Tag Archives: work

Volunteer to Help Pay Student Loans

If you are like me, you paid a pretty penny for your college education. I however, decided to finance most of my education in the form of student loans (private and federal). It amounts to a great sum and I wonder how I am going to pay it off every day. Looking back, I know I would have been able to pay for college with cash and yet didn’t.

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I know it’s going to take a lot of hard work and dedication to pay of the majority of the loans but I am always looking for other avenues. Volunteering is one of those avenues. As you will see, there are plenty of ways to get your college education paid for by volunteering. As a bonus, you are doing good things to help around your community and the world. Here are some resources for paying off your student loans while volunteering:

AmeriCorps

Each year, AmeriCorps offers 75,000 opportunities for adults of all ages and backgrounds to serve through a network of partnerships with local and national nonprofit groups. You can volunteer in various areas such as education, business, housing, disaster relief, health, technology and more. You serve for 12 months and receive a living stipend up to $7,400. At the end of your service, you receive a $4,725 education award to be used toward your federal student loans or your tuition if you are currently in college. AmeriCorps is also the group that offers the VISTA program.

Personally, I looked around the site and found a few good positions that I would be interested in. There were several positions in financial education, foreclosures, and housing. Check it out because there is something there waiting for you!

Peace Corps

Peace Corps volunteers serve in 74 countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Europe, and the Middle East. Collaborating with local community members, Volunteers work in areas like education, youth outreach and community development, the environment, and information technology. The Peace Corps provides volunteers with a living allowance while they are serving. It enables them to live in a manner that is similar to where they are stationed. After completion of the program, the Peace Corps provides volunteers with a $6,000 payment to help with the transition back to a normal life.

While serving in the Peace Corps, volunteers are able to defer their federal student loans until they are finished with the program. If you have a Perkins loan, you will be eligible for a cancellation of 15% for each year you spend in the program. If you spend more than 2 years, you can have 20% of your loan cancelled in years 3 and 4. In all, you can have up to 70% of your Perkins loan cancelled.

Teach for America

Teach for America is an American non-profit that enlists America’s future leaders to help end education inequality. The program will place you in a low-income school in various locations around the country where you will teach students (you do not need an education degree). The great thing about the program is that you receive all of the same benefits as other professional teachers in the school district. In other words, you receive the same salary and health benefits as beginning teachers.

During your two years as a teacher, you can receive forbearance (they still pay the interest) of your student loans. Plus, at the end of each year you will receive a $4,725 education award that can be used to pay off federal student debt.

Military

The military offers many great education benefits while you are in the service or after you leave. With the active duty and verterans GI Bill, you can receive up to $1,075 per month for education and training. If you are in the reserves, you can receive a reduced benefit of up to $297 per month.

Charity for Debt

Charity for Debt offers a unique program in which you can volunteer your time with various non-profits in return for the payment of parts of your student loans. The program is still in the pilot stage and is currently only being offered in Dallas, Oklahoma City, and Washington DC. Basically, you volunteer your time at various sponsored non-profits and you receive anywhere from $15 to $20 per hour (tax-free) that is then used to pay your student loans.

Personally, I have signed up for this progam since I live in the DC metro area. I will keep you informed on how the process goes and if it even takes off.

Does anyone else know of any other ways to volunteer your time and have you student loans paid?

Money Genie: I Grant You 3 Financial Do-Overs

Today is your lucky day! The personal finance genie has graced this site with his presence. What’s he doing here? Well, he has come to grant you 3 financial do-overs.

What Would You Change Financially If You Had the Chance?

The genie wants to know what financial decisions you would change if given the chance. Do you wish you began investing at 18? Do you wish you never set eyes on that guy giving away t-shirts in college if you signed up for a credit card? Here are my 3 wishes:

1. I wish I never saw a credit card in my life

I’ve never wanted to get too much into detail about our personal finances because some people who read this blog obviously know me. However, I will admit that I have made some bad decisions concerning credit cards over my lifetime. I received my first card at 18 and I could just feel the immense power that it had. That power caused me to feel financially invincible and it caused me much financial harm. Let’s just say that it will take me quite awhile to dig myself out of this financial hole that I have dug.

