Smart Personal Finance For The College Grad

By Matt & Jon:

The ladies over at Life Before Noon were kind enough to offer the chance to write a guest post for their blog, and we were happy to oblige. As a blog geared toward graduating college students we thought we'd offer up some financial advice from the perspective of young professionals now a few years removed from college life...

If you guys are anything like us, you suffered through college scrimping and saving, squeezing every last ounce out of every dollar you earned. You’ve eaten more bags of Ramen than Tokugawa Mitsukuni and the promise of ‘free food’ has conditioned a response remiscent of Pavlov's Scotch terrier. After all these years of (forced) discipline you’re going to want to live it up a little once you land that first job....

Drop by Life Before Noon to read more, and thanks for the opportunity to contribute!

Smart Personal Finance for the College Grad

Laptop Freedom

By Matt:

Yesterday was a glorious day. After four years (!!) of pestering and begging, I was finally given a laptop at work.

For as much as I am a proponent of leave-your-work-at-work, and unplugging your weekends and not becoming all consumed by the job you are only paid to do from 9-5, the laptop can actually be an incredibly freeing thing. I can't tell you how many hours I have spent transcribing notes that could have been typed. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where I haven't been able to provide that critical piece of data at the critical time. Or how many catastrophes could have been avoided were I able to log into the network from home. Those days are over.

A desktop computer keeps you anchored at work as well. I live in windowless cube-ville, and I can't begin to describe how drained I feel between the hours of 1-3PM, fighting off the post-lunch crash and suffering under fluorescent lighting. We have a couple conference rooms with windows around the office, not to mention an outdoor courtyard with picnic tables... I fully intend to spend significant time working from these locales in days ahead.

For me, this is a personal post of celebration... here we are in 2008 and I have finally entered the unwired world. But we can't leave this topic without providing a little how-to, therefore, keep your eyes open for a post from Jon in the days to come. For you desktop-bound folks that still remain, he has some excellent tips on how to acquire a laptop using reason and logic. Good stuff that you'll want to check out - to make sure you don't miss it, click here to subscribe to The Corporate Hack!

Unplug Your Weekend: Don't Check Your Email

By Jon:

Hey there Corporate Hackers,

Just a quick note to encourage you to fully take advantage of your weekend. Turn your Blackberry, Outlook or Mail.app off -- those emails can wait until Monday morning. If you've already made that a precedent, you could go so far as to set an out-of-office advising your return on Monday morning.

If your only phone is your work Blackberry, that's a bit more difficult, but you can set your Sound Profile to not notify you of emails received, only SMS messages. That way, you'll only have to ignore a little red light instead of a ringing sound every few minutes.

It's drastically important to disconnect and step away from your job -- on the weekend, you're not being paid to address those emails! You have to take time to stop and recharge your batteries and live your life, and stopping conversation with friends or driving off the road is not worth reading another "FYI" email.

Protect Your Identity

By Matt:

As a follow-up to Jon's post on shredding all your clutter, check out this great post from J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly on how to prevent identity theft. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America, and as the post points out, in 2005 3.7% of American's were victims... with a population of 303 million people, that's over 11 million victims! Yikes!

Take a minute and learn what you can do to keep your personal information safe, and be sure to shred those credit card statements!

How To Prevent Identity Theft - Deter, Detect, Defend