There are literally hundreds of credit card offers that boast “25,000 Miles with your first purchase!” (And more often than not there are even better offers) on airlines from Korean Air to KLM to American Airlines. Simply sign up, use the card (pay attention to spending requirements), and get the bonus. You can cancel your card any time after you receive the bonus and lose 2–5 points on your credit score.

So what’s the catch? Most cards require you to have great credit (750+). Still finishing college and don’t have any credit history? Don’t fret, because there are solutions for you that will be discussed later.

As far as the credit card companies are concerned, it’s worth it to them to give you a free flight worth $300–500 in exchange for a credit card, because the vast majority (> 90%) of approved consumers will be spending thousands of dollars with that credit card.

We at Unemployable Brothers don’t like doing things like everyone else, so we prefer to fall into the 10% minority.

A large number of cards simply require a purchase (and it can be any price!). As mentioned earlier, credit card companies usually have people sign up for cards and stay on, so they will of course end up making money (after all, if the credit card companies weren’t making money these promotions wouldn’t exist!)

For example, towards the end of the year 2010 American Airlines was running a special credit card promotion: 75,000 AAdvantage miles after $1500 in purchases over 6 months. The spending minimum was much higher than normal cards (Delta’s Gold card gives you 25,000 miles for your first purchase), but it was well worth it.

Of course its 2011 and this deal is gone, but these types of offers come and go, and as long as you are paying attention you can jump on board for more great deals! The current 40,000 mile offer from American Airlines is found here.

Seeing as how this was the best deal I’d ever seen on a credit card sign-up bonus (the 75,000 one), of course I applied. However, there was some fear that I wouldn’t be accepted. After all, I’m a 22 year old college student with no full time job (and therefore no steady income).

So why would the credit card companies accept me in the financial state that I was? With a spending limit of $8,000, it was a big risk for these companies. Or was it?

I’ve tried to be on top of personal financial matters, and about a year before I had applied for a low level college credit card (where anyone who applied was accepted) from Regions Bank, so that I would be able to establish some credit for myself.

I have paid close attention to my payment dates and paid everything off on time. Sometimes I spend $50 in a month and others (especially when I’m buying plane tickets!) I could spend up to $1000. The key is to always pay them off in FULL and on time. If you do that, APR rates shouldn’t bother you.

Of course if you’ve been out of school and in the working world for some years, you may have good enough credit to apply for any card and get accepted for it. If that’s the case, then great! Find out which cards you should get, as well as a whole lot of information on churning (Google it and you can find tons of help on this topic).

But what about those of you who were like me a year ago: no credit and no chance of landing a huge credit card bonus? The airline companies have heard our cries (or at least begun to understand our position), and have offered a few cards for the poor college student. Let’s take a look at a few:

• Sun Trust Delta Debit Card – This is one of the best mile earning debit cards available! If you choose the Delta SkyMiles World/Business Check Card you will gain a bonus of 5,000 Delta Sky Miles and earn 1 mile for each $1 spent. The annual fee is only $55. The earning potential is on par with many of the credit cards, and you don’t have to deal with the problem of getting approved. Use this card like you normally would, and enjoy earning miles from Delta.

• Chase Continental Debit Card – This is also similar to the Sun Trust one, but for Continental Airlines. After your first purchase you’ll get 2,500 miles, plus 1 mile for each $1 spent (for the Preferred Debit Card). The annual fee for the Preferred is $65, and for the standard its only $25 (and you ear 1 mile for every $2 with the normal one, so it’s worth it to get the preferred card).

These 2 debit cards are the most popular non-credit types, and it’s wise to apply for and get accepted for them. Once you have a card, just make sure to make the payments on time all the time, and you won’t have any problems!

So what are you waiting for? Find your favorite airline and apply for their card. Follow the instructions carefully, but it’s not as hard as you think to fly anywhere for free! If you have any positive experiences or would like to share some special promos, feel free to post your comments!

In this TED Talk Ken Robinson does an incredible job bringing to light some of the startling truths affecting today’s youth and our future.

After you watch this feel free to stroll over to these two sites for a look at our statistics versus the rest of the globe:

• National Center for Educational Statistics — PISA Results from the past eight years.
• PISA International Home Page — 2009 results available in several languages.

