One of the problems with having a blog is that there is a record of promises I have made to myself. No longer is it just in my head where it will go away and I can go back to binge-television watching and eating Choco Tacos while sprawled on the couch. Damn it! Anyways, this month’s debt update met the goal from last month:

Smallest Debt (April 2012): $4,343

Smallest Debt (May 2012): $4,269

Next month will be better, I know this.

Total Debt Update:

May 2012: $32,183

% Change from April: 2.1% Decrease 

The monthly goal was to be under $32,200, which I just barely met. I also made a goal to increase my income. First, I got a raise at work which is backdated to February (the backpay will be a nice little chunk to pay towards my Discover card). I immediately increased my savings rate and retirement contribution rate which I had been waiting to do as soon as my raise was implemented. I’ve also been doing some side work since the last week of March. It’s a pretty cool chance to work with a very successful business and get paid along the way. My eBay side business is also generating around $20o-$250 monthly. So while these two side ventures aren’t earning a ton more income for me, they both have the potential to continue to grow, with the same level of effort from me, to much more. So I’ll continue to work on these side efforts, but I am also enjoying work more as I have a lot of new responsibilities and a chance to learn a lot more. So what’s the goal for June’s update? Under $31,000 in debt and to continue to be diligent at work and on my side work. Sometimes I feel exhausted because I am putting at least 60 hours a week into everything. But I know it’s not a lot in the grand scheme of things. I still have time for dinner every night, time to read and time to hang out with my friends and family. I’m not writing as much as I want to be nor exercising but that is my own doing, which brings me to part two of this post:

2012 Goals Check In

Whew! What a farce! I totally just wrote my goals back in December and then told them “See you bastards in hell!” and didn’t give them a thought since. We’re getting close to mid-2012, so I want to check in on these goals and see what needs to be adjusted to meet as many as I can.

1. Develop my relationships and spend time with the people I love.  Always!
2. Reduce waste: Energy, water, food, consumer items and paper goods. Yes on all of them except water. I’m not making a conscious effort to use less water what with the 2-3 showers a day I take and the garden hose I like to leave running all day to provide “soothing water sounds” (mostly kidding). But I hardly ever let food go to waste now, and am much more conservative in all the other categories too.
3. Get to know more people in LA and elsewhere.  Yes. Meeting lots of new people through work, blogging and looking for side work. It’s been very fun and I’ve surprised myself at how non-anti-social (that’s not a word) I can be. 
4. Pay off $20,000 in debt to bring my debt total to under $15,000. Remains to be seen. I’ll be very happy with under $20,000.
5. Wake up 1 hour before I have to get ready for work, Monday through Thursday and write, do errands or work out. Not doing this at all. Going to re-implement for at least once a week.
6. Exercise 6 days a week.  Not at all. Around 2-3/week. Now pushing back to 4.
7. Successfully complete the Yakezie challenge.  This should be doable! I need to read more blogs who are new to Yakezie and provide whatever support I can. 
8. Develop American Debt Project and my two other online properties into income-generating websites. Yes, but not a lot. The other two have been completely neglected. I plan to revive them towards the end of the summer.
9. Buy my first place.  Only if I have the down payment and the slush fund. More concerned about making the right choice instead of just doing it for the sake of doing it!
10. Contribute 10% of everything I make to savings. Totally embracing this! It’s really easy to save a portion of my side income because I treat it as found money, so I don’t mind parting with it.
11. Start an herb garden in the patio! Too busy for this right now. Might enlist my mom to help make it happen.
12. Become a better photographer.  Nothing’s happening….
13. Writing goals: Submit to Thought Catalog, brainstorm/start book ideas. I’m over Thought Catalog, but I still need to write non-blog stuff to stay sane. This is also at an impasse.
14. Make at least $5,000 in writing/freelance income.  None of it is writing income, but I think I can definitely hit the $5,000 mark.
15. Create monthly goals for each month, which I will announce on my blog.  I love doing this one! The monthly goals keep me on track and I am going to switch it up a little for June. So here’s to the June update being under $31,000!

The trend of the 1820s was to give foods terrible names: Anyone up for some Whortleberry Pie? No? OK, how about Blueberry?

