What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.
George Dennison Prentice
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Henry Kissinger (1923 - )
Golf and sex are about the only things you can enjoy without being good at.
Jimmy Demaret-
Many a man who falls in love with a dimple make the mistake of marrying the whole girl.
Evan Esar (1899 - 1995
Friday, May 29, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Quote of the day
There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
Arthur Honegger (1892 - 1955)
Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
Thomas H. Huxley (1825 - 1895)
- More quotations on: [Science]
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882)
- More quotations on: [Atheism]
You give my regards to St. Peter, or whoever has his job, but in Hell.
Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon, Dr. Horrible's
Arthur Honegger (1892 - 1955)
Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
Thomas H. Huxley (1825 - 1895)
- More quotations on: [Science]
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882)
- More quotations on: [Atheism]
You give my regards to St. Peter, or whoever has his job, but in Hell.
Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon, Dr. Horrible's
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Quote Of The Day
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)
- More quotations on: [Language]
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794)
- More quotations on: [Writing]
I don't have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks.
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977), In the film A Day at the Races
Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.
Stanislaw Lem (1921 - 2006)
Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)
- More quotations on: [Language]
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794)
- More quotations on: [Writing]
I don't have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks.
Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977), In the film A Day at the Races
Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.
Stanislaw Lem (1921 - 2006)
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Financial Tips For Young Adult
Unfortunately, personal finance has not yet become a required subject in high school or college, so you might be fairly clueless about how to manage your money when you're out in the real world for the first time. If you think that understanding personal finance is way above your head, though, you're wrong. All it takes to get started on the right path is the willingness to do a little reading - you don't even need to be particularly good at math. To help you get started, we'll take a look at eight of the most important things to understand about money if you want to live a comfortable and prosperous life.
1. Learn self control now, not later.
If you're lucky, your parents taught you this skill when you were a kid. If not, keep in mind that the sooner you learn the fine art of delaying gratification, the sooner you'll find it easy to keep your finances in order. Although you can effortlessly purchase an item on credit the minute you want it, it's better to wait until you've actually saved up the money. Do you really want to pay interest on a pair of jeans or a box of cereal? (To learn more about credit, check out Understanding Credit Card Interest and our Debt Management feature.)
If you make a habit of putting all your purchases on credit cards, regardless of whether you can pay your bill in full at the end of the month, you might still be paying for those items in 10 years. If you want to keep your credit cards for the convenience factor or the rewards they offer, make sure to always pay your balance in full when the bill arrives, and don't carry more cards than you can keep track of.
2. Don't put your financial future in someone else's hands.
If you don't learn to manage your own money, other people will find ways to (mis)manage it for you. Some of these people may be ill-intentioned, like unscrupulous commission-based financial planners. Others may be well-meaning, but may not know what they're doing, like Grandma Betty who really wants you to buy a house even though you can only afford a treacherous adjustable-rate mortgage.
Instead of relying on others for advice, take charge and read a few basic books on personal finance. Once you're armed with personal finance knowledge, don't let anyone catch you off guard - whether it's a significant other that slowly siphons your bank account or friends who want you to go out and blow tons of money with them every weekend. Understanding how money works is the first step toward making your money work for you. (To find out how to have fun and still save money, see Budget Without Blowing Off Your Friends.)
3. Pay attention to where your money goes.
Once you've gone through a few personal finance books, you'll realize how important it is to make sure your expenses aren't exceeding your income. The best way to do this is by budgeting. Once you see how your morning java adds up over the course of a month, you'll realize that making small, manageable changes in your everyday expenses can have just as big of an impact on your financial situation as getting a raise. In addition, keeping your recurring monthly expenses as low as possible will also save you big bucks over time. If you don't waste your money on a posh apartment now, you might be able to afford a nice condo or a house before you know it. (Read more on budgeting in our Budgeting 101 special feature.)
4. Start an emergency fund.
One of personal finance's oft-repeated mantras is "pay yourself first". No matter how much you owe in student loans or credit card debt and no matter how low your salary may seem, it's wise to find some amount - any amount - of money in your budget to save in an emergency fund every month.
Having money in savings to use for emergencies can really keep you out of trouble financially and help you sleep better at night. Also, if you get into the habit of saving money and treating it as a non-negotiable monthly "expense", pretty soon you'll have more than just emergency money saved up: you'll have retirement money, vacation money, and even money for a home down payment.
Don't just sock away this money under your mattress; put it in a high-interest online savings account, a certificate of deposit, or a money market account. Otherwise, inflation will erode the value of your savings.
5. Start saving for retirement now.
Just as you headed off to kindergarten with your parents' hope to prepare you for success in a world that seemed eons away, you need to prepare for your retirement well in advance. Because of the way compound interest works, the sooner you start saving, the less principal you'll have to invest to end up with the amount you need to retire, and the sooner you'll be able to call working an "option" rather than a "necessity".
Company-sponsored retirement plans are a particularly great choice because you get to put in pretax dollars and the contribution limits tend to be high (much more than you can contribute to an individual retirement plan). Also, companies will often match part of your contribution, which is like getting free money. (To learn more, see Understanding The Time Value Of Money and Retirement Savings Tips For 18- To 24-Year-Olds.)
