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June 2007 - Posts
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Have you ever walked by or driven by a store or restaurant and wondered to yourself how they could possibly survive in the business world? There seem to be so many places out there that are always open but never seem to have any customers inside. Such businesses often make me wonder how they can possibly manage to stay afloat with no regular customer base. Even if they are managing to make enough money to stay open, that really has to be the extent of it, unless by some stretch of the imagination they own whatever building they are occupying outright so that they don't have to pay monthly rent. Utility and supply payments alone have to end up making it really difficult for them. The presence of such extremely small businesses baffles me even more when I think about their inclusion in small-town America. Even in the town where I live, basically a college town, where the level of commercial business that takes place during about four months out of the year really slows, it's hard to believe that these businesses make any money at all on a given day. I've even wondered about all this for larger businesses and even some more popular restaurants. What happens if, on some random day, no one decides that they want an Arby's roast beef sandwich from some particular Arby's location in town? There are still people inside the store ready to wait on customers and to prepare the food...and I'm sure that they've already got some food prepared. Plus there are the overhead costs of electricity, water, and phone that are on even if they aren't being used by customers. I just wonder if this happens, and if it does, how often it happens. I remember specifically back when I was quite a bit younger and just entering high school that I worked at one of our local malls in upstate New York in a piano and organ store that was owned by the uncle of a friend of mine from school. I only worked for about six hours on Saturdays and Sundays, during which I spent the majority of my time doing my homework or playing one or more of the many pianos in the warehouse. I would say that on a good busy day, twenty people might walk into the store, and maybe one or two would actually buy something. With big ticket or specialty items like pianos, you can't exact expect that they are just going to fly out the door. Most people who walked in just wanted to sit down and plunk out some cruddy piano tune that they learned in their childhood, and very few actually ever bought even a piano book. I am almost positive that this type of thing must happen all the time and in a bunch of different stores. I suppose that that is the risk that you end up running when you own a business that carries specialty items. Maybe it's just a risk that you run when you own any business, at least if you own one that doesn't have a steady customer base on which your sales can rely. I guess that in the long run, I just can't even imagine being employed at a place where I would never be sure if I was going to have customers on any given day. I tend to get bored very easily when there isn't much around for me to do. I actually strive in situations where I have a little bit too much to do in the time that I've been alotted. That makes me push myself to work more efficiently so that I end up getting things accomplished. It also helps me to take advantage of the little bits of down time that occur when there aren't any customers around. My current job is kind of a mix of both. Most time when I work during the day or on the weekends, there are a lot of customers who need help, and there is usually a lot of work to do. Some mid-week days or when it gets later on in the evening, things get really slow, and there only ends up being so much that you can clean, polish, or even straighten up in your particular department. It's these days that I wish that I was back in the piano store where it was expected that I could occupy myself by practicing piano all day. It was also expected that people who work at the counter would bring extra school work to do while they are sitting there and no customers are around. That would surely be the most ideal situation at the current time for me. I would love to be able to bring stuff from school with me to read through while there aren't customers nagging me for help. I would get so much done! Unfortunately the conundrum that many people run into is that, of course, management doesn't want you doing other things while you are on the clock. This is understandable, but like I said just a moment ago, there is only so much that you can do to keep occupied. Sometimes, I just end up walking in circles from one end of the department to the other, just looking for things to do. Sometimes I clean things that surely haven't been cleaned in months if ever. Ah well, I suppose that I shouldn't be complaining about not having too much to do. Most people would probably enjoy sitting around and doing just about nothing. Most people except for me I guess.
