Today’s guest post comes from Jenny. In her own words: “I am currently a junior in college and living in New York City. Going through the job recruitment process now has made me reflect a lot on the past 3 years of my life. Here are some things I wish I had been told on day one:”

Pick a major you love, not necessarily one that is related to the career you think you want.

There is a very simple reason for this: if the subject is something you enjoy learning, you will inevitably be good at it and that will lead to a high GPA. From experience, I can say that GPA has been the very first factor used by both large and mid-size firms when screening applicants’ resumes and thus is a deciding factor in landing your first internships and full-time jobs. It is to your dual advantage to have a high GPA while studying what you enjoy.

But what if I am a biology major and want to go into the financial services industry, you ask - shouldn’t I major in economics or finance? Not at all.

See, with all of the competition in today’s job market, companies have grown to love the “story hires”. These are people who have a story as to why they have decided to change their career path or explore other options and that makes them more interesting to employers and well-rounded as individuals. I know for a fact there are people working at one of the top investment banks on Wall Street right now who actually have medical degrees and used to be surgeons.

You can major in whatever you want, as long as you are able to talk about “transferrable skills” you acquired along the way that are relevant to the job.

Have a 5-Year Plan.

Although this is not Soviet Russia under Stalin, it is important to have an idea about what the next 5 years of your life will look like. I was blind-sided when my junior year of college rolled around, summer internship recruitment season was in full swing, and all of sudden all of the interviewers expected me to know exactly what location, what division and what group I want to work in. I felt like I had to decide the rest of my life in just 2 weeks.

Very often when young adults start college, they are advised that they should use this time (all 4 years) to explore. Though I am in no way against this, I do believe that “exploring” should be done in a specific direction. Because at the end of those 4 years, everyone will want the same thing: a job to start their career.  The people who have done the research, know what to expect, and have a clearer sense of the direction of their career are in a much better position.

Take a few minutes to plan what classes to take when, which school clubs may be good to get involved in, and start talking to upperclassmen about their experiences so you know what to expect.

Start Talking to Upperclassmen About Their Experiences

Upperclassmen are a seriously under-valued and untapped resource for underclassmen. These are people who were just recently in your shoes and have survived it unscathed and that much wiser. Why not ask them about it?

A lot of times first-year (and second year) students are intimidated by upperclassmen and tend to shy away from interaction, let alone asking for advice. I remember I used to think upperclassmen were so much smarter and so busy that they could not possibly relate to me. Well, with time I have learned that all it takes is some courage to ask a question and the rest works out. You would be surprised how incredibly willing people are to give advice if you just ask for it.

I recently adopted a freshman buddy in this way. I was at an event and this girl sat down next to me, we started talking, and she later asked for my telephone number so that she may call me if she needs advice. I gladly gave it to her and now she texts me whenever she has questions.

The next time you’re in class, at a club meeting, sporting event or a company presentation, approach an upperclassman and ask a question. They were in your shoes just a year or two ago and can give you so much information about the right classes, professors, clubs, and internships that you would never be able to find on Google.

Jenny is a undergradute finance major attending college in New York and a first-time contributor on brip blap.

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(me, in St. Petersburg, circa 1997)

Learning an “exotic” foreign language, and how it changed my life.

If you read this blog, you probably know that I’m a Russophile. I lived in Moscow for several years, I can read/write/speak Russian fairly comfortably and my wife is Russian. Even more:  I have been interested in Russian long before I “knew” Russian or Russia.  Key the computer geek theme music: I mentioned that I was a finalist in the International Science Fair: I wrote, in Basic on a Tandy Color Computer with a cassette-tape drive, a very primitive artificial intelligence program that reliably translated English into Russian, grammatically correct. I even had to develop the Cyrillic font. I did all of this after buying a Russian grammar book at a public library for $.10 and using it to set it up – I didn’t know Russian at all.  Pat, pat, pat on the back, Steve.  Score one for geeky computer boy.  The US Army liked my program, gave me a commendation and took the code.  What happened with it after that, I dunno.

Anyway, after the ISF my interest in Russian waned. I always joke that my ancestry is German with a little German mixed in. Even though the Original Blap Ancestor ventured to the new world in the 16th century, my paternal ancestors clung to German ways and traditions and language. And I mean they clung. To the best of my knowledge, my dad was probably part of the first generation of Blaps to speak English at home rather than German. So in high school and college I had a strong motivation to take German, and I did.  I loved it.  I had a great teacher, and I spent a summer semester in Germany as an exchange student.  To this day I speak, read and understand German quite well.

But I always liked foreign languages in general. I took French and Latin as well and decided in my sophomore year that Japanese would be a good challenge. Keep in mind that this was the mid-80s: Japan appeared to be well on its way to becoming the dominant economic power of the 21st century. We know now, in retrospect, that Japan’s economy tripped and stumbled and has never really recovered, and China and India are now careening past it, but at the time it seemed that Japan might become an economic superpower at a minimum and THE economic superpower if everything fell right.

