Where I Am

I have about three weeks (er, two and a half?) until the end of another school year. I’ll be a junior, technically, but still have three years to go as a consequence of switching majors. In that regard, I’m going for a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with a photo concentration, and probably an Art History minor. I have classes, housing, financial aid, etc. Scholastically, I am pretty well set, and feeling more confident about my choices then ever.

This summer is a different story. No job, yet. I’m not terrible concerned about what the job is, which hopefully will make finding one easier. I’m still not exactly sure how people come back from school with jobs already in hand. I must be missing something.

Lots of artistic ideas, but no darkroom in which to execute them. Not sure what to do about that, but I keep trying.

In other ways, I’m also on unsure footing. Maybe more on that some other day, though.

A little bit of positive news though, to bring this to an optimistic close. I am receiving some sort of award from a scholarship show (that I didn’t enter) in the art department. What this award is or why I was chosen, I have no idea. Oh well! Recognition is recognition.

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From The Vaults: Surveyspot.com

This post originally ran on my old blog, the Sensdep Experience. I’m reproducing it here because a cold has shut down the writing portion of my brain, and I’ve eaten through my back log. Hopefully I will have something new for you tomorrow, but until then enjoy this classic!

So, since June 27th (The post originally ran Augusut 15th of the same year) I’ve been signed up with a company called SurveySpot to take on-line surveys for a cash reward. The idea is simple but I thought I might talk a little about my experience in case anyone wants to consider doing it themselves.

As I said, the premise is simple. The company contacts you with survey opportunities from various market research groups, and you can accept or decline each survey. Also, most surveys will have a few introductory questions to ensure you fall into the demographic they want to poll, and you may be told politely “no thank you” after doing those. However, if you are accepted, most surveys take between fifteen minutes and an hour and pay between $2 and $5.

These surveys work great for people who have a little bit of free time and want to make some extra cash. It wont come quickly, as there are long processing times between the research group and SurveySpot as well as between SurveySpot and you, but it’ll get there eventually. There are some surveys with no reward (though SurveySpot offers instead an entry into a quarterly $25,000 raffle), but you are under no obligation to do them.

The downsides are pretty straightforward. A lot of the surveys are boring, unless slight changes to product packaging really catches your interest. Some weren’t so bad though, so don’t expect every time to be drudgery. There is also the ever present chance of internet failure. Should something time out just before you finish, tough luck. I think it only happened once to me, though.

Being turned down for surveys can be frustrating. I’ve probably spent an hour getting rejected by six surveys to be accepted by one. However, I also had one day where I was accepted by all five, so it comes and goes.

The big things to watch out for are as follows:

A) Any company that asks for a sign up fee is a scam, flat out. Don’t bother. SurveySpot is free.
B) Any company that uses points instead of real cash is probably a scam. I was signed up for one of these before (Harris Poll Online) and after a ton of surveys could just manage a $5 gift card. If a company uses points, do the math. How long is each survey, how many points per survey, and what can points buy you. You might find it works out to an agreeable amount per hour, or, as I did, you might not.

That said, it’s not bad, for working from home on your own hours. It’s never a career, and not even really a second job, but not bad to pad the wallet a little. As I said, I signed up on June 27th, and the last survey I took was June 30th, about a month later. In that time I took 19 surveys at $3 a piece, for a total of $57 dollars. If I could keep it up, that’s $684 a year.

Unfortunately, I’m writing this because I couldn’t keep it up. It’s mind numbing work. It will never go on a resume, and I decided I’d rather do some other form of low paying work (like an online store) which will hopefully pay dividends later on. Still, I can’t complain too much about the experience, and I’ll have a check for $57 no later then four to six weeks after September 10th.

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On Advertising

The short story, of course, is that advertising sucks: it is a carefully crafted way to separate you from your money. It makes you feel uncool, afraid, or in need when you aren’t, and then tells you what you can consume to make it better.

The long story is a little more complicated. Not because advertising has great redeeming virtues (I don’t think it’s even as funny as it used to be anymore), but because I would be doing you an injustice without mentioning some ways to avoid advertising’s influence.

