.

I recognize clearly that this book would be relevant or helpful to me if I were living paycheck to paycheck. Heck, it would be helpful to anybody living like that, so it is specifically tailored to them.

My family is financially comfortable. Yes, we were hit badly by the recession and our accounts took a major hit, but the recession didn't cause us to worry unduly. We have fairly low expenses for a family of 4. One of the big expenditures for us is my education, which has been saved for all of my life in cash. My sister's was saved for in the stock market and her fund took a hit when 9/11 happened. It taught my parents that it would be better to switch to cash when saving for the last few years before college. So, the recession hit us with some force, but not enough to impact daily life.

Consumerism

2009-12-29T20:10:00.000-08:00

I'm sipping Costco-brand diet green tea, sitting in an opulent green leather coach in a house that has been carefully crafted by an interior designer and an architect, next to a garage filled with stuff and two pure bred dogs who are let out every 2 hours or so. The garage is the second garage, because the first one has a sleek Lexus and a gas-guzzling SUV.

And I'm wondering about consumerism.

I've been raised somewhere where I've been allowed to have everything I needed and most things that I've wanted. I haven't really wanted a lot (once I got past the stage where I played with toys on the living room floor) and it's been nice. But there is a room in my house, the guest room, that has slowly filled with detritus. Our living room has an enormous box filled with toys that nobody plays with.

And I'm currently dog sitting in a gorgeous home, airy and spacious and full of light. It has 2 people and 2 dogs. It's 2 stories with a basement with a combination air hockey/pool/table tennis table, a fireplace, a guest bedroom, storage room, and theater room. Do 2 people really need what amounts to 3 stories? Is it that important to have a big house?

This is the couple that tells me that as soon as I graduate from school, I have to make a lot of money, that money is the only thing. But looking around their luxurious home has me making a silent resolution to never go over the top like this.

Yes, the home is absolutely lovely. It is a joy to dog/house sit here. But it's really too big. I'm dog sitting with my sister, and we spend almost all of our time on the first floor. Even then, it has a parlor, a dining room, a sitting room, a family room, a breakfast nook, a kitchen, a half bathroom, and a master bedroom. And these are oversized rooms, so this is a rather large house.

I don't want to have to pay my mortgage on some comparable monstrosity. It is possible to raise children in an RV, per Jacob of ERE's words. If that is possible, then a one bedroom apartment should be sufficient. I think that's going to be my first port of call when I start living with someone else. There's really no reason to buy a house straight out of college. Look at the mortgage crisis! I don't want to be chained to a job that I don't want and a house that's too big. I want to enjoy what I earn, but sensibly. Throwing money away on a spacious house is ridiculous.

Leo's 6 Changes

2009-12-22T20:57:00.000-08:00

6 Changes

Leo has set up a system where he walks us through forming new habits that will basically crowd out the old ones. He says that we don't have to choose exactly 6, but it's a nice number to work with.

One way that it doesn't necessarily apply to me is that I'm not stuck in a rut. I'm in college, per the title of my blog, and my schedule changes each semester.

My schedule last semester looked like this:

8:48 Wake up

9:30 Get Ready

9:50-10:10 Go to Chinese

10:10-2:15 Classes

2:15-2:30 Walk to my room

2:30 Relax for 5-10 minutes

approximately 3 Eat lunch/dinner depending on what day it was.

4-8:30 Relax. Sometimes drag out my yoga mat while relaxing. Sometimes eat dinner.

9 Shower

10 Read books/Do homework

12 Start getting sleepy. Combat with green tea.

1 or 2 Go to bed

Obviously, my schedule varied greatly. Sometimes I met other people for lunch or dinner which changed the times. Sometimes I had to have group meetings for my business class. On Mondays, I volunteered, which gave me huge issues with my time. I chose Mondays because they were the least crowded of all of my days. In the end, everyone wanted to schedule things for Monday nights, so they ended up being hectic with my volunteering gig.

My new intent for the Spring Semester of 2010 is to be a bit more efficient. My schedule will look more like this:

8 Wake up

8:30 Go to SRSC

9:30 Go back home

9:45 Arrive and shower

10:30 Apply makeup, get dressed, dry hair.

10:48 Catch bus to Jordan/Do homework.

11:15-4:25 Classes

T: 5:30 Lab. W: 6 Practicum

1.5 hour study session

Recreational time

10 or 11 Bedtime

Review of Google Chrome

2009-12-08T12:46:00.001-08:00

I used to be a PC user. Back in the days before my college gave me a pretty MacBook.

When I was still living at home, Chrome was the answer to my prayers. It ran efficiently on my bug-filled Dell laptops and desktop.

But alas, when I got my Mac and searched for Chrome, I found that Google had not released a version for the Mac yet.

I signed up for the email notification and waited for the day that Chrome would come.

In the meantime, I used Safari. And Safari was good.

Until it started crashing, giving me horrible flashbacks of what it was to have a PC.

So when Safari failed me, I switched to Opera, which I had downloaded as soon as I got my Mac.

I had used Opera in the days before Google Chrome. I'm an easy going kind of girl, and I am free with my browsers. I used to use IE until Mozilla Firefox became prominent. Then, I switched from Firefox to Opera. But when Chrome came out, it was like an epiphany. It was beautiful. Each tab a separate application? I can put tabs together from different windows? Yes, please.

But today, when Chrome for Macs came out, it was a disappointment. It's still the best browser for PCs that exists. Unfortunately, Opera still trumps Chrome for Macs.

For one thing, as Minimal pointed out, Chrome still has the close button on the right side of the tabs. The close button hasn't been of great importance to me, as I normally command+W everything, but it is a little disconcerting.

Another thing is that I'm used to Opera's keyboard shortcuts, which means that I like it when I can press command+# and it gives me the bookmark that I want. Chrome doesn't have that. Chrome, like Safari, shows me my most frequently used sites. However, sometimes I don't want those. There are plenty of sites that I don't use frequently but need to get to in a hurry when I want them. Chrome, instead, bastardizes this keyboard shortcut into tab selection. TAB SELECTION. I wish that they had the option to switch this to bookmark selection!

Something unique to Opera users is that they get used to the mouse gestures, which Chrome does not have. It was irritating to use a desktop PC with Opera, because I would frequently go forward or backward without intending to use the right-click button. Now, I rely on it with my Mac because it's almost impossible to do it unintentionally.

