Free credit check, useful yet sneaky!
Regardless of my obsession with the freecreditreport.com commercials, a jingle that I will sing for days, I have not actually had the guts to enter all my extremely personal data online to discover a number and report I don’t even need.
Yesterday though, encouraged by a blurb in the reputable Readers Digest, I logged on to creditreport.com (note the absence of the market friendly and tempting word “free” before the address). Readers Digest claims this is the only site approved by the federal government. Backed by RD and the feds? I’m there!
It was so nice to see all my student loans laid out neatly before me, and they even gave an estimate of what the monthly demanded bill would be. Oh, the things to look forward to upon graduation. In all seriousness, it is a great service to check out your credit report, get your score, and even see who has checked on your credit recently.
The sneaky part came when I called to cancel my free trial. Once you sign up for this service, you are actually signing up for a continued monitoring system of your credit. You can get a free 7 day trial to check your credit, but you have to cancel within that time if you don’t want to start getting billed. So along with having to remember to actually call (a task a recommend doing immediately after you check your info so you don’t forget), you have to deal with the phone operators who don’t want you to cancel the service.
Luckily, I have been employed by the whole high pressure sales, shady language, and fast talking business, so I have a heightened ear for situations that may, in a few words, screw me over. After informing the operator many times my excuse that I just didn’t have the money or interest in continuing the membership for almost 15 dollars a month, he informed me of an option for 9.95/mo because of the economy. After he told me this was an option, I simply said “okay.” Okay as in “I understand,” not okay as in “sounds awesome sign me up right now!” Warning bells went off when there was a couple seconds of silence after this exchange, so I asked how I would know if he cancelled my membership. He then told me he had just signed me up for the 9.95 option because I said okay to it.
“Oh, that was sneaky buddy!” Seriously, I think these were my exact words to the operator. I know, I use big time intimidating sentences. Trying to finally cover all my bases I told him I didn’t want any part of the service for any price and to cancel my service immediately, and not to offer any more deals. I heard angry tap-tapping to complete my request and then a curt reply that I should get a confirmation email in ten minutes.
It was great to check my credit score for the first time, get to see a total of my loans, and take advantage of the one free check I get once a year, but a little frustrating to deal with calling (you can’t cancel online) and navigating sales people customer service.
Take advantage of this service, keep your guard up, and remember to always check on a secure connection!
The Visual Web, and IRL Connect
Whoa! Talk about moving away from the static web, and even past web 2.0 concepts. Sites from Google to Cooliris are making their searches and sites more visible. To see an overview for yourself, check out CNN’s SciTechBlog.
My favorite new discovery is IRL connect, which at first glance really reminds me of Google Latitude. Upon signing in, I immediately see a satellite view of Oxford (gasp! It knows where I am!) and on the left, a slightly familiar 140 character “what are you doing” box.
OH okay, so the youtube bubbles on the web are Youtube videos from Oxford. That’s kind of cool.
I am done exploring this site. As far as I can tell it just integrates Facebook and Twitter so when you post on one of the sites or on IRL, everything gets updated. Unless I explore it more and find a useful option, I think it’s just another site I have to log on to, remember passwords for, and waste time on. I don’t need to integrate everything, my igoogle RSS works just fine. And, again, what is this obsession with globally tracking and pinpointing friends? Not. necessary.
Earth Day and FREE Reynolds Wrap!
As a college student, I love love love free stuff. Even if it’s tin foil.
Reynolds Wrap, in conjunction with Earth Day tomorrow, is handing out free rebates for their new tin foil, made with 100% recycled aluminum foil. Sweet!
Go tomorrow (Wednesday) to Recyled Reynolds to get your coupon, and discover a free way to help out the earth.
The Biggest Taboo
People always say that you should never talk about religion and politics (at dinner, with strangers, etc). I disagree. Maybe because I am in college and political talk flies around constantly, and maybe because I am a person of faith on fire for God, but I talk about religion and politics all the time.
The one subject that IS however taboo for me and I think most of the rest of the country is: Money! How much we make, how much we have, how much we spend, how much we give.
Last Sunday, Pastor Jeremy at OBF gave a sermon on our stewardship with money.
Wow. It was convicting and I discovered (the point of this blog, discoveries!) that I have a lot of rethinking to do about my money. To understand why this topic was on my mind so much that I decided to blog about it, you have to listen to the mp3 linked above.
