I love a good garage sale, and I frequently shop at my favorite local thrift store. When is it good to buy used, and when is it bad?
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Three Things Your Teen Should Do Instead of Working a Low-Wage Job
Thanks to my experience working low-wage jobs, my husband and I are going to ask our 13-year-old to follow a different path than I did. Rather than working at dead end jobs available to most teens, my husband and I want him to focus on other activities. Read this post to find out which activities and why!
8 Wedding Gifts That Newlyweds Will Really Use
For some help in picking just the right wedding gift, consider these hard-to-fail ideas for wedding gifts the lovely couple will cherish forever…
Getting Lifestyle Creep Under Control
Have you ever wondered why you are still short at the end of the month, in spite of that raise or promotion at work? You may be suffering from lifestyle creep. Read more in this post!
Small Moves You Can Make That Will Add Up to Big Financial Changes
Often, it is the small changes that add up to big results. Here are seven small changes you can make in your life that will add up to a big improvement in your overall financial health…
Organize Your Financial Life With This Money Road Map
Are your finances in the shape you’d like them to be? Or, are they a disaster that you’d like to clean up as soon as possible?
How to Help Your Kids Develop Respect for Money
How can we as parents help our kids to understand and value money so that they don’t head the way of so many who are deep in debt? This post explores some of my ideas!
Securing An Internship (And The Best Companies For Them)
The following is a post by MPFJ staff writer, Toi Williams, who is a professional finance blogger for MarketBeat. She has backgrounds in personal finance, sales, and real estate.
For many students and graduates, the pathway to employment starts with landing the right internship. An internship is program offered by an employer to potential employees that allow interns to work either part time or full time at a company for a certain period of time. The Random House Dictionary defines an internship as:
“Any official or formal program to provide practical experience for beginners in an occupation or profession.”
Internships are an essential pipeline for talent for employers and a great steppingstone for students. Many students try to do a few internships throughout college to get a feel for what career they’d like to pursue. Internships are most popular with undergraduates or graduate students who work between one to four months.
Internships allow you to experiment with a career that interests you. Most American internships are work experience internships. There are also research internships, which are more common in scientific fields. Some internships offer college credit for the successful completion of the program.
Internships can be paid or unpaid. Paid internships for college students are less common than unpaid internships. Unpaid internships are usually subject to stringent labor guidelines. U.S. federal law mandates that unpaid interns must not be used to displace the work done by paid employees or benefit the company economically. Some states have additional laws that govern the activities of unpaid interns.
Just about any internship program would be a good entry on your resume, a great way to gain references, and help you with networking. You’re not bound to work for your employer after the internship is over. However, a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers that polled U.S. employers with interns found nearly 7 out of 10 internships result in a full time job offer after successful completion of the program.
If you’re hoping to change geographic location for your internship, there are some things to keep in mind. The first is where you will live during your time with the company. Some internship programs offer housing to students or include a stipend for housing and expenses. Others have developed some financially accessible options so their interns can focus on doing the job rather than worrying about their housing. Make sure you know where you will be living before you make your choice.
Today, employers are being a lot more specific about the skills they need from their interns. These days, interns at some of America’s most popular companies are responsible for a wide range of high level projects. Many companies use their internships as trial runs for potential hires or future promotions. Law firms and investment banks have operated like this decades.
According to a new report by jobs site Glassdoor, the 25 best-paying companies for internships generally pay their interns a median of more than $4,500 a month. Those companies are all generally pay their workforces well above average wages. The intern programs at Facebook, Google, and many of the other Silicon Valley companies on the list are notoriously competitive and challenging, somewhat justifying the higher pay.
Topping Glassdoor’s list is Facebook, with a median pay for interns at $8,000 a month. Microsoft was next, with a median pay of $7,100 a month. The rest of the list is as follows:
• ExxonMobil ($6,507)
• Salesforce ($6,450)
• Amazon ($6,400)
• Apple ($6,400)
• Bloomberg LP ($6,400)
• Yelp ($6,400)
• Yahoo ($6,080)
• VMWare ($6,080)
• Google ($6,000)
• NVIDIA ($5,770)
• Intuit ($5,440)
• Juniper Networks ($5,440)
• Workday ($5,440)
• BlackRock ($5,400)
• Adobe ($5,120)
• MathWorks ($5,120)
• Qualcomm ($5,040)
• Capital One ($5,000)
• Chevron ($5,000)
• Accenture ($4,960)
• Deutsche Bank ($4,640)
• AIG ($4,616)
• Bank Of America ($4,570)
While New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are the primary metropolitan areas for internships in the U.S., there are plenty of other locations that offer great unpaid and paid internships for college students. There are hundreds of thousands of internship opportunities available with employers across the country. You can focus your internship search by where you live, by your college major, or by specific company.