If you still want more, take a look at this article. I do not agree with everything written, but the first six paragraphs are spot on.

• American Education — Swimming Naked in an Changing World

Other Random Items

Be on the look out for a few things in the pipeline here at BeUnemployable. We are working hard on three eBooks: our manifesto, a guide to traveling the world, and a micro-business guide. We hope to release those by mid-year. If you have any creative thoughts, ideas, or artwork you would like to contribute to any of those efforts, please contact us.

Lastely, I will be traveling for the next week so I will do my best to have another post up by Saturday, but cannot guarantee it.

Unveiling Creativity Myths

Creativity is an interesting field that has been shrouded with an air of mystery for many decades. Some of the mystery is fading away, however, with the advent of new technologies that allow us to gather increasing amounts of information about the human psyche. A recent study raises some questions about the typical left brain vs. right brain theory.

The experiment behind the study is rather straight-forward. Six full-time professional jazz musicians had their brains scanned by fMRI while playing a scale or a memorized jazz piece exactly as written and again when they were free to improvise, riffing off the assigned music.

What they found was quite interesting. Dr. Allen Braun, one of the key researchers, summarizes it well in the news release:

“One important thing we can conclude from this study is that there is no single creative area of the brain — no focal activation of a single area” He continues to say, “You see a strong and consistent pattern of activity throughout the brain that enables creativity.”

Perhaps creativity is not just limited to really gifted, right-brained powerhouses. Maybe this indicates a more balanced approach to creativity.

Don’t get too excited just yet. There is more. It seems that creative people, rather than having a part of their brain “turned on” to creativity, actually have adapted their minds to temporarily shut down certain parts, opening the flood gates of creativity.

According to the study, when the musicians improvised, the brain’s dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions were far less active — and another brain area, the medial prefrontal cortex, was more active.

The regions that were quiet during improvisation are typically involved in consciously monitoring, evaluating, and correcting behavior the researchers say, while the active medial prefrontal cortex is what allows for self-expression. Interestingly the study also revealed that the brain’s sensory regions were more active during improvisation.

“It’s almost as if the brain ramps up its sensorimotor processing in order to be in a creative state,” researcher Charles Limb, MD, says in a news release.

What can you take away from these findings? Three things:

1. Creativity, or being in a state of creativity, seems to stem from “ramping up” our sensorimoto process. In theory we can find away to repeatedly achieve this for our own creative purposes.
2. Creativity seems to be latent, waiting to be unlocked by quieting certain parts of the brain, rather than being a delicate gift to a select, right-brained few. As with anything, some people are simply better at picking the lock and letting their inhibitions go.
3. Putting it all together, creativity may be more based upon environment than on certain giftings. For example, the often “free-spirited” lifestyles of many creatives may tend toward specific environments and habits that better unleash the mind.

Source: Limb, C. Public Library of Science One, February 2008; vol 3.

For further information on this study, watch this inspiring TED talk. It runs about 16 minutes.

The Creative Process

So what do we do with this information? Apply it. Perhaps better understood than the neural foundations of creativity is the creative process itself. Everyone uses it. It is not just limited to artists and musicians. It is the secret behind ramping up your mind and turning off the creative limiters. It is what many creative people tend to do without even knowing it. You may find that, just like me, you did not realize how commonplace the creative process is until seeing it in front of you. Saying it better than I ever could, here it is from knowledgeable blogger, Charlie Gilkey.

Enter Charlie

The Four Steps of Creativity

We’ve known for a long time that the creative process can be broken down into four distinct processes, most of which can be fostered and augmented. The processes are:

1. 1. Preparation
   2. Incubation
   3. Illumination
   4. Implementation

I’ll spend some time on each step.

Preparation

This is the first phase of what most call work. A writer, for example, prepares either by writing, reading, or revising earlier work. A musician plays scales, chords, or songs…a painter messes with paints or visits an art gallery…an entrepreneur researches problems to solve….a programmer plays with code. In each example, the creative is going through relatively mundane processes.