If this wish came true, I would live my life with MUCH less stress. As many of you know, debt puts a huge weight on your shoulders. You have to continually focus on the final outcome of being debt free. Having that vision helps you continue the battle and kill debt a lot faster. I cannot wait for that day to come!

2. I wish I fully funded my Roth IRA every year since I opened it 7 years ago

All I can say is that I started out on the right path. I opened a Roth IRA when I was 18 (actually, my uncle did it for me). However, over the years I completely neglected it and managed to only put around $1,500 into it. I know a lot of you will say that I lucked out because of the market collapse, but I do not see it that way. If I would have put the max in each year ($31,000 total) and invested it in an index fund (Vanguard Total Market),  I would only have around $27,000 in the account. Frankly, that sucks. However, that would be $26,000 more than I currently have in it and if I had done that every year, I imagine my credit card debt wouldn’t be as high.

3. I wish I would have paid my way through college and not taken on student debt

Looking back, I know I would have been able to pay my way through college (undergraduate AND graduate). Yet what do I have to show for it? Many times the average debt of a typical college student. In plain english, I was stupid. I really have no idea where the money went that I earned while working during college. It could have easily went to my school and yet it didn’t. I just want to scream from the hilltops for being so dumb. Don’t get yourself in the same mess I did. PAY CASH FOR COLLEGE!

I really wish there was a money genie and he could take care of all my financial woes. Unfotunately, there isn’t and I will have to live with my decisions and learn from them.

What are your top three financial mistakes? Share them with us in the comments!

Do you have a blog? Share your financial do-over wishes with your readers! Link back to this article so we can have a collection of them all. Hopefully this can be a large resource for younger individuals (college students) on what NOT to do financially at a young age.

UPDATE:

The genie has been making his way around the blogosphere. Check out some of the places that he has been:

Mrs Micah

Suburban Dollar

Budgets are Sexy

Free Money Finance

Joe Taxpayer

Give Me Back My Five Bucks

Punch Debt In the Face

Fighting Foreclosure

My Financial Recovery

Saturday Sneak-Peak: PFfirewall.com

Welcome to this weeks edition of Saturday Sneak-Peak! Every week I explore a personal finance blog and give a brief review of the site. My major intent of the adventure is to expose everyone to new and/or obscure blogs. Up this week is PF Firewall.

Firstly, I want to congratulate Jesse. He and his wife added a new bundle of joy this past week! If you don’t click on any of the links, at least leave a comment and congratulate him on this great blessing (they had a girl). 🙂

Jesse has been blogging since February and has been know to have lengthy, well-thought out posts. He averages about 15 posts a month so those of you who do not like to be bombarded with posts, he is your guy!

Here are some of my favorite posts from him:

Selling Oil Changes Door-to-Door?

Shopping Out of Season

The Real Reason for Lehman Brothers’ Downfall

Now off to the questions!

YMR: Why did you want to start a personal finance blog and what blogs did you read before you started?

Jesse: I started my blog for several reasons. I am actually really new to the blog scene, I hadn’t even read any blogs previous to late 08 aside from The Consumerist, which I didn’t realize was a blog.

When reading The Consumerist, I read about a girl that paid off around $14k in debt by following some Consumerist tips. This led me to think about my debt which I was completely ignoring. One of the tips was to call credit card companies and ask for rates to be lowered, and if they didn’t lower the rate, transfer the balance to another credit card. While searching for credit cards with better rates, I happened on MyMoneyBlog.com, which led me to a few other personal finance blogs including GetRichSlowly.com, BudgetsAreSexy.com and BrokeAsASpoke.com and I was hooked on Personal Finance blogs. I started following blog networks and finding more and more blogs about personal finance to read.

So I decided to start a personal finance blog to track my finances. I also thought if my finances were out there in the open, I would be more accountable and wouldn’t be able to ignore my financial incompetencies.

