Tag Archives: money
How to Save Money For Traveling!
By focusing on how to save money for traveling, you can join these guys in Europe, or wherever you endeavor to go!
With graduation looming at the end of your upcoming senior year, you have big plans. Instead of strolling off the stage with your diploma and marching straight into a cubicle, you’re going to hit the road on a multi-month (maybe multi-year?) trek of exploration and discovery around the world. You want to do this while you are young and physically able to climb mountains, crawl through ruins, discover obscure mysterious islands and endure rough and tumble night buses, and for this, we applaud you.
Far too many people wait until retirement when their health has failed them, leaving them unable to fulfill all the dreams that they had put off for countless decades. One reality of travel that is constant, no matter how slim your budget, is that you need to have sufficient money to travel for any length of time.
Economy class fares cost the same for all of us, so in this final year of school, you need to acquire the eye of the tiger when it comes to saving cash from whatever job you have (if you don’t, start looking).
The following five tips will show you how to save money for traveling in no time, allowing you to get to the fun part of travel: planning out all your amazing adventures!
1) Stop eating out
Bear in mind that this doesn’t mean to stop eating: we all need adequate nutrition to survive. What this tip does prescribe is this: no more lunches at Chipotle, midnight pizza runs, or hungover breakfasts at your local sports bar. Look up some beginner recipes and start making food for yourself. Start off simple, then branch out to more complex meals. Soon, you will be eating better than ever, while spending considerably less dough than you were before. Talk about a win-win proposition!
2) Wave goodbye to your cable company
With abundant free entertainment on Youtube, Vimeo and Reddit, and cost-effective options on Netflix, Hulu and iTunes, why are you still shoveling your cash into your cable company’s furnace for the sake of a few measly channels? Endure the 30 minute phone call you’ve been dreading and cut the cord tomorrow, and watch as all that wasted capital begins piling up in your account instead of padding the wallet of some greedy CEO.
3) Cut back on drinking (and when you must, do it at home)
While going dry would have a dramatically positive effect on your finances, we realize that the college experience is often drenched in booze. So instead of cutting out the alcohol altogether, go out once per week maximum instead of the multiple nights per week that you are doing now. If you normally go out once per week, then take alternating weekends off from the bottle. Band together with potential travel companions and find fun, non-alcoholic things to do on those days to make adherence easier for everybody.
On weeks when you do drink, opt to stay home and avoid the expense of cover charges, marked-up alcohol prices and expensive cab fares. Instead, have your friends over to your house, and host the party there instead!
4) Seek out freelance work
With all that free time between classes (trust us, you’ll be looking back at this surplus time fondly when you enter the real world), you likely have time to find a second job, or failing that, a freelance gig on the side. Got a way with words? Become a freelance writer. Skilled in the art of editing/manipulating photos? Flog your Photoshop wizardry to the people of the internet in return for monetary compensation. $200 here, $600 there … it all adds up fast.
5) With a month left to go, sell everything that won’t fit in your backpack
With your plane tickets booked and your preliminary plans getting you excited, one last thing you can do to top off the pile of gold in your vault is to sell off all your stuff. Furniture, trinkets, gadgets, kitchen ware … anything that doesn’t fit in your backpack, or will have a practical use on the road – GONE. Sentimental items should be boxed and stored at your parent’s house or at the home of a trusted friend, but all that other stuff? Liquidate it into sweet, sweet spending cash!
Best Majors For Making Money Right Out of College!
There’s no doubt about it: college will likely provide some of the best times of your life. While the next four years of relative time freedom should be savored, don’t forget why you are in school in the first place – to get a degree that will help you get a position that will pay a generous salary. Such an accomplishment is becoming tougher in today’s economy, where jobs for certain degrees are evaporating due to outsourcing and automation.
As such, much greater care must be taken when it comes to selecting a degree and a major, as it will make the difference between playing in an optimal position, and being forced to take your shots from behind the proverbial 8 ball. Now that we have your attention, may we suggest five degree paths that grant their recipients a higher percentage chance of landing a good job in their field?
We can? Great! Let’s begin with…
1) Information Technology
From managing networks to programming in various computer languages, the demand for people to help continue the unprecedented expansion of the internet continues to grow. While things aren’t quite as crazy as they were in the gold rush days of the 1990’s, the need for creators, analysts and developers in this field is still strong.
For a web app developer, who pulls in $80,000 on a median basis, to IT managers at bigger firms, who comfortably earn six figures on average, the prospects for a good living are still here. The computer-intensive nature of much of this work also lends itself well to mobility, meaning that freelancers can earn a living doing what they do best from a beach side bar in Thailand if they choose to do so!
2) Engineering
The world will always need problem solvers, and as this is at the core of what an engineer does, the demand for these professionals will always be steady and strong. Specialties run the gamut from chemical, civil, and electrical engineering to fields as far flung as human factors engineering (aka ergonomics). Median salaries range from $75,000 to $90,000 depending on the field, but in parts of the world where labor shortages are active, these earnings can spike considerably.
3) Marketing
The core of business, forever and always, is getting people to check out your stuff, then getting in there and closing the sale. This is what the motivated marketing graduate is innately good at, and the best promoters and closers get paid very, very well for the services they provide. The median earnings of many marketing managers is perpetually close to $100,000 per year for most regions, and with performance bonuses tied in, most killers finish with considerably more than that in their bank account come Christmas.
4) Geology
At this point in history, the oil industry is in its twilight years. The day where clean energy rules the roost will likely be here within the next generation or two. Until then, a crapload of money stands ready to be made in this field, as easy oil finds don’t exist anymore, and finding more supply to prop up our oil-dependent civilization requires the ingenuity of petroleum geologists (i.e. you).
These specialists can be making $96,000 on average straight out of school, with low to mid six figures per year possible as you progress through your career. The best part is this: it doesn’t include the many performance bonuses that exist at many workplaces, so the potential to make even more depends solely on your work ethic.
What about the day when oil is over? The world will continue to need to dig gold, iron ore, and rare earth elements (used in smartphones and other electronics) out of the ground, so if you plan ahead, simply transition over when the ship begins to sink and with any luck, you’ll be in a new position with minimal disruption!
5) Pharmacology
That dude that fills prescriptions behind the counter at your local drug store? He isn’t a chump. Not even close. Despite the tendency to stereotype anybody that works in a retail environment as a low wage earner, pharmacists stand out from the pack, making a cool $80,000 per year on a median basis to ensure that your grandmother gets the right pills for her condition, and not something that will, you know … kill her!
After shouldering this enormous responsibility, having the certainty of steady hours and a plush wage make this sterile-appearing career seem positively appealing in today’s economic landscape, especially when you consider how old the boomers are getting. Excuse us while get our lab coat…