I decided to take Japanese. It was a new course at the University of Mississippi, where I went to school (yes, we had Japanese courses in Mississippi) – only one class was offered. So on registration day I woke up and strolled over to the registrar only to find that it had filled up in minutes and no slots were available. I was disappointed, but I still wanted to take a language. I thought Spanish might be useful, but boring (I didn’t care for French when I learned it – romance languages don’t appeal to me). I skipped through the catalog until I saw Russian and remembered my little project at the ISF four years earlier. And best of all, it was at 10 am so I could sleep late – back in college I had yet to discover the benefits of waking up early.

Russian was fantastic. The teacher was a guy straight out of PhD school, passionate about the subject and the culture. He invited his students to his home, showed us Russian movies, introduced us to actual Russians (quite the novelty in the Deep South in the 80s, let me tell you – we were in the midst of the cold war and that was amazing) and managed to get Russian food. I loved the intellectual challenge of the language – a different alphabet but more importantly a language completely removed from the European languages’ interrelationships.

So why was this a good financial move? I’ve already mentioned it in 8 steps to a six figure career, but here it is in a nutshell: it gives you instant credibility as a smart person (deserved or not). Employers and contacts and almost everyone I meet expresses shock that I can speak Russian, read it and write it. I don’t think it demonstrates much intelligence, personally. Language acquisition is more of an inborn skill, I think. But I do think that learning Russian demonstrated some intellectual curiosity and the fact that I stuck with it indicates some intellectual discipline. I have benefited hugely in my career from knowing Russian. It meant that I was plucked out of obscurity as a junior staff member of a Big 6 (now 4) accounting firm and hurled into the middle of the mid-90s Russian economic explosion. It opened up opportunities I would never have had as just another staff person.

But that’s not the biggest part of it. Without developing my Russian skills I wouldn’t have met, pursued and married my wife. Maybe if I had taken Japanese I would have lived in Japan, developed a fondness for all things Japanese. Hard to say. But I do know that the decision to learn Russian set in motion the life process that brought me to where I am today: with a wife who is focused on the same things I am, personally and financially. So that’s actually the single biggest reason why that was a great financial move.

So what was your best move?

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Based on a few recent comments on some of my articles about careers (this one, for example), I started wondering about the difference in wealth between college graduates and skilled non-college graduates. A college graduate can usually expect to go into the professional world as a “white-collar” worker, earning substantially more than his non-college graduate peers. However, the college graduate – unless he is very athletically or academically gifted – will probably come out of college with at least some student loan debt. He will probably start earning money several years (4 or more) later than a non-college graduate.

So I decided to do a comparison of the two career paths, and see what those big choices meant for someone later down the road. Specifically I wondered if I could answer a few questions:

1. Can the late start in saving by the college graduate be overcome through higher salaries?
2. Does the lower earning potential of a non-college graduate mean that the non-college graduate will be required to “work until they die”?
3. Who will be able to quit the rat race first?

I made a lot of assumptions and put together a spreadsheet to try to come up with answers to some of these questions. I’ll cover that in part 2. I ignored a few things – I didn’t worry about inflation, for example, since it would affect them both equally. You could argue this is wrong, because inflation moves at different rates in different parts of the country, commuting costs (gas, etc.) might expose one or the other to more inflationary pressures, etc. I skipped that. I also assume that both are highly disciplined savers, always saving 10% of their income and getting decent returns over time. If, of course, both started saving as soon as they start earning and never reduce that amount, they would be in the .000001% of the US population that does so.

My findings were a surprise and weren’t a surprise to me. The main point of the exercise was for me to challenge my own personal context (a concept Robert Kiyosaki talks about a LOT in his book “Retire Young, Retire Rich“). My context is that smart people go to college and get desk jobs. My context is that wealth is created through earning as much as possible. I am trying to challenge my own prejudices about what “building wealth” and “escaping the rat race” actually mean to me. It’s interesting, because I don’t have much exposure to people who don’t subscribe to the “go to college, earn money” credo; but fortunately I’m learning more about the opposite mindset and it’s interesting for me. It’s too late for me to undo my decision to go to college for 7+ years. There were alternatives – I could’ve started a business and educated myself. It’s not too late for me to learn something new.

Stay tuned!

