Personal Finance and Investing

A college degree is really important since it decides what your future career holds for you. To keep it straight and simple, a college degree is an investment with assured long-term benefits.

But is earning a degree really that important? Well, there are statistics that will make the picture clearer for you. Consider this: professionals with a Bachelor’s degree earn 60% more than high school graduates, while those with an Associate degree earn 20% more!

This simply points out that a person with a college degree can earn about 72% more, over a forty-year working life than a high school graduate. Given below are a few tips that can help you decide on the right degree and career path.

o Capitalize on your interests: That’s right – if you don’t want a boring old career, avoid following the herd. See what you’re interested in; it could be writing, music or acting. Maybe you are the science geek in your class. The point is, follow your interests.

You may be interested in the Arts; but when you see that it doesn’t offers you a good chance to make a living, you quickly jump on to a degree related to science or some kind of research. This often results in sacrificing your interests for a field that could be boring. If you pursue a degree that interests you, the chances of you becoming bored or disillusioned decrease.

o Make your goals clear: Set your goals before you decide on a degree. That simply means that you need to know what you are getting yourself into. You’ve got to know how exactly a specific college degree can help you get closer to your dream career.

If you are still not sure about your goals, it is high time that you get serious about it – because if your goals are not clear, you may end up getting a degree that will result in wasting both, your time as well as your money. It is always better to spend some time thinking and conducting a self-assessment to set your career path.

o Studying options: There are many online degree programs that you can choose from that are conducted by prestigious colleges and universities. In this way, you can get good work experience that is related to your career and a college degree at the same time.

The world is extremely competitive and you have to rise to the occasion by making your goals clear and designing them specifically in conjunction with your career. A degree is an ideal way to achieve this objective and pave the way to a successful career.

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There’s a lot of things that go on to college in your freshman year that are new and exciting area not everyone of them is going to help you achieve your academic goals. This is not to say that classwork is the only aspect that’s important college because social skills and broadening your for rhizomes and new experiences are crucial to your development as an adult. But if success in the business world after college graduation is important to you and you want to be an independent adult who pays for their own way through life you clearly cannot neglect academics.

Here are some things that will help you keep things in balance:

people from your high school who did not go to college are working 50 to 60 hours a week to feed their families and pay their rent. They’re struggling to get by. So when you feel tired and sorry for yourself with your 15 hour credit load, remember the effort they’re putting in and see if you can find a little bit of energy to take care your business.

Don’t hang around with a bunch of people that do nothing but party all night unless you plan to make a career out of saying “would you like fries with that?”

prep plan your daily class schedule so that you have breaks in between classes that allow you to study while you’re out and out of your dorm room. That will leave your evenings free to take care of special projects or relax.

If you’re not a morning person then don’t schedule your most difficult classes for that time. It’s a good idea though to learn how to function at a time when the rest of the world is functioning. College is as good a place as any to learn that.

Make a master calendar for the whole semester the records the dates of every assignment and test so that you can budget your time.

Keep a study journal that has a page devoted to nothing but the excuses that you used to blow off your studies say you can see how pathetic your excuses really are.

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Have you noticed a terrifying cyclical trend in the job market?

Before your high school student heads off to college and even before he/she starts looking for a major, they must research a career path.

Recently published online at informationweek.com, an article entitled “IT MANAGERS TO HIRE FEWER COLLEGE GRADS IN 2008″ describes how there are fewer jobs available in the Information Technology field than previous years.

What they (colleges) are promoting as the hot career, after a period of time, there will be a glut of new graduates in the market. It’s the old “supply and demand” cycle rearing its ugly head.

Understand that colleges are in the business to: A. Educate and B. Make money. Hopefully their priority emphasizes educating students. However, if they do not make money colleges would not be in business very long.

TV commercials are promoting the “hot new jobs”. One of the hot tickets right now is computer animation/computer gaming.

It won’t be long before there are more graduates that hold this degree than there are jobs. We are in the stages now where we are seeing this with IT support. The ending result is the number of new jobs offered will be fewer, with lower salaries.

There are resources out there that have demographic information pertaining to job growth in a particular field. Spending 4 to 6 years earning a degree in a specific medium only to find out that there are no jobs available and/or the employer wants experience is disheartening.

Research your career before you start college. You (the student) must know if there is going to be a job market in your discipline, so that you don’t waste your time studying for a job that wont be there. I’m going to go out on the limb and say that pharmacy majors may find themselves finding fewer and less paying jobs in the not to distant future, due to market trends along with supply and demand.

