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Why Education Costs Rise So Fast

December 3rd, 2010 at 03:55 pm

I just read a great post about why education costs are rising quicker than inflation and should be. Mark Warschauer is a leading researcher on laptop programs in schools. His findings usually show that computers don't matter, good teaching matters. I found the article fairly convincing.

http://papyrusnews.com/2010/12/03/why-education-costs-rise-and-why-we-can-afford-them/

Whelmed Just Right

December 1st, 2010 at 06:54 pm

So DH and I have been a bit overwhelmed lately with the idea of "investing". We both have this urge to get into the investing game an buy a couple stocks. We were getting all itchy about this up until Thanksgiving weekend, at which point I realized that we were both being a bit silly. This is not the time in our lives to be investing. We are still very, very busy saving for a our many short term goals (house, car, kids, student loans), and we really shouldn't be thinking about investing. Now by investing, I don't mean retirement. That I see as another savings goal. We need to save $5000 a year to fill up one of the Roth's. Investing is setting money aside to generate supplemental income while we are still working.

So we had to lower our goals. My uncle wrote a book a couple years ago and he talked about how we need to avoid being overwhelmed or underwhelmed. We need to be whelmed just right for optimal motivation. This might involve increasing our productivity, but just as often this involves lowering our expectations to something more reasonable.

So here we go. We are going to try to lower our expectations and focus on our savings goals. We will try to be whelmed just right.

My Frugal Holidays

November 17th, 2010 at 09:36 pm

So I'm almost finished with my holiday shopping! **dances** And I was able to utilize my ever-improving frugal skills to do it for ridiculously little! **dances more** Here is what I've got:

- Gifts for Parents: Each gets a wedding photo album from Shutterfly. I got both for free and only paid shipping.
- Gifts for niece & nephew: Purchased off Amazon.com using swagbucks gift cards and free shipping from Amazon Student.
- Gift for DH's cousin: Purchased from ULTA during a sale using a coupon and got a free bag (which will probably become part of another gift).
- Gift for DH's brother: Amazon.com gift card part of which will be from at least 1 more swagbucks code.
- 2 White Elephant Exchange gifts: Picked up 2 $5 Starbucks gift cards by doing surveys.

Gifts to still get:
- Family Christmas gift exchange: Probably use the gift bag and some free samples to create a bath gift set. Need to find out details of exchange.
- Family Secret Santa: Probably use amazon.com swagbucks. Need to find out details of exchange.

And that's it. DH and I never do gifts for each other, so that covers the holidays.

Spending to Save

November 12th, 2010 at 09:39 pm

Lowering my future expenses is one step to bring myself closer to financial independence. Lower expenses means less need in net worth and greater savings from income. Here are some things in my life that I can spend money on to lower future expenses:

- Pay cash for a car
- Pay off debt
- Purchase a house
- Pay off house debt
- Buy an older/safer car for lower insurance
- Buy and grow herbs in my window (those of you lucky enough to have backyards/patios can plant vegetables/fruit)

Those are all that I've thought of right now. Any other ideas?

Logging our Net Worth

November 9th, 2010 at 05:51 pm

I started logging our net worth each month. I use our cash and stock investments minus our debt to decide our net worth. I don't count our checking account since this amount fluctuates too often. I don't want to include non-liquid assets in my calculations. I'm also tracking our "multiplier" = net worth / yearly expenses.

This is forcing me to face the fact that most of the money I am currently saving will just be spent within the next 3-5 years on buying a car and buying a home. This is sort of depressing, but I have adjusted my goals accordingly. I'm hoping that by the end of 2015 I will have saved 1x our yearly expenses over our debt.

Thoughts:
- When we go on vacation, our net worth will drop because the vacation account is included.
- When we buy a car with cash, our net worth will drop by the cost of the car.
- When we buy a home, our net worth will drop by the total cost of the home = down payment + loan amount.
- When we pay off debt, our net worth will rise.
- When we put money into retirement, our net worth will rise, though there will be volatility.

Actions:
- Try to buy a less expensive car.
- After buying a car, put the extra money away into a low risk mutual fund and redirect the lease payment into this account. Possibly exclude this from net worth calculations to simplify.
- Pay off debt quickly. Saving to pay off subsidized student loan debt is a good way to increase net worth.
- Reducing expenses increases the multiplier two-fold: decreasing the denominator and increasing the numerator.

Realization

October 13th, 2010 at 04:50 pm

So I had a realization over the past few days about saving which many people probably already know, but which is a new thing for me. I realized that the only number that matters is the percent of my income that I save into permanent assets. The total amount saved doesn't really matter since it has no relation to how much I spend.

