I can’t believe it’s almost April already. I updated all of my March Networth information, which overall went up a little under $2,000. Not so bad, nice to see retirement funds inch up, despite market craziness. Pretty soon I will need to depreciate my car a bit more to better reflect that asset. With all of the miles it has, I know it’s not really worth $9,000 anymore…
I haven’t posted or really made any significant goals lately other than paying down all credit card debt before my birthday, which I’ve done – yay! So I thought I would list out a few concrete goals for this month:
-- Really lock in on my budget
-- Budget equal posts/time to my writing and my literary interests as well as pf
-- Keep birthday celebration expenses low… I’ll go all out later.
-- Move up to 85% of my emergency savings goal
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Financial Aid Nitty Gritty
Another report back on the financial aid outlook at my top choices for grad school. I was planning to put off this deep dive for a little while, but then I got scared by this post from MFA or Bust, since Columbia is also my top school and I had no idea what reputation they had for funding their students. So, I pored through all of the school websites to get a sense for what’s out there. Pretty interesting… and more encouraging than I thought it would be… definitely skim through the specifics unless you happen to be in my exact situation.
Columbia
Merit-based fellowships listed – no separate application
Need-based scholarships listed – application submitted after admission
Outside awards:
$5k NSCS-Geico Graduate School Scholarship
$1k BPW/NY Grace LeGendre Endowment Fund, Inc.
Harvard
Base loan package comes first, before any other aid.
Need-based fellowships (almost 50% of class receives fellowships avg. of $22K).
“Restricted” fellowships listed that I didn’t qualify for (like, must be descendant of class of 1902 or resident of Fitchberg, Mass to apply)
CitiAssist loans was also indicated as a preferred lender
Stanford
Need-based fellowships, Outside aid
Siebel Scholars Program – at the end of the first year, 5 students are selected for top academic achievement/leadership/citizenship $25,000 tuition award
Berkeley
Haas Merit Scholarships – no separate application needed
Haas Achievement Awards – must answer optional essay question in application
Graduate Student Instructorships – available for the second year, can apply in Spring of first year (receive salary plus $4,300 fee remission)
Extensive Online Scholarship Database!!
NYU
$50,000 in funds for (apply first deadline) the Reynolds Foundation Graduate Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship
Teaching Fellow /Graduate Assistant / Stern Consulting Corp – can receive up to $14,400 in tutition remission
I’m not trained enough in the lingo yet to see if one school looks better than another, but it did seem like there really were REAL options to pursue at each school. This was much better than starting with some of the other general financial aid website resources out there too.
Columbia
Merit-based fellowships listed – no separate application
Need-based scholarships listed – application submitted after admission
Outside awards:
$5k NSCS-Geico Graduate School Scholarship
$1k BPW/NY Grace LeGendre Endowment Fund, Inc.
Harvard
Base loan package comes first, before any other aid.
Need-based fellowships (almost 50% of class receives fellowships avg. of $22K).
“Restricted” fellowships listed that I didn’t qualify for (like, must be descendant of class of 1902 or resident of Fitchberg, Mass to apply)
CitiAssist loans was also indicated as a preferred lender
Stanford
Need-based fellowships, Outside aid
Siebel Scholars Program – at the end of the first year, 5 students are selected for top academic achievement/leadership/citizenship $25,000 tuition award
Berkeley
Haas Merit Scholarships – no separate application needed
Haas Achievement Awards – must answer optional essay question in application
Graduate Student Instructorships – available for the second year, can apply in Spring of first year (receive salary plus $4,300 fee remission)
Extensive Online Scholarship Database!!
NYU
$50,000 in funds for (apply first deadline) the Reynolds Foundation Graduate Fellowship in Social Entrepreneurship
Teaching Fellow /Graduate Assistant / Stern Consulting Corp – can receive up to $14,400 in tutition remission
I’m not trained enough in the lingo yet to see if one school looks better than another, but it did seem like there really were REAL options to pursue at each school. This was much better than starting with some of the other general financial aid website resources out there too.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
March Read/Bought Review
Bought: Nada, yet again. I’m getting better with the self-restraint thing. Living across the street from the library instead of a bookstore helps with that. Also, I joined Bookmooch, an online website which lets you give away books you don’t want and receive books on your wish list. So Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto is coming my way for free and old college books I’ll never read again are going out. The only costs are shipping… so I’m sure I won’t do a lot of it, but it is exciting. Especially with some of the “rarer” books on my list.
From the library this month I read:
Here is New York by EB White – beautiful and moving, especially since I’m hoping to move there.
