So school is finally done and as far as I know, I did okay with my grades. I’m back home in South Florida and need to find a summer job to help pay for some projects that I am planning on launching at the end of the summer. Typically, our local newspaper classifieds have about 4 full pages of job listings and even more with the summer rolling around with all of the education centers hiring teens and young adults to help with the younger kids.

We must be in hard economic times because the jobs section had 23 postings. Sad isn’t it?

I called all of my old employers and all of the hotels and restaurants. Nothing. I would resort to the online jobs with the telemarketing call centers, however men are typically not accepted or welcomed with these jobs as they are for work at home mothers which I do understand. There is a law against discrimination and it does apply to both sexes but an online job isn’t that big of a rush.

I want water cooler talk and share the gourmet Starbucks coffee in the break lounge. It isn’t necessary but to be in that environment is something that is necessary for anyone to experience.

Today I filled out an online application with one of the largest telecommuting companies, took my test, and got an acceptance email. I have an interview that will be conducted over the phone tommorow.

Who else is having zero luck of finding an actual job?

If you need a job, LiveOps.com and West.com are hiring. Give them a look.

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Now I know a lot of people need their own car/truck/van for work and other reason, but I would like to just show the benefits of public transportation, so please keep reading (even if you never ever, not in a million years plan to not own a vehicle).

First reason it rocks: its cheap. If your a penny pincher or you have recently looked at your financial and realize you need to be a penny pincher, then public transit is for you. Plain and simple it is cheaper then owning a vehicle. Studies have shown that when people are estimating the cost of a vehicle, they only allocate 50% of what it will actually cost them to use. So if your building a budget, make sure you double your estimate for car expenses (insurance, gas, repairs, washer fluid etc.).

The argument that public transportation is inconvenient is often over stated. Once you start taking it for a while, you know the schedules and you tend to base some of your plans around that, making it more convenient  for you. However I 100% agree that often public transportation (depending on the city) can cost you significantly more time and since time is money, how much are you really saving?

My last reason for public transportation being awesome (okay, so maybe awesome is a little over zealous) is that its more environmentally friendly. Pollution from cars has an impact on everyones air, there is no need to keep this impact high when you have the option to reduce. The economies of scale that buses and trains get on pollution makes them far nicer to mother nature then a Hummer with low tie pressure.

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Filed under: Frugal, Green, Saving | 1 Comment

Today was the black Monday for Yahoo. After being unable to come to an agreement with Microsoft, their stock dropped significantly. A majority of yahoo shareholders were anticipating a buyout and it was that reason alone that the stock price was high. With that offer no longer on the table, the stock price of Yahoo dropped 14.65%.

Microsoft wanted Yahoo essentially for the page view, they want to expand their advertising side and need those page views to attract advertisers. There is not really any technology that Yahoo has in which Microsoft needs.

The coming few weeks will be very interesting for Yahoo, maybe not for their shareholders. If the stock price drops enough, it is possible that hedge funds could take Yahoo private. Other options include, an advertising deal with Google (this may go against monopoly regulations), merger with AOL or perhaps Microsoft will revisit the acquisition once the price has dropped enough.

No matter how you look at it, it is not a good time to be a Yahoo stakeholder. Jerry Yang will need to come up with something brilliant and fast.

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With exams finally over I can get back to writing. I’ll also be working 30hrs/week so I should be able to save up some investment money. I wasn’t able to save as much as I’d like to over the past summer, since I was earning less, so this will give me a chance to play catch up. My cell phone bill was a bit scary this month as somehow managed to use twice as many minuets as I have on my plan. I was not expecting it at all, but now that I look back there is no reason for me to be shocked.

Since I won’t be working full time, I will have more time to donate to this blog, yay! Although I’m considering picking up a spring course on macro economics, I’m going to ensure it doesn’t interfere with blogging. 

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As some of the tech bloggers that read here may know, a websites value is based on its Pagerank. Also known as “PR”, a pagerank shows how popular a website is and how many other websites link to it. Also, a good PR shows that Google likes your content and boosts your webpages to the top of Google’s search results.