This means I have to count some of my savings (for a car, house, trip, etc) as actually spending (just debtless spending). If these items counted as "savings" then the ultimate goal would be to avoid debt, but my ultimate goal is to build wealth.

So to buy a $15K car every 10 years, that would be about $1.5K a year in savings (in the avoid debt model). Or that could be $37.5K in assets (in the wealth building model) which would create approximately $1.5K a year.

This change in mindset was inspired by www.earlyretirementextreme.com. The guy is a bit crazy, but his ideas are both onerous and liberating.

Vacation!

October 10th, 2010 at 07:36 pm

So my husband and I have been struggling for the past 3 years to find a time to go to San Francisco to see the city and visit his Aunt and Uncle. He decided (for my sake) that we had to go before the end of next summer. The problem was, I couldn't find a good time. Work, holidays, school, etc just got in the way. Finally we realized the only time we could go was next month!

So we called his Aunt and Uncle and we are staying with them and taking 2 days in San Fran and 2 days in Napa. So exciting! The only problem is, we don't have the money saved up yet. We decided screw it! We are going to borrow from one of our other savings plans or tighten the budget for that month, but if we don't go now, we will never go. Plus, it's not like we will be going into debt for the trip, just reallocating savings.

Lucky Investing

September 28th, 2010 at 05:46 pm

Last year I found out that my employer was taking money out of my paycheck and sending it to a DCP when I worked over summers. I gained access to my account, and I moved all my money into the fund with the best performance that I could see. There was only a couple hundred dollars in the account so I didn't take it very seriously. Well, luckily for me, that fund was a Fidelity Income fund and was entirely invested in government bonds! In this economy I have made a 7% return on my investment!

Well now that I know a lot more and with my knowledge of the impending bond bubble burst, I just rebalanced my portfolio to only have 10% in bonds. I changed to a different fund with a lower expense ratio also. Hopefully I have played my cards right and in 2-3 years when I graduate and roll over that account, hopefully I will have seen decent growth. In the mean time, I'm using this fund as a testing ground for my own investing strategy (the rest of our retirement is invested according to my financial planner/brother's recommendations).

A Little Status Update

September 23rd, 2010 at 04:33 pm

I just wanted to update on our status. Currently we have $27,625 in defered subsidized student loan debt. $8,500 of that debt is DH's student loans and will be forgiven by the state over the next 5 years. The rest are my student looans due 6 months after I graduate. We currently have around $1500 set aside for this. It is on my savings plan.

I am currently putting around $650 away for a down payment and another $650 away to buy a car. October will be my first contribution to my Roth IRA at $416.67 per month. These comprise my savings budget.

Outside of the savings budget is more money. We have $50 a month going to my husbands 403(b) off budget. $200 of our Needs funds an Annual Bills account. We are adding a $200 item to Wants to boost our efund before we begin trying to conceive.

So there will be a lot of saving going on. I have figured that if we increase our savings by 2% a year from our base amount of $1680 per month, we should meet our current goals. Thankfully we are already beating our yearly goal for 2010.

Ruminating on Moving

September 14th, 2010 at 11:46 pm

So today we have a friend moving in with us temporarily until his university housing begins. Often when friends move I think about how the stress of moving is often easily controlled with a bit of planning and an emergency fund.

I have seen several people move and here are some things I have learned:

- Take care of acquiring new housing months before your move out date.
- Always plan to talk to your new landlord/housing office in person before you move in. Especially in college town, housing is on a cycle.
- Sell as much as you can! Especially if you may have to store those things and even more so in the years between college and "settling down". If you own Ikea, sell it and buy used at your new home.
- Moving is expensive. Even if you are just buying pizza for your friends.
- Moving takes a long time. Even if you have a ton of friends.
- Lists are your friends. List where everything is packed, especially if you are storing, using multiple cars, or hiring a moving company.
- You have more stuff than you think.

Super Saving

September 12th, 2010 at 08:18 pm

So I just ordered 2 photo albums from Shutterfly. I used a code for 1 free book from Groupon which I purchased using my referral bonus. I also used another code for 1 free book from Borders. I couldn't qualify for free shipping because I didn't actually spend any money. But I did order with my cash back credit card for 1% back and used upromise to get another 9% back. So after both of those it cost me $12.82 for 2 8x8 photo albums and 2 of my Christmas/Channukah presents are completed.