The reason I say most call this phase “work” is because these processes may or may not be inherently enjoyable. They’re also fairly mundane and tedious, but the creative has learned that this process is necessary to plant the seeds that lead to…

Incubation

This would be the mystical process if there were one because you often don’t know that you’re percolating an idea, or if you do know you’re working on one, you don’t know when it’s going to come out. It’s at this phase that your conscious and subconcious mind are working on the idea, making new connections, separating unnecessary ideas, and grabbing for other ideas.

This is the phase that most people mess up the most with distractions and the hustle and bustle of daily lives. Modern life, with its many beeps, buzzes, and distractions, has the strong tendency to grab the attention of both our subconscious and unconscious mind, and as result, the creative process stops and is instead replaced by more immediate concerns.

However, from this phase comes…

Illumination

This is the “Eureka” moment that many of us spend our days questing after. When it hits, the creative urge is so incredibly strong that we lose track of what else is happening. The driving impulse is to get whatever is going on in our head down into whatever medium it’s intended to go.

The most frustrating thing for me is that the “illumination” moments happen at the most inopportune times. They invariably happen when I’m in the shower, when I’m driving by myself, when I’m working out, or when I’m sitting in mind-numbing meetings that I can’t get out of. Of course, the bad part is as I said above: the impulse is to get the idea out as soon as possible, so it’s not at all uncommon for me to stop showering, driving, or working out and run to the nearest notepad – and, in meetings, I start purging immediately anyway. I’ve yet to gain enough clout to excuse myself from the meetings, but I’m working on it.

I was speaking to a friend a few weeks ago, and I told her I was frustrated because I was pregnant with ideas and didn’t have time to get them out. Keeping with the analogy, when a Eureka! moment hits, it’s much like labor – you’re done with incubating, and it’s time for…

Implementation

This phase is the one in which the idea you’ve been preparing and incubating sees the light of day. It’s when that written piece comes out, when that song flows, when that canvas reveals its painting, and so on. It’s also when a good creative starts to evaluate the idea and determine whether it’s good or not – but only after they have enough to see where it’s going.

Most of the creatives I know or work with get really frustrated with others at this phase. Other people only see the creation at the end – they don’t recognize or care much about the process that generated that idea. This is especially true with some supervisors and bosses who expect the end product on a certain schedule – the process does not work that way. Creatives know that for every good idea, there’re at least a few that don’t work out, but they can’t know ahead of time what’s going to work out and what won’t.

The creative process begins with work and ends with work. The take-away point here is that creativity is not just percolating and Eureka – it’s percolating and Eureka sandwiched between work.

To read more on Charlie’s insights on creativity, stop by his blog: http://www.productiveflourishing.com/demystifying-the-creative-process/

Back to Me — Creativity Takes Practice

Untapped Creative Potential — While it is hard to put hard numbers and facts behind it just yet, there is evidence showing that each of our minds is capable of incredible creative output. I’d like to restate my thesis to say this: We all have creativity but we do not all realize it or adopt practices to allow for it. How exactly do you unlock creativity? Here is a short list of suggestions.

1. Set up an environment that allows for focus, and relaxation of the mind. This is not your typical work office or in front of your television. Find somewhere to let your mind float free of your work life and other distractions. This blazes the trail for the following step.
2. Prepare. It is the first step in the creative process. If you never get past it, you never realize your full creative potential. Just as Charlie mentioned, preparation is mundane by nature. By researching successful people you will find that their success was not an overnight event. It took them hours and hours of patient practice before true expression shone through.
3. Make time for the process. It may take awhile to reach your eureka moment. You can’t just expect to sit down in a coffee shop for twenty minutes and be done with it. It may take several hours. Do the unnatural for today’s culture, disconnect and isolate. Unleash your mind from the millions of things it has become used to processing at once.
4. Be Ready. Great ideas really are Eureka! moments so be sure to have some sort of writing utensil and scrap paper. I prefer Moleskine notebooks and Papermate Sharpwriters.
5. Be determined. You will have lots of ideas. Don’t just stop at the first. You will find that once you open the flood gate, more and more ideas come easily. You will also find yourself bettering past ideas. Keep refining if it isn’t working yet.
6. Find a friend to help you brainstorm and weed out bad ideas. I would suggest an open-minded friend. Community refines good ideas into great ideas.