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It's hardly a possibility to be a financially independent adult these days without noticing first hand the neverending fluctuations in the price of gasoline, particularly those that have happened over the last six months or so. Thankfully though, after several months of record high prices at the gas pumps that rivaled the records set not long ago in the wake of hurricane devastation at Gulf of Mexico refineries, prices in the past few weeks have eased some. It has surely been shocking for me to drive up to a gas station to refill my gas tank and see a number on the regular unleaded pump that is less than three dollars. Now that the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded is somewhere in the two dollar and eighty-some-odd cent range, the price of fuel seems to be back to a comfortable level. Sure, the price could be much lower, but I surely won't be the one to complain about a fifty cent or more drop in fuel prices in just a few weeks time. I thought that it would be important to write a short post today about this decrease in fuel prices in order to give a little bit of thanks. Previously I've spent a good deal of time over the past several months decrying the first rising and then relentless plateau of gasoline prices that we've just been through, thinking of course that we would never see an end to the trend. Now the the prices have fallen slightly, I was surprised to one again find articles on the internet with somewhat of a complaining tone about the price of gasoline. It was great while the prices were falling so that a positive message of "gasoline prices fall once again" or "gasoline prices continue to fall" was broadcast somewhere on just about every business page headline on both the internet and the newspapers. However, once the decrease in prices stalled, the negative vibes were included again questioning why the price hasn't fallen further. In all honesty, with the state of the world being what it is, with two separate wars raging in the Middle East and the foreign policies exercised toward petroleum-producing countries by our current government, one can scarcely expect the price of gasoline to fall much farther. My sentiment is that we should be thankful for the slight ease in prices that we've seen recently and save our complaints for the policies of our government rather than crying out at the gasoline industry. I'm sure that many of you who read my Christian financial blog will disagree with me on this point. Most times the common pairing is the more highly religious Americans tend to agree with the more Conservative government policies. This has been the rule for a long time, but it appears that times are changing. America, though strong in its moral convictions appears to be starting on a new more liberal path. I take evidence of this observation from the mid-term elections where the control of both the house of representatives, the senate, and the state governors changed to a liberal majority. This is a reflection of many things, not least of which is the growing discontent of the majority of Americans with the actions of our president and his administration. The financial burdens felt by the average American as a result of the path that the current president has lead us all down can only go on so far. How far though will this trail of devastation and financial ruin for Americans travel during the next year and a half until the next presidential elections? The possibilities are frightening. Many undergraduate college courses in politics, economy, and finances now teach that the United States will fall within the next fifty years. I used to scoff at such teachings, but now it seems that the reality is not far off. We must all ask ourselves how we feel about this fact and whether or not the United States will be able to recover after this eight year span. I find it startling how much a simple thing like the price of gasoline can relate to such larger concerns of all Americans. The ever-changing gasoline prices index a larger issues which our government and lawmakers have yet to tackle sufficiently. What can we do though? It seems that we are just helpless to influence our representatives to make any changes that might ameliorate the situation. I, for one, am just exhausted with the situation...a scary thought for a young, commited, and active twenty-six year old graduate student. What about you? As an American, what can you do or say to help get this country out of the state that it is currently in. It's scary that many of you will have to answer "nothing".
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It's been quite a while since I wrote a post that talked about all the goodness and savings that can come from becoming familiar with the way that Amazon dot com works for customers. The services at Amazon have been so good to me over the past several years that I've now gotten into the habit of checking their website, especially their personal suggestions based on my previous purchases, in order to find out if there are any new low price options listed for things that I might want to buy. Most of you know by now that there is always something that I want to by, at least when it comes down to books. My library of books for my field is my pride and joy. It's a collection that I started just about two and a half years ago, and it has grown substantially since I began it. I know have about one hundred fifty books, which is a long way from the three I began with when I decided what I was going to do for the rest of my life as a career. Anyways, enough about me...let's talk about Amazon dot com. I think that one of the best things about Amazon is that it is so user-friendly. That simply means that it is easy enough to use so that even people who don't like computers or aren't as familar as others are in using the internet can still take advantage of using Amazon both to purchase items and to sell things that they no longer need. This is of a great benefit to the rest of us bargain shoppers out there who like to take advantage of the extremely low price items that you can often find in the many different categories on the Amazon website. I can't even tell you how many times that I've bought a book on Amazon where the fixed price of shipping at three dollars and ninety nine cents is far more than the actual price of the book that I'm purchasing. I think that I've even bought a book for about twenty cents before, so if you think about it that way, you get a book that was once maybe twenty or thirty dollars for under five dollars, complete with the cost of four to fourteen day shipping. They also offer a great expedited shipping option for those of you who, like me, want to make sure that an item arrives in a more timely fashion, usually within two to six days. A lot of times, there are books that I'm not able to find in the library that I can find on Amazon, and for just a few extra dollars, I can have them at my door in just a few days so that I can find the information that I need in them for a class or for a paper that I happen to be writing. Recently, Amazon has implemented another service of convenience; one-click payments. I don't personally like to use the one-click payment option, mainly because I'm an obsessive clicker with my mouse or touchpad. The idea of the one-click payment is that you sign in with your Amazon account user name which will have your preferred method of payment (bank account, credit card, or whatever) linked to it, so that all you have to do is add items to your online shopping cart, press a single button, and voila! it's ordered and on it's way to you. Although I have a lot mroe experience buying books off of Amazon, it's not to say that I haven't on occasion bought other things. The selection that the website offers is so amazing that you can find just about anything you could possibly need or want. Just off the top of my head, I know that I've bought baking equipment, a sweatshirt, a watch, and computer and ipod accessories from Amazon. There is no way that I could possibly do the site justice by describing what it offers. You simply just have to try it out for yourself. Make sure that you visit the site for the first time when you have a little while on your hands to search around. Once you get clicking around and exploring the site, you definitely run the risk of loosing track of time. I really hope that you'll time a few moments and check out the site and then drop me a line and let me know what you think. Happy browsing!