Working on Our Credit Score

September 10th, 2010 at 06:38 pm

So I've been working on our credit score a bit lately. I got mine for free last week from FICO and I was surprised that it was only a 729. We won't need our credit for another 3 years when we buy a house so I figure right now is the perfect time to work to improve it. My two biggest problems were length of credit history and revolving credit utilization. We don't carry a balance on our cards, but we use them for all of our purchases so the balance each month looks high.

So far we signed up for another credit card. It offers really good rewards and will get us even more cash back every year.

We each own an individual credit card, and I was thinking that we should add each other as cosigners. I might not want to add my husband to my card because it isn't that old, but his card is 7 years old and has a higher credit limit than any of my cards. Any thoughts?

Plan for the Future

August 30th, 2010 at 09:57 pm

Upcoming events in my financial life:

October - Closing old checking account and moving extra money into my savings.
November - Sign up for new health insurance and a flexible spending account.
January - Insurance & FSA begin.
March - If DH doesn't get RIF'ed, we reduce our e-fund to 3 months.

Right now our biggest savings challenge is getting an extra $10,000 in our e-fund before we try to get pregnant. Right now that's not going to happen by our goal date (April 2012), but with the extra money from the checking accounts and monthly interest, we might be able to d it. If DH doesn't get RIF'ed, we already have enough money in our e-fund. So here's hoping for a good time next March.

Woot New Checking!

August 25th, 2010 at 07:46 pm

So we are switching to ING for our checking. I want to actually earn interest on my checking, and this will make transferring e-fund money from my savings so much easier. Now for my to do list:

[ ] Increase credit limit
[ ] Setup credit card bill pay for cell phone
[ ] Setup direct deposit for my paycheck
[ ] Setup direct deposit for DH's paycheck
[ ] Remove ebills for 3 CC's at old bank
[ ] Add ebills for 3 CC's at new bank
[ ] Change auto payments on lease
[ ] Check last year of statements for auto payments & withdrawals
[ ] Create another to do list!

A Good Day

August 24th, 2010 at 11:36 pm

Today was a good day on the money front.

- Had a dentist appointment and everything checked out clean so no expensive dental bill
- Turned in our bottles and cans and got $3.36. Pretty good haul for only about a month.
- Talked with my insurance agent and sent her information about LoJack on our car. I'm expecting a refund on our premium.
- Got a free credit score from myFico.com for following them on Twitter.
- When DH gets home we will apply to increase our credit limit so we can reduce our credit utilization

The only negative thing today was having to pay the AAA renewal. Seems like there always has to be one expense.

Running Errands = Big Expenses

August 19th, 2010 at 09:38 pm

Yesterday we had a couple of nice big expenses, and there are just more to come. I took my car in for maintenance yesterday. I have a dentist appointment next week. We also will be making reservations to attend a film festival that my brother-in-law is in. This is his first one, and we are the stars of the movie so really we should be there. Thankfully I have enough in our Frivolous account to take care of this.

I hate that we aren't saving anything right now. I don't really count the student loans as that just represents more debt. We won't put anything away next month either. Our dreams just get pushed back every month we have to delay. Hopefully in October we will have a big enough paycheck to actually save.

Reminder: Get DH to change allowances at work.

Started a Student Loan CD

August 18th, 2010 at 08:20 pm

We received DH's student loan refund and all that money is going into a CD for the next 18 months. Hopefully by the time the money gets out we will have a better picture of our repayment plan.

The confusion is that the state will forgive $2000-$3000 a year for 5 years in student loans if he teaches in a low income school. We don't need all the money they will be offering for his Master's loans, but currently his parents are paying off his undergrad loans. I'm torn if we should focus the initial forgiveness on his old loans (helping Mom & Dad) or his new loans (helping us). I think we will ask them if any of the loans are unsubsidized and get the specifics on interest rates when things get closer.

Summer Break is Over

August 17th, 2010 at 03:55 pm

So summer is basically over in our house. DH is back to work which is a blessing. He was offered permanent substitute positions at his old school and another in district school. We still have hope that he can work in our county, but this is the best backup plan.

Over summer we have had to stop all our saving to retain positive cash flow. This is upsetting. It means we still haven't started contributing to our Roth IRA. We should be able to start up again in October. When we do, I will be adjusting our contributions so that they = money needed/months to achieve. I disregard interest for this so hopefully I can adjust the contributions down in the future to make room for other goals. Any extra money will go into the soonest, most urgent goal.

This month has been hard as DH needed major dental work. He maxed out our dental coverage! He still needs his wisdom teeth removed, but that will have to wait for next year. I think I will have to take over choosing the medical coverage this year. I am not pleased by that.