(photo by GirlReporter)

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A great deal of the following ideas derive from Maslow (on a theoretical basis) and Huxley (on an anecdotal basis). What I wish I would have been learning doesn’t exactly differ from the subject matter I have been learning. The problem, though, presents itself in presentation, in the means. There is nothing inherently wrong with learning the governing laws of the world in which we inhabit (physics and mathematics). The subject matter is useful in a number of different fields. Yet where I think our educational system is failing us is in robbing these subject matters of their awe-inspiring aspects. Physics and mathematics, as they are currently taught, have been reduced to the rote memorization and application of formulas. Sure, this produces competent, linear-thinking engineers and mathematicians, but it does nothing to produce the novel, creative thinkers we covet, the next Einsteins, the next Leibnizs. These men were taught to see beyond the formulas we’re all familiar with. The formulas weren’t presented as reality, they were guidelines to a far more complex reality.  No one can be expected to fully immerse themselves into a subject matter if they are not encouraged to, and presented with the awesome nature of their subject matter.

This is not to imply that every man will be naturally inclined to be amazed by the governing laws of reality, as in mathematics. Our various idiosyncrasies dictate that our curiosity and our creative abilities will naturally lead us to absorption in one field over  another. The point is, that we must foster an environment for these innate curiosities to be expanded upon and explored. This is how we produce the individuals whose curiosity will produce the next wave of scientific and artistic breakthroughs. As it currently stands, we have made ourselves reliant on the extraordinary perseverance of a select minority to foster their own path to true education. Yet this is to deny ourselves the rewards of an entire population’s worth of untapped potential.

Most students are lost at a very early age as they find their education being dictated to them in a disinterested fashion, less concerned about the fostering of curiosity and wonderment than the reproduction of meaningless answers on a standardized test. It must be recognized that the need for industrialized cogs is quickly diminishing within this country and if we are to persist within this changing environment, then the core tenets of our educational system must change with it. The emphasis must be turned away from the production of competent works, to the production of competent thinkers, of competent innovators. Our system, as it currently operates, seems set up to inhibit the production of such individuals.

This article was written by Anthony Benedict. Anthony helps to run and maintain inetzeal.com. This website is an entity of an Internet marketing company which provides many services, which includes a white label link building service, as well as many other white label SEO services.

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Education.

I am a huge proponent of public education for two reasons:  1, the involvement with your community, both for parent and child, is going to happen somewhere – there is no sense in insulating yourselves from it; 2, you’ve already paid for it (through taxes).  That having been said, education – particularly college – is not a good candidate for finding the cheapest option simply because it’s cheapest.  That might seem to contradict some of my earlier pieces.  But I don’t think it really does – I simply think that far too many people choose the most expensive college just because it’s the most expensive, and that’s wrong, too.  At every level you need to find options that are good for you and that really address your goals.

Health care.

This one is tough.  Of course you don’t want to overspend, but I can tell you that when you are seriously ill, most – not all, most – thoughts about money go right out the window.  Of course in the case of lingering illnesses, such as happened in my family this summer, you still have to worry about the person’s family’s future – will the cost of health care be too much to allow them to keep a house, for example?  And it’s a sad state in this country that we have to worry about the cost of wellcare.  But in general, when you are really sick or injured, you don’t stop the hospital from doing procedure X because it costs too much.  The hospital or insurance company may stop it, though.

Cars and related expenses.

When you read people suggesting ways to save money on cars, I always think “this is a metal box that you get in and drive around in at 60 miles per hour – do you really want the cheapest car you can get?”  I want the safest car, with reasonable mileage that keeps it from being an outright assault on the environment.  I’ll pay a bit extra for the good tires, even though I could get reconditioned ones cheaper.  Then again, I still drive a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix.

Insurance.

If you live in a flood zone, you can save some money by skimping on the flood insurance.  When the flood comes, though, if your insurance isn’t enough to rebuild your place or buy a new one, why did you bother?  What was the point of saving that money if you can’t use the insurance when you need it?  Make sure you’re insured against financial catastrophe.  Life insurance is important.  Having a $100 deductible on your auto isn’t.

Babyproofing equipment.

I think the choice here is clear.  If you want to skimp on gates at the top of the stairs for your child, then I don’t think you have your priorities straight.

Food.

This one may be a little more contentious, but I think trying to save money on certain types of food is ridiculous.  If you eat meat, try this experiment.  Go buy some heavily processed, dyed, factory-farm raised chicken, and buy some organic free range chicken.  Prepare them both the same way, but don’t overdo the breading, herbs, spices, whatever – keep it simple.  Try both of them.  Tell me which one was a better use of money.  If you aren’t a meat eater, try buying organic, locally produced tomatoes and then buy a Mexican imported tomato from the supermarket.  In both cases, the more expensive option is likely to taste far better, therefore it satisfies you better meaning you’ll eat less, enjoy it more and be less tempted to let it sit in the fridge until it goes bad.  It’s probably healthier, too, but I won’t even use that argument.

This one is the tough one – making money.