C.S. Lewis sums up a pretty good idea of this concept in Mere Christianity:
I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusement, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our giving does not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say it is too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot because our commitment to giving excludes them.”
Go forth and prosper. And be generous.
My obsession with Gmail gets worse…
Discovery: Google labs!
I use gmail and I LOVE love love the features it has for all of my needs. I can chat with my boyfriend when he’s online too (without the regular aim chat, where other people also feel the need to bug me…) and we can share online calenders, that helps us stay on task from where ever we are and also know when the other person is out of class and can chat on the phone.
The labels are also a huge plus, mainly for the organization I run. There are at least 3 people that I have access to the groups gmail account, and the labels are priceless when it comes to organizing incoming emails and finding an email without having to sift through hundreds. Goodbye hotmail folders! It also helps me personally, as I also generate a lot of emails and the labels help draw my attention to the ones I need to pay attention to (“Oh, this one is labeled “urgent” and “Job,” maybe I should call someone…)
Google has always, at least I think, been on the cutting edge of email and advancement. Now, ta da, their “Labs” where they introduce new features and beta ideas, has added a whole bunch of awesome features. Plus, it’s getting attention from CNN!
My Favs:
Offline: For when there is no wireless and I forgot (surprise, surprise) the address of the business I am interviewing at. Get on google offline to access my inbox and look it up on my desktop!
Tasks: Not a new idea to any sort of application, but this is a great supplement to the hundreds of sticky notes that litter my desk, room, and bookbag. It’s also really easy to add tasks, the task box I have on my igoogle homepage is really lame and hard to add things to.
Forgotten Attachment Detector: YES! I jumped for joy when I saw this, not unlike Tom Cruise on Oprah that one time (I know, it’s a lame and old reference. But it’s just so good.) I wish this feature would be added to Miami’s email system, because most of the emails I send are doubled when I forget to attach something. Another way Gmail is helping me avoid looking like an absent minded idiot.
Undo Send: Wait, did I just have a happy clicker finger episode and send that half written email to a listserv of 90 people? Oh yes I did, but oh NO I didn’t! It’s the five second rule for food on the floor, but for email. If you catch it before 5 seconds have passed, no one gets hurt.
Google Calendar Gadget: Finally. It was always so annoying to click on the calender to view it and then hop back and forth, yadda yadda. Now it’s a quick glance right in gmail. Does this make me high maintenance? At least google caters to us lazy people…
Evan likes the Multiple Inboxes option, that lets all of your starred messages be in one place, and all your labels to be separated out. My eyes go crazy enough with everything I do online, I just think multiple views in gmail would be too stressful. Yes, stressful.
Also, a funny little option from the article:
With Perlow’s Mail Goggles, users can specify which hours they would like to enable the feature. If a user tries to send an e-mail during the self-selected time — say, midnight to 3 a.m. — a screen pops up forcing the user to solve a series of simple math problems before the message can be sent. Theoretically, this gives time for the intoxicated or emotional e-mailer to reconsider.
Sigh. We are indeed a drunken, dramatic, emotionally charged and sometimes irrational nation. Thanks Google!
Thank Goodness for Web 2.0
My laptop has a virus. Achoo!
It’s a doozy too, some sort of a Trojan virus. I am the simple interactive media studies/social media girl, so luckily I am dating my very own personal IT department who handles the software/hardware in the relationship. We work so well together.
Since I can’t use my laptop, Evan (that’s the bf) gave me his laptop to borrow while he tried to fix mine. Panic ensued, at first, since I am on my computer on average 5 plus hours a day. I have my easy buttons on my toolbars to reach my fav sites as fast as possible, and my lovely Firefox + cookies remembers all of my passwords for me! Plus, I am starting a huge multi-modal project for my digital rhetoric class. Bah!
SO why do I love Web 2.0? Classes and my personal actions have transitioned to Web 2.0 applications, so instead of bookmarks and work being saved solely on my laptop, it’s all online!
If you don’t use delicious for your bookmarking…you should. It’s amazing. It’s my best friend. Any site ever that I want to remember, from internship leads to interesting articles on CNN are all saved online, accessible from anywhere, and tagged for easy locating!
Other work is online too, like my blog is a major rolling semester assignment that I can update and access whenever.