Furlough Days

May 9th, 2010 at 09:04 pm

Hello all. Sorry for being silent. I was away at a conference for 5 days and then was crazy busy catching up.

So we received DH's paycheck, and they have taken out money for the upcoming furlough days. Somehow they justified taking out a higher pay rate than he actually gets paid. Don't ask me how they justified it. It's all Union contracts. So this month's budget is going to be $300 tighter than normal.

I'm pretty sure DH is going to be changing his specialization for his Masters. We looked at possible Education Technology jobs and he could easily earn 1.5-2x his current pay. This should also mean that we will hear if he is accepted by the end of the week. Hopefully that will mean hearing about financial aid sooner.

I started our Roth IRA this week, though I'm still waiting until the beginning of next month to fund it. We were delayed by the name change.

We have a lot of big expenses coming up from exciting weekends and planning for summer vacations, but I think our Frivolous spending account will cover it.

Name Change Still Ongoing

April 27th, 2010 at 04:42 am

So after getting married last August I quickly began to change my name. I figured I was done with most of it, but when I went to open my Roth IRA I found out I was very wrong. Somehow I forgot to tell my HR Rep that I had changed my name. I told the school as a student, but not as an employee. Friggin disconnected systems.

I was hoping to open my Roth IRA with the same company that my university's retirement plan is through. If I open my Roth IRA right now it will be forced under my maiden name and then I will have to change my name with the company. So now I have to delay opening my Roth IRA.

Thankfully we didn't change DH's with holdings yet. The plan is to go from $300 a month into his 403(b) to $50 to the 403(b) and $250 to the Roth IRA. We will increase contributions once we have a good downpayment and also when DH's paycheck goes up every year. I know we should be putting more than 5% into retirement, but part of my retirement plan is paying off our eventual house and a large down payment is a necessity.

More Fun Finance for Kids

April 24th, 2010 at 02:23 pm

I found this through Free Stuff Times. Basically like a Math Blaster trivia game for finance. Has really good animation of a soccer game, and you can choose Easy, Medium, or Hard questions and the quicker you answer the better your players do in the game.

http://www.financialsoccer.com

It doesn't really follow sound learning principles for multimedia learning, but it's an engaging trivia game with some quality questions about finances.

Swagbucks -- Guess it Works

April 21st, 2010 at 03:21 am

So two weeks ago I went home for the weekend and my sister was telling me that she had started to use Swagbucks. As part of my move to try to make a little money on the side, I have started doing surveys online. We discussed surveys versus searching sites. I had to admit that in the month I have been doing surveys I have not gained any rewards from them. I just can't qualify for enough surveys. The frugal, childless lifestyle is not what market researchers want to hear about.

So I signed up for Swagbucks. I began using it on April 5 and today, April 20, I just cashed in my first reward for a $5 Amazon.com Gift Certificate. I'm really impressed with how quickly the rewards start. Now I understand that I'm not actually getting any money from them so I decided to purchase something that would reduce my spending in other ways. I'm going to buy an herb garden kit. They cost about $15 with shipping and then I can grow fresh herbs in our window. This will save us money and add such lovely flavor to our cooking. Plus I need to nurture my green thumb if I plan to start a vegetable garden once we own a home.

So from all this I can confidently now show the swagbucks banner on my blog.

Resolving my Crisis

April 15th, 2010 at 03:53 pm

So DH and I sat down last night and discussed how much we had to get us through the end of the month and still stay within budget. We decided that we are still in the testing and adjustment stages of our budget and so we are still going out on our little date night on Friday.

I really do want to try to live off $4600 a month. It is our goal, but it makes no sense to try so hard if it is not livable. We are not in debt, but we have lofty savings goals. I just cannot wait until May when we find out our summer plans, June when we find out about DH's financial aid, and July when I can adjust our insurance savings (I started saving late).

Budget Crisis!

April 14th, 2010 at 10:51 pm

So we've been chugging along this month feeling pretty good about our budget. We avoided buying groceries by eating what was left in the fridge until last weekend. We then went out last weekend and spent exactly $200.00 at Costco and then a bit at the grocery store. This was a big part of our budget, but now we are restocked on meats and other basic ingredients.

Then two nights ago we had a major birth control emergency. This led to a horrible worrying night and a trip to the pharmacy for Plan B. This ran us $54.36. Then in addition I had to buy another prescription this month to finish off my birth control. Thankfully I have two insurances right now through DH's work and my school. That cost another $30. Not a happy situation.