A second reason, I have always felt like teaching is the best way to learn. By researching what I want to write about, I learn so much about finance from those out there that know more about it than I do, then I can share the information with my readers knowing it is accurate.

Yet another reason was that I am a pretty big geek, and having my own website is one of those things that I wanted to do, coded completely from scratch of course. I had started several websites from scratch but none of them really had a purpose so I would code them, put them up and never update them. I felt like this was holding me back from learning more about web development, so I thought if I started a blog that was really easy to update, using a blog engine like WordPress instead of coding from scratch, I could get the content rolling, get motivated, then be able to spend time coding and modding the blog. I am happy to say this is working. I recently released a new custom theme for my blog, I have been doing a ton of design work in photoshop such as logos, banners and icons, and I have even been hired to redesign someone elses blog.

I even started another site coded from scratch with a purpose/idea that I found while writing my blog. This new site hasn’t really gone public yet as I am still designing it but it fills my geeky void 😉

YMR: Which post (on your site) has been your favorite and why?

Jesse: I think my favorite post was The Most Important Part Is Starting: Debt Recovery and the reason is I felt like the post, massive as it was, was really going to help people. The post was spurred by a friend that was having trouble getting started on the road to debt recovery. I realized there may be more people out there like her that have no clue on how to get started repaying debt so I was really happy to be able to help a friend out as well as anyone else that may read the post.

YMR: How would you describe your writing style?

Jesse: Another reason I started my blog that I left for this section is that I wanted to use my blog to start a writing portfolio. I have always loved to write and thought of doing some freelance writing but I have no public writing experience.

So my writing style reflects this desire. I write as if I am writing for a newspaper. Factual, informative and to the point. I try to hold myself to professional standards. I am known to be long winded but I want to make sure I cover all the facts and leave nothing out that may be important. On that same note I try and make the information more understandable as if I am talking to my readers versus writing to them.

YMR: Tell us something about yourself that some may not know.

Jesse: I am much geekier than I let on in my blog. I am a Linux user..I worked on the Geek Squad when I was younger..and even my TV is running on Linux. I even switched keyboard layouts to be more efficient when typing. I use the Dvorak instead of QWERTY layout and now type a few dozen words per minute faster than I used to. It took about a year to fully switch.

I am much geekier than I let on in my blog. I am a Linux user..I worked on the Geek Squad when I was younger..and even my TV is running on Linux. I even switched keyboard layouts to be more efficient when typing. I use the Dvorak instead of QWERTY layout and now type a few dozen words per minute faster than I used to. It took about a year to fully switch.

YMR: Tell me a little bit more about this financial highway adoption you got going on.

Jesse: Well, I started my blog to be more financially responsible yet I spent about a hundred dollars on hosting. I knew it was necessary especially on the commitment and motivation side but I felt bad about it. Even before I started trying to get my finances in order, I had a real hard time spending money on myself for any reason. Even my play sites that I mentioned before were hosted on my home computer, making them unbearably slow. I couldn’t bring myself to ask for donations in the traditional way because I felt like a hypocrite, telling people to save money yet asking them to give me money. So I started thinking of ways I could reduce the cost of my blog without asking for a hand out.

My adoption system does just that. When someone adopts my blog, they pay a small piece of my costs, roughly the cost of hosting per year divided on a weekly basis, and in return get recognition from my readers for doing so. They get a banner in every post of their week and a banner on a dedicated page, forever.

I also want my readers to feel like they are a part of the little community my blog creates. Through the people that have adopted so far I have made some great contacts and friends, and gotten to know some of the bloggers that read my blog much better.

Thanks Jesse! Have a great weekend everyone! I am heading off to PA so limited posting this weekend.

Our Cell Phone Company Is Scamming Us

A couple of months ago, I opened our AT&T wireless bill to see quite a surprise. We unfortunately had gone over our minutes and incurred about $30 in additional fees. How could we have gone over our minutes? We always had minutes left over at the end of the month and we didn’t change our phone habits. Actually, we had over 300 minutes left in rollover minutes that month! What happened?

