Another thought: Financial Aid
In this video, CNBC and Newsweek talk about tips for paying for college in the recession.
Colleges have taken a 23 percent hit in endowments, meaning the cutbacks are transferred on to students.But with smart borrowing and scholarship sleuthing, it’s still possible to defray some of the costs.
Watch David Noonan share some tips about smart borrowing [...]
Add it up
I find that guilt is the best budgeting tool. But mint.com is pretty neat, too.
I’m the kind of person that needs a little nudge to pay attention to my bank account, so I signed up for the Web site’s free application.I wanted to play around with it for a few weeks before I blogged about [...]
Freekend: Lollapalooza
If having parents in town is the best way to save money during the weekend, a friend visit might be the worst.
There’s the pressure to show them a good time and eat at fun restaurants and have frosty beers at funky bars. Plus, they’re living the vacation splurge while you’re living business as usual. Plus, [...]
Lollapalooza (part uno)
I don’t blame you if you decided not to plunk down serious cash on Lollapalooza this summer. I’m not a huge fan of music festivals, but this year’s hullabaloo turned out to be a fantastic convergence of a whole bunch of bands I want to see, a friend visiting from out of town for the [...]
Thinking about buying a house?
I’m a long way from that point. But now’s not a bad time to be thinking about it.
One of my classmates did a story about first time homebuyers for Medill News Service last week and I made a flash graphic to illustrate why now’s the time to take the plunge:
Click here to see why first-time [...]
Craigslisting
I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage about Craigslist:
Sometimes you can find really good stuff for cheaps. And sometimes you get murdered by a hooker.
Well, readers, my luck has been the former these last few weeks. I managed to score both a replacement for my recently-stolen bicycle and an apartment to sublease in D.C. [...]
Hankincents chat
My friend Rob Story and I live in opposite-land. He’s tall and I’m short. He took serious classes for an engineering degree, while I… took wine tasting and played newspaper.
Consequently, he graduated with a master’s degree from Virginia Tech, got a job and moved to D.C. with his girlfriend Sheri. I, on the other hand, [...]
Selling out
Hard up for cash while you’re waiting for that Google AdSence check to come? No luck getting into a medical study for topical ringworm medication?
There might be more alternatives than you think.
Wisebread has a list of Six Weird Things People Sell for Cash and weird is right.
Unfortunately, the scarcity principle comes into play here [...]
Never eat singing fruit
If you find grocery shopping tedious with a car and a job, I challenge you to try it with a hand cart and student loan money guilt. By the time you throw in tax, the challenges of eating healthy and half a dozen wrinkled coupons, my bi-weekly shopping trip becomes an all-afternoon affair.
Plus, I’m trying [...]
Cream and Sugar
Where I grew up, coffee was something your mom made in the kitchen and your dad schlepped to the office in one of those green Stanley thermoses. Coffee shops were places people went if they lived in other states.
Coffee used to be utilitarian. Like buffalo plaid and canned beer, it was more demonstrative of people [...]
Freekend: The Wire
I’ve gotten hooked on The Wire, the HBO socio-political police procedural, set in Baltimore. Various critics have called it the best show on television and my friends have called “Please hurry up and watch The Wire so you’ll know what we’re talking about.”
It was slow starting, but the last few episodes of Season One were [...]
Seven-way split
More terrifying than E. coli-tainted spinach. More nauseating than a hair in the salad dressing. It’s settling the check for a group dinner… OR how to ruin a friendship in 15 minutes or less.
A great evening can go sour when a friend shorts the bill or a co-worker who picked the expensive wine wants to [...]
Free-kend: July 3
My first “free-kend” was a huge victory. I think I only spent $2 from Friday to Monday, thanks to the semi-annual occurrence that some experts call “the parental visit.”
Ordinarily, I would’ve blown a bunch of money celebrating Independence Day, but my parents were kind enough to pick up the tab for a whole slew of [...]
Hankincents theory of Relativity
When I was trying to come up with a name for this blog, one thing that leaped to mind was the story of the apocryphal magi from everybody’s favorite Christmas carol. They came with really fancy gifts that were probably well-received. But here in 2009, I’d just as soon have a big, fat check as [...]
Mission Statement
Think of this blog as a desert fork for understanding the economy. It’s a simple tool for a demographic that wants easy-to-swallow money advice that goes beyond the main course. By using a three-tined approach to dole out news, personal finance advice and real-life spending scenarios for people taking their first foray into the [...]