The most obvious, of course, is to cut yourself off from it. If you don’t see it, it can’t effect you. Unfortunately, that usually isn’t an option. I know I am not willing to make the sacrifices I would need to make. So what can you do?

One way is to become a savvy consumer. I didn’t realize it until I recently read this article on Get Rich Slowly, but I think my parents did a fairly good job of preparing me. Learn a little about economics and advertising. Think critically about commercials, at least occasionally. What are they selling? How are they selling it? Quite often, thinking about it is enough to break the control. You’ll question, and usually advertising’s arguments can’t stand up to questioning (unless it’s a genuinely good product). I know I feel good every time I notice what the advertiser didn’t say about a product. One guess why that car commercial didn’t mention fuel mileage? Or safety features?

Viewing them as humor works too. Frankly, a lot of the commercials out there are funny, but not for the reasons the advertisers intended. One recent car commercial, for example, explains that recent research showed that cup holders are the top priority when most women choose a new car. The commercial then goes on to deny that as silly and explain how big the engine is. I’ve got to hand it to them, they are apparently experts at alienating their demographic.

Perhaps the best way to fight advertising, though, is to keep personal goals in mind. If you know what you want, and how to get there, you wont be as easy to sway. Before you buy another new TV, remember your financial goals. Before the Oreos, remember your diet. Advertisers typically don’t sell you on a product, but on what the product will do for you. Not cars and diet pills, but popularity and a sexy body. If you already know what you need and how to get there, you wont even hear those commercials.

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Repaying Student Loans

For a college student without that many huge expenses, I am surprisingly concerned about money. One of my biggest problems is that I hate being in debt. (Ironically, I love lending people money; my friends are always good for the money, but in the meantime my lower bank balance is an incentive not to spend more.) As you might expect, my mounting student loans, small though they are, annoy me endlessly. I want to pay them off quickly, but I know thats not always the best option. After all, they do have a ridiculously low interest rate, relative to credit cards and other forms of credit, and about half of them aren’t actually accruing interest until 6 months after I graduate. Still, I’d like to attack them pretty aggressively when I graduate, as long as my financial situation allows it. But where to start?

Get Rich Slowly has a very interesting guest post on the subject that focuses a lot on consolidation. However, the author, SJean, starts with the most basic question you will probably need to ask yourself: What do I owe, and to whom? To answer this, he recommends speaking with your school’s financial aid department as well as checking with this site.

Once you know what you have to pay, it’s time to consider consolidation. In short, this means combining all your loans (in my case, I have several from each year of college) into a single loan. This can often get you a lower rate, especially if done during the 6-month grace period after graduation, as well as making it easier to manage your loans. When picking a lender to consolidate, SJean recommends looking for the following:

• interest rate (will likely be the same for all lenders)
• discounts for auto-payment
• discounts for on-time payments
• website and user interface for payments
• ability to pay with credit card with no fee (to get cash back bonus, not to convert to credit card debt!)
• ability to use Upromise rewards to pay back the loan (Sallie Mae)

These qualities make it easier and sometimes cheaper to pay back your loans. Which is good, because with the exception of some very rare circumstances, your loans are with you until you pay them off or die.

He goes on to cover some measures you can take if you cannot pay back your loans. Luckily, student loans are eligible for forbearance (delaying payments), but interest continues accruing and it negatively hurts your credit score. (You may also be able to defer payments or arrange a different payment plan with your creditor, but both require some luck and pretty special circumstances.)

Luckily, if you can pay back your loans early, there’s no harm in doing so. However, it’s often possible to save money by paying the minimum balances and investing extra money in a high yield account. You may also have other, higher interest debts you should pay down first. However, if you’re like me and want to pay them down quickly (who wants to still be paying for college when they are forty?) you usually can.

Aside from that, paying off student loans is pretty much like all loans. The debt snowball can still apply. You should still take the approach that works for you, balancing financial and psychological concerns. As for me, I’m still hoping to be able to ditch a lot of my loans when I graduate, but I’ll have to see where I am in three years. Good luck!