Haha, Groupon. We already know that its business model has set itself up to fail, but I always enjoy a little anecdotal evidence. This weekend I finally gave in decided I needed a haircut and checked Groupon for any possible “Now!” deals, which are meant to be used the same day. A good haircut and color in my pretentious town runs at least $130, and I saw a deal for much less than that (I don’t want to give the actual price and get the merchant in trouble) a quick drive from me. Groupon puts the salon’s address, phone number and website in its deal detail page. So I call the number and ask if they have time for an appointment and they book me for an hour later. And then I casually ask (because this was definitely an experiment on my end), “Do you want me to buy the Groupon or just come in?” and they tell me to just come in. Three hours later, I walked out with a great haircut, perfect color and a blowout that’s good for a couple days. I got a great deal, and the salon, although it gave me a heavily discounted price, got to keep 100% of my payment and I tipped on the cost of the full-price service. The only loser here was Groupon, who knew nothing about the transaction, and won’t be collecting 50% of the deal as it normally would. Doomed, I tell you. Doomed!

Weekend Reading for General Enlightenment

Free Kindle eBook: The American Frugal Housewife sounds like it would have made a great blog 200 years ago. The feat of a book that was written as a practical guide on being economical in 1828 still being relevant and entertaining today is considerable. Child’s focus on self-discipline, being level-headed and putting children to work from a young age (none of this “useless play”) will resonate with anyone looking to bring restraint and practical wisdom into their lives. She has a dry tone that made me think she was from New Jersey, but it turns out that’s just how they all talked back in the day. You’ll learn about everything from what to season sausage with and the uses of herbs (and that blueberries used to be called the awful-sounding and possibly poisonous and/or acne-inducing whortleberry). It’s fun to learn about things that seem quaint and outdated until you realize it’s still perfectly applicable today. Consider the section entitled, “How to Endure Poverty”:

That a thorough, religious, useful education is the best security against misfortune, disgrace and poverty, is universally believed and acknowledged; and to this we add the firm conviction, that, when poverty comes (as it sometimes will) upon the prudent, the industrious, and the well-informed, a judicious education is all-powerful in enabling them to endure the evils it cannot always prevent. A mind full of piety and knowledge is always rich; it is a bank that never fails; it yields a perpetual dividend of happiness.

and a discussion of her modern society sounds an awful lot like our own (minus the terminology, I don’t know what a bottle imp is either):

Perhaps there never was a time when the depressing effects of stagnation in business were so universally felt, all the world over, as they are now.—The merchant sends out old dollars, and is lucky if he gets the same number of new ones in return; and he who has a share in manufactures, has bought a ‘bottle imp,’ which he will do well to hawk about the street for the lowest possible coin. The effects of this depression must of course be felt by all grades of society. Yet who that passes through Cornhill at one o’clock, and sees the bright array of wives and daughters, as various in their decorations as the insects, the birds and the shells, would believe that the community was staggering under a weight which almost paralyzes its movements? ‘Everything is so cheap,’ say the ladies, ‘that it is inexcusable not to dress well.’ But do they reflect why things are so cheap? Do they know how much wealth has been sacrificed, how many families ruined, to produce this boasted result? Do they not know enough of the machinery of society, to suppose that the stunning effect of crash after crash, may eventually be felt by those on whom they depend for support?

Luxuries are cheaper now than necessaries were a few years since; yet it is a lamentable fact, that it costs more to live now than it did formerly. When silk was nine shillings per yard, seven or eight yards sufficed for a dress; now it is four or five shillings, sixteen or twenty yards will hardly satisfy the mantuamaker.

If this extravagance were confined to the wealthiest classes, it would be productive of more good than evil. But if the rich have a new dress every fortnight, people of moderate fortune will have one every month. In this way, finery becomes the standard of respectability; and a man’s cloth is of more consequence than his character.

Offline Reading: I continued reading on money, debt and society in Harper’s magazine. The June 2012 issue isn’t online yet, but there were two excellent articles about money, “The Price of Admission” on the cost of college tuition and rising student loan debt and “In Recovery: Twelve Steps to Prosperity”. The first article was a brilliantly written dissection of college as a corporation and one with often bipolar views of itself. The second article introduced me to Underearners Anonymous, an anonymous organization similar to AA or NA. The founder had been attending Debtors Anonymous classes, when he decided that underearning was its own, separate disease/addiction. You may not be comfortable with the term disease or addiction describing something that is not a physical or physiological condition, but the organization addresses an important point: are we putting ourselves in a position to earn less than we are worth? I know that I’ve done this many, many times. Consider the “symptoms” of Underearners. Stability Boredom? I’ve been planning to write a post for some time called “How to be Consistent without Getting Bored to Death”. Giving Away Our Time? Happens all the time! In any case, I find the idea of underearning to be highly relevant. While no one operates independently of society and the economic realities of the markets, it certainly doesn’t mean you have to work for $10 an hour when you have taken the time to learn and develop skills that are worth more to an employer or business or when you have work experience that is relevant to a position in a different industry. If I am serious about earning more and paying off a ton of debt in just over a year, then heading to a meeting might be very worthwhile.