All of my notes, assignments and quizzes for my English class are also blogged.
iGoogle is also, to me, the epitome of the Web 2.0 movement, as I don’t have to go out to find what I want, but all of my interests are brought to me. Even on Evan’s laptop I sign in to my igoogle, and my gmail, weather, news, to do list, and all my RSS subscriptions are fed right to me on one page.
So thank you Web 2.0 for allowing my functioning and admittedly, perhaps, overly indulged on-line life to continue while my clunky Dell HP is sick. Get well soon!
America finally gets smart, spurred on by the Obamas
Sitting with the New York Times open in front of me, I give a big round of applause to Michelle Obama for planting a vegetable garden in the white house lawn. Maybe now, Americans will finally be adding more ways to spend less and use their resources.
Now, I know there are plenty of people out there who have already been living lives of frugality and resourcefulness. Well done folks.
With that disclaimer aside, it just cracks me up every time I read another article about “new ways” to save, be healthier, and live smarter in this economy. It makes me laugh because my family has been doing this all along. I was talking about this over spring break with my Dad, and we were both kind of shaking our heads. I am not trying to take the high road or sound haughty, so if the following comes out that way, please excuse me.
My family has grown vegetables my whole life to eat. Even when we lived smack in the middle of town (granted, a town of 5,000) we had a garden with carrots, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, and other random things we could coax out of the ground. We got corn from my grandpa to freeze, and we picked peaches and strawberries to freeze and make into jam. These are usually huge family endeavors, giving us an opportunity to spend time together and use our resources to get healthy food and not spend tons of money buying jelly and canned fruits and veggies from the store. So a big thank you from the Obamas for the wake up call and push to the nation to grow their own vegetables as a bonding activity, leading to healthy eating and saved money.
This leads to articles I have read to save money by cutting down on eating out. It is so strange to me that people eat out every day, and it’s no wonder people are in financial trouble if as many people do this as it seems. Eating out was a special treat for my family. Ordering pizza was a rarity, and grabbing fastfood only happened if we happened to be out on errands all day. Saved money.
We recycle. Saves world, and saves money because it’s less trash. Why does less trash matter? We don’t pay for trash pickup, and instead keep all out bags in the shed outback. We take it to the dump when we get enough and pay to put it there, mucho cheaper than a regular pick up. Taking the recycling out and putting all food scraps in a compost pile (I know everyone can’t do this, but if you have a yard, you should!) all saves money.
We don’t even have cable, which includes no fast internet. Now, there is one place I wish my family wasn’t so stingy. But everything else, mostly in the basics of not eating out every day or even once a week, is such a no-brainer I hope that once this “crisis” swings up to the positive again, families will continue to embrace money saving practices. Can you imagine how much extra money families could have if people were just living smartly all along??
College. Jobs. Future. Ugh!!!
Okay, Mr. Job Market. You have one year and 3 months to get your act together and make room for me. You are apparently being a bit persnickety right now, according to an article on CNN.
The unemployment rate among college graduates at a record high. In February, almost 1.9 million college graduates were unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Mom and Dad, make room. You may be able to put off that empty nest thing after all. Or maybe Europe should make room, isn’t that a typical college endeavor? Backpacking across Europe? Yeah, I like that too.
It’s not like I am giving up on a possibility of a career or anything. I am only a junior, so I have some time to build more experience and network. I already have two solid summer internships under my belt. I work part time between classes as a manager at a cafe (please God, let your plans for me NOT include making grande sugar free vanilla lattes for the rest of my life). I hear volunteer work is a selling point, and I am set on that. I have decent grades, etc. But if the girl in the article has a 3.9, started looking in October, sent out over 100 resumes, and still has been unsuccessful? Oh boy.
I do feel very lucky to be at my school, with the chance to get the education I am being equipped with. I know that will help propel me further than some others who aren’t as blessed as I am in the job market, so I guess I just need to focus on the postives, press on, and realize that all the internships I am being denied from for this summer are probably going towards people who have already graduated and are more desperate than I. Though, I do need to keep trucking along to find a job for break. Someone’s got to shell out the money for this brick-filled “public ivy” in the middle of nowhere.
A counselor at a college in Minnesota offers more encouragement:
“I think it’s a good time to be in school right now because you’re investing in your own skills,” Parliament says. “And right now when there’s not as many job prospects it’s a good time for you to make those kinds of investments. So I would say it’s a good time to be in school no matter what.”
Yes. Skill honing. You hear that job market? I am skilled! You need me! Hire me?
