Browsing Category: "Self Improvement"
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There isn’t a driver in America right now who doesn’t cringe a little every time they drive up to the pump, I don’t care what you drive. So, in this world of daily rising fuel costs, tracking your gas consumption is a necessity if you want to ever see any relief from the pain. Enter FuelFrog, a new web application that launched last week, which aims to make tracking your gas mileage and consumption easier and thus (hopefully) eventually lower your bills.
FuelFrog is hugely simple, and incredibly useful which tons of potential. After each fill up, users enter their miles traveled since the last fill, the price paid, and the amount of gasoline in gallons. Then, over time, FuelFrog will track and graph your fuel consumption data so you can do things like identify trends in gas prices in your area, see how fuel efficient your car is, how much you’re driving, and how much you’re spending. Second Pixel (FuelFrog’s parent company) co-founder David Rasch said in a press release,
“We’re paying more attention to our impact on the environment today than we ever have before and FuelFrog is making it easier to track fuel consumption and the impact, not only on our wallets, but on the environment”.
Information can be entered via the web, or via Twitter (and, if you’re a Twitter user, go ahead and follow me here and Nate here), which means that you can log your fuel data immediately after filling up via your mobile phone.
For what its worth, FuelFrog also plans to give users access to aggregated data from other users, allowing you to compare your vehicle’s fuel consumption against another make and model, for instance, or your city’s average gas prices to those in another area.
Click here to check out FuelFrog for yourself.
Source: “FuelFrog: Track Your Gas Mileage” [ReadWriteWeb]
Popularity: 6% [?]
Almost anyone will tell you that being organized will increase your efficiency, reduce clutter and help you remember assignments and errands better. There are innumerable ways to organize your life, from writing out to do lists, carrying a day planner or having a blackberry or other mobile device with a lot of those features rolled into one. Since I am without a blackberry and often misplace my to do list before it’s completed I have decided to go with another option: iGoogle.
Since creating an iGoogle homepage for myself, I have found it much easier to keep track of my day-to-day affairs as well as plan for long-term events. Every day at work I fire up my laptop, open the Internet and my own personalized online workbook opens right up. My personal iGoogle configuration is pretty simple, containing a to do list, some news feeds, my Gmail inbox, a clock and a calendar. For me, that’s all I need to keep track of almost everything. One of the best parts of iGoogle though is its customizability.
You can include virtually anything on your homepage, from games and horoscopes, to news feeds and various planning widgets. Should your initial page get too crowded, you can create multiple tabs, just like in your Internet browser, and categorize your tabs according to content. I have the main page described above and then a tab dedicated to searching, with Google, Wikipedia and Weather search bars, as well as MapQuest and some other helpful tools. The options are seemingly limitless and I find that iGoogle is a great way to keep myself organized and on task. Why not try it out for yourself and customize your own homepage?
Also as an additional social networking note, I’ve recently joined Twitter, so if you are already following Luke and were desperately waiting for your other favorite Internet author to join up – the wait is over! You can follow my tweet feed at: www.twitter.com/ncleveland.
Popularity: 20% [?]
A very important piece of finding a job, be it your first or not, is submitting a good resume. This simple document briefly sums up your qualifications and compactly and concisely tells a prospective employer what you can do. This is great, and still a very valid part of the equation in finding a job; but that equation is changing. While having a good resume will make sure you get past the first round of cuts, it won’t ensure you get hired.
More and more employers want to see some evidence of things you’ve done, in addition to what your GPA says you should be able to do. Articles like this one demonstrate that having a good academic track record is only a step in the right direction towards getting that lucrative job. You need to bolster your credentials by having some sort of portfolio or record of things that you have done. This poor guy has a 4.0 GPA in his master’s program and a 3.9 in his doctoral program and still relies on his mother for support. Odds are he is just letting his resume do the talking with no additional work to support it.
Depending on what you want to do for a job, any additional submissions you want to make with your resume will vary. If you want to be a financial analyst, show your employer your own portfolio or pick some stocks and track them for a 6-month period, providing analysis along the way. Submitting your personal blog about bird watching probably won’t be relevant here. If you want to be in digital media, graphics design or a similar field, why not have a personal website to display your work?
What if you don’t have a blog or a website to demonstrate the things you’ve been doing? Go register yourname.com, or yourname.org if it is still available and even if you have no real web-building experience, with a little persistence you can get the basics up there. Maybe your resume looks similar to 15 other candidates for a journalism job, but you’ve had a blog you’ve been operating for 3 years – show your employer!
Even if you don’t have a lot of experience on the web, or don’t think a blog would be relevant to your intended career, do something that shows initiative and passion. Spending a few hours on a Saturday afternoon setting up a personal website or beginning a stock tracking project could be all you need to separate yourself from the pack. Doesn’t that sound worth it?