Bloggy Reading: There have been some excellent posts lately. It’s so hard to link to them all! My Twitter feed is always full of good reads on the net but here are just a few good ones:

ee musings hit a homerun with On authenticity in blogging. She is an adept writer and each post is always measured, thoughtful, sometimes funny and always realistic. Not realistic in a “life is shit and then you die” kind of way but realistic in that she sounds genuine and I have become a faithful reader. Plus I loved that she wrote her post on living in New Zealand for me and others curious about life there. Oh and I just realized she’s only 23. Seems like some of my favorite bloggers are the younguns!

Another favorite blogger friend, My Broken Coin wrote How to Make it in America. Good advice that’s not standard or recycled. But I don’t expect anything less from a regular Business Insider contributor!

Erin at Dog Ate My Wallet wrote about a friend from the other side of the tracks. Erin comes across as quiet and reserved (unlike bloggers like myself who fill their posts with exclamation marks!! And italics and bold statements!!) but her posts and her comments on my blog and others always blow me away. Her friend Russ lived a difficult life but that didn’t stop him from doing what he could do for his daughters. It reminded me not to judge other people and to live my life, which is always easier said than done.

Anyone who pays $50 for their car is awesome.

Modest Money wrote a great Mother’s Day tribute to his mom. Savvy, hard-working businesswomen always make me happy.

And lastly, it was a while back but Well Heeled Blog did a cool job putting her 5 financial stressors out there. Of course, I don’t wish her any stressors, but somehow, it seems like she got less stressed about it just putting it all out in written form and enumerating each stressor. She has a lot on her plate but darn if she isn’t staying practical and reasonable. I’m impressed.

I had more of you to add but it’s 2 am and I want to watch Mad Men. Next week: May Debt Update, a Triple Book Review and maybe an LA post. Stay posted!

Happy Halloween: If you can’t have good customer service, do this.

After you’ve started selling on eBay, you’ll discover a weird secret about sales: you now have customers. If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, retail or other direct-interaction-with-the-general-public type job, having customers is a strange new phenomenon. Here are a bunch of strangers who are suddenly asking you a lot of questions at once and a sale might depend on it. When a sale is completed, there are even more questions coming in and you have a few of your own: How do I handle this flood of requests? How do I deal with returns? How fast should I ship? Every successful eBay seller is different. But after having spoken with sellers whose volume ranges from $20,000/month to over $1 million/month, as well as handling my own much more modest sales volume, I’ve developed my own way of doing customer service on eBay. It’s unique to the platform and it’s focused on efficiency, because by its nature, an eBay business is less efficient than a normal retail sales operation. But with lower overhead and start-up costs, eBay is a great place to gain real world sales and customer service experience. My overall eBay customer service philosophy is: be as descriptive and honest as possible, always offer a refund or a way to correct any problems and work customer service tasks when they are convenient for you (you don’t have a 24-hour customer service number for a reason!).

Tips for Strong eBay Customer Service

1. Always describe items to the best of your knowledge with all flaws clearly described. It’s so much easier than dealing with returns. Jeans have a weird oil stain? Mention it and take a picture of it. Selling a Tiffany necklace with a loose clasp? You better describe it! I have found that it is better to disappoint people upfront and I am in the habit of describing items with plenty of detail, several pictures and an open, enthusiastic tone (some eBay sellers sound very unhappy in their product descriptions and make the buying process sound like a punishment. Make buying from you sound like a fun, positive experience). Sometimes I sell stuff I know nothing about and have no way of testing to see if it works, like computer components or SCUBA gear. I list those items for parts only/non-working or as is and with tons of pictures. Specialty items tend to find their buyers and get bid up to their value, even if the exact condition can’t be verified.

2. Offer a No Questions Asked refund policy. It’s easier and faster and most people won’t abuse it. Someone will probably take advantage of you at some point, but not enough to matter. Most customers are very impressed with an easy refund policy and will leave you glowing positive feedback despite not getting the product they were expecting.

