May 2008

It’s graduation time again, and that means it’s time to celebrate for many of you. For others, it means that you’re one step closer to freedom. While I won’t be graduating until later this year, I’ve already graduated once from college, so I do have a few nuggets of wisdom to share from my experiences. Here are ten things you should do before you graduate from college.

1. Study

At least once during your college career, you should make an effort to study. You are paying for it after all. And remember all of those movies where nobody thinks the slacker can pass the final exams, but they cram really hard, pass the exam, get the girl, and live happily ever after. That could be you!

2. Go on a date

You’d be surprised how many college students forget about this one. While studying is good, part of the college experience is meeting new people. You definitely won’t meet new people if you lock yourself in your dorm room and study all the time. Honestly, will your friends and family be more impressed that you graduated with a 4.0 or that you found a boyfriend/girlfriend?

3. Stay up all night

I’m just suggesting an all-nighter. Whether you spend it studying or partying is totally up to you. For the adventurous, I’d suggest mixing it up and doing at least one of each. Seeing the sunset and sunrise without sleeping is an essential part of the college experience.

4. Take a road trip

Being away from home is a big part of what makes college so fun. However, even college can get boring after awhile, so gather up some friends and take a road trip. Spontaneous or planned — it doesn’t matter. The next time you have the urge to get out of town, just call up some friends and go!

5. Go somewhere for Spring break

This is the last time you’re going to have Spring break unless you become a teacher or professor, so make the most of it. Go somewhere you’ve never been before or party with your friends for an entire week.

6. Travel abroad

If you haven’t caught on yet, college is a great time to travel. Most college students don’t have to worry about things like taking care of kids or paying the bills yet, so this is great time to travel abroad and experience different cultures. It’s also great because college students can save a lot of money by staying in hostels while traveling abroad.

7. Play full campus capture the flag

This may sound a little strange, but trust me — it’s awesome. It doesn’t have to be limited to capture the flag. You can play hide and seek or freeze tag if you want. The key is to make sure it involves your campus in some way. This is a great way to discover parts of campus you’ve never seen before, and it’s fun seeing the look on other people’s faces as they try to figure out what’s going on.

8. Get an internship

I’ve talked about why internships are a college student’s best friend, and it’s true. Internships give you valuable experience that you just can’t get in a college classroom. You’ll gain real world experience that will help you decide what career path to pursue. It will help in your job search as graduation approaches, because you will already have real world experience under your belt.

9. Leave a mark

No, I’m no advocating vandalism, although that’s a pretty good way to leave a mark on something. What I’m really talking about is leaving a mark on your school. This could be anything from participating in campus clubs or events, doing research for a professor, or scratching your initials in a table at your favorite hangout. (I’m a hypocrite.) The point is to leave your name on something you accomplished associated with your school. What’s the point of going to college if you don’t contribute anything to it?

10. Say goodbye

If there’s one thing to remember to do before you graduate, it’s this one. Many people look back at college as the best years of their lives, and this is usually because they shared them with some great friends. As we all know, even the best friendships grow apart sometimes, especially when you move away to different cities, states, or even countries. Be sure to have one last get together with your friends because you never know when you’ll all be in one place again.

Here’s a quick roundup of the carnivals that I participated in the past two weeks:

• Make Saving Automatic was featured in the 151st edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by Kimberly Palmer at Alpha Consumer
• Waiting for my 2008 Tax Rebate was featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance #152 hosted at Money Under 30

Also, I hope everybody had a great Mother’s Day this past weekend. I remembered to call my mom on the right day, so I’m pretty sure that makes me a good son. In honor of moms all around the world, here’s a great post by squawkfox about how to be a woman.

At the beginning of this year, I mentioned that I was considering getting LASIK. The insurance I have through work covers a sizable portion of the cost, so it definitely makes financial sense to get the surgery done. Not only will I be saving on the cost of the surgery, but also on the cost of contact lenses I’d have to buy if I didn’t get the surgery. In the long run, LASIK will be far more economical than continuing to wear contact lenses.

Of course, getting LASIK is a serious decision, so I’ve been doing my research. When you’re getting surgery on something as important as your eyes, shopping for the lowest price shouldn’t be your top priority. With that being said, you also shouldn’t pay more than you need to for what you want to get.

I called a few doctors in my area to get an idea of the price range. While I did get a solid price from one doctor’s office, the other offices told me that the price depends on which procedure you end up getting and gave me a price range.

Most doctors offer a free consultation where they determine whether or not you’re a good candidate for LASIK. This is basically like a typical eye exam except at the end they let you know whether you’re qualified for LASIK or not. They also determine which procedure is best for your eyes. Most importantly, they talk to you about what you’re expecting to get out of the surgery and the potential side effects of getting the surgery done.

Once they determined that I was a good candidate for LASIK, I talked to the doctor about the procedure and was able to ask any questions that I had. After getting my questions answered, I decided to go ahead with the surgery, so I discussed the price with them. The price was competitive with the other offices I had contacted, so I scheduled a date for my surgery.

By the end of this week, I’ll be able to wake up in the morning and see clearly.

Update: My surgery has been postponed until next week because of scheduling issues, so it’ll be a few more days before I let you know how it went.

Recently, I’ve been realizing how much of our lives we spend waiting on things. We spend the work week waiting for the weekend. We spend the time after a job interview waiting for a phone call back. We spend hours and hours waiting in line at the DMV.

Waiting sucks.