Read the full article here.

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Faster, Better, And Cheaper!

I see lots of commercials (typically the local car lot or furniture store, home made variety) that claim to offer a product “faster, better and cheaper!” I’m always a little appalled that people think consumers are gullible enough to believe such a thing exists, but just in case it isn’t clear, a quick rule of thumb.

Any product or service can be measured three ways: quality (better), convenience (faster), and cost (cheaper). Quite often, you’ll be able to find a service or product that offers one of these, but you’ll never find something that offers more then two. It breaks down like this.

Better, faster, but… it will cost you.
If you can afford it, you can get high quality goods or services fast. Emphasis on, “if you can afford it.” You have to pay not only for the most skilled workers but for them to put in long hours, or to pay extra to get materials in a rush. It’s possible, but it’s expensive.

Better, cheaper, but… not till late next year.
Another option. You pay for quality, but save on delivery time. Maybe you hire a really skilled carpenter, but he only works when he has spare time. Or else you order the good stuff, but take the cheapest delivery option. The reason the merchant, whatever they’re selling, can offer such a good product at such a low price is that they take no risks by stocking the product ahead of time; your quality product isn’t ordered from the source until you order in the store.

Faster, cheaper, but… well, you get what you pay for.
Of course, you can always find someone willing to sell you a product or service with a minimal investment of time or money. In fact, I’d say this is the predominant business model in the US. Think Wal-Mart, K-Mart, etc. It’s not bad, if it works for you, but you have to know what you’re getting in return. It will be low quality. If it’s a service, the work will be shoddy and rushed. You save in the short term, but in the long term you lose out on quality.

Is one option better then the others? It depends on your situation. If it’s a service or product which will strongly effect you or your family’s safety, I might advise buying quality, and paying for it however you can. Otherwise, you have to decide what’s right for you. The important thing is not to be suckered by people who claim to deliver everything.

There is always a cost.

What you get one place, you pay for another. If one company found a way around that rule, they wouldn’t need to advertise: their competition would already be out of business.

(There is one exception I can think of to this rule, and thats buying – typically services – from people who are desperate. Students, young people, etc., who don’t have a lot of options. I know I’ve worked hard and fast for little pay before. However, it’s important to note that this is limited to low-skill jobs. Here, “quality” means hard work, not skilled work. So, to some degree, you still lose out.)

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Blog: The No Impact Man

For a while now one of my favorite blogs has been No Impact Man, the ongoing writings of a liberal environmentalist who got sick of waiting for the world to change and decided to change himself. He set out over a year to drop his net environmental impact to zero (very little negative impact plus some positive impact), in the middle of New York no less. His journey is instructive for those looking to lower their impact (or save some money), but now that his year long experiment is over, he’s been doing a lot of reflection, trying to decide what restrictions to keep and which to let slide.

Interestingly, he’s found that he doesn’t want to give up a lot of the rules. True, it was difficult (especially with a small child) to avoid buying anything new, to eat local food, to go without power. However, he repeatedly found that with less stuff in the way, he was closer to his family. He appreciated his life more. Some of his posts on this subject have been incredibly touching. One recent post in particular caught my eye.

I have to feel bad for his wife. (I should say, the spouses of immersion journalists in general.) She has put up with a lot of hardship for his experiment. Still, it’s interesting how it has rubbed off on her. He recently described his most amazing No Impact Man moment yet.

He’s been composting (vermiposting, actually, I think), using a cheap, second-hand plastic bucket to hold food scraps, because the project rules forbid them from buying anything new. The project is over, so she wanted to go splurge on a shiny new metal container for the scraps. No sooner had they left the store the she stopped them.

“I want you to take it back. We can just wash out the plastic bucket and use it until we find a better trash can on the street or at the flea market… I think the consumer brainwashing has worn off.”