If you are starting a business or investing, you don’t necessarily want the cheapest possible option.  Undeveloped property 80 feet from the road with no plumbing or electricity in Montana might be cheap, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good investment.  If you are starting up a restaurant, you don’t want to serve the cheapest possible food.
I guess the purpose of these examples is to show that sometimes the mania for frugality and savings isn’t always the best idea.  Saving money can’t always be solely about retiring or financial freedom.  Between now and then there is a life to be lived, and lived safely and comfortably.

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But there is also a case to be made for redefining insufficient education within the context of the economic changes that have swept this nation over the past decade. The last three years have seen a prolonged financial and employment downturn, but in both cases they are signs of trends that have been underway for some time. The offshoring of the U.S. manufacturing sector has been devastating to millions of wage earners and (former) homeowners. Nonskilled jobs have been followed to the developing nations by skilled positions including IT jobs, accounting and actuarial jobs, many other white collar support roles, even freelance writing: I am constantly underbid on writing gigs by people in Bangalore or some other exotic time zone.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that insufficient education today may be because a job for which a bachelor’s degree was sufficient a decade ago now requires a master’s degree. That may be due to the increasing complexity of some professions – civil engineering comes to mind – or it may mean that employers can be more selective in their baseline requirements for professional employees. The IT requirements for many jobs have shot up over the past ten years; today you can find graduate degree programs in nursing informatics and financial engineering – two examples of professional niches that didn’t exist for the last generation.

For someone who is currently unemployed, has gotten through college and put in several years of successful work experience based on those undergraduate studies, the suggestion that they lack sufficient education isn’t a fair statement. The education that many of us obtained prior to entering the work force simply isn’t applicable in today’s domestic economy or doesn’t meet newly established benchmarks for professional advancement. Fixing a situation like may require a more concerted effort than continuing education.

Today a wealth of online graduate degree programs designed for experienced and/or working professionals exists. Many are part time, for those of us who are still working; others are accelerated programs that can get you through a master’s program in a hurry. And today, most of them are offered by traditional universities that have expanded into distance learning. The morphing job market can be a frightening situation, especially for people who have embarked on a career track. Sometimes the best insurance for someone who has to change direction is an advanced degree to bolster those years of experience.

Article Source: Bob Hartzell is an in-house editor for Masters Degree Online.com. He writes about the current state of traditional and for-profit education including student loans, scholarships and distance learning.

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What are the best subjects to learn for business – and life – success? If anyone sat down to identify the perfect secondary (and maybe college) education, I doubt they would come up with today’s average American curriculum. While there are plenty of courses in basic skills (reading, writing, mathematics, and so on) many other just as critical basic skills are overlooked (personal finance, homemaking, health/physical education). What are some of the critical components missing from our national curriculum?

From my own personal experience, I can suggest a few, but there are probably many more you can think of easily. I could also bash a few courses I took, but an argument can always be made for “knowledge for knowledge’s sake.” I believe that sincerely. I have never, for example, “used” A Tale of Two Cities in my day-to-day life, but I’m glad I was forced to read it, stuck with it and finished it. Experiences like that created a love of reading for me. Other subjects I guess can be chalked up to “generally good to know although not terribly useful.” For me this included subjects like biology and mythology (one semester of “English” was actually spent studying mythology, which apparently means “Greek mythology” since we didn’t study anything else (not even the excellent D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths). While those subjects were sometimes interesting, I didn’t learn much from either except that I don’t like biology and that you shouldn’t steal fire from the gods.

Here are a few subjects that are very useful, and why:

1. Typing. Out of all of the courses I’ve taken in my life, this one has made the most profound difference in my daily life. I took a typing course in high school, back when it meant learning to pound out “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” 500 times on a MANUAL typewriter. However, the experience taught me how to type, and very, very well, which means I can blaze away typing even while carrying on a conversation or reading something else. I doubt I have to explain to anyone who uses a computer why lightning-fast typing speed is useful.

2. Speech. I took a public speaking class that changed my life. Before that class, like everyone, I was nervous about speaking. After it, I was still nervous, but I learned that it was a temporary nervousness and that anything was possible. We had to give speeches to groups, recite monologues, debate, take questions and almost any type of “speaking in front of a crowd” activity you can think of. To this day I am relaxed and confident speaking to any group; I have addressed 2000 people or 10 board directors or 1 interviewer with equal calm.

3. Personal finance. I didn’t ever take a personal finance course, and I wish I had. Everything I learned about finance before college came from my parents, my grandparents about money, part 1 | brip blap or my own reading. A course that taught me things they weren’t as familiar with or not as proficient with – real estate dealings come to mind – would have been a great learning experience for me. That having been said, I’m sure personal finance would use textbooks sponsored by Capital One and tout the benefit of home equity loans to consolidate credit card debt.