Previously, MMandYou was pagerank “0″ with little content and only a few websites linking to the blog. As of today, Google updated their rankings and gave MMandYou a PR4! YES, Page Rank 4!

It’s is truly awesome. I didn’t even check until my friend R.J. notified me and said congratulations.

I guess we can say people enjoy MMandYou and are satisfied with the blog.

Regardless, thank you all of you for your support and continued patronage. Peter and I are glad we have some loyal readers.

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Over the past month or so I have been incredibly busy. School assignments galore and other events that have kept me busy. As a result of this, the hours I have been available to work have diminished  exponentially. Since my bank account balance is directly tied to the numbers of hours I work it too has sunk to a embarrassing low.  I should say that I treat my investments, no matter how liquid, separate from my bank balance.

Because of my low balance I have been forced into living a very frugal lifestyle. Now I’m not complaining, not in the least. But I just want to show everybody how easy it is to not spend money when you don’t have much to spend. This is one of the reasons I don’t like budgets. For example suppose I normally spend $1500/month (this number is completely made up) on everything from bills, to gas to going out with friends. Now say I hear some financial planner give a presentation, he says everybody needs to save. So immediately upon getting home I set up a budget where I only spend $1300/month.

Not bad right? Saving $200/month is pretty good and if I’m diligent enough and actually follow my budget I would have no problems. But lets suppose a different scenario, say I now I can only work half the hours so each month I’m only bringing in $750. Ouch! I now can only spend half of what I used to each month. What will I do? Well there isn’t much of a choice I will just spend half as much as I used to. The lack of income has forced me to save $750/month. In other words I was forced to save money.

So instead of working half the hours, why don’t we just put this restrcition upon ourselves. Each month take out some money and invest it automatically. This forced saving will keep your retirement accounts healthy while you don’t even have to think about it. Its forced saving.

I know I’ve brought this topic up before. But I just wanted to show that forceful saving works and a real life example should help you see that. So I suggest that everybody goes out and sets up an automatic savings program at their bank.

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Filed under: Debt, Frugal, Saving | No Comments

Just to let everyone know there will be new posts starting on the 23rd of April, so stay tuned! And thank you to everybody for being patient with us, we really appreciate it

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To everybody who has been wondering where we have gone, don’t worry! Were still here! Classes end this week so as soon as they do we will be posting new posts. So stay tuned.

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The other day when I was in my financial economics class, our teacher was very biased towards the open borders of trade in favor of NAFTA, the North America Free Trade Agreement. Simplified, NAFTA is an agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico to allow mostly unrestricted free trade between the three countries. My professor was obviously pro-NAFTA in speaking on talking points such as saving money with these cheaper products and strengthening our relations with Canada and Mexico.

Personally, I don’t have a stance for or against NAFTA but many American workers including those in unions have a hatred for this political agreement. My SUV was made in Mexico by the Ford Motor Company and its a great vehicle. Yet, I would like to see higher paying jobs inside the borders to help strengthen our countries GDP.

NAFTA isn’t the problem. Both Republicans and Democrats alike have spoken on NAFTA various times throughout this campaign cycle yet have ignored the bigger threat that President Bush adressed a few years ago in his State of the Union Address. Hint: Its the country everyone is protesting for the Olympics…yep…Big Red.

Now a days, China is the huge pain in the ass because people still buy their cheaply sold and cheaply made products in stores all over the US ande Canada, yet fail to realize we are sending massive amounts of capital overseas to China for these goods when they could be made in our country. Wait, isn’t China in a communist political system? Didn’t know it was a tradition for the greatest country on earth so send billions each year to China only for them to return the money to bail out our financial brokerages and banks. Since when did the United States need Chinese products and Chinese investment to bail out our country? What would Lincoln or FDR think of such filth?

Can we please trade just between the US, Canada, and Mexico…some of our biggest allies that are in fact democratic nations?

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I just wanted to apologize to all the readers for my gaps in writing lately. I have been hit by a truckload of school work so my priorities have shifted a bit. Don’t worry I’ll be shifting back into full throttle as soon as possible. I’ll also be sharing some special info that isn’t talked about a lot among financial blogs, so stay tuned for some really good content. Cameron and I really appreciate you staying with us.

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