3. Do Your eBay Work in Batches. Like any other online activity, eBay listing and management can become a time warp, and you can waste hours listing one item at a time, leaving one feedback at a time, or printing out shipping labels one by one. I do everything in batches: process orders twice a week (since my listings end twice a week), leave feedback for all paid transactions once a week, and account for all sales, refunds and fees once a week. Turbo Lister is a free eBay tool (but it’s only for PCs) and will save you time when you are listing multiple items.

4. Don’t Respond to Every Question. It feels counter-intuitive, but you don’t need to respond to every single question. I’m at the point where my feedback and my extremely detailed listings speak for themselves. In my case (but certainly not everyone’s) most people’s questions are irrelevant. They either ask me to ship to countries I don’t ship to, ask about a detail that is already in the listing or are requesting a product I don’t have. If I have something they request, I will list it and respond to them. But if I don’t and I have no plans to get it, I don’t respond. My eBay sales are not intended to become a big time commitment and I like it that way.

5. Ship items promptly and with tracking. As long as you ship out within one business day, your buyers will be impressed with your speedy shipping. An item could end on Thursday night, your buyer will pay on Friday, leaving you to ship on Monday and still meet the one business day window. Tracking is also vital in case buyers ever claim not to have received an item. USPS does lose mail and UPS is generally better but also more expensive. You will have to decide which carrier works best for your business.

6. Always be polite to a fault in messages and feedback. Since getting a lot more active in eBay in the past six months, I can tell you that some customers are going to be rude. It will be new and unexpected at first, but just know that no matter how detailed your listing and how easy your return policy is, you will never make everyone happy. Some people really enjoy complaining. Just offer them a refund and move along. Don’t get dragged into any fights and don’t defend your product (“What do you mean it’s broken? It was working fine when I shipped it!!”). Once you’ve offered a refund, you’ve done everything you need to do. You won’t change anyone’s mind trying to convince them that you’re right and they’re wrong. The customer’s always right, remember?

Are you interested in seeing more posts about eBay? I can talk about cutting down costs, the logistics of your operation, eBay stores and listing software. But I may look at some other small business ideas first as well as alternatives to eBay. Let me know what piques your interest…

If you’re under the age of 35 or so, chances are that someone has asked you to do something web or tech-related for them. I actually really like that. I miss the old days when my mom would ask me how to get to her Gmail while she was looking at the Yahoo! homepage (now she’s all savvy and checks her Facebook on her iPhone). I’m a pretty active eBay seller and people are always asking me to help them set up their eBay listings or figure out what to sell. eBay is awesome. Setting aside the double-dip they get on their fees (eBay charges fees per listing and per PayPal transaction, the online payment processor it also owns), the magic of eBay is that it provides efficiency to an inefficient market. Anyone can sell their used and new items and can choose whether they want to make their product available to international eBay buyers as well (thereby increasing their market with a single click). But after ten years of selling apparel, electronics and highly technical niche equipment on eBay, I have a pretty good idea of  what is worth selling and where you shouldn’t even bother. There are tons of eBay seller guides available to help you research what sells well, as well as Terapeak, but I like to round these ideas out with real sellers’ experiences.

The following are just a few of my favorite products and brands to list on eBay and are based on my personal experience only. These brands sell well even when the item is used, as long as it is a current style and in good condition.

Apparel Brands

• Tory Burch (People go crazy over anything with that big double T logo)
• Michael Kors
• Tommy Bahama (Men’s Hawaiian shirts in general sell like gold on eBay)
• Juicy Couture Kids (it’s a little less common on eBay and tends to sell very well)
• Whatever the hottest denim brand of the moment is (Seven, Citizens, J Brand, True Religion)
• Nike
• Under Armour

Electronics/Technology Brands

The important thing about electronics brands is that they seem to sell well even when it is really dated stuff (to you). So if you’re in doubt, just list it. You’ll start to get a feel for what’s popular based on the number of watchers and page views your item has.

