Stop Dismissing Higher Education! It's Well Worth It

I've recently read a lot articles and blog posts relating to higher education. Everything seems to come back to the point of whether it's worth it to go to college or not. Many argue that due to the Great Recession and skyrocketing cost of higher education, a lot of college graduates are stuck with loads and loads of student loans while they can't find or hold down a good job.

It's true that employment opportunities are currently not what they use to be, but that's no reason to dismiss going to college altogether. Instead, it provides a chance for us to rethink what a college education means. On an individual basis, a careful cost/benefit analysis needs to be done when choosing a school. Nationally, though, we should bring attention to studies and debates to find ways to keep costs down.

Besides, why are we talking about less education when the rest of the world is becoming increasingly more educated? In a lot of countries, a bachelor’s degree is no longer enough. People are getting masters and Ph.Ds. in order to get jobs. On top of that, globalization means that we won't only be competing for jobs here in the U.S., we'll have to compete with those people with graduate degrees from other countries in the future (it's already happening now), whether we like it or not.

My Health/Spending Dilemma

Remember the boot camp that inspired a "buddy system" post a while back? Well, I'm finishing up week 3, and it's no joke. The trainer leads the class through drill after drill for about an hour, four days a week. Classes are fun, the people are encouraging, and I'm definitely seeing results, which is much more than I can say for other things I've tried.

Let me give you a little bit of background, first. At the end of my first year in college, the freshman 15 turned into more of a freshman 30. I tried exercising and dieting every year during break, but couldn't really get my weight down due to stress, work load, and all of the crap I feed my body daily. It became my goal after graduation to get back into shape and maintain a healthy weight. I lost all of the 30 pounds I gained and am less than 10lbs away from my weight goal. That's great and all...but I hit a wall in the fall of 2009. My weight's been fluctuating around the same place ever since.

Is Your Information Secure? Technology's Not Perfect

I've been told that for someone who works as an engineer, I'm pretty hostile towards technology. I don't like feeling like a guinea pig, so I'm rarely an early adaptor to new devices. This isn't because I'm not excited about innovation or not curious about how they work. Rather, my hostility stems from a general skepticism about how increasingly "perfect" each invention seems to become. Yes, improvements are inevitable, but I also believe that a small amount of distrust is healthy. Anyway you put it, technologies are created by humans and we are hardly perfect beings.

From my experience, during the conception of a product, there are numerous factors to be considered before it can be put into the hands of consumers (think BETA versions). Even then, mistakes or problems that haven't been considered before often come up. This can be said about almost anything: software, computers, smartphones, etc.

This is the major reason why, despite the benefit of convenience, I haven't started doing mobile banking or use online bank account consolidation/budget managing websites. Yes, you heard right. I'm pretty old school when it comes to finances. Besides online banking and one android app where I log discretionary spending, technology plays a minimal part in money handling for me. (It's pretty ironic that my credit card was still charged fraudulently a few weeks ago…)

Keeping Up With Multiple Bank Accounts

I'm kind of crazy about "free" money. Really. Whenever I get those flyers in the mail to receive bonus cash for opening an account, I get super pumped. If you remember, I even wrote a post about Chase's offers. Needless to say, when I saw a "bonus $100" for opening an account at select branches of Union Bank earlier this month, it was hard to resist. Of course, I was careful about reading the small prints to see whether I'm actually qualified and capable of not being penalized. So this past Saturday, I braved the rain and made the 20 minute drive a couple of cities over to open an account.

Up until last September, besides a 12 month CD with Citi, I banked exclusively with Bank of America. Now that I'm accumulating these accounts, I think it's time start getting more organized. I don't think it's reasonable for me to just rely on memory anymore.

Groupon Mania – Deal or No Deal?

Groupon's been all the buzz recently. Within the last few months, it turned down a $3 billion buyout offer from Yahoo! as well as Google's $6 billion offer. Not such a wise decision if you ask me, the company’s business model can be easily imitated by others, in fact, it already has. Numerous websites have popped up within the last year or so offering local deals. Of course, to add insult to injury, Groupon made 3 terrible (not to mention insensitive) Super Bowl ads. Bad move, especially with a pending $15 billion IPO.

Okay, enough of me giving them business advice that I'm clearly not qualified to do. For now, I'd like to believe the executives at Groupon have some special secret no-fail business plan that the rest of us can't even dream of.

Anyways, I have been on the Groupon train since 2009. When I first started, Groupon wasn’t getting all of the media attention it’s getting now, and like most people, I thought it was a very unique concept. Not only are the discounts generous, the element of supporting local businesses is a huge plus. It’s a great site to discover small local mom and pop places. In fact, my first purchase was to a restaurant that I had been dying to try. Awesome, right? In a blink of an eye, I joined Living Social (now backed by Amazon), DealOn, and BloomSpot. Sites like Yelp, Gilt, and Active.com , which I was already a part of, began to issue exclusive deals to members, too.

How to Deal with Credit Card Fraud - Part 2

I finally got a replacement credit card today! If you didn't know, I got a credit card fraud alert call from Bank of America more than a week ago telling me that they had declined a charge for a purchase in New Jersey due to suspicious activity (I was home in California when the card was charged). I called the activation number thinking that it would be a 2 minute process of pressing buttons, but i was dead wrong.

After typing in the last four digits of my new card, the robot directed to wait to “speak to the next available representative” who’ll be right with me. Right…I waited for almost 10 minutes. Either they're trying to vamp up their customer service, push new "promotions," or get market research data, I got a live person on the other side of the line. Bank of America, if you plan on starting to charge fees to customers, you should really think about cutting down on live person credit card activation. The rep. chatted me up on the benefits of the card (which I’m well aware of) and tried to dig deeper into my spending habits.

Steps to Opening a Deposit Account

This is the 1st post in the Bank Deposit Account 101 series. 

It’s Valentine’s Day! So of course I’m going to bring up the extremely sexy topic of opening up a deposit account! Disagree with the sexiness of the topic? Well, let’s put it this way, a bank account (credit union, too, but for simplification, I’ll refer to everything as “bank”), if used correctly, acts as a tool to accumulate wealth. And money is super sexy. Below are some steps you will (or should) take when opening an account:

Research, Research, Reaserach! 

You can ask around to see what the best bank account is out there, but you must remember to at least look into it a little bit yourself. There are some traits to an account that everyone agrees are good, but there are also some others that have to be assessed on an individual basis. Some examples of these characteristics are: the amount you can put into the account, convenience, and the length of time you plan on keeping an account open. Be sure to consider these features carefully and weigh their importance to you before choosing a bank to open your account in. 

Once you’ve chosen a banking institution, you can proceed to opening an account. For a lot of banks, you’ll have the option of opening an account online or in person. If this is your first time opening a bank account, I suggest that you go to the bank (unless it’s an online bank without physical locations).