Popularity: 27% [?]
As I was perusing the Internet recently I found a couple of great of pieces I wanted to touch upon today. The first is a quote from a Colby College grad talking about her experiences after college. The whole piece was a filled with advice from graduates to their undergraduate counterparts – you can read them all here – but this one was the most pertinent to me:
“Every grad should know that, unless you’re going on to grad school, the first year out of college is one of the toughest you’ll face. Someone told me at my graduation party that it’s the hardest of your life. I’m not sure it made it easier, but when things were challenging, at least I knew it was normal. Why is it so hard? It’s something to do with having no structure and having infinite choice when you’ve spent the previous 18 years in an academic structure with many fewer choices.”
-Kimberly Schneider ’01
Adjusting to the post-college lifestyle can be very challenging for many people. I know I, for one, have had a huge problem with my sleep schedule since a 10:30AM meeting isn’t “optional”, the notes won’t be put online and you generally can’t schedule every Friday off. Many grads find the first year after college one of the toughest of their lives, for a number of reasons. A lot of these reasons are all the things we here at RealWorldReally.com talk about all the time: credit card debt, budgeting, building a savings, finding a job, dealing with roommates or doing your taxes.
The important thing to remember is that while things might be tough now, you aren’t alone and plenty of other people are out there on their own trying to make it work too. If things get overwhelming, talk to some of your friends or colleagues about what they did to get by and get settled out of school. After a short time dedicating yourself to making good financial decisions you can start clearing out debt, freeing up more income and eliminating a lot of the early sacrifices recent grads end up making. And of course, stay tuned here for tons of great info as well.
The other cool piece I found online was a short NPR radio clip talking with two young professionals living in NYC about their savings habits – they hit both of the extremes here. I thought it was a good listen and you can probably garner some great tips from both of them that will help you build financial assets, even without the benefit of a $200,000/year income like Mr. Levy.
Popularity: 21% [?]
photo credit: Roguey000The monthly electric bill can really take a good chunk of change out of any recent grad’s wallet, but every wasted penny also does a number on this planet we all call home. Well, here are ten easy and cheap things you can do today to lower your bills, and your impact on the Earth:
- Check the furnace or air conditioner filter each month, and clean or replace it as needed. Dirty filters block air flow through your heating and cooling systems, increasing your energy bill and shortening the equipment’s life.
- Activate “sleep” features on computers and office equipment that power down when not in use for a while. Turn off equipment during longer periods of non-use to cut energy costs and improve longevity.
- In summer, use fans whenever possible instead of AC, and ventilate at night this way when practical. Using fans to supplement AC allows you to raise the thermostat temperature, using less energy. Fans cost less to use than AC.
- About 15 percent of an average home energy bill goes to heating water. To save hot water, take five-minute showers instead of baths. Do only full loads when using the clothes washer or dishwasher.
- Replace light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs. Incandescent light bulbs are outdated; 95 percent of the energy used goes to heating the bulb, adding unwanted heat to your home in the summer. Replace your five most used light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs to save $60 each year in energy costs. These light bulbs use two-thirds less energy and last up to 10 times longer.
- 75 percent of the energy used by home electronics is consumed when they’re turned off. Televisions, VCRs, stereos, computers and many kitchen appliances — basically anything that holds a time or other settings — continues to use electricity even when turned off. A simple solution? Plug all of these items into power strips, and then get in the habit of turning off the strips between uses.
- Your washing machine and dishwasher use a TON of electricity. Minimize the drain by only washing full loads.
- Replace you regular surge protectors with Smart Strip surge protectors, which automatically turn off power to plugs that are not in use.
- Don’t Put Uncovered Foods/ Drinks in the Refrigerator. Condensation makes the fridge work harder, and costs you more money.
- Use Your Microwave Instead of the Oven. Microwaves use less electricity, and don’t release as much heat into your home.
These (and many more) are simple steps anyone can take today to lower your bills, save you money, and do some good. For more ideas and resources, check out the Consumer Tips from the Alliance to Save Energy.
Technorati Tags: frugal, personal finance, money saver, go green, college, graduation, real world
Popularity: 21% [?]
When you look at the day in front of you, it’s easy to think you have a very busy day planned. You have emails to respond to, a staff meeting in the morning, maybe a lunch meeting and you need to buy cat food at some point in the afternoon. Your day looks cluttered, so you think it’s jam packed. but really that’s all it is - clutter. If your day was better laid out, you’d be amazed at how much time is freed up.