Then today I was going over our budget. As I have said it is divided into Savings, Billed Needs, Flexible Needs, Billed Wants, and Flexible Wants. Under Billed Wants I have added $300 a month to save for DH's Masters. Somehow I forgot to take this money away from our Flexible Wants.

So as of now thanks to all the problems, I have no more money budgeted for Needs and only $116.49 in Flexible Wants. This money will have to go towards Needs, especially since I have to go to Denver at the end of the month for a conference! Ugh! Looks like we will be going over budget and putting less towards the Down Payment and Frivolous Spending accounts to cover our monthly budget. That was supposed to be for trips this summer...guess not so much.

The Power of Advertising

April 9th, 2010 at 07:28 pm

So DH and I live in a largely ad free world. We only watch TV on Hulu (one ad per break) and we mostly frequent webcomics and blogs on the internet. Usually most of our advertising is video game related.

So somehow I received a copy of [url http://www.thenest.com]The Nest Magazine[/url]. It really is a fun magazine aimed at newlywed yuppies. They are trying to aim at both husband and wife, which I think is a good goal.

So last DH comments at dinner that he was looking through the magazine. Suddenly he is talking about how much he want to buy a multipart screwdriver and Japanese saw that he was in an article. I incredulously asked him why he would need these things in our dorm-apartment! I proposed maybe when we buy a house we could get them and he actually said that he wanted them now! What for? This led us to talk about the power of product placement and advertising.

I used to frequent sites like The Knot and Martha Stewart when we were getting married. Now I'm on sites like Saving Advice and Help Me Financial. Then I wanted to make my house look amazing. Now I want to scrimp and save as much as possible. It just shows how you environment can effect your expectations for yourself.

Federal Financial Literacy Resources

April 7th, 2010 at 08:29 pm

This is partially for my own research use and partially to share with all of you. As I said in an earlier entry I am becoming interested in financial literacy education. I was just reading the Obama Administration's "A Blueprint for Reform" which outlines their proposed changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the current version is called No Child Left Behind, but it's been around since LBJ). The Blueprint outline that in addition to Literacy and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) it supports a "Well-Rounded Education" which includes "arts, foreign languages, history and civics, financial literacy, environmental education, and other subjects". This got me to explore what other governmental bodies have information about financial literacy.

Federal Offices

Text is US Treasury Office of Financial Education and Link is http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/domestic-finance/financial-institution/fin-education/resources/credit.shtml
US Treasury Office of Financial Education

Text is Financial Literacy Education Commission and Link is http://www.mymoney.gov
Financial Literacy Education Commission

Text is Federal Citizens Information Council and Link is http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/
Federal Citizens Information Council - Product information

Text is
President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy and Link is http://www.treas.gov/offices/domestic-finance/financial-institution/fin-education/council/

President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy


General Reports
Text is National Strategy for Financial Literacy 2006 and Link is http://www.mymoney.gov/pdfs/ownership.pdf
National Strategy for Financial Literacy 2006

Text is 2009 National Financial Capability Study and Link is http://www.finrafoundation.org/resources/research/p120478
2009 National Financial Capability Study

General Education
Text is National Council for Economics Education and Link is http://www.councilforeconed.org/
National Council for Economics Education

Text is Federal Reserve Teacher Search Tool and Link is http://www.federalreserveeducation.org/teachers/
Federal Reserve Teacher Search Tool - Elementary to College, NCEE & Jump$tart standards

Text is National Financial Education Network Database and Link is http://www.flecnationalnetwork.org/
National Financial Education Network Database - Database of personal finance educational materials

Adult Education
Text is Free My Money Toolkit and Link is http://www.mymoney.gov/order.shtml
Free My Money Toolkit

Text is Federal Reserve Personal Finance Education and Link is http://www.federalreserveeducation.org/pfed/
Federal Reserve Personal Finance Education

Text is National Credit Union Administration Financial Education and Link is http://www.ncua.gov/Resources/CreditUnionDevelopment/ResourceConnection/FinancialEducation.aspx
National Credit Union Administration Financial Education

Text is Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Link is http://www.occ.treas.gov/cdd/finlitresdir.htm
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Secondary Education
Text is FTC Game for 5-8 Grade and Link is http://www.ftc.gov/YouAreHere/
FTC Game for 5-8 Grade - Teaches about scams, advertising, information security, and business economics

Text is Atlanta Fed 8th Grade Curriculum and Link is http://www.frbatlanta.org/edresources/personalfined/course/index.cfm?redirected=true
Atlanta Fed 8th Grade Curriculum