What with Chrome having funny close buttons, lacking keyboard shortcuts to bookmarked sites, and being deficient in mouse gestures, I'm sticking with Opera for now. Maybe Chrome will learn what I want from it.

The only use I intend for Chrome as of now is when I have some serious multi-tabbing going on, which happens when I use Google Reader. I admit that Reader is more compatible with Chrome than it is with Opera, and I spend about 30% of my online time using Reader. So, Chrome has a place in my life. Just not as my default browser.

Flowers and Class

2009-10-28T12:42:00.001-07:00

No, I'm not talking about my classes in college. What this post is about is the difference in classes.

I had a best friend in high school who lived in a part of the city that my parents considered the ghetto. The majority of the people who lived around him are black. When my father first came to the city and was penniless, he lived in this area and got robbed several times. This is part of the reason that my parents have a very negative view of the area.

One time, I got my friend in trouble. He and I went out for pizza when he was grounded, causing his little sister to be locked out of the house.

As a result, I really wanted to apologize to his mother for taking him out for pizza. In my world, giving flowers was a very simple gift and would eloquently express my apology.

In his world, he ran this by his mother and she thought that it was really strange and he told me that flowers are for when you want to get into someone's pants.

I was a little bit shocked, but I realized that I had to factor in that his parents had grown up very differently. My dad's family used to own a county. My mother's father was the head veterinarian at a major veterinary clinic. Both went to private French Catholic schools.

While my parents may have come to America with nothing, they had grown up with plenty, in a society which was roughly comparable to the higher echelons of American society, though I would venture a guess and say that our lifestyle is more French than American.

This is a major difference between me and the common person, but I learned and am learning how to accept people who haven't been raised in the same way as me. It is honestly easier for me to connect with someone who has been raised in the same way as me, but I do have friends who have a lot less.

Forced Minimalism

2009-10-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

I'm in college. I think that in some ways I am experiencing forced minimalism. Leo B. of mnmlist.com commented on how moving forces minimalism. I did stuff all of my necessary belongings in 2 suitcases and a duffel bag and came to a room containing a bed, desk, chair, closet, cabinet, and bookshelf.

I am reading an increasing number of minimalist blogs and I'm struck by how sensible minimalism is. Why keep something that you aren't going to use? Now, I don't intend to go minimalist on my books or my clothes, but I can definitely stop myself from amassing detritus, which is far too easy in college.

About Me: Family

2009-10-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the Midwest with a middle class family. I grew up in one of the nation's best school systems, and I am profoundly grateful to my parents for buying a house where I could play in the neighborhood and backyard. The quality of my childhood was great in that sense.

My parents are very hard-working and they worked hard for the majority of my life. Our household income, according to this interactive NY Times graphic, was above the 90th percentile for America. My parents worked/work low prestige jobs, so even though the wealth that they have accumulated puts us above the 90th percentile, my dad considers us lower middle class.

You may be thinking that that is crazy. But it's all in where we live. According to this MSNBC article, being middle class depends on where you live. We live in the only city in our state that made the top 100 richest cities in America. I went to school with a son of the deposed Ethiopian royal family, the daughter of a former professional football player, the son of an Italian basketball superstar, and the son of a major shoe store's CFO. Our income pales in comparison to their wealth and income. Across the street from my house, there is a gated community full of mansions. Using Zillow, the cheapest house that I can see in that neighborhood is $1.25 million. My house doesn't cost that much.

So I write from the perspective of a girl whose parents have always made 6 figures. But I also write from the mentality that I am solidly middle class. When I told my dad that according to the NY Times we were upper class, he later came back and gave me a story about coming to America with literally just his shirt on his back and a pair of shorts. And he said that this is the real story of where we are today.

So I may seem a bit snobbish at times, but ridiculously humble at others. And this is the reason for the differences in behavior.

My parents are very frugal people. My dad, despite earning 6 figures on his own, wore his last pair of tennis shoes for 10 years. We went to buy his new pair together and he used a discount to buy the new ones for about $20. This is in spite of a million-dollar net worth. My parents operate on a cash basis and rarely use plastic. They paid off all their debt quite some time ago and are looking at a pretty healthy retirement. Their net worth took a beating when the stock market died during the recession, but we look forward to the growth that's been promised so far.

Smartphones: Why I Don't Have an iPhone

2009-10-11T15:36:00.000-07:00

I need a smartphone. This is not an immediate need, but a future one. As a business student and future business person, I will need a smartphone to function on a daily basis. This means that I should try to get to a level of functionality with a smartphone. Ergo, if I get a smartphone now, I will be able to use a smartphone efficiently in the future.

I've got Cingular, so it should be relatively simple for me to get and use an iPhone. But there are a few reasons why I don't have one.

Palm and Sprint tried to get in on the iPhone crowd by doing the a cost analysis campaign. And this campaign was very convincing. But the big, big factors that kept me from springing for a Pre at the first chance were these: inertia and apps. I am a Cingular customer. (I persist in calling it by its old name partially because I don't like using an ampersand when I type.) I just had to switch from Verizon a year ago and I hate hopping between new carriers with new rules. Switching is honestly a nasty headache and there are no actual problems with Cingular right now. In fact, the iPhone has a lot of nice features. The big one for me is the huge amount of apps, which the Pre cannot compete with. So even though the Pre is cheaper, I would have to stick with Cingular and use the iPhone if I could afford it.

Which I can't.

Theoretically, I have the money for it and I could. But I find myself unwilling to use the limited....ok relatively limited....ok generous funds that I control to throw it into Cingular's hungry jaws. It's not going to happen. Cingular seduced my parents away from Verizon by promising them a better, cheaper deal when they bundled home phone, Internet, and wireless. It didn't happen. When I switched to unlimited messaging, Cingular charged my poor parents an extra $30. The leap in our monthly bill gave them a heart attack. It was not good.

This is why I don't have an iPhone.

Big Mac Love

2009-10-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

No, this post isn't about burgers. It's about how much I love my Mac computer.

I've always used PCs. They've just been the computers available to me. I remember all the technology training that I went through in school. I was fortunate enough to have an abundance of computers at my disposal when I was in school and they always ran Windows. As a result, I have 11 years worth of experience with Windows. I know how to use Windows and have always liked it the best.

