education - Surviving and Thriving

Monday miscellany: Social media shopping edition.

August 16, 2021 by Donna Freedman

Last week I did something unprecedented: social media shopping. Specifically, I succumbed to a Facebook ad. While I can’t say too much about this, on the off-chance one of the two recipients is reading, I can say I think the gifts I purchased will be a hit this Christmas.

This was new to me, but definitely not to everyone. According to a CreditCards.com survey, nearly three-fourths (72 percent) of millennials say social media affects their buying decisions. By contrast, only 45 percent of my own age group copped to this kind of impact.

Ana Staples, an analyst with Bankrate.com, says it’s pretty easy to be influenced. In fact, she recently had to put herself on a “book-buying ban” after watching too many TikTok videos about reading. Staples realized she had months’ worth of reading material already stashed.

“Not my proudest moment,” she says.

To help the rest of us avoid impulse buying – and, maybe, Internet scams – Staples offers the following tips.

Giveaway: “Homeschool Hacks” and a $25 Amazon gift card.

June 15, 2021 by Donna Freedman

This was the year for homeschooling, all right – whether parents liked it or not. My friend Linsey Knerl had her book, “Homeschool Hacks,” in the works before COVID started, however.

And I’m willing to bet that Zoom classrooms and homework evenings would have been sooooo much easier had parents across the country gotten their hands on “Homeschool Hacks: How to Give Your Kid a Great Education Without Losing Your Job (or Your Mind).” [As an Amazon affiliate, I may receive a small fee for items bought through my link.]

But don’t take my word for it. Listen instead to Lela Davidson, author of “Faking Balance: Adventures in Work and Life,” “Who Peed on My Yoga Mat?” and “Blacklisted From the PTA”:

“For anyone serious or merely curious about homeschooling, this is the perfect first read.”

Who am I to argue with someone who wrote a book called “Who Peed on My Yoga Mat?”

More to the point, I would never second-guess Knerl’s expertise: She has six kids and has homeschooled them all. Knerl learned what she knows by being a successful homeschool parent (along with her husband), which she does in addition to having a career as a freelance writer.

This is a two-part giveaway: I’ll be sending “Homeschool Hacks” to some lucky winner along with a $25 Amazon gift card. The scrip can be used to buy a few things for your own homeschool classroom. (Or for anything you like, really.)

College is optional. Education is not.

April 25, 2018 by Donna Freedman

(FinCon and the Center for Financial Services Innovation are sponsoring the #FinHealthMatters writing/podcasting contest. Here’s my entry.)

A recent Facebook post about college featured a couple of 20-somethings. One was a slacker dude lamenting, “I spent $60,000 on a worthless degree and no one will hire me.”

The other was a clean-cut young man happily announcing, “I spent $6,000 at a trade school and make $85,000 a year.”

Obviously things aren’t that simple. Some high-cost degrees immediately lead to high-paying jobs, and not every skilled tradesperson automatically rakes in the bucks.

But its core message is one I’ve been espousing for years:

There is more than one road to postsecondary education.

If you’re unsure what you want to do with your life, college might not be a good fit. And even if higher education is in your future, it might not look the way you imagined.

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?

April 7, 2019August 31, 2017 by Donna Freedman

(Happy Throwback Thursday, everyone! This article originally ran on Oct. 25, 2012. Its sentiments are as valid to me today as they were back then. The comments section is pretty lively, too.)

My daughter didn’t want to start a pissing match when she responded to a post called “There is no monopoly on being rich.” She knew it was a possibility, however, and turns out she was right.

The site’s author, Sam, responded with an oblivious chirp of a comment that stated, among other things, “I have set backs [sic] and disabilities too, but I’ve decided to always look on the bright side. Why does something optimistic on my blog insult and aggravate you? If this short and sweet post makes you angry, then I fear your life is going to be even more difficult than normal.”

And one reader growled, “Who would want to hang out with someone like you? No wonder why you are having such trouble! … Why not create a blog as big as (Sam’s) and generate online income, that way, you wouldn’t feel as financially constraint. [sic] I’m sure it takes a lot of work, but if Sam and what looks like many others can do it, why can’t you? Finger cramping?”

So Abby wrote a piece for her own site called “Flame war, party of two!” It asks readers to weigh in on her comment, which says there kind of is a monopoly on being rich.

