In the summer, our electric bill almost triples. We have central air, and keeping the condo cool is expensive. Recent grads who have just moved into their apartment know this first-hand; running air conditioners is expensive too. But don't worry- first of all, your electric bill during the summer months (June, July, August) will be the most expensive of the whole year. Once you stop using your air conditioner, your electric bill will drop drastically.
But a way to cut those electric bills in the summer months to make it a little more managable is to use energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. These might cost a little more upfront but they last ten times longer and use less electricity!! In fact, switch just one your light bulbs to a CFL and you'll save approximatly $90 per year.
You should definetly visit your electric supplier's website- in CT they offer all sort of rebates and incentives to cut back on your electricity use. For example, in CT you can buy up to 12 CFLs per year on their website at a substantial discount. Also, they have a energy efficient rebate program - if you use 10, 15, or 20% less electricity during the summer months of 2007 than you did in 2006, you will save 10, 15, or 20% (applied as a credit) on your electricity bill.
Another tip: cut off two minutes of your shower. Water heating makes up 15% of your electric bill, so shortening your shower by two minutes will save you over $200 per year!
Budgeting Tips: High Electric Bill Got you Down?
Business Etiquette Tips
Some etiquette guidelines are not inherently known; growing up, many times I found myself embarassed because I had unknowingly made a faux-pas or had made something more difficult for someone else without meaning to. I learned the hard way! Starting out in business, many students like myself don't know everything there is to know about office politics and the way to delicately get around awkward or uncomfortable situations and be known as a considerate person at the office.
Peter Post, related to the expert on etiquette Emily Post, does Podcasts on the Boston Globe's Website on business etiquette. He covers even the smallest of details, such as the question of whether or not to wear socks with loafers if your office does business casual. You can submit a question for the Etiquette at Work column via the Globe's website at http://www.boston.com/business/globe/bizetiquette/ or to read his column check out http://www.boston.com/business/columnists/
Wall Street Journal- For Free!
Now I'm pretty skeptical about signing up for things online, and I certainly don't buy alot of sites promising things for free. But a friend told me about E-Rewards, a site that pays you for filling out market surveys. This makes sense to me; I know how hard it is to get people to take surveys after many-a-deleted email at Babson. Marketing students would send out surveys all the time and most people never bothered, even after being tempted by a drawing for a "free ipod" or something like that. So at E-rewards, you only have to give them your email address and fill out your demographics, and they send you surveys to complete. Each survey will give you "e-currency" which can be redeemed for a slew of different products.
For example, if you collect $40 in currency, you can get the Wall Street Journal for free for 26 weeks. I joined a few days ago and I'm already at $15. At this level I could get a free year of a bunch of different magazines, but I'm saving up for the Wall Street Journal. At higher levels, you can get US airways, Delta, American, etc frequent flier miles too. Each survey runs about $5 in e-currency, depending upon the length, and even if you don't qualify to take it, they usually give you .50 just for taking the time to answer a few questions to find out. Not bad!! The site is www.erewards.com
Screen your online identity!
Today, more and more employers go online to get a better idea of the character and quality of their applicants. They sign up with facebook, or have one of their college interns check out prospective employees. They do google searches, and search on myspace. So make sure you like what they find! Don't post incriminating pictures online - anything with outrageous behavior (i.e. kegstands or beer pong games) and definetly don't post anything illegal! (that picture of you and the illegal drug paraphenalia....not cool). Keep your profiles clean of profanity and don't say anything you don't want an employer to see! Keep religious and political comments to a minimum, if any. Searching the internet is an easy way for employers to weed out candidates and put your resume on the chopping block.
"For the past few months, we have seen an exponential increase in the number of employers who are gaining access to social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, to see what they can learn about candidates there, as well," Patricia Rose, the director of Career Services at the University of Pennsylvania, cautions students through a MP3 on her office's Web site.
Now, take this information in the opposite direction- when employers search for you, let them find positive information! Linking the finance blog you write (I'm guilty!) to facebook, and posting your past internships on your online profiles is a good way to highlight your good qualities to potential employers. List community service, and school involvement on your profile. Let facebook work for you instead of against you!
Account of a new grad's first day! Since one of my friends from Babson recently started work, I asked her to do an interview on her first day to give you all a clue as to what might be in store for you!
"For all of you grads who don’t start until July or August, and are wondering what it might be like…here is how my first day went!"
6:45 am: woke up
7:45 am: left the house
8:30 am: arrived at work, a half hour early.
8:33: reached the penthouse and walked into the office. The receptionist was not there but a fellow employee welcomed me and led me to my desk.My desk was in a conference room, and I was sharing with another new associate. Apparently our furniture was backordered, so we were both set up at a round desk.
8:35: I was led to a conference room where one of the 3 other new associate sat. Introductions followed and we talked until new associates 3 and 4 showed up. Ironically, they turned out to both be from Babson.
9 am: we were given lots of forms to fill out! insurance forms, confidentiality agreements to sign, etc10 am: Analyst welcome session. We were given handbooks and a training guide, found out who our clients are, and met our new bosses.
11 am: the HR rep talked to us about benefits and vacation time, etc.
12 am: Noon meeting with the whole firm, where two clients were discussed.1
pm: lunch in the cafeteria. I brought mine so I was separated from the other analysts who went out to buy. Had an interesting conversation about basketball camp for a colleague’s child.
2 pm: Training on all the applications and reports we will be working on.
3:30pm-6 pm: Exercises on what we learned
6:15: left office
6:45 arrived home
It was an exciting but tiring day!