4. Physical education. As a varsity athlete I was exempt from physical education, but I wish I hadn’t been. Learning to do some very basic “normal” training would have been helpful. I focused all of my energy on preparation for one sport (tennis) rather than general fitness. This had disastrous results later in life.

5. Homemaking. Don’t laugh. I think learning how to cook could save this country billions in health care costs. Imagine if people could actually prepare healthy food at home. My mother is a terrific cook, and I never had any motivation throughout high school to learn how to cook. I went straight from there to a fraternity house where meals were provided. When I finally started living on my own, my gourmet best was frozen pizza…

6. Civics. I took a civics course, but it was ridiculous. My wife, who is an immigrant, was required to undergo detailed testing before she obtained US citizenship on the Constitution, US history and civic life. Now, it may not be necessary for everyone in this country to know how many Congressmen there are or how many Supreme Court justices there are (although they should) but everyone should know the Bill of Rights and their civic duties (jury duty and so on).

Optional Bonus #7: A foreign language. Now, many people might disagree with me on this suggestion, and of course many people feel a certain nationalistic need to defend English as “America’s language” or French as “Belgium’s language” or whatever.  I don’t really think most people need to become fluent in a foreign language, and I’ve been a great proponent of the world agreeing on a true lingua franca – a second language everyone would learn.  As of today, that language might be English – it’s fairly easy to learn and already quite widespread.  But 100 years from now it might be Portuguese, or Spanish.  Who knows, who cares.  The point is that foreign languages open up your mind.  Studying a foreign language helps you understand that different people think differently.  That’s invaluable, in my opinion.  My life so far has taken a vastly different direction than it might have thanks to my study of foreign languages – especially Russian.  You can see why by reading an old post of mine, “boosting your career with an overseas stint“.

You could go on, but these are some basic courses that would make a big difference in the US population. They are not taught often enough, and it’s a shame they aren’t. I am amazed to this day when I see people hunt-and-peck on the keyboard – not because I blame them, but because that’s not a basic required course for graduation from high school today. The same goes for the other 5 subjects up there. It’s hard to say when they will be required – or if they ever will be – but we can hope.

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That’s fine, of course:  most companies like to use your work history as “shorthand” for knowledge. A certain body of knowledge can be assumed based on the company.  Or can it?  Credentials can be misleading.  I know CPAs who don’t know thing one about taxes, for example, but many people would assume that having “CPA” tagged after your name means you are up-to-date and knowledgeable about taxes.  And I’ve ridden my master’s degree for years, even though it’s a body of knowledge frozen in time in the early 90s; there have been huge changes in the field of accounting since I got my imitation sheepskin.

But until the day comes when someone with no college degree but an impressive volume of self-taught knowledge can get a good white-collar job – or even get in the door for an interview – having a few “good names” on your resume will make a big difference.

Are there Alternatives to College Careers?: Of course there are. I’m always surprised at how dismissive people can be of careers that don’t require a college degree, especially considering the cost of a degree these days (see The Educated Indentured Servant).  But as I said above, even if I worked my way through thousands of hours of self-taught education (books, online resources and even free TV lectures, etc.) on accounting, I doubt I could get in the door for an interview in a corporate accounting department.

The Incredible Value of the Local Library (A Visual Tour) versus Books. If you read both articles, you’ll notice there is a big gap out there between people who love libraries and frequent them often, and those who simply never go to one because so much free information is available online. My suspicion is that the people who value libraries the most are parents of small children. Before I had kids, I had probably been to a library three times in ten years. Nowadays, though, it’s not out of the question for me to go two to three times a week.

• Does Your Community Know You?
• Jewish Thoughts on Wealth: Gain Knowledge
• Make Sure You’re Coming Out Ahead When Refinancing
• Financial Goal Setting: The First Step To Control Your Finances
• Will You Pay for College for Your Kids?
• Your Mortgage Dating Guide
• Ways to Track your Spending
• Swing Away
• 10 Unknown Uses for Vinegar

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Well, I get glimpses of the past and flashbacks now that I have kids. I spent a couple of days at my children’s preschool/pre-K school where Little Buddy attends pre-K and Pumpkin goes to daycare (or preschool or whatever you’d like to call it).  I do realize from time to time, when I self-analyze my abilities, that I do have one ability if nothing else:  kids like me.  I can engage them in learning and don’t make them nervous as some other parents do.  I probably would have made a decent grade school or middle school teacher if I could have supported a family on that salary.  That’s a sad observation, frankly, but one for another post.

I’ll make one other observation, too, unrelated to personal finance or careers: my children’s school concentrates heavily on play, and I like it.  Not learning, but play – directed, but not with any intention towards teaching any specific subject.  It’s interesting as a parent to process the conflicting emotions that arise from watching this:  you want your kids to learn but I also (mentally) slap myself and say “Pumpkin’s not even 3 yet – she deserves play time.”  I’m a firm believer in the concept that kids need play time – creative time, self-directed – to develop themselves.  They’ll have plenty of time to be crammed into desks and forced to learn times tables later, I guess.  Just my parental opinion, I guess.

