Filed under: Bargains, College, Debt, Saving, Wealth

Middle-class parents rejoiced when Harvard University announced that it would only charge up to 10% of a family’s income (those making between $60 up to $180K) for tuition.
Not to be outdone, Yale University this day announced it would cut help middle and lower-middle class students as well, by slicing tuition by 50% for families making less than $120,000. The plan calls for increasing financial aid budget by more than $24 million as well, and holding next year’s inevitable tuition hike to 2.2%.

Tuition, books, room and board for an undergraduate this day costs about $45K a year.

Yale President Richard C. Levin said the school wants to allow students to “make the most of Yale — academically and beyond — without worrying about excessive work hours or debt.”

The vaunted Ivy League school becomes the latest in a line of elite universities, starting with Princeton in 2001, that has slashed costs and done away with student loans in lieu of grants.

Of course, there are critics who say these policies only benefit the upper-middle class. But then families making less than $60K a year don’t pay any tuition to Harvard or Yale. Good luck getting in without hours of tutoring and lots and lots of extracurricular activities, though.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Debt, Saving

American consumers are finally going on a spending diet and it’s about time. The New York Times reported this day that even “affluent” Americans cut spending in December. I don’t think most consumers cut spending happily. I believe most were forced into making that decision as they could no longer tap equity in their homes.

While it’s a bad thing for American retailers, hopefully consumers have learned their lesson and develop new spending habits that meet their actual earnings level. Consumers should use this time of soul searching and less spending to start paying themselves first and build an emergency nest egg, so they have the ability to break the habit of using credit cards to get themselves out of any financial problem.

If you’re ready to get started, write yourself a check each pay day. Even if all you can afford is $10 a pay period, put that into a savings account and don’t touch it unless a true emergency crops up. That true emergency should not be a great purchase on a pair of shoes or dress you want. Ultimately the emergency fund should total at least three months of your cash needs. In this case I’m talking about housing, health care and food costs — the necessities of life. By setting up this emergency fund you won’t need to use a credit card every time something unexpected happens. Instead of using plastic tap that emergency fund.

Lita Epstein has written more than 20 books including the “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Improving Your Credit Score.”

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Borrowing, Debt

A fascinating story by James Fallows in the current issue of Atlantic Magazine left me with compassion for the Chinese citizen. Instead of spending some of the country’s huge dollar holdings to benefit its people, the Chinese government opts to keep feeding the U.S. appetite for debt.

The background for his piece is familiar. The Chinese hold over $1 trillion in U.S. assets, making up around 70% of its foreign reserves. He points out that in just the past decade we’ve borrowed an equivalent of $4,000 per American from the Chinese to fund our spending jones.

Yet, while kids in China still attend unheated schools, the Chinese government continues to plow its earnings back into U.S. dollars, effectively financing our unbalanced budget. And with the plunging value of the dollar, this policy has cost the Chinese people hugely.

This hurts the U.S. economy in the long run, too. In an best free trade climate, we would be making and selling the Chinese some of those goods and services that would improve the lives of its residents, instead of selling them I.O.U.s.

Fallow concludes that the trade imbalance is unsustainable. The way it corrects — gradually or abruptly –could be the most important economic story of the decade, to citizens of both countries.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Photo, Google, Social Software, BlackBerry, web 2.0

Over at Berryreview.com, they’ve had a opportunity to scope out the new Picasa Web Albums Uploader for Blackberry. While the older “version” of Picasa for Blackberry was just a glorified landing page, this new application has plans to do a lot more:

• Add any picture to the correct album, add tags, or adjust its size prior to uploading
• Upload any picture to Picasa Web Albums
• If you’re using a BlackBerry smartphone with GPS capabilities you can also geotag images so that people who look at your photos can tell where they’re taken. (Of course, it will only list the location at which the pic was uploaded, so if you upload a picture of that alien aircraft you snapped at Area 51 after you get home to Kennebunkport, your friends will think your pic is a fraud). To properly geotag an image (and avoid disbelief), you should complete the uploading process from the same location the picture was taken.

No release date as of yet, but if you want to be the first to know, you can become a member of the Blackberry Owners Lounge, and they’ll let you know as soon as Picasa for Blackberry is available.

[Via Berryreview.com]

Read

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Internet, Security, Social Software

The Associated Press reports MySpace is looking to implement structural changes as well as independent monitoring in the hope of blocking sexual predators from preying upon its innocent user base. MySpace supposedly has made the agreement with 49 says, and is going to make the announcement official later this day.

Taking into account that last year Internet safety ranked as one of the top 10 children’s health concerns, this is hardly surprising. It is however a classic example of the old freedom vs. security debate, and whether what a child does on the web is the responsibility of the parents to monitor or a third party. Hopefully, the change will be a positive one, providing tools to parents instead of limiting usability to the average user of MySpace who is neither a child nor a sexual predator.

Or maybe it’s just a cover-up for MySpace to model itself a little more after Facebook and having a good excuse for it - who knows. As MySpace has implemented a number of features that are eerily similar to Facebook, not excluding the MySpace platform, it wouldn’t exactly be beyond them. But then again, MySpace might just be sincerely concerned about sexual predators on social networks.

[via AP]

Read

Share This

Share This