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I know that just the other day I was talking about how sensitive the subject of money is for individuals, particularly in the United States, but did you know that the information on how much the world makes, or more specifically how much each country makes, saves, and spends is readily available information? I may be a bit of a nerd, but there is a really good resource for finding this kind of information that is updated regularly and comes from a "reliable" source. If you ever get the chance, try surfing around the website for the United States Central Intelligence Agency and finding their version of the World Factbook. This is absolutely one of my favorite things to do when I'm sitting around with nothing in particular to accomplish and I happen to have my laptop sitting around with me. I like to just pick a country or territory from the website list of just about every viable territory around the globe and read a little bit about the history of the country and various facts about it. Of course, information on the gross domestic product, import and export amounts, and what kinds of goods and services fund the nation from year to year are included on the various subsites. Of course, being an Africanist, I first started reading all about the over sixty countries on that continent, but as time has gone by, I've branched out to read about other countries and make some financial comparisons. It's rather surprising to learn where certain products that we all use come from around the world. The site also contains information on how much the United States provides to a given country in aid each year. Other important financial concerns are also listed on the site, including things like tourism and international disputes. I guess that I like looking at these sites because I think that it's important for us over in the United States to be able to look and to make a comparison about financial things between our country and others around the world. Simply looking at the gross domestic product of the United States compared to that of countries so close to us, like Mexico for example, certain things start to come in perspective. These numbers give clues as to how the United States holds the power that it does over the rest of the world. The list of our imports and exports only supports this fact. Sure, we have to import certain things, but the United States is diverse enough in its holdings that we have the ability to produce many of the products that Americans need. Another important reason for looking at such a respected source for this type of information is that you have less of a chance to receive biased information from one news source or another, or even from a particular journalist. Of course we have to remember that the United States government ultimately oversees the Central Intelligence Agency, but I believe that their influence is less so than over other organizations and agencies in the federal system. I'd like to think, therefore, that the information that we are receiving is less tainted than elsewhere in our government. I really urge you all to take a look at the World FactBook to learn more information about the rest of the world. I think that most Americans don't get the opportunity to think outside of the box when it comes to the rest of the world. I'm sure that many people, maybe the less fortunate of Americans, don't even get the chance to think about the world outside of their own city or state. I know that for the longest time, I couldn't imagine life outside of upstate New York, that is of course until I decided that I was going to go out and find it for myself by going to school halfway across the country. I think that we can all learn something worthwhile by thinking about far off lands. Give it a try sometime!
