Search results for college
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Posted
Jan 17 2008, 11:29 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Paul Navone is one of those quiet millionaires next door. His friends had no idea he had money until he started giving it away -- $1 million to a college and another $1 million to a prep school. The 78-year-old retiree never made more than $11 an hour while working in the New Jersey mills, according to a story by Joe Logan in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and to this day Navone buys his clothing at thrift stores, and doesn't have a TV or a phone.
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Posted
Mar 21 2008, 12:24 PM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
A little cleaning can save dollars along with your sanity. That's what Smart Spending message board reader "Lynn D" says, anyway. In a thread called "Making home a haven," the grad student notes that her formerly crowded condo made her feel "stressed and boxed in," which led to her wanting to go out, which led to her spending money. At first, she tried to combat the tendency by spending more money -- on storage bins, hooks, an entertainment center and other things allegedly designed to help. Finally, Lynn D figured out the real problem: "I needed to get rid of (junk)!" Now she finds herself staying at home more, whether it's to do her nails or watch a movie on a couch no longer littered with papers and books. Lynn D admits to another savings, too: She no longer has to buy things she already owns but couldn't find in all the clutter.
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Posted
Jan 17 2008, 07:04 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Filed under: college, debt, marriage, The Dough Roller, student loans, children, getting started, stocks, mutual funds, frugal, cars
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller. The best thing about being 40 is having survived your 20s and 30s. And at 40, I'm considered an old-timer in the personal-finance blogging community. Reflecting back on the past 20 years, I realize that I've learned a thing or two that I wish (oh, how I wish) I had known when I was 20. Here they are, in no particular order: School loans are like a bad date -- easy to get, but hard to get rid of. At 40, I still have more than $20,000 in school loans. Education is important, but I spent far more money during school than I needed to spend. Compounding, like the 1970s Big Red Machine, is pure magic. Assuming you retire at 65 and earn a 10% return on your investments, $1 invested when you're 20 will be worth 2.5 times more than $1 invested when you're 30, 6.5 times more than $1 invested when you're 40, and 18 times more than $1 invested when you're 50.
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Posted
Jan 21 2008, 10:33 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Last summer I found a cast-iron skillet in the "free" box at a yard sale. It was slightly rusty, but a little steel wool took care of that. I'd wanted an iron skillet and had been keeping my eye out for an affordable one. What's more affordable than free?
Never having cooked in cast iron before, I'm really enjoying this pan. It's as useful as I'd hoped it would be. Having a new kitchen tool makes me happy.
Betsy Teutsch, who writes the Money Changes Things blog, had the same kind of skillet epiphany, except hers was a Teflon pan from the supermarket.
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Posted
Feb 27 2008, 07:11 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
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
May 30 2008, 09:45 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Recently a tenant moved out of the apartment building I manage. During the final walk-through I saw that she'd left behind a wall-mounted spice rack, a shelf-and-cabinet unit in the bathroom and a wheeled kitchen cart. She told me her fiancé had all the household items they needed. If no one wanted those things, they could just be thrown away.
I love my new kitchen cart.
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Posted
Oct 08 2008, 04:48 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller.
Regret over past financial decisions can have a powerful hold on you.
At 23, you may regret running up $20,000 in credit card debt during college. At 35, you may regret never having gone to college. At 45, you may regret having never started that consulting business you always dreamed of pursing. And at 65, you may regret not having saved more for retirement. In recent days, many financial chickens have come home to roost.
Regret, financial or otherwise, can have a powerful grip on your life. For most, the question is not whether you have financial regret. The question is how you harness the power of that regret to make sound financial decisions today that you will not regret tomorrow.
Here are some ideas to help you do just that:
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Posted
Dec 07 2007, 06:40 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar. Over my son’s life, he’s received numerous gifts from me and my wife, his grandparents, and his aunts and uncles. We have many toys he doesn't regularly play with, so we’ve given a few away and have some in storage so we can rotate them monthly, giving him the enjoyment of having “new” toys to play with. His second birthday is approaching, and we’ve been thinking about what sorts of gifts are appropriate for him. What would he enjoy at this age? The surprising answer is that almost everything he indicates an interest in is very inexpensive.
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Posted
Jul 20 2009, 11:11 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from "vh" at Funny about Money.
Tina, my associate editor on the day job and my moonlight business partner, sent a link to this interesting discussion. The main post itself has several links to relevant, equally interesting posts and conversations.
Given the astonishing burden of student loans that too many young people are saddled with -- my son's roommate's girlfriend, for example, remarked that she will graduate from a top-quality institution with a master's degree in international business and $1,400-a-month student loan payments -- assessing the "value" of graduate education is not a crass or pointless exercise.
It's well and good to love learning for learning's sake and so to feel that the graduate school experience is irrelevant to one's vocational prospects. However, once that graduate school experience ends, you still have to pay for it. You still have to keep a roof over your head, put food on your table, and foot the considerable cost of raising a family. When young people are saddled with five- and six-figure student loan debt, they should reasonably expect the financial investment in graduate education to pay off with jobs that will support them.
That, unfortunately, is too often not the case.
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Posted
Jun 05 2009, 03:58 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Just the other day, we were thinking it might be time to brush up on advanced complexity theory. And because we're expanding our vegetable garden, knowing more about soil mechanics might help. (Well, maybe not because we haven't taken the prerequisites.)
And in case we've forgotten about the particular charms and indignities of aging, we can take free courses on that too, courtesy of Johns Hopkins.
If you have knowledge gaps you want to fill, you can do it online -- for free. To help you find a particular topic, UniversitiesandColleges.org is building "The master list of free online college courses." Feel free to let them know of courses that don't yet appear.
We had no idea how engaging these free online courses could be until we checked out a few on this massive list.
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