MonaVie Blackmails Me?: Stunning that a company, or a rep for a company, would stoop this low. Read the article to see how low a supposedly ‘legitimate’ company can stoop. You can also read MonaVie: Multi-Level Marketing Gone Haywire for more idiocy. I can’t believe anyone falls for MonaVie’s crap after I’ve read stuff like this.

Blue Cash Rewards Increase: I’ve owned a Blue Cash card for years, so this is good news.  I’ll take it…

Social Lending Arbitrage Beats Projections: I still think Lending Club is a good bet – if you’re interested in trying it they have a $25 signup bonus right now.  I’d treat it like any other investment – it has its ups and downs, but it can serve as a reasonable diversification strategy versus the market.

Personal Finance the Krav Maga Way: Since I’ve seen all the Krav Maga signs up around my neighborhood, I thought this was an amusing – and timely – post.

Small but Alarming Indicator: This is unpleasant – but not unexpected – anecdotal news.  On the other hand, Bubelah just attended a small business workshop where they barely had enough room for the interested attendees, and I remarked that it must have been all of the laid-off people thinking about launching small businesses (and good for them if they were)…

Life After Debt: What It’s Like in the Third Stage of Personal Finance: Just an interesting read, on many levels (fitness, travel, etc.)

and more…

• The Downside of Owning REITs
• Talking about Deflation
• The Key to Effective Budgeting – Master The Yes/No Factor
• Book Review of Leah Ingram’s Suddenly Frugal
• How Much Mortgage Can I Afford?

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• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book.
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

One of my fondest childhood memories is reading “The Hobbit” along with my dad. We had a big illustrated edition – a lot of the cheesy Rankin-Bass stills, where Gollum looks like a frog – and he read it to me in installments. I don’t remember how many times we read it or how old I was, but I do know that I read “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy (on my own) before 3rd grade, so it was probably when I was 5 or 6. But my point is simple: I remember being almost insanely excited with the idea that another chapter was going to unfold. A picture would be painted in my mind – by me – and the next day another picture would be drawn. I would go to sleep in the bunk bed I shared with my brother, my mind filled with trolls and dragons and dwarves.

I try to read to my children frequently, and have done so since they were born. My son likes books better than my daughter.  Every time I start to read to Pumpkin, Little Buddy runs over and insists on sharing (which means reading to HIM). But I think both kids have an early love of reading. I don’t read to them for any other reason than a long-term attempt to inspire a love of books in them. Books have been some of my truest and dearest friends throughout my life, and I think children need to learn early in their lives that a life can revolve around books without TV, video games or the internet.

Books, for me, are a stand-in for intellectual curiosity. That curiosity is different from getting an education; far different.  I argue that for most people, college is a crutch. Their intellectual curiosity is sated by four years in college – they read, they take interesting courses, they graduate and 58% of them never read a book again. Many people don’t even consider college as a place for true learning, but instead a diploma mill used to obtain fruitful employment.  My wife, Bubelah, thinks college is necessary for growth, and that college forces people to expand in ways they never would on their own. I say that college can only assist growth.  If you take advantage of the opportunities in college – or the continuing education available after college such as books, adult courses, or even through TV – then you have intellectual curiosity.  Intellectual curiosity, if someone has it, won’t stop with college. There is no excuse to quit learning, ever.

I’ve gotten glances from my coworkers from time to time when I sit and read a book in the office cafeteria while I eat lunch. I look around and see I am the ONLY person reading (without exaggeration) in the entire cafeteria.  I read history, or graphic novels, or fantasy/sci-fi.  It’s hard for me to imagine how exotic that appears to most people. The idea of reading anything other than a newspaper or magazine seems trivial or immature to them. Worse yet, I might be considered an elitist, or a bookworm.  When did intellectual prowess or a curiosity about life become a characteristic to be mocked? I care about history, space exploration, politics, ethics, literature. I’m a pointy-headed intellectual – and I drink beer and love pro football, too.

So how do you create a love of learning? Read.  After our formal education is done, we may gain knowledge through experience, or discussion, or other avenues – but reading is so freely available and simple that it can only be deemed a great failure of any society that doesn’t encourage it as a core virtue. You should do it whenever you can.  It doesn’t even matter WHAT you read: just read.  I’d like to see America become a place that’s proud of intellectual curiosity, but too often intellectual curiosity is mocked and belittled by people whose idea of culture is determined by TV executives. Knowledge should be a lifelong goal, not something satisfied by four years in college.