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It seems as though so many people are getting married this Summer. Maybe I'm just getting older, and it's just what people my age do when they get to this age. Forget having any real financial security or a true career path ahead of you. Heck, most of the people who I know that are getting married aren't even finished up with their schooling yet. How is it that these people are going to go on to afford to live as a couple, with a house, a mortgage, cars, bills, and maybe even a family sometime soon? Things like this really blow my mind. It's actually sometime that has been on my mind a lot lately as I think about my brother and soon-to-be-sister-in-law as well as my best friend as his fiancee, as both couples will be tying the knot within the next six weeks or so. It seemed pretty appropriate that I happened to come across an article that was discussing the necessity for couples who are on the road to marriage to discuss and outline a plan for their financial futures preferably before they walk down the aisle. The article discusses how many young couples who get caught up in all the happy things surrounding marriage never really get into talking about their future finances because such talk is very taboo, especially in our culture and society here in the United States. Sure, we talk about our careers, our neighbors, and even our sex lives comfortably, but stepping into the discussion of money just doesn't happen. It's hard to believe that that subject is more personal to Americans than just about anything else in our lives. No one wants to share how much they make, what kinds of bills they have to pay, or even the amount of their credit card balance. I have to admit, a discussion about some of these things feels like it would be pretty intense, and it's surely not something that you want to get into when planning a wedding. Unfortunately what seems to happen is that many newlyweds end up married and then immediately, within a month or two of their wedded bliss, have to tackle financial issues head on, which obviously interrupts the romance of the honeymoon period. Perhaps this is why someone coined the phrase, "the honeymoon is over." They surely could have been talking about money. Let's face it...money is no picnic to deal with. From the time we are kids, most of us are taught to deal with our money in a certain manner, or at least we learn about what to do or not to do with our money according to how it is dealt with by our parents and family. We tend to inherit these financial characteristics much like any other traits, genetic or otherwise, that our parents or guardians have exposed us to. For better or for worse, if you are going to marry someone, or even have a solid long-term relationship with someone where you are responsible for sharing financial obligations, it's better to start earlier rather than later in learning, accepting, and maybe even compromising on your spouse or partner's financial tendencies or expectations. These are the types of things that, if you can decide upon before exchanging rings and vows, you will surely have a less rocky road ahead of you. I was surprised to read that such a high percentage of weddings end during the first year due to irreconcilable differences pertaining to money. That seems like it would be motivation enough for young couples to nip financial concerns in the bud before making any set plans for the big day. Sure, I'm not married yet, but if I was planning to be, I think that I'm the kind of person who would want to tackle these types of problems before things got too serious. If you and your boyfriend or girlfriend can't have a joint cellular phone plan and, I don't know, switch off on payments every other month with success, then chances are you are in for long-term problems. Many of you more conservative folks out there will probably hang me out to dry for saying this, but if I was on the road to marriage, I would surely want to try living together and sharing financial responsibilities before being legally bound to someone. That just seems like a wise move in this day and age when things like student loans and potentially crazy credit card payments loom over the heads of many newly married couples. Just my opinion of course...
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Judging from the places that I've lived over the past...oh...seven years or so of my life, you would probably never guess that I'm a big city kind of guy. Sure, the Florida panhandle and central southern Indiana aren't quite metropolisis, but they aren't so bad either. Truth be told though, New York City is where I'm the most comfortable. I think it's the anonymity of being on the island of Manhattan and the fact that you can do just about anything you would ever want to do without having to step foot off of the island. Anyways, I find the topic of my blog post a little bit amusing after just having written just a few days ago about expensive cities. My other post talked about expensive cities around the world and about the fact that New York City, though expensive, really didn't even come close to being the most expensive of the bunch. After reading an article today in the news, I would tend to rethink that analysis, because a night out on the town in Manhattan has never sounded so expensive to me. Yes, I've spent a lot of time in New York City over the last several years, but I know how to visit and have fun affordably. I know the places to go, the places to eat, and the places to shop where I'm going to get the most bang for my proverbial buck. I was a big theater kid in high school, and I still think of myself as somewhat of a theater connosieur. I know what shows are playing, where they are playing, the stories behind them, and most importantly whose going to be in them. I think in all the shows that I've seen on the Great White Way, which I would imagine numbers somewhere between twenty-five and thirty at this point, the most that I've ever paid for a seat was about sixty dollars. Sure, some of these were balcony seats, but I paid only forty-five dollars for a third row orchestra seat to see Rent the last time I was in Manhattan. Sometimes I've paid as little as twenty dollars for those lottery tickets that people show up early to get. It just all depends. Nonetheless, a beautiful night out in Manhattan filled with theater doesn't exactly have to