• Apple (duh)
• ASUS
• Sony
• Kenwood
• Canon

Other Stuff that Sells Well on eBay

• Scuba/diving gear and other specialized sporting equipment
• Power tools
• Construction small items like clamps, connectors, fittings, etc.
• Anything related to CB/Shortwave/Ham Radio
• Auto parts
• Vintage/collectible/antique items in popular, low to mid-priced categories (Bakelite, vintage costume jewelry, army/navy/war surplus)

…And Stuff that Doesn’t Sell Well on eBay

• James Perse/Vince/and other non-flashy aspirational designer brands (Rule of thumb: does it have a big logo? Sell it on eBay!)
• Generic clothing (Don’t expect to make a living selling plain black t’s unless you are already a well-established seller)
• Super-specialized items that don’t have a large enough audience on eBay to sell for what they’re worth (like high-end antiques)

There are many different ways you can go with an eBay business. You might start out just cleaning out your house and garage of old stuff you never use and realize you really enjoy selling and don’t want to stop (especially when you’re just two feedback away from the next color star!). Then comes the more difficult task of actually choosing a few items to buy over and over to sell on eBay. It might take a few tries, but you will eventually discover what works for your business.

Next time on The eBay Series: Successful eBay Customer Service

Remember Post #1? I shared one of my biggest financial goals: to own and invest in real estate. It is still my second biggest priority (after getting out of debt), but I think I need to admit to myself that I am just not prepared yet. Let’s say I get approved for a mortgage, find a place that would make sense as a rental property and come up with 10-20% down. If I do that, I would have probably 45 cents left to my name following the closing of the house and zero slush funds to take care of buying appliances, maintenance, repairs or anything else. And then what? Well, shoot, we need a washer and dryer, so it’s off to Home Depot for the zero-percent interest card! And Macy’s! And Lowes! And Bed Bath and Beyond (just kidding, I hate that place)! I would be back to growing my debt in a heartbeat.

There are a lot of other things I need to consider before buying my first place:

1) I need to reduce my credit card debt: I have a horrible confession. I realized last month that while my overall debt has been going down, my credit card debt has stayed almost exactly the same from when I began tracking it last June! I have four debts, two being credit cards and taking up two-thirds of my total debt and the other two being my student loan and car which are less than $10K combined. I’ve brought my Discover card balance down somewhat, but I need to attack the remaining $4,300. It needs to be gone in less than six months. Being down to three accounts and that much less in credit card debt will make my repayment a lot more manageable and a mortgage a lot more obtainable

2) Additional, dedicated house funds: I need at least a $5,000 slush fund just for the house (separate from the down payment) for unexpected closing costs, appliances/stuff for the house and funds to cover at least two mortgage payments in case I became unemployed. Current amount: Um, $10?

3) Who’s living here: me or tenants? I asked Money Mamba the question a few weeks back: do you buy real estate investment property when you rent your own home? He made some great points as did the other readers and it doesn’t come down to any hard and fast rule, but what makes sense for you. On the one hand, the area I want to buy in is not bad at all (it’s in Orange County and all of the OC looks idyllic compared to LA, where unless you’re in Brentwood, it can look like one endless strip of dingy corner stores and broken sidewalks), and I would be 100% comfortable livng in the place I eventually plan to rent. But does it make sense to make a move from LA down to OC, relocate, set up the condo with appliances and whatnot, just to move out in 6 months to rent to a tenant? And will we have another 20% down payment ready for a second place or will we go back to renting? I haven’t decided at all because I’m so hell-bent on just getting a place, which brings me to the title of this post…

4) I’m Too Emotional to Make Rational Decisions in Real Estate: Maybe it’s our culture (I’m Iranian), but I grew up around a lot of real estate talk and near-real estate worship. I know more real estate agents in the Southern California area than seems reasonable. I’ve spent many a weekend house-hunting with friends, family, heck even acquaintances if they invite me (I love open houses). So I have always, always, always wanted to buy a home, or maybe lots of homes, or maybe an apartment building, or a mall or a parking lot, or JUST SOMETHING, damn it. Sometimes it feels like I have a “To Do” list for my life and it looks like this:

It’s true. I put the pressure on myself and I let it get to my head. I think I am way behind in everything because I don’t own any real estate yet. But it’s not a small decision. It’s not something you just jump into because it seems like the right thing to do and everyone else is doing it. More importantly, I chose to live a different, non-traditional life for a couple years and made no effort to save money or stay in one place. I loved it and will never regret it. So why do I beat myself up over something I chose? It’s irrational. It’s emotional. Its like PMS, but worse because it’s in my head every day like some grating video game background music that loops over and over and over again because you didn’t shut off the Xbox. What I am trying to say is that I can’t trust myself to make reasonable decisions that aren’t intricately tied up with my expectations of lifestyle and perhaps wanting to impress people or show them I’ve made it when it comes to real estate. I don’t like that part of my thinking and I need to get it straight on my own about why I am buying a place and why it makes sense. And I have to understand that owning real estate with a mortgage is not going to magically solve all of my financial wants/needs and keep me from worrying about money ever again. It’s more stuff to think about and new stuff to take care of. I think a good next post in this series will be getting past my more immature expectations of real estate.