Alcohol, Entrepreneurs and Creatives

Now to explain the link between the three. The only real logical connection with alcohol is its ability to loosen inhibitions and hence enable you to better create. I have to confess, the alcohol bit was an attention getter from a creative bout the other night – I guess you could say it is a bit of an example of creativity from a guy who loves numbers and logic.  The link between the other two, and the secondary reason for writing this is simple. Talent is overrated. We all have more abilities than we know. Entrepeneurs and creatives are great. More importantly, entrepreneurs are really just creatives in business suits. They are nerds in disguise – artists with hidden paint brushes. They are more creative than anyone, including themselves, will give them credit. Both entrepreneurs and creatives can and do change the world. The point is that we all have a deeply hidden connection to both. We are all gifted with incredibly powerful minds. Sometimes we just need to figure out how to let our minds run wild. If there is anything worth remembering it is this – The world will be changed by those determined few who figure out what they are really made of – and then unleash it.

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit” –Aristotle

So how will you implement the one-mistake rule? I would love to hear about it. Please share your experiences in the comments section!

1. The airline ticket – Often viewed as the largest expense on any trip. From flying to your destination then flying around the continent, the price can sky rocket before you know it. If you’re a student then you can take advantage of some great airline tickets. STA travel is a great site for university students, and Vayama is a good site for everyone else. Look out for an article that lets you know the best time to buy your ticket.
2. Buses and trains – While a little less glamorous and slower than planes, buses and trains are a great way to get places cheap. Check out your area if a bus or train system exists, and you’d be surprised the savings and ease. A lot of times buses and trains run overnight, so even though it takes 10 hours, if you leave at midnight you don’t lose any travel time. Buses are quite popular in Latin America, and trains are the way to go in Europe (although buses exist and are used). Ask about the local bus or train system whenever you arrive at your destination (or consult Google for companies and route information.
3. Housing – Hostels and cheap hotels can add a good chunk to your expenses. But what if there were a free option that is actually better than the costly ones? Let me introduce you to Couch Surfing. CS is a worldwide organization full of people who host other travelers. And it’s completely free. Check out their site here and start staying places for free!
4. Attractions – Everyone knows that university students and young people in general don’t have a lot of money, except attractions it seems. With the ISIC card, you can get huge discounts on anything from movie theaters to museums to national icons. The cost is $22 for a year, and all you have to do is show the card to get the discounts. There is also a sizeable insurance policy that goes with it, which makes the value of this card HUGE. See “ISIC Card” below.
5. Food – You’d be surprised how many great, cheap restaurants exist out there. You just have to know where to look. Even though it takes a little courage and risk of feeling uncomfortable, simply asking locals “where is a cheap, nice restaurant to eat at?” can score you some local favorites (and not leave you in tourist traps). Of course heading to the supermarket and buying meat and cheese works too, if you’re very budgeted!

Have any additional suggestions or comments? Please share them with the rest of the members here. As always keep your eyes open for future articles discussing cheap travel and how to avoid high prices!

Resources

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• Vayama
• ISIC Card

• income that flows in, regardless of how many hours you put in
• not bound by the 9 to 5 regime
• is evergreen – it stands the test of time
• works for you 24/7/365
• once automated it requires little effort on your part

1. Real Estate – Purchasing, owning, and selling property. It sounds simple, but there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. You may be familiar with “house flipping” and appreciation strategies. We’ll tell you more here.
2. Internet Marketing – The internet is the future of business. It is also becoming one of the most easily automated business models available. There are many models within this blanket category. It is as simple as this: your site is your business. Get traffic (like foot traffic) and sell. The concept is like a normal business, but the tactics are completely different. This is our bread and butter and we are really looking forward to sharing our knowledge with you.
3. Dividends and Capital Gains – The stock and bond markets offer passive income, although it comes at a much higher risk as you have much less control than you do in the prior two methods. While it is more risky, passive income from stocks, bonds, etc. can be attained in any market if you are well educated and know what you are doing. Educated does not mean a college degree. It means taking the time to really develop your understanding of how markets work and move.
4. Automated Small Businesses – By this we mean brick and mortar – physical businesses. The difference is automation and outsourcing to take it from high maintenance to lower maintenance. This is definitely doable, but also quite difficult.