A simple trick anyone can use — at work, in school, or even during the grace period after graduation while you’re looking for work — is to come up with a plan. Make a template in Excel with three columns that breaks your day down by the hour (the left-most column), task (in the middle) and comments/reactions (to the right). Save the template to your desktop and open it every morning when you get up or get to work and fill it out for the day in front of you.
photo credit: quinn.anyaMost importantly, be honest. Schedule in down time and a lunch break (if you get one). If you don’t have something planned for an hour, leave it blank. And, once your schedule is complete, stick to it. If you schedule responding to and writing emails for 1:00-2:00pm, only check your email during that hour. If you planned to write and mail cover letters from 9:00-11:00am, write and mail your cover letters from 9:00-11:00am and nothing else.
Once you see your schedule right in front of you, broken down by the hour, you’ll be amazed at how seemingly busy, stressful days work themselves out, and you will see just how much time you waste each day by lacking focus. By scheduling your day every morning and sticking to it, you’ll free up more time to be more productive.
Technorati Tags: career, productive, schedule, self improvement, college, graduation, real world
Popularity: 24% [?]
One of the benefits of living close — but not too close — to my parents (they live in a small town about 45 minutes north of my apartment) is that those evenings I’m able to get up to visit them, I’m (almost) always rewarded for it. Often it’s the chance to save some quarters by doing my laundry at their house, or some lucky visits its a free meal out. That’s just what happened this evening. But the downside (and believe me, it’s the only downside) of a great dinner and a couple of pints of great microbrew is now I’m too stuffed and too tired to write a totally original post.
So I figured I would at least show some link love and point you all in the direction of some other great and helpful posts from across the Interwebs. It’s the least I could do, really.
photo credit: Brian SawyerFirst, Trent at The Simple Dollar lists 20 valuable questions to ask yourself about, well, yourself. And your relationship with money. Ranging from “1. What five things do you most truly love doing? Think of things that you both enjoy in the moment and also enjoy looking back on later. Do any of these cost money?” to “11. Where do you want to be in one year? Describe your life in as much detail as you can. Can you name five actions you can take in the next week to lead you to that goal?”
Secondly, J.D. from Get Rich Slowly featured a guest post today entitled The Lazy Man’s Guide to Groceries on a Budget, which certainly hit home for me - being both a lazy man and on a budget. The recommendations included buying vegetables from a Farmers’ Market (when the season’s right), where they are typically half the price they are in grocery stores to, most importantly, never letting anything go to waste. Nothing will screw up a grocery budget faster than having to throw expired food away.
And thirdly, Ginger from Girls Just Want to Have Funds — who has an AWESOME new look to her blog that everyone should check out if they haven’t already — wrote a tell-all tale of her Disillusionment and Resentment with Graduate Education, in which she outlines her objectives, resentments and ultimate decisions with her graduate degree program; something that I think most graduates grapple with after completing their undergraduate career. Ginger also touches on the decision of pursuing passion & purpose, or pursuing a career - something I debate with myself about on an almost daily basis.
Alright, on that note - I think it’s time for a chapter or two of The Tipping Point
Popularity: 31% [?]
This is a guest post by Wren Schultz of BlogduWren
For anyone over 18 years old, there is a stigma associated with living with your parents—much to the chagrin of those of us who choose to do so(for reasons outlined later). Supposedly it is an indication that you can’t make it on your own or that your life is at rock bottom, not to mention what effect it allegedly has on your dating prospects. If you shed these stereotypes and preconceived notions, however, you may realize moving back home after college makes more sense than you thought.
Historically speaking, family dwellings used to really contain the whole family. Grandparents, aunts, uncles–everyone lived together under the same roof. If a child went away to war, university, or business, he or she always had a home when they returned, which many did. That trend continues today in many countries outside of the United States. Households in such places as China, Ecuador, and Italy are frequently composed not only of parents and their adult children, but also often included are their children’s spouses. It is a living situation that has persisted through the years and has only become passe in the United States in the last 75 years or so.
If historical precedent won’t get you to reconsider those prejudices, let’s have a look at the practical aspect. Living at home for a time after college is a great way to start paying down those college loans or start a rainy day fund. When you don’t have the hassles of a home of your own to deal with, you have more time to look for just the right job, try out different jobs to see how you like them, or build valuable experience with low to non-paying internships that would be next to impossible to take on while living on your own. Even aside from the financial and employment benefits you stand to gain, the list of benefits continues: higher occupancy homes are much better for the environment, living together leads to good family relationships (for you to get know your parents as people rather than just parents and them to get to know you as the adult you’ve become), not being tied to a living situation (with the house plants, bills, mail, and pets) allows you the freedom to travel, whether it is a well-planned trip around the world or an impromptu week-long trip to Omaha.
Hollywood has had its go at adult children who live at home. Sometimes it is the main focus like in Failure to Launch and
other times it is a minor reference like Will Ferrell’s pathetic character in Wedding Crashers. Whether large or small, the
references are rarely positive. But when was the last time your life imitated Hollywood. Are all Russians really evil? Will a pinto automatically explode if you accidentally tap its back bumper? No. And just as all of those Hollywood images are mis-represented exaggerations, so it goes with living at home.