6. Get a grip on taxes.
It's important to understand how income taxes work even before you get your first paycheck. When a company offers you a starting salary, you need to know how to calculate whether that salary will give you enough money after taxes to meet your financial goals and obligations. Fortunately, there are plenty of online calculators that have taken the dirty work out of determining your own payroll taxes, such as Paycheck City. These calculators will show you your gross pay, how much goes to taxes and how much you'll be left with (also known as net, or take-home pay).
For example, $35,000 a year in California will leave you with about $27,600 after taxes in 2008, or about $2,300 a month. By the same token, if you're considering leaving one job for another in search of a salary increase, you'll need to understand how your marginal tax rate will affect your raise and that a salary increase from $35,000 a year to $41,000 a year won't give you an extra $6,000, or $500 per month - it will only give you an extra $4,200, or $350 per month (again, the amount will vary depending on your state of residence). Also, you'll be better off in the long run if you learn to prepare your annual tax return yourself, as there is plenty of bad tax advice and misinformation floating around out there. (To learn all about your taxes, visit our Income Tax Guide.)
7. Guard your health.
If meeting monthly health insurance premiums seems impossible, what will you do if you have to go to the emergency room, where a single visit for a minor injury like a broken bone can cost thousands of dollars? If you're uninsured, don't wait another day to apply for health insurance: it's easier than you think to wind up in a car accident or trip down the stairs. You can save money by getting quotes from different insurance providers to find the lowest rates. Also, by taking daily steps now to keep yourself healthy, like eating fruits and vegetables, maintaining a healthy weight, exercising, not smoking, not consuming alcohol in excess, and even driving defensively, you'll thank yourself down the road when you aren't paying exorbitant medical bills.
8. Guard your wealth.
If you want to make sure all your hard-earned money doesn't vanish, you'll need to take steps to protect it. If you rent, get renter's insurance to protect the contents of your place from events like burglary or fire. Disability insurance protects your greatest asset: the ability to earn an income, by providing you with a steady income if you ever become unable to work for an extended period of time due to illness or injury.
If you want help managing your money, find a fee-only financial planner to provide unbiased advice that's in your best interest, rather than a commission-based financial advisor, who earns money when you sign up with the investments his or her company backs. You'll also want to protect your money from taxes, which is easy to do with a retirement account, and inflation, which you can do by making sure that all of your money is earning interest through vehicles like high-interest savings accounts, money market funds, CDs, stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. (Find out all you need to know about insurance in Understand Your Insurance Contract, Five Insurance Policies Everyone Should Have and Insurance 101 For Renters.)
A Financial Basis for Life
Remember, you don't need any fancy degrees or special background to become an expert at managing your finances. If you use these eight financial rules for your life, you can be as personally prosperous as the guy with the hard-won MBA.
1. Learn self control now, not later.
If you're lucky, your parents taught you this skill when you were a kid. If not, keep in mind that the sooner you learn the fine art of delaying gratification, the sooner you'll find it easy to keep your finances in order. Although you can effortlessly purchase an item on credit the minute you want it, it's better to wait until you've actually saved up the money. Do you really want to pay interest on a pair of jeans or a box of cereal? (To learn more about credit, check out Understanding Credit Card Interest and our Debt Management feature.)
If you make a habit of putting all your purchases on credit cards, regardless of whether you can pay your bill in full at the end of the month, you might still be paying for those items in 10 years. If you want to keep your credit cards for the convenience factor or the rewards they offer, make sure to always pay your balance in full when the bill arrives, and don't carry more cards than you can keep track of.
2. Don't put your financial future in someone else's hands.
If you don't learn to manage your own money, other people will find ways to (mis)manage it for you. Some of these people may be ill-intentioned, like unscrupulous commission-based financial planners. Others may be well-meaning, but may not know what they're doing, like Grandma Betty who really wants you to buy a house even though you can only afford a treacherous adjustable-rate mortgage.
Instead of relying on others for advice, take charge and read a few basic books on personal finance. Once you're armed with personal finance knowledge, don't let anyone catch you off guard - whether it's a significant other that slowly siphons your bank account or friends who want you to go out and blow tons of money with them every weekend. Understanding how money works is the first step toward making your money work for you. (To find out how to have fun and still save money, see Budget Without Blowing Off Your Friends.)
3. Pay attention to where your money goes.
Once you've gone through a few personal finance books, you'll realize how important it is to make sure your expenses aren't exceeding your income. The best way to do this is by budgeting. Once you see how your morning java adds up over the course of a month, you'll realize that making small, manageable changes in your everyday expenses can have just as big of an impact on your financial situation as getting a raise. In addition, keeping your recurring monthly expenses as low as possible will also save you big bucks over time. If you don't waste your money on a posh apartment now, you might be able to afford a nice condo or a house before you know it. (Read more on budgeting in our Budgeting 101 special feature.)
4. Start an emergency fund.
One of personal finance's oft-repeated mantras is "pay yourself first". No matter how much you owe in student loans or credit card debt and no matter how low your salary may seem, it's wise to find some amount - any amount - of money in your budget to save in an emergency fund every month.