The market in Southern California has started to recover, but interest rates remain low and there is still plenty of inventory in Orange County and Los Angeles (not so much in San Diego). So if I really want to buy that house and not just dream about it, I need to get serious about paying off my credit card debt, separating out savings for a house fund, and not getting rushed into something for “fear of missing out”. That’s been one of my biggest flaws in my thinking, which is worrying just a little too much about what others are doing and how I compare to them. I loved Mo Money’s post on that idea, that sideways glance (how did he get that?) and she has some great advice on getting over it and living your life or, to put it in a more annoying way, “do you”.

I still dream and obsess over real estate. But I need to develop patience. I’ll continue to read and stay current with the market. I’m just getting my head in the game so I can do this thing right.

Do you guys have any great real estate first-time experiences to share? Is there something you wish you had known before you purchased your first property? Would you buy a property to rent if you didn’t own the home you live in? Or if you already do that, does it still make sense for you?

If you Google "online learning", this goat comes up. I thought I would continue the tradition.

First things first: watch Middle Men. It isn’t always easy to pick a movie for two, and our areas of interest don’t often converge: my boyfriend likes historical/epic/adventure/Fast and Furious and I like gritty/dark/foreign language. But we have a few common themes we can always agree on. So when we saw the Netflix description of Middle Men that included “entrepreneur” “billing for online porn” “FBI” and “Russian mobsters”, we knew we had a winner for the night. The comedic timing of Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht is brilliant (“Tell that to the judge” “Judge, we’re not pedophiles!”), Laura Ramsey has the screwed-up but outwardly smooth and confident young porn star down to a t, and you’ll be rooting for Luke Wilson to make it. The backstory on this “almost true story” is just as interesting, and it’s surprising it made less than $800,000 at the box office, when much worse movies have done so much better.

On to education: I often preach talk about how important it is to educate oneself. A self-directed education is the best way to open new paths for your life. I never got passionate about learning and understanding new ideas until after I graduated college. I liked learning but only in a general, passive way. I was usually thinking more about when class would be over, who I needed to strategically run into, whether the snack bar was still serving french fries and other weighty collegiate matters. But in any case, I learned what I was taught. I did not go out and seek new things to learn, study subjects I knew nothing about and find out things about movements or industries that continue to shape our society. But after college, it was up to me to decide what I needed to learn. And I have been learning: at work, in discussions and meetings with leaders of the industry, through classes and a lot of reading.

But I am in a place where I need to take my education and professional development to the next level and I want to take advantage of the online resources that put entire courses, complete lectures and some of the greatest works of man online, making them free and available to all. I am still amazed and grateful for the vastness of the internet. I want to devote some time each day to personal development and these sites are all great places to start.

Websites for Learning Skills, Topics and Languages Online

Khan Academy is great for quick learning episodes you’d like to insert into your life. No signup required, just find a video you like and start watching. How about an introduction to the income statement? Over 3,000 free videos on topics from finance to the humanities are online.

Coursera is a new initiative from Stanford with Penn, Princeton and University of Michigan also joining to create high quality online courses that are free to everyone. It’s pretty incredible to think you can take a free Computer Science 101 course from Stanford, right now and be  watching the video less than two minutes after signing up. There are videos, assignments and exercises. I have signed up for CS 101 but also have my eye on Game Theory and Greek and Roman Mythology.

MIT Opencourseware has nearly complete resources on actual MIT undergraduate and graduate courses. You can view the syllabus, lectures, assignments and videos for courses. While it may not cover all of the course contents, you can work through the materials at your own pace and take the course on your own.

Skillshare is an online resource for finding offline classes. This one isn’t free, but the cool concept is that anyone can take any class or teach any class. You could set up a 2-hour session in a park to teach technical writing, sewing, conversational Mandarin or whatever you wanted. You can charge any amount (I’ve seen classes from $20 to $1495) and you just need to get people to sign up for your class. What could you teach? Check the site to see if Skillshare is in your city – if it’s not, they are still a small startup and are looking for ambassadors to begin initiatives in new cities!

Those are just a few that I’ve stumbled upon. I know there are hundreds more out there–what’s your favorite online resource that makes you feel smarter? I’d love to hear them!