The Mystery Unknown Callers

Upon further inspection of the bill, I noticed a few items (that used quite a few minutes) that looked like we called ourselves. In other words, if our phone number was 410-555-1212, it showed that we had an incoming call from 410-555-1212. What the hell? How can we call ourselves and talk for that long? Curious, I called AT&T wireless and this is the response that they gave me:

“I’m sorry that you went over your minutes this month sir. Unfortunately, when our system cannot recognize a phone number that calls you, we list it as if you called yourself. Also, those phone calls use up your anytime minutes because we do not know if they are AT&T customers or not.”

So, even if the other caller was an AT&T customer (which I could talk to for FREE), I get screwed because their “system” cannot recognize the number? How can they do that? I know for a fact that some of those phone calls were to my financee who has AT&T (actually, she is on my account). How can they recognize the number one day and not the next? 

I started to get pretty peeved at the whole situation and started pleeding my case. Unfortunately, “there was nothing that they could do for me”. I had no proof that shows I called her at those times. In the end I just gritted my teeth and paid the bill.

Since the infamous bill, we have started using our house phone more for calling people not in our wireless network. So far it has worked wonders and we have a surplus of 900 rollover minutes. 

Anyone have any wireless phone bill stories? 

Weekly Roundup – May 10th

Hope your weekend is going well! Ours started off with a bang yesterday when we booked our honeymoon! Heading off to Jamaica at the end of July (during hurricane season of course) for an all-inclusive extravaganza. I am working on a post for tomorrow detailing our experience with AAA travel. I’ll just say that it was a good one.

Now for a quick plug for the Carnival of Money Stories. Tomorrow is the last day to submit for the return of the carnival. It will be hosted by Gather Little by Little on Monday. You have until 5pm EST today to get your submissions in!

Great Reads From the Week

J Money from Budgets are Sexy wants to grant you one luxury wish. What would you pick? My answer is in the comments!

Bob at Christian Personal Finance explains the art of phishing scams with a great video that he found. That’s one of the things to avoid in my list of identity theft tips.

Free Money Finance tells you how one bad experience can ruin a company.

One Caveman’s Financial Adventure has a great list of 8 things new parents don’t need. I hope I don’t have to worry about these things for a few more years!

Make sure you check all of them out and I look forward to a great week of discussion! 🙂

Have Jobs Become Disposable?

I have held over a dozen jobs in my lifetime and I cannot name all of the companies. Kind of sounds like a Job Hoppers Anonymous group doesn’t it? I guess you could argue that it’s not that high of a number. However, I must tell you that I am only 25 years old. Yes, they have only been part-time jobs but why did I change them so much? Was it because I hated the work or did I just get bored and need something else? Will it mean that I will jump from job to job my whole life?

I know this is kind of a non-issue right now with the economy. In other words, if you have a job right now, you are happy with it no matter what. However, before this whole recession thing, people seemed to have a certain attitude about their jobs. They thought, “If I don’t like my job, I’ll just quit and find a better one.” Has our love for disposable goods traveled into our jobs?

Do Careers at Large Companies Still Exist?

Long gone are the days when you find a job and then spend the next 50 years of your life doing it. Companies no longer provide pensions, retirement healthcare, etc unless they are required to by union contracts. Is that the reason we change jobs so often, because companies seem to not care about their employees?

Do Careers in General Still Exist?

There are some companies (small businesses too) out there that seem to care about their employees. However, many people still leave those jobs in search of something different. What do companies have to do again in order to have employees want to stay there for 50 years? Anyone have some suggestions?

When I think about a career, I think about something that I make from scratch. Whether it’s making a career out of blogging (maybe one day) or starting your own ice cream shop. I just don’t think that there are careers (jobs that I would LOVE) out there anymore. Is that just me and my generation speaking? The world may never know!

What are you thoughts on this issue? I know I put a lot of questions in the post so this is meant to be an article with great conversation in the comments. I look forward to responding!

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