With that being said, most of us are still waiting for our 2008 Tax Rebates. How much longer you have to wait depends on a couple of factors:

• The last two digits of your Social Security Number
• Whether you requested direct deposit or a paper check

Direct Deposit Payments

Depending on the last two numbers of your Social Security Number, your rebate should be deposited by:

00-20: May 2
21-75: May 9
76-99: May 16

Paper Check

Depending on the last two numbers of your Social Security Number, your rebate check should be mailed by:

00-09: May 16
10-18: May 23
19-25: May 30
26-38: June 6
39-51: June 13
52-63: June 20
64-75: June 27
76-87: July 4
88-99: July 11

The IRS also provides a convenient online tool where you can check your stimulus payment status. You will need to enter the following information:

• Social Security Number
• Filing status (Single, Married Filing Joint Return, Married Filing Separate Return, Head of Household, or Qualifying Widow(er))
• Number of Exemptions shown on your 2007 tax return

In case you’ve been in a box the past decade or so, the Internet is a pretty happening place to be nowadays. I definitely dig it. Of course, as things get more popular, they tend to start filling up with junk. As more junk accumulates, it becomes harder to find what you’re looking for.

Fortunately, companies like Google have built great tools to help people, like me and you, find stuff. We find what we’re looking for, and Google slowly takes over the world — a fair trade in my opinion. So when Google finally does take over the world, you’ll definitely want to know how to use their search engine.

Here are six cool things that Google can do to help you quickly find what you’re looking for. How does this relate to finance? Well, we all know that time equals money.

1. Calculator

If you ever need to do some quick math or you’ve been dying to know the answer to that equation from physics class that doesn’t even fit on one line in your notebook, then just Google it. From simple addition and subtraction to sines and cosines, Google can handle it all. You can even type in phrases like “5th root of 32″ and “20% of 150″.

2. Currency Converter

Traveling abroad or have leftover money after traveling abroad? Use Google to find out how much your money is worth. Simply type in a dollar amount and the two types of currency, and let Google work its magic.

Currency isn’t the only thing Google can convert. Try typing in “1 ft to m” or “1 cup to teaspoons”. Google can pretty much convert anything you throw at it.

3. Dictionary

Enough with the numbers, this tip is for people who like words. If you think Google is good with numbers, wait till you see what it can do with words. Just type “define:” before a word, and Google will do just that. It’ll grab and display a list of dictionary definitions for the word.

4. Search a Specific Website

Have you ever gotten frustrated because you couldn’t find what you were looking for a on a site? To make matters worse, the site’s search function doesn’t work, or it simply doesn’t exist. Have no fear! Google to the rescue! Type “site:” followed by a website, and Google will only search within that site.

The example above searches this site for “student loans”. Note that “site:brokegradstudent.com” can appear anywhere in the query. If you search for “student loans site:brokegradstudent.com”, you will get the same results.

5. Search for a Specific File Type

We all know that the Internet is littered with all kinds of files, but sometimes you just want to find a particular type. For example, maybe you’re looking for the prospectus of a Vanguard fund in PDF format. By adding “filetype:pdf” to your search, Google will only search for PDF files.

6. Remove Unwanted Results

It’s always annoying when you’re searching for something, but irrelevant results keep showing up instead. There’s a way around it though. Let’s say you just finished reading Harry Potter, and you want to look up reviews on the book. However, searching for “harry potter review” returns a bunch of reviews of the movie instead of the book. By adding “-movie” to the search, Google will remove pages related to the movie from the search results, and you get what you were looking for.

This is just scratching the surface of the awesome power of Google. You can mix and match these tips to make your searches even more powerful, like searching for a specific file type on a specific website. Happy googling!

While I was doing my daily blog reading yesterday, I came across a post about Mother’s Day gift ideas. Oh crap!

Checks calendar…

Mother’s Day is this Sunday, May 11!

Sigh of relief.

I’m glad that I came across the article before this weekend. Otherwise, I’d have some explaining to do to Mom. Now I’m passing on this information to forgetful sons and daughters everywhere so that you too can have your “Oh crap!” moment before it’s too late.

I decided to give Broke Grad Student a makeover this weekend. I’ve felt that the old design was too cluttered for awhile now, but I didn’t have any time to fix it while I was finishing up my thesis. With my thesis out of the way, I don’t have any more excuses, so here it is — the new and improved Broke Grad Student. I hope you like it.

In other news, here’s a recap of what happened in the carnival world this past week:

• Unusual Ways To Get Money For College was featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance #150 hosted by Lazy Man and Money
• Carnival of Debt Reduction #137 - Graduation Edition was hosted right here by Broke Grad Student
  

This blog is almost 6 months old now. Time has been flying by. Quite a bit has happened in the past month, so here’s a quick overview in case you missed any of it:

• I successfully defended my thesis a few weeks ago! This means I’m only a few revisions away from being done with grad school forever.
• Making it over that obstacle made me reflect on why you should always be prepared for the unexpected.
• This week I hosted the Carnival of Debt Reduction #137 - Graduation Edition.
• And finally, I’ve recently decided to reduce my student loan payments.

Paid Back: $3995.32

I’ve knocked out almost 20% of my debt in the past four months. While this has felt awesome, my emergency fund and retirement funds have been suffering from my aggressive loan payments. This is why I’m planning to reduce my student loan payments for at least the next few months.

2,295 Unique Visitors

This number slightly dropped from last month. While I’m not happy about this, I now have a solid goal to shoot for this month.

103 Subscribers

Woo-hoo! I broke the century mark. This number has been steadily growing, which is cool.

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