What will I write about when I don't have any debt??

Another slip-up month. I was going to cheat and not post until next month, but I realized I have to be honest with myself (since the updates are mid-month now, I skipped March and went right to April). I have to post regularly scheduled updates. Between the big East Coast trip and taking care of a few annual expenses, I fell behind by quite a bit this month. My goals for the month were under $32,000 in debt and $500 in savings. Well, I missed the debt mark and have just over $400 in savings. The cool thing has been transferring little amounts of money to my savings. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything and I don’t want to make any withdrawals from savings again, which I haven’t done since January.

I have been working a lot, which is why I haven’t been writing as much, but I’m happy to be working. However, it’s still painfully obvious to me that I do not have enough income. I am not ungrateful for what I have, but I see a dizzying stretch of sameness if I do not push myself to the next income level. I’ve cut expenses as far as I can: I track my spending, I don’t drink or smoke and I spend most of my extra time feverishly working on something that could be big. But right now I’m just tired. I’ve been at this for a year and I still feel like I can’t get ahead. The worst part is that while my overall debt level has gone down, my credit card balances have stayed high, and the high balance card just stays in the same thousand-dollar range.

I could have said no to my friend and not been a bridesmaid in her wedding. That would have saved me around $1,000. But then I would have spent the rest of my life seeing my friends’ pictures and remembering that I wasn’t a part of that wedding. Just another snapshot in the alumni magazine of someone else’s joy. But I shared in that joy and this is one couple who I am not worried about making it. Their relationship and friendship has been a source of strength for our little circle and I love them and I wouldn’t have missed that wedding unless I’d gotten shot, and even then, I would have tried to make it if the bullet hadn’t hit any vital organs. I only have a handful of friends that would ask me to be bridesmaids in their weddings, and this was the first of those. And let’s be honest, the other three have all told me they’re either not having a wedding or are going to ask me to be present with them when they go to a Justice of the Peace (and maybe a Denny’s afterwards). So was this a once-in-a-lifetime event? Probably!

So right now, right in this moment, I’m a little tired of all the hustling and tracking and planning and managing. But if I let myself relax and just do them anyways, they don’t seem so stressful. So my goal for May is to get under $32,200 in debt and work on increasing my income. I’ll report next month on specific things I did to increase my income and how it turned out. I’m not going to set any savings goal for the month because I am comfortable with my savings rate. With my income just barely meeting my expenses, I have been committed to saving whatever I can and will continue with that until I break this threshold. That’s what I have been seeing this as: I’m hovering at a certain income level and I need to break this threshold to get to the next level where I envision that small cushion between income and expenses as the most comfortable, microsuede-upholstered chaise lounge ever. I’ve been here for nearly six months (at this income level) and I’ve been telling myself to keep going and not get discouraged. I have to believe that and believe in myself. I have the skills, the enthusiasm and the ability to make more money. It’s going to happen. But if I get down on myself, I won’t be able to figure out how. A wise rapper named Too $hort once said:

I know you tired of being broke just hanging out
You gotta lot a dreams but you can’t get out
The first thing you need to do is set yourself some goals
Think positive, everything else is old
and work hard, never stop hustlin’

I will be gettin’ it! On with the bad news:

Smallest Debt (February/March 2012): $4,169

Smallest Debt (April 2012): $4,343

Next month will be better.

Total Debt Update:

April 2012: $32,872

% Change from February/March: 1.0% Increase (Bad Girl!)

I’m not beyond reproach, but I don’t pretend to be that way.

As the second-largest public school district in the country, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has one of the worst reputations around in nearly every respect. There’s the dismal graduation rate (around 56%), poor academic performance, way-too-easy teacher tenure (most other school districts in California have a more comprehensive evaluation process) and an insane $19 billion construction bond program.  That $19 billion (spread across several bond measures) has created some impressive architecture (like the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools that cost $578 million and looks like it belongs on the Las Vegas Strip or the Visual and Performing Arts School at a comparatively cheap $228 million) but little in the way of academics.