Create an upscale, smashing business warddrobe on a college grad's budget. Like most women, I like to shop. I also like to think I've gotten good at it. Women in business need to present a professional, conservative image. Big slits and low tops are not for work. So how do you put together a $10,000 warddrobe with only $1000? Here are a few of my tips!!
- Don't automatically gravitate to lower-end stores for business wear just because you don't think you can afford higher quality items. You want to portray a high- quality image to get promoted to the job you want, so dress the part.
- Be prepared to spend a little extra on the classics- a really good suit for interviews, some nice dress pants, and some high-quality dress shirts.
- SALES!! Always, Always, go to high end stores and look at their sale rack. You can get great deals for good quality items this way without spending your whole budget!
Current suggestions:
- One of my favorite dress-shirt makers of ALL tip, Charles Tyrwhitt, is having a big sale right now. Charles Tyrwhitt has a store in NY, but is based in England. Clearance racks you'll never find in-store, but right now online you'll find dress shirts originally $100-$150 on sale for $35-50. You can get a few a that price! The shirts are well-made of high-quality fabrics and fit fabulously. Link: http://www.ctshirts.co.uk/search.aspx?DepGrpCode=CLE&level1=Clearance
Dont' worry- even though it's from London, shipping costs are reasonable.
- Talbots has great, high-quality business casual wear. Find cardigans, suits, and dress shirts at 40-70% in their semi-annual sale, going on now. The best selection is online. Link: http://www1.talbots.com/talbotsonline/search/searchresults.aspx?q=Misses+Sale&BID=&h=M
- I've also gotten some great high-quality suits at United Colors of Benneton. I've gotten a lot of complements on a suit that only cost me about $150. The fabric is great and the cut is superb. According to a case study I did recently at Babson, the suits are made in Italy by independent contractors (little mom-and-pop sewers) so it's not a cheaply made mass-produced suit like you'd find at target or h & m.
Search engine giant strikes again!
Google just announced they will buy Postini for $625 million! Postini sells software to encrypt and archive e-mail and instant messages. Postini's security features will persuade more companies to use Mountain View, Google's e-mail service. Google hopes to further challenge Microsoft with this purchase, as Postini's security features will encourage more customers to use Gmail along with other software, spreadsheet, and instant messaging features.
The Postini acquisition is the third-biggest purchase Google has announced. The company agreed to buy DoubleClick Inc. in April for $3.1 billion and completed a $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube Inc. in November. As of 9:45 am today, Google shares rose $7.10 to $546.50. The shares had risen 17 % this year before today's trading.
Think Closed Mutual Funds are big winners? Think again.
The old theory of supply and demand tricks many investors into thinking a closed mutual fund is something they really want to get into. The supply of available shares is zero, so the demand is high. On the message boards of Morningstar.com, many investors post requests for "one-share gifts" of a certain closed fund, offering investors who own them a hefty sum in return. Once they have obtained one share, most funds allow them to put more money into it. But do you really want to do this?
"We've found that closed funds actually don't perform all that well," says Morningstar's director of fund analysis, Russ Kinnel. "The biggest reason is simply because the point at which it closes is that point at which it's had really strong returns, and you're kind of just buying at the top."
Managers often close funds because they have too much cash flowing in- and can't manage investing it all. Some closed funds have horrible 1, 3, 5, and 10 year returns. So if you really want to get in, do an analysis like you would on any mutual fund- and make sure it's worth the price.
A big "Thank-you" to my college degree
We all hear how people with college degrees earn more than those without. In fact, today a college degree sometimes isn't enough once you hit a certain level- you need your CPA, CFA, or MBA to continue moving up the career ladder and to make more money. But the actual data supporting these claims is appalling- making me count my blessings I never gave college a second thought. According to the US Census Bureau, college students with a Bachelor's Degree will earn on average $49,000 compared to only $26,000 made by those with only a high school diploma. How does this add up over the years?
If you start working at age 22, and continue working until you retire at 65, the college graduate will make over 2.2 million more than the high school grad. This counts only a 3% annual inflation rate of your salary- and does not include wage-jumping promotions that we all hope we'll have! According to these assumptions, college grads will make over 4 million dollars in their lifetime. Check out the graph below, courtesy yahoofinance.com.
Foreclosures: Hitting close to home
When the sub-prime market went belly-up, I just thought of it as a sector in the market that got out of control. I pitied the people who really shouldn't have taken out loans for a home, and were told they could by greedy loan originators. Incredibly high foreclosure rates are all across the country, as people leave their homes unable to make payments as the interest rate climbs. Businesses in the collateralized debt market got plummeted too, when clients defaulted and stock prices sank.
But for the rest of us, who could afford a loan and were not neccesarily affected by climbing interest rates (had a fixed loan, or could afford the higher rates) are affected by the logistical aftermath of a huge wave of abandoned homes. My fiancee's parents live in a very nice neighborhood, and about a month ago the people across the street suddenly vanished. The property hit the real estate market and it was just another home for sale. But weeks passed and the lawn got overgrown with weeds, uncut grass, and wildlife. The pool had mildew and was a funky greenish color. Neighbors complained and the police hounded the bank to take care of the home; finally the grass was cut. But all around the country, foreclosed homes are becoming overgrown, abandoned pets take over, and critters from outside wreck havoc on the homes' interior. In May alone, authorities found 23 abandoned animals in a house in Lake Carmel, N.Y.
Know of abandoned animals in a foreclosed home around you? Call a local animal group like PetAlliance of Ohio.