Having money in savings to use for emergencies can really keep you out of trouble financially and help you sleep better at night. Also, if you get into the habit of saving money and treating it as a non-negotiable monthly "expense", pretty soon you'll have more than just emergency money saved up: you'll have retirement money, vacation money, and even money for a home down payment.
Don't just sock away this money under your mattress; put it in a high-interest online savings account, a certificate of deposit, or a money market account. Otherwise, inflation will erode the value of your savings.
5. Start saving for retirement now.
Just as you headed off to kindergarten with your parents' hope to prepare you for success in a world that seemed eons away, you need to prepare for your retirement well in advance. Because of the way compound interest works, the sooner you start saving, the less principal you'll have to invest to end up with the amount you need to retire, and the sooner you'll be able to call working an "option" rather than a "necessity".
Company-sponsored retirement plans are a particularly great choice because you get to put in pretax dollars and the contribution limits tend to be high (much more than you can contribute to an individual retirement plan). Also, companies will often match part of your contribution, which is like getting free money. (To learn more, see Understanding The Time Value Of Money and Retirement Savings Tips For 18- To 24-Year-Olds.)
6. Get a grip on taxes.
It's important to understand how income taxes work even before you get your first paycheck. When a company offers you a starting salary, you need to know how to calculate whether that salary will give you enough money after taxes to meet your financial goals and obligations. Fortunately, there are plenty of online calculators that have taken the dirty work out of determining your own payroll taxes, such as Paycheck City. These calculators will show you your gross pay, how much goes to taxes and how much you'll be left with (also known as net, or take-home pay).
For example, $35,000 a year in California will leave you with about $27,600 after taxes in 2008, or about $2,300 a month. By the same token, if you're considering leaving one job for another in search of a salary increase, you'll need to understand how your marginal tax rate will affect your raise and that a salary increase from $35,000 a year to $41,000 a year won't give you an extra $6,000, or $500 per month - it will only give you an extra $4,200, or $350 per month (again, the amount will vary depending on your state of residence). Also, you'll be better off in the long run if you learn to prepare your annual tax return yourself, as there is plenty of bad tax advice and misinformation floating around out there. (To learn all about your taxes, visit our Income Tax Guide.)
7. Guard your health.
If meeting monthly health insurance premiums seems impossible, what will you do if you have to go to the emergency room, where a single visit for a minor injury like a broken bone can cost thousands of dollars? If you're uninsured, don't wait another day to apply for health insurance: it's easier than you think to wind up in a car accident or trip down the stairs. You can save money by getting quotes from different insurance providers to find the lowest rates. Also, by taking daily steps now to keep yourself healthy, like eating fruits and vegetables, maintaining a healthy weight, exercising, not smoking, not consuming alcohol in excess, and even driving defensively, you'll thank yourself down the road when you aren't paying exorbitant medical bills.
8. Guard your wealth.
If you want to make sure all your hard-earned money doesn't vanish, you'll need to take steps to protect it. If you rent, get renter's insurance to protect the contents of your place from events like burglary or fire. Disability insurance protects your greatest asset: the ability to earn an income, by providing you with a steady income if you ever become unable to work for an extended period of time due to illness or injury.
If you want help managing your money, find a fee-only financial planner to provide unbiased advice that's in your best interest, rather than a commission-based financial advisor, who earns money when you sign up with the investments his or her company backs. You'll also want to protect your money from taxes, which is easy to do with a retirement account, and inflation, which you can do by making sure that all of your money is earning interest through vehicles like high-interest savings accounts, money market funds, CDs, stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. (Find out all you need to know about insurance in Understand Your Insurance Contract, Five Insurance Policies Everyone Should Have and Insurance 101 For Renters.)
A Financial Basis for Life
Remember, you don't need any fancy degrees or special background to become an expert at managing your finances. If you use these eight financial rules for your life, you can be as personally prosperous as the guy with the hard-won MBA.
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
Woody Allen (1935 - ), My Speech to the Graduates
The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
Doug Larson
Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.
Hesketh Pearson- More quotations on: [Quotations]
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak.
Jay Leno (1950 - )
Woody Allen (1935 - ), My Speech to the Graduates
The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
Doug Larson
Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.
Hesketh Pearson- More quotations on: [Quotations]
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak.
Jay Leno (1950 - )
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Quote Of The Day
Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931), (attributed)
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Following the Equator
Men live in a fantasy world. I know this because I am one, and I actually receive my mail there.
Scott Adams (1957 - )
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931), (attributed)
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Following the Equator
Men live in a fantasy world. I know this because I am one, and I actually receive my mail there.
Scott Adams (1957 - )
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Qoute Of The Day
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
- More quotations on: [Enemies]
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
Russell Baker (1925 - )
- More quotations on: [Progress]
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), Sceptical Essays (1928), "Dreams and Facts"
A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988), Time Enough for Love, 1978
- More quotations on
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
- More quotations on: [Enemies]
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
Russell Baker (1925 - )
- More quotations on: [Progress]
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), Sceptical Essays (1928), "Dreams and Facts"
A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988), Time Enough for Love, 1978
- More quotations on
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