There are many avenues available for securing an internship. Internships.com calls itself the largest internship marketplace online, listing “202,897 internship positions from 123,218 companies located in 9,152 cities across all 50 states.” Another resource is Indeed.com, which lets you search for internships in your local area or any other US location you are interested in. WayUp is advertised as “the #1 place for college students & recent grads to get hired and launch their careers,” listing both available jobs and internships for companies across the nation.
Burning Glass Technologies, a research company that collects employer postings for internships, has released a list of the top 20 fields for internships by number of online postings. Those fields are:
1. Business Operations
2. Marketing
3. Engineering
4. Sales and Business Development
5. Media, Communications, and Public Relations
6. Data Analytics
7. Finance
8. IT Development
9. Arts and Design
10. Project and Program Management
11. Human Resources
12. Science and Environment
13. Health Care
14. Educations and Human Services
15. Database Administration
16. IT Support
17. Economics And Policy
18. Legal
19. Retail
20. Event Planning
Securing an internship will provide you with a wide range of benefits. You get a valuable opportunity to talk to real workers in the fields that you are interested in and experience what working for a particular company would be like first hand. Internships also give you a chance to hone your skills and improve your leadership talents. Employers overwhelmingly point to internship experience as the most important factor they consider in hiring new college graduates for full-time positions. Research shows that 85 percent of companies use internships and similar experiential education programs to recruit for their full-time workforces.
How about you all? Did you use an internship to start your career?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/inl/3466738936/sizes/l
5 Ways To Start Investing With Less Than $1,000
The following is a guest post. Enjoy!
There is a common misconception that you have to have thousands and thousands of dollars to start an investment portfolio, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. There are dozens of ways that you can start investing with $1,000 (or less). It’s important that you start investing for your future, but if you’ve never gotten in the investment waters, it can be a scary jump to make. Luckily, there are several simple ways that you can put your money to use.
Betterment
If you’re looking for a simple investment that you can make, without having to pour over different graphs and reports to decide which investment is the best option, then Betterment could be an excellent choice. Betterment is the better choice for anyone that is looking to set it and forget it.
With Betterment, all you have to do is create an account, set your goals, and start investing. After that, their robo-advisors will invest your money based on your risk preference and goals. They will even continue to reinvest your money as you make it, which means that all you have to do is sit back and watch your money grow. You can easily start investing with $1,000 and not have to worry about making the wrong choice for your money.
Motif
Maybe you want a little more control of how your money is invested, then Motif is another excellent option. Motif is an excellent website that allows you to purchase 30 stocks of companies that all revolve around the same idea. For example, you can buy 30 stocks in business that all deal with medical technology.
There are several advantages to Motif, but the most notable is that the trading fees are going to be drastically lower than any other brokerage that you’ll find. Motif allows you to invest in the industries that you want, without having to pay the massive fees.
Pay off Debt
Most people don’t see paying off debts as a form of investing, but it could be the best option for you $1,000. If you’ve got credit card bills or lingering student loans that have been hanging over your head, it’s vital that you pay those off as quickly as possible.
The amount of money that you’ll pay in interest will hinder the amount of money that you can invest. Use any extra money that you have to pay off those debts, then all the money that you save can be invested.
Save for College
If you have kids, you may not be thinking about sending them off to college yet, but that could be the perfect use for your extra dough. If you didn’t know, college is expensive. Very expensive. It’s important that you start saving as early as possible.
There are several ways that you can start saving for your children’s college, but the best way is to open up a 529 Plan. These are special accounts that you can put the money in, but you’ll get several tax advantages as long as you use the money for any college expenses.
Set it Aside for a Rainy Day
You never know when something is going to break or need replacing. If your water heater were to go out suddenly, or your car broke down, you probably wouldn’t have the money that you needed to pay for that bill, but setting aside the $1,000 is a simple way that you can invest in your future. That’s a great way to have a rainy day fund, which can prevent you from having to use a credit card for any sudden bills that you run into. It’s not the most exciting way that you can “invest” your money, but investing in your future by having a safety net is one of the wisest things that you can do with your money.
Investing $1,000
These are only a few of the hundreds of different ways that you can put your money to work. It’s vital that you make the best decision for you and your money. Investing is going to be the foundation for your future and the security of you and your family.
Take the time to look at all of your different options and decide which one is going to work best for you. It can be scary investing your money because of the horror stories, but thanks to the Internet, investing your hard-earned money has never been easier.
***Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/gotcredit/33502814980/sizes/l
Smart Money Management vs. Cheapness: The Eternal War
The following is a guest post by CM at Infinite Transcendence. Enjoy!
Which Side Are You On?
People are often big on saving money since budgeting is a major part of life in your personal life and in business. With poor money management, even the richest person can become poor very quickly. There are countless stories of people with money going broke, and our country is a debtor nation. Clearly, we need to spend and utilize our resources wisely. The average person has student loans, car loans, mortgages, and a manner of other expenses. Controlling these wisely is essential to living a life of freedom.
The difference comes down to how people choose to manage their money. A few people manage their money from an overall cost evaluation while others simply cut down costs as much as possible no matter the expense. Today, I’d like talk about the major difference between effective money management and being cheap. This is something, when done properly, will make a major difference in how you live your life. You will essentially increase your productivity while reducing costs. That’s why smart money management is important.
What Is Cheapness?
Cheapness and effective money management are two different things. Some prefer to use the word frugal to describe wiser money management. I prefer the term smart money management because it looks at other factors outside of simple dollar and cents costs. An individual who is cheap is someone who values monetary cost above all others. They’ll waste immense amounts of time, comfort, energy, and sanity just to come ahead a few pennies. They’ll drive clear shot across town to save a few pennies on gasoline. Nothing is ever irrational if it’ll save them a few dollars, even if the cost is countless hours of frustration afterwards.
Have you ever:
- Bought food that was expired just to save a few dollars?
- Spent lots of time arguing over a minor price difference just to save a few dollars even if it meant burning a few bridges?
- Sacrificed quality to an extreme level to get minor savings?
- Massively inconvenienced yourself for a good deal: i.e. sleeping in front of a store for a weekend just to save on some item?
- Gone without something you really need for a long time because you simply didn’t feel like paying the price?
- Given up a lot of time, convenience, and quality in any other way in a disproportionate way compared to the cost?
These types of activities will only ensure that you end up further behind when it comes to building wealth and intelligent financial management. People who want to succeed at not only managing money effectively but also in terms of building wealth will avoid this behavior like the plague because it only ensures that you’ll expend more time than what your money is worth. Time is far more limited than money and people who want wealth are cheap with time. Treat your time and your energy sacred. You’ve already traded it once to make the money. Don’t trade it again being cheap. You’re then spending a multitude of time for a minor savings benefit.
The True Cost of Cheapness
People don’t look at the true overall cost of being cheap. I have known many people who will indeed drive across town to save gas, or go through other extreme lengths to save a dollar. One situation I remember with my own family was when we were moving. Instead of paying for a larger U-Haul truck and hiring some extra help, they wanted to do it without help on a smaller truck. It took around 7 trips and 4 trips on two smaller trucks to get it done. What should have been a day or two job ended up taking several days. This time could have been spent putting the items in the house or relaxing and using the time on something more fulfilling.
I had another friend who just used their cars instead of U-Haul and it took them an entire week! They would have been better off hiring the help. These things often come up in business where the time it would take to do something would be better off spent being subcontracted so that you can focus on the things that will generate you the most business. It’s the principle of working “on” your business and not in it”.
Another negative is using cheap or inadequate tools. This can easily run you in the red because you’ll have poorly done work or you’ll end up with sub-par equipment or machines that can fall apart on you. This can even put you in risk in certain situations. Many people have been harmed or killed due to machine malfunctions. In most cases you’ll end up spending a lot of money fixing problems that could have been fixed the first time. A $1000 job ends up costing $5000 because you tried to cheap out and spend $500. Compounded with the time cost this is just not an effective way to manage your resources.
Avoiding Cheapness In The Future
Here are some ways to avoid cheap behavior in the future:
- When making a purchase decision whether its’ a product or a service, analyze the true cost of everything. Time, money, frustration, and time spent fixing problems again should all be analyzed.
- Think buying time instead of strictly saving money.
- Hire people when you can. That time could be used to increase your productivity elsewhere. If you can hire someone for a job that’s $50 that takes them 7 hours, is it worth it to do it yourself when you make $20 an hour? You’re paying yourself a low wage to do the work in this instance.
- Use quality tools whenever you can. It saves time and you don’t have to replace them as often.
- Use quality parts when doing repairs. Nothing is worse than nickel and diming yourself over cheapness.
- Look at freeing yourself up. This means having the time to do the things you enjoy in life.
Following these tips should launch you ahead in managing your money and time resources adequately. Simply remember with wealth management that time is a major factor as well as money. Don’t squander your time for meager financial savings. You’ll find that you end up digging yourself deeper into the hole. Go out and start budgeting wisely today!
***Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/76657755@N04/7408506410/sizes/l