What we Talk about when we talk about love by Raymond Carver – I have always loved Raymond Carver, and I was finally able to read more of his “disturbing” stories, I’ll say...especially the title story.
Love Stories for the Rest of Us – this was a nice compilation that sold me on the title. A husband and wife team of editors compiled stories that represented love in everything but a traditional “darling” fashion. Really endearing and memorable stories from what I’ve read so far. I read one about a married couple that becomes enamored with a more glamorous couple and ultimately gains back their self-respect and autonomy in the relationship, one about a little girl who observes lesbians kissing for the first time and one about a housekeeper’s daughter that falls in love with the son of her mother’s employer. I highly recommend the collection.
And from my bookshelf I read:
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.
This has been a beautiful, if slow, read. And as I’m originally from the south, they are more familiar than exotic characters populating the chapters. It’s definitely made me want to get back to the southern story I’ve been writing off-and-on for the last few months.
Since the bookmooch proposition works best with more “rare” books – any suggestions out there from those who have a rare find favorite, that’s never going to be sitting out on any Borders front table?
From the library this month I read:
Here is New York by EB White – beautiful and moving, especially since I’m hoping to move there.
What we Talk about when we talk about love by Raymond Carver – I have always loved Raymond Carver, and I was finally able to read more of his “disturbing” stories, I’ll say...especially the title story.
Love Stories for the Rest of Us – this was a nice compilation that sold me on the title. A husband and wife team of editors compiled stories that represented love in everything but a traditional “darling” fashion. Really endearing and memorable stories from what I’ve read so far. I read one about a married couple that becomes enamored with a more glamorous couple and ultimately gains back their self-respect and autonomy in the relationship, one about a little girl who observes lesbians kissing for the first time and one about a housekeeper’s daughter that falls in love with the son of her mother’s employer. I highly recommend the collection.
And from my bookshelf I read:
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.
This has been a beautiful, if slow, read. And as I’m originally from the south, they are more familiar than exotic characters populating the chapters. It’s definitely made me want to get back to the southern story I’ve been writing off-and-on for the last few months.
Since the bookmooch proposition works best with more “rare” books – any suggestions out there from those who have a rare find favorite, that’s never going to be sitting out on any Borders front table?
Friday, March 28, 2008
TODAY.
As of today, Goal #1 is accomplished. I am no longer (and will not again be) carrying a balance on my credit cards. I feel like the air is clearer, and I’m on to bigger, better things. Better budgeting, getting to more exciting goals, and moving up on the credit rating scale. While this was an unplanned sidetrack, I feel pretty lucky actually that I was able to rein this in quickly, and move on. Whew, feels like a pretty great Friday.
Watching a little NCAA basketball tonight and hosting a party in the Guy’s condo tonight to celebrate. Enjoy the weekend!
Also, a fun and interesting link from Financial Times on Apple's plans to make all of their music free with the purchase of a "premium priced" ipod. I wonder what the premium is going to be for the largest music library ever! Very tempting.... clever Apple.
Watching a little NCAA basketball tonight and hosting a party in the Guy’s condo tonight to celebrate. Enjoy the weekend!
Also, a fun and interesting link from Financial Times on Apple's plans to make all of their music free with the purchase of a "premium priced" ipod. I wonder what the premium is going to be for the largest music library ever! Very tempting.... clever Apple.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Cool Sites I Read Not Related to Personal Finance
So one of the reasons I write this blog is to maintain a connection to the outside of my daily work grind and as a reminder that I am more whole than my daily schedule / calendar of events would suggest. Thus, as an FYI to those who only read this blog and don’t know the rest, I thought I would post about some of the other interests that I spend time reading, learning and thinking about outside both 1) my daily work grind and 2) my personal finance struggle.
Chocolate & Zucchini
This is a food blog written by a Frenchwoman, Clotilde, who has now made herself into quite an enterprise. I think this is a really innovative and different blog that tends to veer outside of the equation of topical blogs in general. You get the flavor of passion for food without it seeming one-dimensional. Plus I love the idea of blogging as a way to improve one’s language skills (English is Clotilde’s second language). Just wish it was updated more often. Sidenote: I have made chocolate & zucchini muffins before and they are outstanding. You can’t taste the green stuff but it makes chocolate chip muffins more moist and more nutritious.
TPM Café
I am really into following the minutia of politics. I have finally allowed myself to give up any political ambitions of my own. But I am still very engaged with all of the every last detail. I like the TPM blog for its speed and its randomness. All of the bloggers are very real, personal-sounding people (including one guy in particular, who happens to be a friend I graduated from college with).