cost you an arm and a leg. Well, at least that used to be the case. Mel Brooks is trying to change that with his announcement of proposed ticket prices for his remake of the classic black and white comedy Young Frankenstein on Broadway. The news article that I read today quoted the price of seats being around four hundred and fifty dollars per person. The average, though slightly less, was still above two hundred dollars for a seat, which the article quoted was over one hundred dollars more than tickets for plenty of other famous and mainstream Broadway productions, even those bringing in celebrities to play the roles. What I don't understand is the motivation behind the move to jack up ticket prices by so much. The average American simply will not be able to enjoy even the worst seats in the house. Broadway in this light will become some only the richest among us have access to. I surely will not be able to afford even the least expensive two hundred and fifty dollar tickets to see the show. I'm sure that the production will be spectacular as most things put on by Mel Brooks are, but still, the prices per seat are far more than steep. I fully understand as a musician and actor myself the money that is involved in putting a production together. However, there has to be a point where you stop yourself and say, "hey...no one is going to be able to afford to see this show". Such a show will now cater only to the upper eschelon of society, which of course Manhattan has plenty of, but such prices will turn even the most devoted theater-goers away with disgust. I guess that if this is what "new" Broadway shows are coming to, I'll have to settle for seeing the revivals and the good ole standards when I want an evening out in New York City. I'd much rather save my money for the overpriced clothing in SOHO.
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When I woke up this morning, I immediately said to myself that I knew that this day would arrive eventually. If one person keeps pushing and pushing to get things accomplished, to make money, and to try to be Superman without pausing to eat the right things and get plenty of rest and relaxation, it's going to equal a big crash sometime in the not too distant future. Such is the case with what happened to me today. Having just finished working every single day for a week, and cramming the majority of my hours into a three-day stretch of eleven hours each, while still taking care of all my other school and academic obligations as well, I wasn't sure how long it was going to be before my body had just had enough. My body answered that question for me this morning when I woke to feeling, in a word, miserable. Everything about me ached, and I knew that it was five o'clock in the morning and time to head over to work for another shift. The only positive thought that could get me through my morning routine was knowing that I could come home at noon and take a nap on my couch. Now, that's no different from what I tell myself every single day in order to get myself motivated and out of bed, but today, I knew that I meant it. I've begun to recognize what my body needs in terms of rest, and by golly, I sure have not been providing it what it needs. Add that to the fact that I haven't exactly been eating on a typical schedule, and I've been substituting a lot of "healthy" options for my typical foods in an attempt to lose a little bit of weight before I head up to New York for my brother and sister-in-law's wedding in less than a month. Today was just one of those days that I knew that I couldn't move very quickly, because if I did, I was going to have a problem on my hands...namely that my stomach was not going to handle it. Of course, when you're not eating exactly correctly in the first place, and then you are having stomach difficulties as well, it's double trouble, because you don't want to eat and can't eat anyways. I told myself that if I made it through work that I would treat myself to whatever I was hungry for...nothing like making a pact with your body to make it through the work day. I had made it until about an hour left at work when I began thinking about the great nap that I was going to take. Then it hit me! I couldn't take a nap and recharge my body for all that long, becasue I had (stupidly) scheduled another meeting up at school for three o'clock this afternoon which I had no idea how long it would last. Needless to say, I made it up for my meeting, but the combination of my quasy stomach, my exhaustion, and the heat were not to easy on me. I had to excuse myself twice to go get a drink to rehydrate myself and cool off, because I was really on the brink of passing out. I know that you are probably all thinking that this really has nothing to do with finances and that I shouldn't be writing about it in my Christian finance blog, but in all honesty, what I'm talking about has everything to do with this subject. In my attempt to be a good worker, a good student, a leader, and an over-achiever, and most of all...to make a lot of money over the summer months, I never stopped to think about myself. I've spent the first two months of my summer break working constantly and never giving myself a chance to recover physically or mentally from the stress and exhaustion from the academic year. Money, of course, was my motivation. When you are used to having a fellowship provided to you (I'm extremely blessed in this respect, I know) for each semester to live off of, the idea of jumping back into some work that you aren't exactly being paid well for and has nothing to do with your interests is pretty scary. Most people like me know that the concentration is to make enough money to get through the summer months for rent, car insurance, car payments, cell phone bills, food, etc. without cutting into the money too much that I have desperately tried to save my being careful with my spending during the regular school year. Money, money, money...it motivates every single person in different ways. Some people might be comfortable not having all too much money and living every month wondering whether or not all the bills will be paid or not. That kind of living is just not my style. I like to have a financial cushion on which I can rest and know that I will have everything I need taken care of, and then some...hence my being down for the count today and my body just deciding not to put up with me anymore.