(I originally posted this, in slightly different form, in 2008)

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Elitism has earned an ugly name over the past decade or so. A sure way to accuse someone of having poor judgment or lacking real-world experience is to tar them with the “elite” label. The use of “elite” as a derogatory term has been most pronounced in politics. Political leaders sneer at elites – holding up underachievers as role models – while at the same time aspiring to become the elite of the political class. The “wealthy elite” are also villainized in political campaigns as people who don’t pay their fair share.

I would like to be elite. I like to say – mostly to myself or maybe to my immediate family – that I AM elite. It would be a shocking thing to claim or aspire to in a public conversation, though. Some of my elitism was earned: education, both formal and undertaken on my own, and some was just the lucky accident of my birth – I was born a Caucasian citizen of the wealthiest nation on Earth. Nobody likes to admit the fact that they have some claim to the status of elitism. The term has been damaged over the years.

I want to be elite, and I want others to want to be elite. In private moments I’m not ashamed of being well-read, or well-educated, or having a liberal mindset (in the open-to-all-ideas sense, not the political sense). I want to come out at the top of the heap. I think that the goal of a family, or a community or whatever group you choose to look at should be the creation of elite individuals: Jeffersons, Einsteins, Ataturks. You want people to rise above the average and lead.

I’m not there (yet). I’d like to be. To admit to wanting that would probably seem gross in most company, and I’m most comfortable making that claim on my semi-anonymous blog. We need elite people, and anyone who derides or attacks the elite is, well, an idiot. You can disagree with the particular ideas or approaches chosen by elite members of society, but in business, politics, science, art, religion, whatever area you choose to examine, you NEED an elite. It’s not the elite as determined by birth, or Ivy League education. It’s the elite chosen by intelligence; by drive; by perseverance. I don’t know when that became an ugly attribute in this country, but that attitude needs to disappear – and fast.

photo credit: INeedCoffee

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I found myself wondering yesterday whether the current crisis has devalued the MBA. President Bush is the first president with an MBA.  No doubt many of the men (and don’t doubt for a minute that the overwhelming majority were men) who crafted the clever securities now causing so much commotion were MBAs, as well.

So will the nation see a drop in business school applicants, both from disgust with the horrible way in which these executives have handled the crisis (and before that, their companies) and due to fear of a vastly shrunken market?  I think we will see that. I think this crisis will make a lot of young people wonder if Wall Street is such a great place to work.  I think more college graduates will pause before assuming that they want to incur more debt just to get a degree to work in an industry in massive flux.

Only time will tell, of course… but I think an MBA today won’t be worth as much as it was even a year ago.

photo credit: CarbonNYC

Student Loans for borrowers with good credit. Rates as low as 7.88%. Borrow up to $25,000 to help fund your education.

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• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book.
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

If you’re like me, you read that with a chill running down your spine. You read blogs, so you’re reading a lot.  You like reading.  You think other people ought to like to read.

photo credit: Duquesa Mercedes

One of my fondest childhood memories is reading “The Hobbit” along with my dad. We had a big illustrated edition – a lot of the cheesy Rankin-Bass stills, where Gollum looks like a frog – and he read it to me in installments.  I don’t remember how many times we read it or how old I was, but I read “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy (on my own) before 3rd grade, so it was probably when I was 5 or 6.  But my point is simple:  I remember being almost insanely excited with the idea that another chapter was going to unfold.  A picture would be painted in my mind – by me – and the next day another picture would be drawn.  I would go to sleep in the bunk bed I shared with my brother, my mind filled with trolls and dragons and dwarves.

I read to my son a lot, and have done so since he was born. I’ve tried to with my daughter, with less success since every time I start to read to her my son runs over and insists on sharing (which means reading to HIM).  But I think both kids have an early love of reading.  I don’t read to them for any other reason than a long-term attempt to inspire a love of books in them.  Books have been some of my truest and dearest friends throughout my life, and I think children need to learn early in their lives that a life can revolve around books without TV, video games or the internet.

Bubelah and I talked about intellectual curiousity this weekend, in relation to things I’ve said about a college education. I argue that for most people, college is a crutch.  Their intellectual curiosity is sated by four years in college – they read, they take interesting courses, they graduate and 58% of them never read a book again.  Bubelah thinks college is necessary for growth, and that college forces people to expand in ways they never would on their own.   I say that college can only assist growth – intellectual curiousity, if someone has it, won’t stop with college.  We didn’t decide the argument, but we did agree that there is no excuse to quit learning, ever.

I know my coworkers are weirded out that I sit and read a book in the office pantry while I eat lunch. They are doubly weirded out that I read history, or graphic novels, or fantasy/sci-fi.  The idea of reading anything other than a newspaper or magazine seems trivial or immature to them.   Even though I am not enamored of either of the major parties in the US, every time I hear someone (and it’s usually a Democrat) mocked for being “an intellectual” or “an elitist” I cringe.  When did intellectual prowess or a curiosity about life become a characteristic to be mocked?  I care about history, space exploration, politics, ethics, literature.  I’m a pointy-headed intellectual – and I drink beer and love pro football, too.