You may not be the only person who will need to adapt your thinking to this retro concept. While almost all parents claim that their love for their children knows no bounds, some find those bounds really quickly when the topic of moving home for a spell is breached. Or maybe it is after the new arrangement is tried out for a while that your parents will start to reconsider. As a friend who has gone through it all recently pointed out to me, it wasn’t his parents so much that had the problems, but it was pressure from their friends that made the situation tense. It is important to take into account that it won’t only be you who is adapting to a new living parameters; they will be too. It will [necessarily] be a different arrangement from those days of high school when the laundry went into the hamper dirty and magically showed up clean and folded on your bed the next day. Let your parents know that you understand this and that you will be a great roommate. There you go–now you’ve even got a great start on that communication we were talking about.
The moral of this story is: as you think about what your next step is, DON’T discount returning to that twin-bedded room with sports posters covering the walls. You may just find that by allowing yourself a little breathing room between you and the real world, your pockets will become fuller (or at least less empty), your options will become more plentiful, and you will develop a whole new relationship with your parents–I mean roomies.
Wren Schultz is a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, ME. He is now a freelance web developer and author of BlogduWren; he happily lives with his parents in Anacortes, Washington.
Technorati Tags: moving, moving home, graduation, college, living with your parents
Popularity: 26% [?]
Did college really prepare me for the Real World? No. Did college prepare me for my job? No. I know that if my parents, who – thankfully – funded my college education, just read that, they’re probably pretty sick to their stomachs right now but it really is true.
Don’t get me wrong, college wasn’t a waste by any means. Without my diploma, I never would have gotten the job I did (I know because my boss has told me that, point blank) so that alone makes it worth it. I did also cultivate many life skills while at school (living off-campus my senior year, I taught myself how to cook, for instance), as well as leadership experience, socialization skills, and plenty of resume-building experiences. But college itself (I’m talking about classes) did virtually nothing to prepare me for what was to come.
It might be largely because of my majors (Communications & film double-major), which were very “liberal arts” majors and not very applicable; who knows, if I had been a business major, for instance, I might not be writing this now. But, as it turned out, what I learned in class has proven very ineffective. Therefore, I’ve had to teach myself most everything I know about the two ways I make money — my day-job and blogging — and managing the money I do have. While this has been very enlightening, it’s also been very time consuming and has made the Real World transition that much harder.
What can you do to not fall into the same trap?
- If you’re still in school (and aren’t a business major), take some business courses. While Art History and Existentialism were certainly fun courses, they didn’t teach me a whole lot about the corporate world (well, Existentialism might have, but that’s a topic for another post…). If I could do it all over again, I definitely would have taken more business, marketing economics & personal finance courses in college. While I have begun to teach myself as much as I can about these topics, it would have been hugely helpful if I had known some of these things ahead of time.
- Start preparing early. Along the same lines as number one; if you cannot take any more classes, at least begin to prepare yourself for what you’ll have to go through after college as early as possible. Read books about what a Real World job is like
- Network. The number one thing that can save you from being ill prepared is networking; both professionally and personally. From a professional stand-point networking is vital for getting a job. Did you have an internship last summer? Make sure and call your boss; even if he or she cannot offer you a job, maybe they know someone who can (I’m now working full-time for the company I interned with during the summer between my junior & senior year and got the job by making a phone call before graduation).Or maybe some old family friend is hiring, or knows someone who is. The point is – cover all your bases. Send emails, make phone calls – connect with every adult in your life you’re on a first-name basis with (or heck, connect with the ones you barely know); you never know where that vital connection can come from.
From a personal stand-point, networking is also important. Connect with peers you know who are already in the town you’re moving to. They’ll be able to show you the best places to go out, the best deals in town and the best ways to save money. They’ll be able to offer Real World advice because they’ve already been through the trials & tribulations. And maybe they’ll even be looking for a new roommate. Again, you’ll never know until you make the phone call or send the IM.
What have you done to avoid the “Liberal Arts Trap”? Please, share your wisdom!
(image via www.epartyunlimited.com)
Technorati Tags: Real World, College, Graduation, Business, Networking
Popularity: 43% [?]
If you play basketball, baseball, football, soccer, or any other ball sport in your spare time, here’s a big piece of news and advice for you: Learn how to JUGGLE! More than just a unique trick to impress your friends, co-workers or any potential lady friends (and it will), juggling is a neuromuscular skill that can have a profound impact on your sport. Studies also show that taking just a few minutes out of your work day each day to juggle will drastically reduce work-place stress; juggling is believed to curb common symptoms of ADHD and studies have shown that it even increases your brain power (something previously thought impossible)!
Popularity: 100% [?]