Brand Camp
“Brand Camp" is a blog written on marketing and brand management (my day job) by Tom Fishburne, who works for Method. (you know, the soaps and cleaning products they sell at Target). These little postcard cartoons he does remind me of all of the reasons I am sometimes engaged by my work, and sometimes want to slide down the sidepost of the corporate ladder altogether.
Woot.com
Some would say this IS in fact related to personal finance since there are good deals here featured everyday. But I don’t tend to think this way. I think any sort of enticement towards spending on things you don’t need is not so good. But it's fun to look, and I find myself looking often. I like the concept of the updated-every-day site.
Chocolate & Zucchini
This is a food blog written by a Frenchwoman, Clotilde, who has now made herself into quite an enterprise. I think this is a really innovative and different blog that tends to veer outside of the equation of topical blogs in general. You get the flavor of passion for food without it seeming one-dimensional. Plus I love the idea of blogging as a way to improve one’s language skills (English is Clotilde’s second language). Just wish it was updated more often. Sidenote: I have made chocolate & zucchini muffins before and they are outstanding. You can’t taste the green stuff but it makes chocolate chip muffins more moist and more nutritious.
TPM Café
I am really into following the minutia of politics. I have finally allowed myself to give up any political ambitions of my own. But I am still very engaged with all of the every last detail. I like the TPM blog for its speed and its randomness. All of the bloggers are very real, personal-sounding people (including one guy in particular, who happens to be a friend I graduated from college with).
Brand Camp
“Brand Camp" is a blog written on marketing and brand management (my day job) by Tom Fishburne, who works for Method. (you know, the soaps and cleaning products they sell at Target). These little postcard cartoons he does remind me of all of the reasons I am sometimes engaged by my work, and sometimes want to slide down the sidepost of the corporate ladder altogether.
Woot.com
Some would say this IS in fact related to personal finance since there are good deals here featured everyday. But I don’t tend to think this way. I think any sort of enticement towards spending on things you don’t need is not so good. But it's fun to look, and I find myself looking often. I like the concept of the updated-every-day site.
Figuring Out What you Want
“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” --Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
I liked that quote a lot when I ran across it. It reminded me of reading some nameless personal finance book once (maybe it was SWFR?) when the author tried to make you drill things down to what you really wanted in life. People don’t want to be rich so they can wade through a pool full of money like that opening scene in Duck Tales. People want to be rich so they can feel comfortable and accomplish certain things. Whether it’s freedom or security or one of those higher order benefits, people want those things and money is just the means to get there.
I have recently tried to answer for myself exactly what it is that I want. So I made a list.
-- The freedom to be truly generous to friends with my time, energy, thoughtfulness.
-- The freedom to create (take time off to write, etc.)
-- The freedom to express myself through my lifestyle (This is the least transcendent, but still very true. It applies to writing but also the more trivial categories of “stuff.” Right now my apartment is a blunt tool for survival, and nothing speaks to me or exemplifies my personality in it. I would be happier if I could live in a place, wear clothes, buy art, etc. that echoed my own sense of aesthetics and values.)
That’s a very small start. I have a feeling too, that I will figure it out as I go along.
Also, thanks for all the great posts re: grad school. At some of your advice and also thanks to the WSJ’s Tip of the Week on “Best Loans for College,” I am starting to scour through some of my top choice schools’ list of preferred lenders. We’ll see where that gets me and I’ll report back soon.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
More thoughts on Student Loan Debt
A follow-up on yesterday's post...
Sense for Dollars has a great post here on the fact that you shouldn’t be scared away from student loan debt when you go back to school. You should get smart and realize that even though the numbers are large, they’re real. You will need money not only for tuition but money to live. And fact is, it’s WAY better to have lots of student loan debt with better terms that doesn’t impact your credit rating than to skimp on loans and rack up credit card debt that doesn’t earn interest. A very wise reminder. So perhaps I will focus less on having enough money for school and make sure I’m getting everything else right and setting up solid savings principles independent of what my grad school situation will be. It’s only two years, after all.
Sense for Dollars has a great post here on the fact that you shouldn’t be scared away from student loan debt when you go back to school. You should get smart and realize that even though the numbers are large, they’re real. You will need money not only for tuition but money to live. And fact is, it’s WAY better to have lots of student loan debt with better terms that doesn’t impact your credit rating than to skimp on loans and rack up credit card debt that doesn’t earn interest. A very wise reminder. So perhaps I will focus less on having enough money for school and make sure I’m getting everything else right and setting up solid savings principles independent of what my grad school situation will be. It’s only two years, after all.
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