One of my goals during my three month work hiatus was to look into a career in financial planning. Even though I majored in aerospace engineering during college, it wasn’t until after I graduated and started working that I found out how much I liked helping people with their finances. People are usually surprised to […]
What’s the Best Day of The Week to Start a New Job?
As most of you already know, I started a new job a couple weeks ago! I had a nice three month work hiatus in-between jobs and now I’m feeling refreshed and more ready than ever to tackle a new project. One of the things I thought about a lot during the last few weeks at […]
Annual Enrollment for 2014: My Company’s HSA vs Traditional Plan
As most of you know, a health savings account or HSA is one of my favorite investment vehicles of all time. It’s the only investment that allows for triple tax savings – the money you put in isn’t taxed, the money you take out isn’t taxed and the earnings aren’t taxed – as long as you […]
What Did I Do During My 3 Months Off?
Alright it’s official, I’ve gone back to work as of last Friday(11/1/13). For those of you who are regular readers of my blog, you know that I have been working online full time for the past three months while I looked for a new job. Well I found one a couple months ago but I […]
Job Searching In Today’s Digital Age
Job searching is always a tough gig, but at least the digital age has refined the process of searching and applying for jobs and taken us away from the pencil-and-Classifieds days. Even networking can be accomplished online, allowing job seekers to get more mileage out of the time they spend looking for work. To begin […]
How Not to Negotiate a Job Offer
I’ve dropped some hints here and there, but now it’s official. I got a new job and I’ll be going back to work on November 1st. After it’s all said and done, I will have taken a 3 month hiatus from work in order to recharge, build up some of my online businesses and just […]
Life Update and Carnival of Retirement
I’m two months into my day job hiatus and it’s been going great. I’ve actually started writing for a few other sites in addition to starting another blog and made some decent money along the way. Big news though, I actually accepted a job offer last week and I’ll be going back to work on […]
What Is The Easiest Job You’ve Ever Had?
Even from a young age, I’ve been hustling to find the easiest jobs that would pay me the most. When I was a kid, my neighbor and I would steal lemons from another neighbor’s tree and sugar from his parents to set up a lemonade stand on the corner. I’ll be honest, the money wasn’t […]
What’s the Best Day of the Week to Quit Your Job?
If you haven’t heard by now, I quit my job! My fiancee and I are moving and I did not want to make the hour plus commute so I gave my notice about a month ago. My last day was last Tuesday and so far being unemployed has been pretty awesome. Eventually I’m going to […]
My Big Move!
The past month has been a busy one for me. I’ve dropped a few hints here and there but I just quit my job and I’m moving with my fiancée to Orange County so that she can pursue her medical degree. She’ll start school at the beginning of August and I’m going to take a […]
Unexplored Benefits: Does Your Work Have a Corporate Travel Match Policy?
Right after I get done complaining about my employer, they go and surprise me again. My company was taken over by an even bigger company last year(top 50 in the world) and a lot of employees were worried about benefits being cut and reduced salaries. So far, none of that has happened, it’s been great. […]
Special Tax Treatment of an Employee Stock Purchase Plan
If you do your taxes yourself and participate in an employee stock purchase plan(ESPP) you could be making a huge error in the IRS’ favor. Although the ESPP program was discontinued at my workplace this year, one of my co-worker’s recently made this mistake and he’ll have to amend his 2012 return. It all has […]
Does Life Insurance Make Sense For a Stay At Home Parent?
Even though most of us hope we never have to collect on life insurance, it makes a ton of sense for nearly all single income families. Often times, one parent will stop working after the birth of a child and if they don’t return back to work you now have a single income family. Since […]
Writing Off Moving Costs During Tax Time
The IRS provides a lot of deductions for hard working Americans like us but a lot of people are unaware of them or maybe scared of an audit. I say bring it on, as long as you have the receipts and proof to back it all up, you should take advantage of every deduction available […]
What’s Your Ideal Work Day Like?
I hate the ominous feeling of treading back into work after a long vacation. It’s almost depressing to have to go back after a long and restful holiday. Actually, it is downright depressing. I was talking to a co-worker about my post vacation blues and he told me I’m probably in the wrong line of […]
How to Start Your Own Online Business or Blog
Even though I graduated with an engineering degree four years ago, my programming skills were pretty sub par at the time. I took a few HTML/CSS, C++ and Matlab intensive classes but I always figured that I wouldn’t use stuff like that in real life. Boy was I wrong, all of the brightest guys at […]
Be Wary of Frontloading Your 401(k) Contribution and Losing Company Match
January is a great time to re-assess your retirement accounts. It’s important to review your 401k contribution and at least consider re-balancing your accounts at the beginning of every year. You’ve probably made a couple New Year’s resolutions so why not add this one to your list? 2013 will be the first official year I’m able […]
Employee Benefits: Do You Have the Option to Purchase Additional Vacation Days
A lot of people are talking about employee benefits right now. They are deciding which medical plan to choose(the answer should be HSA!), reviewing their investment choices and maybe even increasing their 401k contribution. But I’m here to talk about a different type of benefit today: vacation days. You might not think of purchasing vacation […]
Do You Have a Second Source of Income?
I know there are people struggling out there for a main source of income, but I think the job market has significantly picked up for college educated young professionals. If you’ve used any of my networking tips, you may have already landed your first job and started thinking about your next one. It’s human nature […]
Getting Away From Internet Job Searches: Networking Tips for Young Professionals
With unemployment at 8.2% as of March 2012, many Americans find themselves relying on the same unsuccessful job hunting tactics. Recent graduates are stuck looking for work in an extremely saturated job market where supply is high and demand is low. So what makes one candidate stand out from another? When I entered the workforce […]