My first two laptops run Windows. The fact that either of them still work at all is a miracle. The problem with Windows is that our computers burn out with viruses after 2 years. Everytime we get a new computer, we're amazed by how fast it is because we're used to our buggy little old computers. Within a month, our pretty, fast new computers slow down to the speed that we're accustomed to. We buy and use antivirus, antispyware, defrag etc. things to try to slow or eliminate this problem. But to no avail!

This is why, when I got to choose between a free Dell or a free Mac, I chose a Mac. Two thirds of the college students faced with the same choice chose the Mac.

When I got to college, it felt like everyone had a Mac. Windows users are honestly a minority in my experience. With Apple's enticement (haha) of the free iPod Touch with the purchase of a laptop for college, a huge number of my friends took the plunge and got a Mac, after many years of Windows usage. The problem definitely is that Macs are seen as extremely expensive. This barrier was, in my case, solved by the fact that it was awarded to me. In the case of my friends, they knew that their Macs would last a really long time.

If Apple honestly wanted to make a case for the real frugality in buying a Mac, they would do a cost analysis between owning a Mac for a long period of time (5-7 years, eons in tech time) in comparison to using a PC. They already tried to do it, but an in depth cost analysis, beyond the cachet of having a Mac, would be far more effective with someone like me.

[Palm and Sprint did this.]

But I love my Mac. It's so fast and so functional. And I have absolutely no need to keep any icons on my desktop. My desktop is so clean and so pretty! I love the dock because of its total functionality. I was reading about optimizing my Mac through some minimalist blogs, but the only things that I took away from trying to optimize were using Dropbox, taking Bluetooth and Airport from my menubar, and deleting the one icon I had on my desktop. I tried eclipsing my menu bar, hiding my dock, using magnification on my dock, moving my dock, and darkening my dock. None of those changes stayed because I didn't like them. Darkening my dock and menubar made me a bit anxious. They aren't as pretty as the defaults. The dock edits didn't make me happy and I realized that locking the taskbar in Windows and keeping my dock up were roughly comparable. Yes, it does take up screen space, which is at a premium on my little 13-inch MacBook, but it also serves really well to make sure that I can access what I want and need. I do have to admit to not using Finder and Trash too often, but the other 5 icons on my dock are used with such frequency that if they were real buttons their colors would be gone by now. That is how well my dock is used. :)

Obviously, my transition to Mac from my Dell was a period of adjustment. I had to become accustomed to how moved around everything is in a Mac. When I found the adjustment video on the Mac, though, I was totally set.

There is only one thing that I don't like about the Mac. This is the setup of the downloads and files. It leaves something to be desired. But in view of all the other things that I love about my Mac, I will take the nasty filing system.

I went home and used my little desktop that I've left. It was so much slower than my pretty little Mac that I realized how much of my life was wasted waiting for it to do what I wanted. This is why the fidelity of a Mac user is so high. The next laptop I buy when this one dies is definitely going to be a Mac.

Re: Matthew Robson's Morgan Stanley Report

2009-10-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

Robson's Report

This report came out quite some time ago, and I only realized yesterday how much I have to say about it.

My initial reaction was that it was very silly and inaccurate. Yesterday, I realized that it was written in the UK, which is why it isn't the same as my experience.

So, I've decided to write a similar anecdotal report, US-style. This is not backed up by extensive research and is limited to my personal experience. It's unscientific and biased by my Midwestern experience. I cut out the sections of the report that I have no experience with.

Radio

Many teens listen to the radio. This may be in a car on the way to and from school. This could also be when they are studying and have alone time. There are many times when a teen will turn on the radio, especially when they don't have immediate access to a computer to use music streaming sites.

Television

Most teens watch TV but there are times when they will watch more. Girls will watch a season of a show in its entirety and be glued to the set once a week for their show, like Grey's Anatomy or The Girls Next Door. Boys like watching sports-related things as well as series like 24. When nothing of interest is on the TV, they will not watch it.

They also are switching to online viewing via Youtube and Hulu as well as networks' sites. Watching online is far more convenient than watching it on television, because it's on demand. Sitting through a 2 minutes of commercials as opposed to 16 is a no brainer. They'll still be watching their favorite show, but not on the network's schedule. This allows kids with a lot of activities (Gen Y) to still watch TV. They may come home too late or be too busy during the week to turn on the TV. They'll choose to buy the season on DVD later or watch it on their computer.

Newspapers

There aren't a lot of us who read newspapers, though a select few still choose to. We like getting our news online or on our phone. Newspapers are too inconvenient and not earth-friendly.

Internet

Most teens are very connected. Almost everybody I know has Internet at home. And even when they don't, they can go to the public library or use the school computers. Facebook is very popular, as are many other social networking sites.

This is legitimately the main source of Gen Y's information. We like to look up reviews of products before we buy them. We like to see what other people have said about a new movie before we go to see it. The best way to inform us of anything is through the Internet, where we can review as much or as little material as we like at our leisure.

When we look for anything, the first search engine we will turn to is Google. I'm old enough to remember when Google wasn't the huge figure it is today, but it's the first thing most Gen Yers will turn to when they want to know about something. When they do not have a computer or an iPhone handy, they can use ChaCha. With our unlimited texting packages, it's cheaper to use ChaCha than to surf the Internet on our phones. Data plans cost more money and ChaCha is free. Plus, unlike Google, there is a real person answering your question. So when you search using ChaCha, you will probably get a 95% relevant answer.

Directories

Teens don't use physical directories. It's far easier to use yellowpages.com when they want to know a phone number. Often, looking up a business on the Internet is a much faster way to see a business's phone number.

Music

Teens like their lives to have a soundtrack. Thanks to the iPod and other portable music players, teens can have music everywhere. They don't like to pay for it and, for this reason, will illegally download music. iTunes is incredibly successful because the government warned all of us that illegally downloading is criminal. Legally, they can also buy it off Lala or other MP3 sites.

Buying CDs is a thing of the past. It's more convenient to just have the file. It takes up no space and you don't have to hunt around the house to see where you last left it.

They may also listen to Pandora, the online radio. That way they can listen to new songs that they will like and they don't have to pay for it.

Cinema

Teens like going to the movies with friends. While movies still cost a lot, this is a good place to find a lot of teens on a Friday or Saturday night. While tickets are pricey for teens, it may be the only ready and legal source of entertainment.