I suppose I’ve always believed to a certain extent that consumption doesn’t make one happy, but I’ve been surprised reading the No Impact Man experiment by how much reducing consumption has improved his life. He repeatedly says that the experiment has taught him that most people don’t really want more stuff – rather, stuff is a consolation prize – but more and closer relationships with their friends and family. A cleaner conscience about the environment (as well as, by extension, a more beautiful environment and typically a healthier body and bank account) certainly can’t hurt with happiness.

I wouldn’t say the No Impact Man lifestyle is for everyone, but I’ve found it interesting and rewarding to read through and try some of the easier measures.

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For My Fellow Artists

When I switched to the art program, I did so with full knowledge that I might be dooming myself to life as a starving artist. I can live with that idea. For many people, though, the perceived lack of income is enough to keep them from pursuing their dreams. And it’s a reasonable enough fear. Lots of people want to be artists (meaning the market is flooded with work), which drops prices. Add to this that many works can be resold or mass produced, and the supply side of art gets even more crowded, mean, yes, lower prices. Toss in the generally subjective way the public choses which art to support, and the industry is a minefield.

Luckily, Kevin Kelly offers an alternative on his website. He calls his idea 1,000 True Fans. He suggests that the problem arises because everyone wants a blockbuster success, but that blockbuster success is typically short lived. This can be a good way to make a lot of money quickly, but not a long term plan for success. Instead, he suggests the key is to focus on your true fans.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

He assumes, I would say rather conservatively, that each true fan may reasonably spend about one days wages per year on your work (or about $100), if not more. With 1,000 such fans, you’re looking at $100,000, minus expenses and taxes. (I think he assumes, since you’re no longer aiming for blockbuster success, that you’re focused more on one-off or print-on-demand work, which lowers the cost). It’s easy to see how this could communicate into a living, perhaps even quite respectable, wage.

What I especially like about his thinking is that it changes the way artists relate to their fans. If you want blockbuster success, it’s all about bringing in as many people as possible, while cutting costs everywhere you can. Not so if you have a small group of true fans. Like Kevin says,

Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It rewards the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work, the qualities that True Fans appreciate.

It becomes about producing quality work. There’s no pressure to “sell out,” to rush the next book/CD/show, to swindle fans into buying less-then-perfect work. You can directly relate to a 1,000 people (especially with the help of the internet).

I especially love the implications for the future of free samples. I know people (some near and dear to me) who think giving away anything as an artist is a waste. I’ve been told that, even though it would mean less up-front exposure, I should submit writing to magazines for printing, not post them on a blog for free. But people can’t be fans of yours unless they know you exist. If giving away one piece (a story, a song, what have you) starts fifty more people on their life-long love affair with your work, all the better, especially when you consider what a True Fan will do to spread the word.

Maybe I am overly optimistic to believe that. At the same time, I know many of my favorite artists are ones I learned about through free work. In addition, when I see an artist who makes a conscious effort to treat their fans properly, as people on whom their livelihoods depends and not consumers to be taken advantage of, it makes me want to support them. So I go out, and I buy the extra shirt, the CD, the poster, even if their material is available for free. It’s the sort of relationship that used to dominate every economy, and the sort of relationship I would like to engage in with you. (Which is why, while I’d love to be paid for my writing eventually, this blog is still free.)

Is this a better path for today’s artists to take? I think so. Printing-on-demand is getting cheaper and easier all the time. The internet isn’t going to start shrinking anytime soon. And it seems like this may be more rewarding, not only monetarily, but psychologically. Make your art, and find a small group of people who love you for it.

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No Such Thing As A Free Meal

There’s an anime I love (stick with me, this is going somewhere) called Fullmetal Alchemist. It takes place in a world where alchemy works, governed by the inescapable Law of Equivalent Exchange: to obtain, something of equal value must be lost. It makes for good drama in the show, but watch even a few episodes, and you realize they aren’t just talking about alchemy. It holds true in our world too.