Students starting college now will be 4+ years behind in the employment market before they are out of school and available for the job market with a degree. Knowing that there will be employment after graduation is crucial. One way to have the odds be in your favor is for the prospective student to get an intern position. This will give them real world experience and positions them for success in their future years.

The unfortunate thing is that High School guidance counselors are over worked, under staffed and under paid. With the average ratio in Arizona of 700 students to 1 counselor, it is no wonder that this is near epidemic proportions.

The growing trend for not only the affluent, but for middle class families is to seek advice and direction outside of the public and private school systems.

Researching your career options now will give you choices and stability later.

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Most people don’t look forward to getting old. Most people, unless they are lucky, won’t retire until they get old, making the word ‘retirement’ sound less than desirable. Still, we all want to retire someday, and in order to live comfortably, or even just survive, we have to plan.

Is it ever too early to start planning for retirement? I will say that planning fore retirement at 12 is a little overkill, but it’s not much later then that when you should get started. As soon as you start your first full time job you should get started planning. For most, this will be out of college and others it will be out of high school. For those who are planning to head right into the work force and skip college, I strongly urge you to reconsider. You should get some sort of training whether it is trade school or an Associate’s Degree. This will greatly increase your potential salary.

If you have already been working for a while, you should begin planning for retirement right away. Talk with your employer about the retirement plans they have available. It is possible that they have a 401K match plan which means they will match all or a percentage of what you put in. If you don’t take advantage of this, you are leaving money on the table.

If you have been working for a while and are a bit older, don’t worry that you will never be able to retire because you have not been saving. You will just have to start saving a bit more aggressively now. Talk with your employer about starting a plan and invest as much as you can.

The best time to start planning and investing for retirement is right now. The longer you wait, the less you will be able to save. This is largely due to compounding. If you invest $20 a month now and through the next 30 years for a total of $7,200, you will make a lot more than if you invest $7,200 all at once and wait just 10 years. How much more, you ask? At $20 a month for 30 years at an 8% average stock market return, you will end up with $30,005.90, and $7,200 invested for 10 years at an 8% average stock market return will have $15,544.30. That’s almost double with the same investment but more time and compounding. What are you waiting for?

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Do you want to start a career in the radio industry? If you do, then you would be a bit surprised by the number of alternatives that you’ll have when searching for Louisville Radio Schools. Should you enroll in online classes, or go to a campus somewhere? Online classes are cheaper, but it’s difficult to take radio-oriented programs online and there is less possibility of internships.

Then you also have to decide on the type of degree that you want to enroll in. Are you more passionate about being in front or the center of a radio program? Then it is a good idea to get media communications degrees. These degrees are helpful if your desire is to become a sportscaster who knows the game inside and out and can make local matches sound really fascinating over the airwaves. Or maybe you prefer being the newscaster, reporting on local news with a journalistic flair – or a weathercaster with a fun and more focused responsibility. Or maybe you like to be a DJ and have an afternoon music hour or a cool morning show. Regardless of your interest, you would typically go for a media communications program to realize your dream. Obviously, if you want to be involved in the technical aspects of radio, from sound boards to broadcasting arrays, then a technical degree of some sort is a necessity, and your alternatives change again. Other concentrations are also required if you like to be in the business side of running a radio station: advertising, marketing and even production.

So let us take a closer look at Louisville radio schools and what options you have. You need to know beforehand that college classes aren’t the first route to take. Why is this the situation? Firstly, it is a bit difficult to get a degree that will fully concentrate on your dream radio job – what with loads of specialties available. The other reason has to do with time – you may not be able to meet the required time as you already have existing commitments. The University of Louisville, for instance, offers both technical and media communications classes which have reasonable, general training on several radio jobs. Asbury College, a little outside of the city, has a media communications degree with a performance emphasis that’s appropriate for those considering a career in front of the microphone, along with a production degree for those who like to be more involved in the business and technical aspects of the radio business. But if options like these do not work out for you, you can always check out radio stations in the area for internships and other more specific training programs.

These programs are really ideal since they offer flexible opportunities and put you on a radio-oriented environment; among the organizations that have these programs are the Radio Connection. There are also local radio stations in Louisville that are more than willing to assist students who want to make it big in the radio business. Examples are Lite 1069 as well as WFPL News. These and similar options may be more advantageous than the conventional Louisville radio schools route.

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