Devices

Cell Phones

Most teens have cell phones and use them very often. With unlimited texting, texting messages, pictures, and video is easy and relatively cheap. We are reliant on our cell phones. When our cell phones are dead, we worry about losing contact with others and we get a little anxious. We may race to the nearest computer and put up a Facebook status saying that our cell phone died. If our cell phone is actually broken, we will set up a private Facebook group to collect phone numbers.

People with iPhones and Blackberries are very happy to use the email capabilities. For anyone with unlimited data plans, it's very easy to email on the go.

Teens don't like to buy their own cell phones. While some with jobs have the ability to buy a new shiny Blackberry, most don't. Teens with jobs may have to pay for gas and insurance, which sucks up a lot of money when a teen makes minimum wage. They will ask for cool cell phones for their birthday or any other special occasion, because a parent is better able to absorb the cost of the cell phone.

Computers:

Everyone has access to a computer. This is a gross generalization, but most teens have some sort of computer access, even if it is not at home. Most people use Windows. If they can afford it, they can and will switch to a Mac, which is less prone to viruses and breaking down. PCs are less durable than Macs and will last fewer years. There are compatibility issues between PCs and Macs, so sometimes they will have both in the house, if they have a Mac. This means that they can use the Windows version of Powerpoint for school but use a Mac for their everyday browsing, music, etc.

A special member of the dream team

2009-09-29T16:29:00.001-07:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

A special member of the dream team

View more presentations from whatidiscover.

Tyler Durden and Personal Finance

2009-09-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

Just found an awesome article starring Tyler Durden! It consists of relevant quotes from Fight Club. Check it out!

Tyler Durden's Guide to Personal Finance

Book Review: Automatic Wealth for Grads... and Anyone Else Just Starting Out

2009-08-21T16:16:00.000-07:00

Automatic Wealth for Grads... and Anyone Else Just Starting Out

by Michael Masterson

I bought this book recently from Amazon. It is really good and understandable and something that I'd recommend reading. The language speaks at the right level and there are a LOT of graphs in it to demonstrate the author's points. The only objection I have is the emphasis on real estate that he puts in. It's silly and ridiculous after the mortgage crisis.

Re: Should Everyone Make at Least $10 an Hour?

2009-07-30T21:46:00.000-07:00

Should Everyone Make at Least $10 an Hour?

That figure has been touted as the living wage. However, pushing the minimum wage up to $10 would cause serious issues. As the article mentions, it would put small businesses at risk because they may not be able to afford to pay their employees that much. It also would definitely cause inflation.

My next comment will be surprising, because I'm a young kid myself. However, teenagers and dependents in general are the ones benefitting the most from the minimum wage increase. Those who really need it won't experience serious impact and people who don't have bills get extra spending money. While this will stimulate the economy, it's probably not the objective of raising minimum wage. I was under the impression that we were trying to shoot for the American Dream, not enable spoiled kids to buy more $1500 purses.

The New Work Environment: From Office Drones to "Co-Working" With "Digital Nomads"

2009-07-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

The New Work Environment: From Office Drones to "Co-Working" With "Digital Nomads"

by Brad Tuttle

What an interesting article! It talks about how the work environment has really changed in this new age. It makes me wonder if the workplace is going to evolve even more by the time I get there!

Re: Why Do We Associate Jews With Money?

2009-07-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

Why Do We Associate Jews With Money?

by The Weakonomist

My best friend is a Jew and for half of my childhood I went to the local Jewish Community Center to work out and go to camp. Every summer I kept kosher, even when my Jewish friends didn't, and I have probably celebrated more Shabbats than the average teen of Jewish descent. (I've celebrated far more than my Jewish-by-heritage best friend.) I have had a lot of exposure to Jews and Jewish tradition even though I'm not Jewish myself.

That being said, I think this article is really interesting. I think that the Jewish tradition actually encourages healthy financial habits. While the trend for Americans is to spend all of their money, Jewish people often buck this trend and are more cautious about what they spend money on. As a result, many of them can handle money, unlike some other Americans.

I don't know if I would say that the stereotype included Jews being greedy, so I would object to that. Associating Jews with money, though, has a basis in the real world.

Re: Working with Teens: Teaching Personal Finance on a High School Level

2009-07-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

Working with Teens: Teaching Personal Finance on a High School Level

by the Weakonomist

I think that the view of the public education system in America is unnecessarily harsh. Before going into the specifics of how my experience of financial education differs from this one, I would like to disclose that I went to one of the best public school systems in the nation. Unlike many school systems, mine was honestly overfunded and the result of an extremely affluent community.

I was taught how to balance a checkbook at the age of 9; balancing a checkbook is ridiculously easy. Also, I went on a field trip to a place called Exchange City that simulated real life, where I had a job and bills to pay. I had a boss and had to learn new skills. I was also required to interview for my job position literally weeks in advance. I had to put together my own resume, which was pitifully meager at the age of 9, and act professionally during a meeting with the parents in charge of interviewing for the positions available. I made the first and second cut to be a bank manager, but lost out in the final round and ended up taking a food industry job instead. I repeated the field trip the next year but took a job with a higher salary.

Additionally, in fourth grade, I had to learn about the stock market. All of the children in my class were allotted $50,000 in hypothetical money and told to spend a week researching the companies that we wanted to invest in. Then we spend the rest of the semester tracking our stocks. We had to pay the teacher 3% commission every time that we rearranged our stocks. We also had to submit an Excel spreadsheet at the end of class every day to show the changes from the day before.

In seventh grade, I took the required Family and Consumer Science class. In FACS, we had to make a household budget for the supermarket that our teacher created. We had to plan for the needs of a family of four and buy according to plan each round. I learned the value of budgets as our money ran out when my partner and I bought a lot of candy and ran out of money for things that we actually needed.

As for the magic of compounding interest, I learned about the value of saving early in my discrete/finite class, which utilized a college textbook. This class was not in the public school system, as I went to a private high school. My parents decided that having a class size of 1,500 was detrimental to the quality of education that I received and put me in the top-ranked high school in our region. (My counterparts at the other high school never took discrete/finite. Instead, they were given the option of taking multivariate calculus.) That class was required for me and was a lot easier than geometry.

I really enjoyed reading the article and wholeheartedly agree about educating children about debt, credit cards, different types of bank accounts, and retirement accounts. All of my knowledge about those is a result of extensive personal research and I wish that I had been taught about retirement in particular in school.

