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Posted
May 12 2008, 12:04 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
"Money Smart Life" remembers the forced frugality of college: beans and rice, water on cereal because milk is too pricey, buying the cheapest beer, no matter how awful the taste. He also knows how newly employed graduates are tempted to spend. For them, he recounts the tale of the guy who went to an all-you-can-eat buffet after spending four years stranded on a desert island: He goes into shock and almost dies because his appetite wrote a check that his stomach couldn't cash. "Of course you won't die from overspending, but you can literally kill your financial future for years to come if you go on a buying binge," Money Smart Life writes in this down-to-earth post.
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Posted
May 02 2008, 01:10 PM
by
Karen Datko
Freedom awaits, new high school graduates. After all, "the world is your oyster, and who doesn't like oysters," says brip blap's Steve, a thoughtful guy and somewhat of a jokester. But so does the boogeyman: You'll have to start paying for all the stuff parental units used to take care of. "Yes, of course, the luxuries of shoes, Wiis, ironically detached rock band T-shirts and overpriced notebook computers used primarily for Facebook, but also items you didn't realize were so horribly expensive while Pops was paying for them -- milk, cell phone bills, iTune downloads," Steve says. Steve's 10 tips can help you find your way as you embark on a college career.
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Posted
Apr 04 2008, 02:24 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
This post comes from Joseph S. Enoch at partner blog ConsumerAffairs.com. The National Collegiate Athletics Association has implemented a ticketing practice that requires consumers to pay money just for the opportunity enter a lottery for the much-coveted men's and women's basketball tournament tickets. The NCAA charges consumers a nonrefundable "service charge" that goes as high as $9 per ticket just to enter a competitive lottery, according to application forms for the 2009 men's and women's tournaments. Ticket applications for the early rounds for next year's men's basketball tournaments were due March 1 and required the consumer to pay about $200 plus a $9 service charge for each ticket. Consumers can apply for as many as eight tickets. The NCAA will sit on all that money before finally drawing applications in June. If a consumer's application is drawn, he or she will receive the tickets they paid for back in March. If not, they will receive a refund for the tickets while the NCAA keeps the service charge -- as much as $72 total -- and presumably all the interest earned in the meantime.
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Posted
Feb 27 2008, 07:11 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
RacerX remembers the college experience: You get a credit card and "probably then only use the card for emergencies -- no pizza or beer left in the house! Taking our girlfriend out! Maybe even rent once or twice," he writes. Since you know nothing about finances, you get a second credit card to make payments on the first, and so the cycle goes. His kids won't be like that, he says. Why? Because he and Mrs. X have decided they're not paying for their kids' college education. Why not? you ask. Because every kid they know who went to college "on the parent express" left school unprepared for life -- and sometimes didn't even graduate. "They took basket weaving and Klingon 301," he writes at Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Money. "They never worked the menial jobs that give you an appreciation for honest work, honest wages."
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Posted
Feb 13 2008, 03:53 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
On the plus side, college sophomore Bill Box earns $200 a month delivering pizza, and his grandmother gives him $100 a semester if he's not flunking out. On the minus side, he owes $1,200 on credit cards, mostly for cigarettes and alcohol, and $12,000 so far in student loans. He lives in a dorm, has a meal plan and buys books at the college bookstore. Bill doesn't know it, but he's already on the highway to debt hell. Fortunately, he's about to get some tough love from fellow student Patrick at SchoolisHard.com. "College students are notorious for living outside of their means," writes Patrick in a post called "Make a debt-free college budget." "I know you are broke, but go cry to that shiny new Nintendo instead of me."
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Posted
Nov 05 2007, 08:20 AM
by
Karen Datko
Pardon us while we get a broom. Our hair literally fell out when we read Stacking Pennies ' post about co-signing a family member's loans . She agreed to co-sign student loans for her sister (whose own credit had been damaged by past financial choices) and unwisely allowed the sister to sign Pennies' name on the loan documents. Thus, it was a total surprise when Pennies learned she is obligated to pay off $23,000 in loans if her sister does not make good on the debt. This is a touching story about a sister's desire to help and a wake-up call for anyone considering the same decision . You can go only so far to save other people from their own mistakes. Pennies says she regrets co-signing the loans. "But it is family, and it is money for education, and it is hard for me to turn my back on that," she writes. We can only hope this works out for the best.
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Posted
Sep 27 2007, 11:27 AM
by
Karen Datko
This post comes from partner blog Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. My first credit card was an AT&T Universal card that I received after filling out an application outside of Doherty Hall on the campus of the esteemed Carnegie Mellon University. I applied because the guy was giving away T-shirts with funny slogans, and I thought it was a great way to get a funny T-shirt, right? Luckily for me, the whole setup was 100 percent legitimate, since it’s now been eight years and my identity wasn’t stolen. But how many of those similarly set up operations aren’t legitimate? It’s a fantastic way to capture a ton of information in a short period of time from unsuspecting victims who likely aren’t even aware that identity theft happens. Let’s say that the person accepting applications is entirely legitimate and he personally won’t run off with your information. What’s to say someone doesn’t mug him on his way home or break into his car and steal all that information? If you think of all the recent data breaches involving theft of credit card numbers, the thieves didn’t break into the store or credit card company databases, they broke into the processors’ databases.
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