Reading is the gateway to knowledge. Of course you can gain knowledge through experience, or discussion, or other avenues – but reading is so freely available and simple that it can only be deemed a great failure of any society that doesn’t encourage it as a core virtue.  I’d like to see America become a place that’s proud of intellectual curiosity, but too often intellectual curiosity is mocked and belittled by people whose idea of culture is determined by TV executives.  Knowledge should be a lifelong goal, not something satisfied by four years in college.

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This post is part of The Money Writers‘ college student finance tips group writing project.

Everyone likes to think that with the passage of time they become an expert. Simply by virtue of their own experience, they become an expert in an area that could be the subject of full-time study.  That’s what giving financial advice to students seems like to me – but I’m going to give it a shot as part of a group writing project by The Money Writers.  I only have three, and in all fairness it’s really only one idea broken down three ways.

1.  Consider if you really need to go to THAT (or any) college. I’ve thought about this idea a lot recently.  I have a relative who’s going to school for art.  A very expensive private school… for art.  Does that make sense?  I suppose it might.  Maybe you interact with other artists, you get to hone your skills.  But do you need an expensive private school education in art?  I majored in mathematics.  I needed help – you need instructors to explain things.  If you’re a writer, you need someone to teach you how to spell, writer gooder, and so on.  If you want to be a dentist, you aim (I hope) on attending dental school.  But if you want to work in accounting, trust me – the Big 4 are hiring just as many people out of state schools as private schools.  You will all make the same.  And if you’re an artist – maybe you should give a couple of years over to art before going to school.  Just sayin’.

2.  Choose a major based on your needs, not your idle ‘wants’. A recent commentator said that they needed to attend a $40,000 a year graphic design school.  If you want to be a doctor, you can afford to gamble on taking on student loan debt.  Your future earning potential is high.  If you plan to be a high school teacher, you might want to think twice about taking on huge debt.  Choose a major based on your needs – or more importantly, go back to step 1.

3.  Don’t bite off more than you can chew. I imagine this is the simplest advice, but the most often ignored in our status-hungry society.  If you cannot afford a $50,000 per year education – if you have to scrape and pull together every last dime – ask yourself:  could you go to a less expensive school?  Would it cripple you beyond belief?  Will people revere your Yale biology degree and mock your Michigan biology degree?  I doubt it.  Take a look at what you can afford.  Remember:  your education will help you land your first j

I rejected a lot of prestigious schools to attend a state school and – very honestly – have never had a moment’s regret for my decision.  My choice would not be for everyone.  But in today’s world, with an uncertain economy, an unsure future and unrealistic expectations, I have to ask:  wouldn’t the best financial tip be not to waste money on more education than you need?

Check out the rest of The Money Writers‘ college student finance tips:

• Lazy Man & Money
• Money Smart Life
• My Dollar Plan
• The Digerati Life
• Million Dollar Journey

photo credit: lucianvenutian

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People often ask me what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

Probably the best book that I can refer you to is the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber … it has changed many business owners’ lives (including my own).

In it, he shakes the myth of the entrepreneur being some sort of ‘knight on a white charger’ – you know the type, like Jack Taylor, the founder of Enterprise Rent-a-Car who was a navy pilot in WWII then went on to launch Enterprise in 1957, taking it to $78 million revenue (it’s now a $7 billion company!) before handing the reins to his son, Andy in 1980.

Here’s how Andy describes his father:

“My father was the true entrepreneurial risk taker. He was the guy flying airplanes off carriers. He did not see taking a $25,000 second mortgage to invest in a business as a huge risk, because he saw real risks being taken during World War II.“

There’s no doubt that adversity makes for better entrepreneurs … adversity gives you a ‘nothing to lose’ attitude.

Contrast that with the educated middle-to-upper-middle class …

… once you finish college and put in a few years learning the corporate ‘ropes’ it’s very hard to let go of the comfortable $50k – $150k that you are earning (and that your lifestyle has magically jumped up to meet … you know: cars, toys, vacations, etc.) to jump into a business that all the odds point to going broke.

You see, that education that we strive for, to lift us out of the middle-class, actually serves to keep us there.

After 6 years in the corporate world, I was bitten with the ‘entrepreneurial bug’ so badly, I was miserable every day that I was still at work after that little epiphany (I used to LOVE my job until then).

Yet, it still took me 4 years to leave …

If I was still working, no doubt I would be well on my way to saving $1 million or maybe even more by the time I retire at 65.

But, from where I now sit that seems WAY too little WAY too late …

photo credit: Môsieur J.,  …selected by Steve

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