Re: 7 Things You Need to Know About the Roth IRA for 2009

2009-07-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

7 Things You Need to Know About the Roth IRA for 2009

by Jeff Rose

I just discovered this blog when going through one of the carnivals on another site. This site has a lot of articles about the Roth IRA and I will go exploring soon. The writing style is refreshing with a good voice.

Re: It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's … a Cartoon Warren Buffett Teaching Kids About Finance?

2009-07-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's … a Cartoon Warren Buffett Teaching Kids About Finance?

by Brad Tuttle

This concept is simply hilarious, but I will bet that it will get a lot of media attention. It's great.

Re: The Wealthy Barber on Compound Returns

2009-07-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

The Wealthy Barber on Compound Returns

from GetRichSlowly

If you'll hearken back to my post about Trent's article about Haruki , you'll notice how I thought that Trent's advice was totally wack. This story definitely underlines the fact that you should do what most of the commenters called "front-loading" also known as saving today so that you don't have to save tomorrow. Haruki will have the ability to stop saving for retirement way before everybody else. He can make a money with compound interest. Now, I did read that article that compared Roth 401ks and Traditional 401ks that said if you had the self-discipline to invest your tax savings in a nontaxsheltered account, then you would end up with more money overall. In that article he says that he would end up with $15 million in taxable income while his friend would end up with $11 million and change tax-free. I don't know what the author thought, but $11 million tax-free that could go on to my heirs tax-free is a lot more attractive than something that they would have to pay estate or inheritance taxes on. That's why I think that the standard Traditional 401k to the company match, then Roth IRA to the max, and then 401k until the max is the best formula. I should probably mention that the 2nd time you hit the 401k, I believe that you should get a separate Roth 401k if the company offers it. You want to have a good balance between tax-deferred and tax-sheltered accounts. Depending on the company match for your traditional 401k, you should have about half and half tax-sheltered and tax-deferred to give yourself options later on.

27 Money Tips for College Students

2009-07-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

27 Money Tips for College Students

by GetRichSlowly

It details specific tips about what you should do while you're a college student. It's boring, but the tips are pretty useful.

Re: Two Ways Women Can Make More Money -- Wear Skirts and Make-up

2009-07-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

Two Ways Women Can Make More Money -- Wear Skirts and Make-up

from FreeMoneyFinance

While I wish that the business/corporate world didn't seem so chauvinistic, when reading this article I determined that it was. Really, this is shocking. What if I don't want to wear skirts and makeup in the workplace? What if I want to wear demure pantsuits and no makeup? This article answers that my salary would be lower than someone who did make the effort to wear a skirt and makeup. That is disgusting.

Re: Over-Saving for Retirement?

2009-07-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

Over-Saving for Retirement?

by Trent

I heartily disagree that you could over-save for retirement. In this article, Trent presumes that Haruki will continue to contribute an amount equal to 31% of his income to his retirement savings. Obviously, Haruki will hit a number where he realizes that he honestly doesn't have to put any more towards his retirement and that will free up a lot of his money for other things. He has his Roth IRA to put towards his house or car. If he wants to start a small business, then he can. If he saves a lot now, then his money will compound and he won't have to save later. What many personal finance sites preach is that you should save a lot and save early. That's exactly what Haruki is doing. Yes, he should build an emergency fund, but beyond that he can absolutely save for retirement. Obviously Haruki can spare that cash right now, as he is contributing it to his retirement. A lot of expenses might crop up later in life, like kids, and he may not be able to contribute to his retirement funds then. Therefore, it's much better for him to do it now, because we never know where life is going to take us.

Re: Networking: Strangers Aren’t Very Giving

2009-07-27T10:08:00.000-07:00

Networking: Strangers Aren’t Very Giving

by MLR

I enjoyed this article about networking. I certainly would make most of those common mistakes. It's a pretty comprehensive look at what you need to do as far as networking goes.

Re: The piggy bank lives on

2009-07-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

The piggy bank lives on

from Consumer Reports

Why is this news at all? Kids are taught how to save money using piggy banks in SCHOOL (or at least in my elementary school). This article seems to be informing us of common knowledge, like telling people that most cars utilize gasoline.

Re: Personal Budget Cuts and My Options

2009-07-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

Personal Budget Cuts and My Options

by Christina

Just found this one. I really like her voice and she's being realistic and honest about her expenditures. Love it. My first one was "Rape by Credit Card" and I will continue to read her blog.

Re: How to Leave a Job on Good Terms

2009-07-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

How to Leave a Job on Good Terms

From FreeMoneyFinance

Gist: Be cool about leaving, even if you totally hate your boss and the company that you're currently at. There's no point in being rude. I would recommend reading this article because there is a straight up list of specific stuff that you shouldn't do.

I advocate being open with everyone. Yes, you shouldn't just blast your company with all the things that went wrong, but I think that leaving a few major complaints in the letter of resignation is ok. You don't want to burn your bridges, it's true, but you also need to be open with the company about some factors in your leaving. At the very least, they will read about some downfalls of working at the company. Whether they rectify those issues or not is up to them. You don't want to be extremely rude or anything about the whole issue, though, so keep it to the biggest concerns.

Re: Identity Theft Hysteria Overblown, Watch Your Debit Card Instead

2009-07-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Identity Theft Hysteria Overblown, Watch Your Debit Card Instead

By Ben Popken

Article syn: There is a lot of protection for you if your identity gets stolen and someone charges up your credit cards. Your real vulnerability is your debit with a PIN. Thieves can clear out your bank account and you'd basically be up a creek sans paddle. Also, don't use P2P; that's how sensitive information can get out.

This article was pretty eye opening. I use a debit myself, as I don't have a credit card yet. It does have a PIN number, but from now on I'm going to focus on pressing credit whenever I swipe. I don't want to deal with Regulation E; Regulation Z seems a lot more friendly. Now, I am really grateful to have a LaLa account so that I don't have to deal with this P2P business.

Re: Starting Salaries Dip for the Class of ‘09

2009-07-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

Starting Salaries Dip for the Class of ‘09

by Melissa Korn

Article syn: Only 20% of seniors who applied for jobs are employed (gainfully, whatever that means). The average starting salary is down $386 this year. . Also, unemployment for people with bachelors has gone up, which is really discouraging. There have been some areas that are going up, though, so that's nice. Also, people who get employed during a recession are slower to go up the corporate ladder than people who enter at better times.