Text is National Financial Capability Challenge and Link is http://www.challenge.treas.gov/
National Financial Capability Challenge - High School students can complete a quiz and top students receive rewards

Elementary & Preschool Education
Text is US Mint's History In your Pocket (HIP) Games and Link is http://www.usmint.gov/kids/
US Mint's History In your Pocket (HIP) Games - Some of these games focus explicitly on identifying money, others include secondary information about money that is nonessential to the game

Text is Money Math Lessons for Life and Link is http://www.mymoney.gov/pdfs/moneymath_lesson.pdf
Money Math Lessons for Life A series of lessons to meet Grade 4 & 8 national standards for financial literacy

Text is Social Security Fables and Link is http://www.socialsecurity.gov/kids/kids.htm
Social Security Fables - Text of various fables which teach financial literacy

March Zero Out

April 1st, 2010 at 07:07 pm

So I "zeroed out" my checking account for March yesterday. I always keep $4000 in there, but I like to move any excess to savings at the end of the month. I opened our "Frivolous Spending" account and put 25% of the zero out in there and 75% in my home downpayment. So that means $568 to frivolous spending and $1706 into the home downpayment! My little ticker says we are 43% of the way to the downpayment and that doesn't include the interest on our CD!

We talked again about starting a Baby Savings Fund. I'm thinking that might just involve adding $10,000 to the Emergency Savings instead of opening a new account. I'm torn if we should start one right after we finish the downpayment fund or wait until the car fund is ready also. We decided to reassess after we hear back about DH's financial aid. Right now we are contributing to savings for a car, auto insurance, DH's Masters, and the downpayment.

Behaviorism and Money

March 30th, 2010 at 06:27 pm

So today for a class I was reading a chapter on the history of behaviorism. Behaviorism, a largely rejected area of study, still has a strong impact on our ideas of education, parenting, and social policy. I would like to focus on the role of behaviorism in financial planning. The federal government encourages us to buy a home so they use negative reinforcement (removal of tax burden). They use the same method for retirement. With children we often use positive reinforcement (allowance) to encourage chores.

This goes against the findings of cognitive psychology that intrinsic motivation is reduced by reinforcement. One study included in our text was about children playing with markers. The group of children who were promised a sticker if they drew a picture, later drew pictures less often when there was no reward. If we assume that children naturally do not like to be messy, we should not promise positive reinforcement for cleaning. With adults, we see this in open source communities. Once programmers are offered money to build a product they become listless and refuse to work on the project.

I have a strong interest in the psychology of finances and especially how we teach children about money. I have been struck lately that we tech children first how to spend money and then later how to save and earn money. The first lessons a child learns about money in our school system is how to recognize various forms of cash and coin and how to make change and convert between these amounts. Early word problems are about purchasing items and getting change back, not as selling items to someone and giving them change. Much, much later, children learn about interest and the difference between monthly payments and paying up front. I'm hoping this quarter to explore the psychology of economics education.

Free Stuff

March 30th, 2010 at 04:04 pm

So I received my first pack of free stuff yesterday. P&G sent me a single us of tide. I will split it between two washers. and a sample of head & shoulders shampoo and conditioner. I'm thinking I will pack these for the trips I'm taking for work.

Speaking of, tonight I head out to spend the night with my family and give a presentation at a conference tomorrow. I'm a little nervous. One thing that irks me about all conferences in academia is that instead of paying me, I have to pay them for my admissions. I pay them for the privelage of presenting my work. I will be published in a book, and I will not see any money. The expectation is that grants (mostly from the government) will pay our salary and pay for my travel costs. I think its a really silly system.

Helped a Friend Move

March 27th, 2010 at 07:30 pm

I helped friends move out of their apartment yesterday. They live in the building across from our apartment. They didn't know they were moving until 2 weeks ago and with a newborn baby they didn't have time to sell anything or make their way through the food in their fridge. They only had a single rented truck for they 3 day trip ahead of them, and they knew they couldn't fit all of their possessions.

So from all of this I ended up taking home tons of food and a bit of furniture. I brought home 5 bags full of food including soup can, 3 cans of non-stick spray, jelly, frozen vegetables, sauces, and so much more. I also got a small side table that I put into my entryway. I'm going to paint it sometime soon as it's all scratched. I got a box of action figures which I will gift to my nephew. I also got a hamburger cage for the grill. I'm totally excited about all my new things. I don't have to go shopping anytime soon.


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