LAUSD proudly unveils its newest hotel...I'm sorry, I meant school

In fact, I’ve never seen a school district care so little about academics as LAUSD. They proved it again this week with their announcement that the Board will seek to lower graduation requirements in the number of credits required (from 230 to 170 units) and eliminate requirements to take elective courses. Some of the news was misreported, as their Facebook page points out. The current passing grade for college-prep courses at LAUSD is a ‘D’ and the proposal would raise the passing grade to a ‘C’ in 2017, which is well overdue as I seriously doubt the value of being a high school “graduate” with a GPA between 1.0 and 1.9. But under the new proposal, students could theoretically be done with all of their graduation requirements sometime around junior year. Unless we’re questioning the entire system and shortening high school by a year (which I have nothing against), this new proposal will solve little: it makes an already easy curriculum easier for the above average students, and it coddles the below average students who would benefit from better instruction and a focus on developing critical skills, like reading comprehension, critical thinking and maybe even some basic personal finance skills. As a product of a California public school myself, I can tell you one thing: it’s already way too easy. I graduated among the top 50 in my 900-student senior class, and I’m not that smart. To quote Joe Rogan, “I know I’m stupid, but yet I’m smarter than almost everybody I meet.”

California public schools mean well, they really do, but dumbing it down and lowering requirements will just send graduates into the real world or college completely unprepared for the normal rigor and pace of things. Take the CAHSEE (California’s high school exit exam) for example. It was implemented the year after I graduated so I never had to take it, but the thing is frighteningly simple. Parents have described it as being at the 6th-7th grade level. Let’s look at its description straight from the California Department of Education website:

Students first take this test in grade ten. If they do not pass the test in grade ten, they have more chances to take the test. In grade eleven, they can take the test two times. In grade twelve, they have up to five times to take the test.

Yes, you read that right. You can take the “exit exam” beginning your sophomore year and you can take it EIGHT TIMES to get a passing grade. Come on! It’s just another requirement that was implemented by the state that meant well but ended up becoming more bureaucratic nonsense. Hey everybody, here’s a high school exit exam that is neither timed to be an exit nor much of an exam because you can retake the same damn test seven more times to pass it. This goes to the heart of my love-hate relationship with California. California wants so desperately to give everyone an equal chance and I admire that because I want that too, but it doesn’t happen like this. You either give the test or you don’t. You either have graduation requirements or you don’t. Don’t water it down.

LAUSD is claiming the new classes will be more rigorous, but only time will tell. The district is a behemoth that serves 900,000 students, has 80,000 employees and more than 1,000 schools. It’s just too big and unwieldy to manage effectively. The Board is a huge power play and its members are career politicians. I want the best opportunities for these students and not just improved statistics. Smaller districts with more focused priorities would make a greater difference for the students. $19 billion is an awful lot to spend on a school district with a less than 60% graduation rate and plans to set the bar even lower for its students.

“Cressida has smoothed everything over in the creative department with her gesture. Praised Fulvia for what is, in fact, a really good idea, and cleared the way to continue her own on-air depiction of the Mockingjay. What’s interesting is that Plutarch seems to have no need to share in the credit. All he wants is for the Airtime Assault to work. I remember that Plutarch is a Head Gamemaker, not a member of the crew. Not a piece in the Games. Therefore, his worth is not defined by a single element, but by the overall success of the production.”         -Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

Plutarch Heavensbee, strategic planner extraordinaire! I like getting big ideas from dystopian children’s novels. But seriously, this was about the deepest thing I’ve come across in the Hunger Games books. I love this idea. It can apply to everything from how you work, to how you see your role in life and all the way to how you manage your money.

Even though getting out of debt gets you caught up in the details, it’s even more challenging to move on from the details and visualize your bigger picture. For a while, you have to focus on the little stuff because that IS  a part of changing the patterns and attitudes that got you into debt in the first place. But it’s not about being petty, it’s about building good automatic habits so that you don’t have to focus solely on details. Every now and then you can ask yourself, “What would Plutarch Heavensbee do? Am I still winning the game or am I just fighting to take home scraps (or not get killed in the arena)?” 

I’d like to think I’m moving towards pulling the whole production off as a big success and not as worried about getting credit for my every move. But I know I get caught up in wanting credit for lots of things I do and feel like I’m spending way too much time on petty stuff. If I can remember I’m doing that, if I realize just how narrow my focus is, I can usually take a step back and reassess the situation.

What’s the goal of YOUR production? It definitely doesn’t need to be money-related (although money might help you get there!) 

My best friend is a teacher and one of her fellow teachers asked her to write his letter of recommendation as he moves to a new school. Here’s the disastrous result:

(Note: This was a total JOKE! She didn’t actually send this letter and her real letter was 100% normal. But she did give him a scare when she emailed him a “copy for his reference”.) Hope you guys enjoyed! Has anyone pulled your leg recently? Tell me about it!