Considering how bad it could have been, I'd say that hit is a pretty small one. Yeah, this stinks, but America's grads are faring a lot better than their European counterparts. Unemployment for college grads is absolutely crazy in France and Spain. One of my French cousins actually has a job stateside; even though she has a PhD, it's hard to find a job in France. I can only hope that the job market goes up by the time that I graduate from college! If this recession continues for several years, that would be really uncomfortable.

We never know what the future brings, so we'll all just wait and see.

Scraping

2009-07-16T19:34:00.001-07:00

I follow FrugalDad on twitter, and he tweeted today about a site that's been scraping him. I honestly had no clue what "scraping" was and had to urbandictionary it. (It means to post other people's content to get more hits btw.) Oh, SEO...how you've changed all of our lives.

After learning about scraping, I went back and put a byline (or something similar if the actual name wasn't listed on the article's page) after the article link and before all of my responses to the articles I've read.

Someone posted a link to FD to help him out with the scraper and he said thanks, so I guessed it was useful. It was a link to a page of DoshDosh, a site I had never visited before. According to those rules, I don't think that I've been scraping, but I'll look into it if someone tells me that I am. All of my things start off with a link to the actual article, so I hope that's prominent enough for the other bloggers.

Re: Students: Card companies want you

2009-07-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

Re: Students: Card companies want you

By Karen Datko

Credit card pushing is going to be really heavy on campus basically. The author mentions that Karen Blumenthal wants her daughter to start building her credit history right now. Quite honestly, that's the reason I want a credit card myself. I don't need one, but my sister got declined for a card by Amex because she had absolutely no credit history. She didn't buy a car or a house and she didn't take out student loans. She was prudent and never signed up for a credit card. The result? She can't get one. I wanted to prevent that by getting a student card now, considering that I have absolutely no credit history at all.

Re: Advice for a Recent Graduate Looking for a Job

2009-07-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

Advice for a Recent Graduate Looking for a Job

by MLR

According to this post, a finance degree really isn't the greatest one to have right now. And sometimes they have to get jobs that don't actually require one. This bodes ill for me, and all I can hope is that the market picks up in the time it takes me to graduate from college.

Q. With this economy being as tough as it is, what is your advice for graduates that are looking for jobs?

Personally, I'm shooting for my MBA right after undergrad right now. That could change. But that MBA will look more attractive when I finish undergrad if the job market for finance majors continues to be abysmal.

Q. I got a Liberal Arts degree! Now what?

Go to law school. JK! You apparently have better problem-solving skills. Props to you, and have fun finding a job. I am not saying this in a derogatory manner; I may switch to a liberal arts degree myself. Employment opportunities are very different for liberal arts people though.

Q. How can I find a job that utilizes my strengths while also aligning with my personal interests?

Look for themes, he says. I don't have themes. I read and write; that's it. That's the only thing that's been consistent throughout my life. I really don't have much more to say.

Re: Top Interview Blunders

2009-07-16T18:06:00.000-07:00

Top Interview Blunders

by MLR

The Casual Luncher:

Seriously? Have a sense of humor about the situation. The guy didn't have time to eat. Yeah, he shouldn't have done it, but chill, dude.

The Trash Talker:

I can totally see myself getting really nervous and just spewing out all of my thoughts on my previous company. A bad move to make, but it's easy to do.

The Money Grubber:

Asking about money is ok, I thought. I thought that you were supposed to get those things out in the open at the job interview. Apparently, for this recruiter, that was a no.

The Lady of the Night:

But you considered her, that's the thing. When House tells Cameron that he hired her because she's nice to look at, she was really indignant. He said that it was like having a nice piece of artwork in the lobby. Yes, women should not be objectified, and you could have asked her to wear something more appropriate in the future, but you penalized her for wearing what you think is a short skirt?

Beyond the lunch thing, I can see myself making these mistakes. I'm not a hooker, but sometimes my nice clothing emphasizes my assets and I've never thought that being attractive was a bad thing. Granted, this lady decided to go a bit overboard, so it's understandable that she never got a call-back. However, these HUGE mistakes are easy enough to make and I wish that these young ladies had practiced this portion of the interview beforehand.

Re: A New Era of Personal Finance

2009-07-16T17:52:00.000-07:00

A New Era of Personal Finance

by Alan Schram

Housing:

Alan Schram argues that the money you put into your mortgage would be better spent invested. If you rent and your roof springs a leak, your landlord is responsible for it. If you have a house, you have to deal with the maintenance. It's just easier when you live a big city to rent. He's from Vancouver, and that's fine. I'm from the Midwest and living in an apartment is too noisy for me. Renting a house wouldn't be too bad though.

Salary:

He says that his dad used to be the breadwinner and his mom would sometimes work, but mostly raised the kids. My mother and father have always been working full-time, so I expect that I and my husband will work. Before the kids hit preschool, though, I want to spend time with them.

Cost of Living:

Yeah, it's up. I really can't give up my internet connection or my phone bill. I'd honestly rather live on Ramen (I absolutely hate the stuff, by the way) than give up my cell phone. It's just too important to me. I'm spoiled, and I know it. My cell phone bill will be a constant when I grow up, so I'm hoping that I can sustain myself even though it costs me a lot.

I don't know what's coming, but I know that prices will be inflated, which is why it's best to invest early. Some of the things our parents learned as 20somethings will no longer apply to us. So, keep your own counsel.

Re: How Much Money Do You Really Spend?

2009-07-16T17:22:00.000-07:00

How Much Money Do You Really Spend?

from blog.loanio.com

You've got to take a comprehensive look at everything that you've spent, not just the bills you pay.

Common issues:

1. Eating out.

How much we spent eating out was a big surprise for my sister and me when we looked at our bank accounts. This is why I love mint.com. I could look at my eating out expenditures easily and it makes graphs for you! I spent 58% of my expenditures on food. Yikes! This is an easy way to spend money. Cut back by chilling with some cheese and baguette outside. The ambience is awesome. ;)

2. Recurring subscriptions.

Just don't do it. You have these cool 7-day trials of something for free. Then they start charging you 14.95 a month. When you're like me and you have no income, just support from your parents, 14.95 in hidden membership fees (or whatever they are) is A LOT. Cancel those as soon as you catch them and try really hard not to get caught in this trap.