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A piece of modern machinery and technology that has become very near and dear to the hearts of many people around the world is the automatic teller machine, more affectionately known as the ATM. Sure, lots of people out there call them ATM machines, but that is just ridiculous. Would you ever call it an automatic teller machine machine? I thought not. Anyways, according to various news sources that I saw today as I was reading through the news, today is the fortieth birthday of the ATM. Surprising as it may seem, these machines have been helping individuals all across the glove get the cash they need on hand since the sixties. I was surprised to find that, although the majority of the ATMs that we now have in the world are in the United States, this was not always the case. Back when ATMs were first popularized, England actually boasted the most machines for quite a number of years. It has even been said that a British man invented the ATM, one that required customers to have a prepaid card that they could insert into the machine after entering their six digit pin identification number. Things have obviously progressed by leaps and bounds as hundreds of thousands of individuals in numerous countries and territories around the world hit up the ATM machine every day for various reasons, like getting some pocket cash, checking their checking or savings account balances, or depositing their paychecks after normal banking hours. As a fun fact, the article states that the most remote ATM known to be in existence is actually at a research station on the continent of Antarctica. I just can't imagine what they would possibly need cash for down in those parts, but either way, an ATM is available to these researchers should they need to check their bank account balances. After a little bit more research, I discovered that most of the information that I found in these articles on the news networks was pretty accurate, but they tend to skew the origins of the automatic teller machine by a little bit. It seems that an American man first invented the ATM in New York City in nineteen thirty-nine, but after an unsuccessful run, the machine was removed from the location where it had been installed. Then came the twenty-five year gap until the ATM re-emerged in England where it caught on with society and gained popularity. Additional information that I found pretty fascinating was that the vast majority of ATMs in the world are in the United States, Canada, and over in Europe. ATMs have also gained popularity in Eastern Asia, Australia, and even on Pacific Islands. They are least prominent in Africa and the Middle and Near East...go figure. It's hard to believe that, with ATMs on navy vessels and in Antarctica, that they are not found in wealthy places like the Middle East. Again...go figure. No matter where they are, it is no secret that ATMs continue to be one of the most important modern inventions for financial minded people nearly the whole world around. Not everyone has the ability to be able to make it to their bank between the banking hours of nine AM to five PM, Monday through Friday, and not on holidays in order to get their banking done. The ATM provides people with the added convenience of being able to conduct their financial transactions safely, securely, and accurately. Just like online banking and payment, as I talked about a few days ago, the ATM is yet another way that modern technology provides a great convenience to the lives of many individuals and businesses. Sure, it stinks when you have a problem with your ATM card, or when you forget your pin number, or even lose your card, but the majority of the time, they sure are awfully helpful when you're in a bind and need some cash or need to know your account balance before you go buy yourself something nice.