Case and point: Airborne, the (finally debunked) miracle cure for the common cold. Turns out it was little more then a scam, backed by falsified research. It’s a bit of an I-told-you-so moment for me, since I repeatedly told a friend of mine that no drug “designed by a school teacher” could be worth anything. It’s textbook equivalent exchange: the creator didn’t give up his time and money to study chemistry or medicine, and he doesn’t have the chance to make a major breakthrough like a cure for the common cold.

Luckily, our government tends to favor equivalent exchange as well. Since the makers gave up nothing to design their product, the government has decided they deserve nothing in return. As such, they’re refunding purchases. Enjoy!

And keep the Law of Equivalent Exchange in mind in the future; it makes a great lie detector. Almost any time someone offers you something for nothing, they’re working an angle, so be careful.

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The Debt Snowball

Debt, I think we can universally agree, is bad for you. Not only is it a constant drain on your financial resources, but it’s also a source of stress. For many people, though, it’s difficult to imagine getting out of debt. It can seem insurmountable.

If you are ready to start going after your debt, though, there are a few ways to go about it. The first is to simply up your payments on all you debts by whatever you can. This is going to be a slow and arduous process, and wont save you much money.

The most logical is to sit down with your statements and brush the dust off your high school math; figure out which debt is going to cost you the most in interest in the long run. It will probably be a high-interest credit card. Once you find the debt that will cost you the most, start paying extra over the minimum payments on that. When you have eliminated it, take the extra you were paying and the monthly payment on that debt and put it towards the next debt. This is called a debt snowball; each debt you pay off makes the next debt easier to pay off. Eventually, you are paying far above the minimum monthly payments on your last debts, and the process picks up speed until you are debt free (and in the habit of making a large monthly payment to put towards savings every month).

However, the most expensive debt is often typically the hardest to pay off. It’s easy to lose the will to fight the debt while your balance oh-so-slowly creeps downwards. It’s not your fault – it’s human nature to be deterred when progress is that slow. Which is why many personal finance advisers recommend a second kind of debt snowball. Instead of attacking the most expensive debt – the most logical goal – go after the debts with the smallest (and there-by easiest to pay off) balances. Otherwise, the system works the same: pay extra towards the loan, then use the extra and that monthly payment towards you next loan, etc. True, in the long run it will cost you a little more, but the psychological rewards come more quickly, and if it lets you win the psychological battle, then it’s worth it. I’m sure using all your monthly payments to pound on those high interest, high balance loans at the end is fun too.

You can use one method or some mixture of the both to rank your loans; the important thing to note is that it’s an easy system to organize your attack on debt. Defeating your debt can be difficult, but it is by no means impossible, and well worth the effort.

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What It Takes To Be Happy: Finances

To bring things to a close this opening week, we’ll look at finances. After today, Fridays will be time for fun posts to get your weekends started right.

Money, in terms of happiness, offers diminishing returns. Many studies have shown that, once your basic needs are met, more money doesn’t buy more happiness. How much is enough? I’ve heard different numbers, from $50,000 down to $20,000, but it’s all less then most people would think. After that, more money only makes you marginally happier.

If we stop to think about it, it makes sense. The difference between being homeless and having a home is huge, whereas the difference between having a small home and a bigger home is less significant. Also, a larger home typically means more upkeep and other worries, whereas not having a home is an incredible hardship. These same relationships apply to almost everything money can buy; some is better then none, but more is not much better then less.

Of course, there are also times when you just need a little money to help something else happen. I’ve heard it said that money buys happiness if you know how to spend it. That is, supersizing everything wont make you much happier, but maybe buying quality or investing in experiences will. An extra $100,000 would let you start your business and finally work for yourself. This is an important, but not as common, way of relating to money.

However, all this shouldn’t be taken to mean that finances play no major role in happiness. I think it’s better, though, to look at it in terms of financial security. Living in debt or on limited resources is stressful; conversely, knowing you have savings in the bank and money put away for retirement can put you at ease, allowing you to focus on other things important to you. And because more isn’t always better, it’s possible to balance making more money with more job satisfaction or other concerns.

It’s in this mindset that Step Lightly will approach financial issues. It’s not about how much you make, but what you can do with it.

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