3. Superfluous items.

So you were standing in the checkout line, pushing your cart, and you saw a huge bag of Gummi Bears. You think to yourself, "Hey. I haven't had Gummi Bears in 5 years. Why don't I buy some? Gummi Bears used to be my fave candy when I was little." Next thing you know, you've spent money on overpriced Gummi Bears. If you really wanted Gummi Bears, you could have bought them at a cheaper price in the candy aisle. But you impulse bought and you paid more. Shame!

15 Low Cost Ways to Beat Stress

2009-07-16T17:20:00.001-07:00

15 Low Cost Ways to Beat Stress

by Frugal Duchess

I don't have a response to this; it's an amazing, self-explanatory article. Read it; it's well-written and thoughtful. She's so cool.

Re: Budgeting 101 – Why Budgets Fail

2009-07-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

Budgeting 101 – Why Budgets Fail

from Kyle from suburbandollar.com

They do for a variety of reasons.

What I'm taking away from this article is that it's really, really important to be chill about the whole budget deal. Like, it IS a diet, albeit a financial one. That's cool, you know, whatever. You cheat on diets sometimes and then you feel really discouraged. You cheat on your budget and you plunge yourself into debt. It's better not to cheat on it, but it's understandable if you do. So basically make a budget as often as you need to. He says something in here about knowing people who make weekly budgets, and that's fine.

Personally, I'll be making budgets for every paycheck and/or month. Again, I don't know yet, as I don't have a job.

Another thing about budgeting that we can all do is automatic online bill pay. This is fantastic for your fixed expenses. Once I have actual bills, then I will definitely automate my bill pay. I don't want to deal with the envelopes and the stamps like my mom does. It seems SO much simpler and faster to do it online. Thank goodness Chase, my bank, gives this service to me for free!

Don't get too discouraged if you go over budget. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go at it again.

Re: How To Improve Your Productivity When Working From Home

2009-07-16T16:51:00.000-07:00

How To Improve Your Productivity When Working From Home

by Kyle from suburbandollar.com

1. Designate a space.

Honestly? This pretty much goes without saying. Everybody wants to have that one spot. Plus, you can get home office tax...stuff. You can deduct some of your home expenses if you have an office at home. How cool is that? Very.

2. Declutter.

Again, goes without saying. If you aren't organized, you lose productivity cuz you can't find your stuff. A no-brainer when it comes to what you have to do when you work from home.

3. Your kids have got to go.

My cousin is a computer programmer (or something) and he works from home in a back office with the latest in tech. That's awesome, but he also sometimes keeps his little boy at home instead of taking him to preschool. It's hard to concentrate when you have a munchkin around, so you should get someone else to take care of the kids.

4. Plan your day.

I live a highly structured life; it's my only way to be productive. If I schedule something, I generally do it. I do try a put things off quite frequently though. I can't help it; I don't like doing unpleasant tasks.

5. Take regular breaks, time yourself.

Plenty of people get really intense when they get wrapped up in their work. The average telecommuter works something like 3 hours more per week than the person in the office. I am not sure why this is, but it's true. Chill for like 15 minutes every few hours and give your eyes a break from the computer screen.

6. Remove distractions.

This also goes without saying. Actually, kids should be in this category as well. I don't know why Kyle has this and the kid thing seperate, but whatever. Ally Carter has also talked about this, as she works at home. That's why she types up her first bits on her Alphasmart and, when she works on the computer, makes sure that she doesn't have Internet access during her normal working hours. (I wish that she, as an excellent writer and possessor of a masters in economics, would post a money blog. That would be awesome.)

Have fun working at home. These rules will probably apply when I get a job, as I fully intend to telecommute some days of the week. I also plan on having a short commute to work, though, so a home office might be surplus to requirements. We'll see when I get a job.

Re:10 investing basics from Buffett

2009-07-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

10 investing basics from Buffett

by Michael Brush

This is a quick tour of some of Warren Buffett's thoughts. It's a pretty decent article, so I'd like to comment on the thoughts that both and Buffett have in this article.

1. Be frugal.

In their words: Brush points out that Buffett doesn't live expensively. Brush stated, "Buffett lives in the same modest house in Omaha, Neb., that he bought more than five decades ago. He drives his own car."

Mine: That's pretty cool for one of the richest men in the world. By not spending his money, he's earned quite a bit. I like that idea.

2. Wait for the "fat pitch."

In their words: Don't constantly buy or sell stocks is the lesson here. Buffett doesn't just trade around everything. He waits for the opportunities that are worth it.

Mine: I think everybody's been guilty of trying to have their finger in every pot. You are afraid when your stock declines and would prefer to invest it in another stock that is gently climbing. Don't move your stuff around too much; it's better to lie in wait.

3. Be a contrarian.

In their words: Don't do what other people do. When other people snap up shares, don't. When they don't, do.

Mine: This is the way to catch what other people leave behind. If a Pixar movie tanks and everyone thinks that Pixar is going to die, snap up the highly discounted stocks and laugh when the Pixar stocks go right back up. That's hypothetically speaking of course...

4. Stick with what you know.

In their words: If you don't understand what the company does or produces, don't invest in it.

Mine: That's pretty standard. If I didn't understand what was going on, why would I invest my money in it?

5. Don't depend on others to say you're right.

In their words: If everyone knew about the stock, it wouldn't be cheap. Buffett makes his money buying what Brush calls "value stocks."

Mine: This goes with not following the crowd. I want to make my own decisions when it comes to stocks, not depend on other people's advice.

6. Buy companies cheap.

In their words: He looks comprehensively at the company. If he likes it, he buys it.

Mine: I really have no experience in buying companies. No comment.

7. Look for companies with economic moats.

In their words: Coke, for example, is hard to compete with. Companies like Eli Lilly with medicinal patents are hard to compete with. Look for companies that have that kind of security for their products.

Mine: This is a no-brainer. Would you take stock in a high risk company that's going to fall to their competitors tomorrow? No. You want some measure of security.

8. Buy big, concentrated positions.

In their words: When you get a big earner, you earn big. That's the basic gist of what they're saying.

Mine: It is really risky to sink all your money into one spot, but risking it has paid off for Buffett. Obviously, you should sink your money into a spot that you've analyzed and determined is safe or relatively secure by your own standards.