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There are really very few things in life that I am lazy about. Probably at the top of the list is cleaning my bathroom...I just hate doing it. Second would be doing laundry, and third would be checking the mail. I don't know why I don't like checking the mail. I suppose that if there was going to be something that I'm expecting coming on its way besides my monthly bills, I might be more motivated to make the walk across the apartment complex campus to check my mail more often. Since I'm so bad about checking the mail, a few months back I delegated the duty of checking the mail each day to my roommate since he loves checking the mail. That has worked out very well, because he always gets the mail and nothing ever really piles up in the small mail box that we have. Well, with my roommate out of town for a seven week period this Summer, which has just started, it's going to be up to me to check the mail on a semi-regular basis, just in case there is anything important that either of us need to get a hold of. In my true style, it's been a week since he left, and I only checked the mail for the first time today. I'm sure glad I ended up doing so, because I don't think that the mailman could have possibly crammed one more thing into our mailbox, although I'm sure that he would try. At first seeing all of the mail, I figured that there was going to be at least something pretty important for either my roommate or me in the huge pile that I pulled out. I was disappointed to find that nothing looked all that great. The thing that really got me though was the amount of financial junk mail that I had received in just one week's worth of mail. I guess I usually just dismiss what I get on any given day and tear it up with other advertisements, coupons, and the like, and just put it in the trash bin. Today was pretty shocking, since out of the pile of twenty-two pieces of mail, sixteen of them were for me, and of those sixteen, thirteen of them were credit card offers, loan offers, and student loan consolidation offers. Of those credit card offers, five of them were for the exact same credit card and the exact same deal. I mean seriously, do these companies have the money to throw away on sending the same person five stuffed envelopes with the same offer in the same week. The sadder part is that this exact same offer is one that I have seen so many times before and have continued to throw away. You would think that somebody somewhere might get the idea that if I was going to respond to their "Please respond within fifteen days" offer, that I would have done it by now. I guess that's just me giving them too much credit. haha...no pun intended actually. Anyways, I just don't get all this bombardment with financial junk mail. I don't think that I've ever once take a piece of it seriously. Most of the time, I don't even bother opening the envelope. I just tear it up or shred it and throw it away without giving it so much as a second thought. If I, heaven forbid, wanted or needed another credit card or a loan, I would go looking for it myself. I would surely never wait around and see what offers I was going to receive in the mail on any given day. I have even less patience for this postal mail spam than I do for email spam, because at least the email spam is only taking up room in my spam inbox. It's not going to take up room in my regular postal mailbox, and it's surely not going to be killing trees. Gosh, it just makes me so upset to know that these companies are wasting natural resources and money like they are. I'm sure that if I'm getting this many credit card offers, for example, in one week, there have to be tens or hundreds of thousands of other people across America getting these same offers. I just wonder how many people even bother looking at them. Maybe it's just that I have a problem with solicitation. No one, I repeat no one, wants to be solicited. It's just crazy. As a person who has the ability to go get a loan or another credit card, I know full well when it is that I would need one, and I know where to look. I don't really need to be bombarded with financial junk mail with my personal information on it every single day or every single week. That's just a breeding ground for identity theft, and I hope that some time someone down the road will put an end to it.
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In the midst of my crazy work marathon that I talked about yesterday, I almost forgot that I technically have a couple of other little part time jobs that are more related to my academic aspirations that I have let fall to the wayside over the past few days. I decided that since my store marathon of working was ending at noon today that I needed to catch up on my life in many ways, one of which was to head downtown to the publications company that I work for to see what I've missed this week. Luckily it's summertime and things are relatively slow with students being out of town, few classes going on, and no big textbook orders for the Fall semester happening quite yet. I was happy to find that I only had one phone message waiting for me on my answering machine at the office and that there were only two pieces of mail containing orders that had to be filled. My job is only part time, so although I'm still getting paid, I'm only getting paid an hourly rate for when I'm there. I'm pretty much my own boss, so as long as I keep up on what needs to be done at the office, I'm fine with taking these little extended times off when other important things surface that I need to attend to. I do have an assistant, but she only comes in if I call her and let her know that I had extra things for her to do. Although I would have liked to be laying down on my couch and taking a nap on my first afternoon off in almost a week, it felt really great to get down to the office and get back into the swing of things. Sometimes I tend to get so caught up in my regular job that I forget what it is that I really do during the rest of the year. Of course I'm always thinking about my field of study, but I get side tracked when there is work to do at the store. I had made a list for myself of things to get accomplished at the publishing company over the summer months that I wanted to have finished before classes started back up at the end of August, and thus far I have only had the chance to cross a few things off of that list. Today I decided that I needed to get cracking and make some progress. I ended up calling my assistant, and she came down to the office to help me make some headway on the list. Between the two of us, we were able to delve into several important projects, and by the end of the day we had really done a lot of work. One of the most important things that I needed to do was to update a list of our standing order customers. It's very important to keep this list current and the customers on it happy, because it is their business that keeps us afloat. Most of the orders that we take our pre-paid by check or money order only, but with our standing orders, since they have signed a contract with us, we are able to send out our new titles to them with a pro forma invoice and then wait for payment. It may sound a little bit risky to do business in such a manner, but believe it or not, companies all over the world do business that way. It makes me a little bit uncomfortable having the publishing group front the money for the whole process and then just sitting back and waiting for the checks to come in the mail. The groups who have standing orders with us technically have no obligation to keep the order and can cancel any time by just returning the new materials to us. That leaves us open for potential problems, since we judge the number of copies of a new title that we will print on the number of standing orders that we have. Therefore we plan on a set amount of profit on top of the printing and shipping costs, and anything that we sell on top of that is just gravy. Again, it sounds scary, but this is the way that our student run publishing group has been operating for the last forty years, so far be it from me to go and change too much of a pretty good thing.