9. Hold for life.

In their words: He doesn't let go of stock, basically.

Mine: Life is a really, really long time to hold something. Just saying.

10. Believe in America

In their words: Buffett said, "These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records five, 10 and 20 years from now."

Mine: That's pretty true. Be sure of what we've got, because we definitely will come back from this.

I liked these investing basics; they are easy to understand and follow. I don't know if I'll personally utilize all of them, but I will incorporate some of them into my investing strategy.

Re: Four Questions to Test Retirement Readiness

2009-07-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

Four Questions to Test Retirement Readiness

by Philip Moeller at US News

I actually got to this article through freemoneyfinance.com's article "What I Plan To Do During Retirement" and I thought the four questions from US News were good, so I'd like to answer them myself.

The four questions are:

1. What is your vision for retirement?

2. When would you like to retire?

3. Where will you live?

4. What are your income sources in retirement?

The reason why I'm responding to the original article instead of freemoneyfinance's is because that post is geared to an older audience while the questions themselves are more general.

Here are my responses:

1. Chill. Read. Maybe start cooking. Volunteer. Travel. They say that you can get really bored in retirement because you're not stimulated like before. I can personally attest to that; plenty of people who I've seen hit retirement go crazy after a while because they have nothing to do. I don't want to get bored and will try to do something with my time when I hit retirement. This may mean picking up a light part-time job. I don't know, because I have no clue where I'm going to be when I hit retirement age. I don't know if I'll be married or not at this point. There are a lot of different things that could happen to me between now and 2081, so I really can't say what I'll long for in the future. Maybe I'll suddenly have the urge to buy a vineyard in southern France and make wine. Perhaps I'll brush up on my languages and travel around Europe. I don't know what I'll want to do when I get there yet.

2. I'd like to retire when work becomes a burden and I can survive without that income. I'm sure that work could become a burden at age 30, but the second half of that statement is also important. Ideally, I'd work for longer, because I want to make sure that my descendants are cared for, but I don't know now how my life is going to pan out.

3. Somewhere where the cost of living isn't too high and I can go on long walks. This means that I probably won't settle during my retirement at a huge metropolitan area like Los Angeles or New York. I live in the Midwest now and will probably retire here. The pace of life is slower.

4. As a young investor, I can put most of my cash into stocks right now. When I go to retirement, I'll transition that money into things like bonds and other investments that are more secure than stocks. It would be terrible if the stock market crashed when I was older and my retirement savings disappeared. I'd get a deferred annuity at some point. The annuity would not be aimed at covering all of my living expenses; its purpose would be to ensure that I had a steady number when it came to my income. It would be my jumping-off point. I'll have my 401k and a Roth IRA just like everyone else. If I can't afford to travel around Europe, then I won't. I'm content with a book in hand or a computer and a quiet environment. I don't need to spend a lot of money to be happy.

Re: What If You Don’t Plan to Retire? Save Anyhow!

2009-07-16T14:21:00.000-07:00

What If You Don’t Plan to Retire? Save Anyhow!

by Robert Brokamp in a guest post at getrichslowly.org

This post from Brokamp was pretty compelling. I watched my dad retire after working from graduation from college in the old country to age 56. He would never have stopped working had it not been for the Ford buyout, but it happened at a convenient time for him. His health was going down the tubes and his sister and brother-in-law died in a 30-day period. Retirement can come unexpectedly. He had to adjust to an annual payment of about 22% of his former income. Planning ahead for retirement is never a bad thing. If you decide to keep working, the retirement funds can still be useful. You'll be able to fund your grandchildren's college fees, like the grandparents of some of my friends, or have the excess money to provide start-up capital for a new business venture. Having excess cash around is never a bad thing. Save when you're younger so that you can relax a bit when you're older.

Re: Frugality's Sacred Cows

2009-07-16T14:02:00.000-07:00

Frugality's Sacred Cows

by Trent from thesimpledollar.com

His post is primarily about the definition of frugality. As defined by Trent's article in the hook, frugality is "getting the maximum value for your dollar while living squarely within your means." He gives a some solid examples of the difference between being cheap and being frugal. The real message is that there are no absolutes; everybody's situation is different.

I really liked this post. What Trent says in layman's terms is that the utility you derive per dollar sometimes is actually higher with more expensive products. His example of this is with trashbags. Bags that break and spill garbage all over the floor, though they are cheap, are not really useful. It is far better to pay a little more for a bag that you can actually use. This goes for everything: shoes, clothing, computers, etc.

I freely admit to going on shopping sprees and I haven't been frugal in the past. This behavior is somewhat nurtured in teenage girls. They have few living expenses and all of their income is disposable. They like to spend what they have because their future is generally secured and they don't need to save it. I have dropped $160 on a pair of distressed (ripped up and acid washed) jeans only to go through a growth spurt and not have them fit me. It happens and you learn from it, like I did.

A purchase that went the opposite way what I affectionately call my bumblebee coat. My mother was concerned that my jacket, bought in the fall, wasn't really enough in the heavy snow, as it got soaked. So she dragged me, kicking and screaming (realistically? complaining and texting), to a sporting goods store where we browsed the waterproof winter coats. I bought an enormous one that I absolutely love. It's my bumblebee coat because it's black and yellow. It also bulks up my shape so that I look like an artist's conception of a bumblebee. It's cute and I will wear it for many winters to come, because I love my bumblebee coat to bits. It was on sale, about 60% off, and worth every penny.

Big Finance Blog Reader

2009-07-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

I tend to comment quite frequently on a lot of blogs, so I supposed that I could compile all my thoughts into one place. I'm a college kid, and I don't have experience like a lot of other bloggers. I don't have massive credit card debt because I don't even have a credit card yet. I don't have student loans because my school was incredibly generous when it gave me scholarships. I don't have a car because I don't need one and thus have no car loans. The same goes for a house. I don't have many of the concerns that other financial bloggers talk about, so the stuff on the other sites that apply to my current life and lifestyle are pretty limited. I don't have a portfolio. This site is just meant to be a reflection on other personal finance blogs. I read at least 50 finance articles a day and figured that I could post some of my thoughts up. I'm not an expert, but I can provide a college kid's perspective on a lot of the issues that crop up on the other sites. I may indulge in some hypotheticals, especially about houses, kids, and cars, as most, if not all, college students think that at least some of those are in their future.

Have fun reading my blog!