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I really don't think that many people are all too familiar with the origins of the marathon. Sure, most people know that it's some race that crazy people subject themselves to, but I would wager that few people know any of the details beyond the event, either technically or historically. For those of you who don't know, the marathon is a twenty-six mile race that stems from a famous path run in between Marathon and Athens in Greece in the Ancient Olympiad. Somehow the idea of running for twenty-six miles for fun caught on and people have been doing in and out of the Olympic games for years and years. Although my blog post for today is entitled "My Marathon", it really has nothing to do with running a race per se. It does have to do with being a little bit crazy and subjected yourself to massive exhaustion though. What I'm talking about is the marathon that I've been running at work over the past three days. With the summer months here and students in our relatively small college town not around, business has been pretty slow at my place of employment. It seems that hours have been cut in nearly every department in the store. My hours, luckily, haven't been cut all too much, but the hours of overtime that I have been enjoying over the past month has slowly dwindled away. As a result, if an opportunity to gain some extra hours or maybe even overtime arises, I've been doing my best to jump at the chance. I've been lucky enough to pick up one extra shift both last week and this week outside of my own department, but as my luck would have it, I know longer have the luxury of just saying what nights I would like to work. I have to take what is given to me and just be happy and grateful for the extra hours, which obviously equals extra pay when the checks come around each week. I usually open in the mornings and have a six hour shift in my department. The times that I pick up other shifts outside of my department though require that I end up closing. Sometimes this means working for six hours in the morning, going home for a little bit, maybe catching a quick nap, and then getting the uniform back on to go back to the store and take a five hour closing shift. That's a big eleven hour day at the store. As it happened this week, my one crazy eleven hour day per week over the change in work weeks ended up being back to back. Not a big deal since it's definitely something that I've done before. I had planned on resting up the night before my two-day stint so that I would be ready and rested for the mini-marathon. In the midst of my starting my relaxing evening the night before however, I received a phone call at a quarter to five with a message that someone had called in sick and they were in desperate need of someone to come in and cover a closing shift. However much I didn't want to go in, I knew that I didn't want to turn down the extra money, so I got myself ready and headed up to work without thinking what I was really doing to myself. I hadn't had a day off in about four days and now I was going up to start a three-day long marathon of opening and closing eleven hour days. It's now the end of my third day of this, and I am one tired pup. I've worked more hours in the last three days that most of my coworkers are even scheduled for the entire week. Thirty-three is my magic marathon number, not just twenty-six. Three eleven hour days, and I'm still not done, since I have to work the next two days on opening shifts. Luckily I have the afternoons off on both of the next two days before my day off the following day. I've warned people at the store to not even both calling me if something comes up, because I need to catch up on my life and everything that I've been meaning to do over the last three days that I've practically lived at the store. It's scary to think that my sleep total over the past three days has been about fifteen hours, which you can all calculate is less than fifty percent of the time that I've spent at the store. The thing that makes me laugh about this now, and has made me laugh in the past, is that I really don't necessarily need the money. It's just that I like to make money, because in the long run I like to save money, or pay off my credit card, or be able to buy my brother and sister-in-law an extra nice wedding gift next month. I like to know that I worked the hardest that I could and made the most effort to make the most possible money while I can. There is no sense in wasting away my summer sitting around playing on the internet all summer. Graduate students need to make good money any way that they can, and a lot of it!
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