No place like phone for holiday fraud.

December 13, 2016 by Donna Freedman

My pay-as-you-go flip phone regularly receives calls from numbers I don’t recognize. For a while I’d pick up any that began with 206 or 425; having lived in Seattle for eight years I figured it might be an old acquaintance or former classmate.

Each time, though, it was a robonotification about a great deal on a credit card, vacation or something else I didn’t need. Nowadays I don’t pick up, and guess what? Those unknown callers never leave messages!

I’m not alone in feeling pestered. Phone-spam victims received an average of 118 sales-pitchy or downright fraudulent calls this year, according to a new study from Hiya, a free caller ID/call-blocker app.

And there’s no place like your phone for holiday fraud. Seasonal scams are up by 113 percent over last year, the study notes.

Among them:

Why I hate self-promotion. (And here’s a coupon!)

June 30, 2024March 31, 2016 by Donna Freedman

I subscribe to several writing-focused newsletters whose authors sell courses, books and other products. Sometimes the newsletters include educational or thought-provoking facts, or links to free videos or webinars.

Mostly, though, they sell. Oh, do they sell.

A subject line like “three simple steps that helped John change his life” or “she halved her work hours and quadrupled her income” might lead you to think the newsletter contains valuable advice.

Sometimes it does. Generally speaking, though, the advice is “if you buy my product you can change your life, too.”

This is all smart marketing. I understand that. I just don’t know how/don’t much care to do it myself. My background in print journalism taught me to keep myself strictly out of the story. The new paradigm, however, is to promote one’s “brand,” if not one’s products.

Which brings me to last week’s giveaway.

Weird ways of saving money.

May 31, 2015May 29, 2015 by Donna Freedman

What’s the weirdest thing you ever did to save money? That’s a question that the GO Banking Rates blogger Christine Lavignia asked of me and 29 other personal finance writers. Here’s my answer:

“As a 21-year-old single mom, I was a clerk at a big-city newspaper, where an editor would ask me to run to the cafeteria for coffee for reporters, ‘and get something for myself, too.’

I would pocket the 35 cents it cost to buy an orange drink and purposely get more sugar packets than necessary; that way, I’d get an extra buck or so a week (these were 1979 dollars) plus sugar to take home for my oatmeal.

“I don’t know about ‘weird,’ but it’s certainly sad. … Just one more reminder that since I had very few resources, I’d better be creative about meeting needs for myself and my baby. My various hand-to-mouth coping strategies were pretty useful much later, when I was a mid-life college student and broke divorcee.”

Edited for clarity: I would get two or three sugars per cup of coffee. Some reporters used that much, others didn’t. At times certain writers would cut back to zero sugars for a while (maybe because they wanted to lose weight). No matter what, most weeks I brought at least a few sugar packets home.

The other answers can be seen at “The weirdest thing I did to save money.” In my opinion only a few of them are truly weird.

My favorite? “I scrounged in the Lost and Found for a free swimsuit.”

Need a job? Go west, or at least midwest.

September 30, 2014 by Donna Freedman

Got a recently graduated kid parked in his old room because jobs aren’t available? Maybe he needs to expand his horizons.

Specifically, your kid might consider living and working in North Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota or Wyoming. Those are the top five of the “Best states for young people,” according to a new study from MoneyRates.com.

The Dakotas? Iowa? Maybe they’re not as sexy as New York or L.A., but they’re hiring.

Want a $50 Staples card?

August 29, 2014August 25, 2014 by Donna Freedman

I must have been one of the nerdiest kids in Cumberland County, NJ, because I looked forward to the first day of school.

The first hint was the mid-August appearance of school supplies at Woolworth’s, Mr. Big, Diskay and other stores in the small city closest to our rural township. While the other kids shrieked and grabbed their throats in despair, I secretly loved the sight of all that notebook paper waiting to be filled with words.

Back when the Earth was still cooling, “school supplies” mostly meant a blue three-ring binder (but only if last year’s was completely kaput), yellow No. 2 pencils (no pens until at least fifth grade), wide-ruled paper and maybe, if you were lucky, a big pink eraser. We made bookcovers out of brown grocery bags. Only the teacher had crayons and Magic Markers.

If eight-year-old me had seen the box of school supplies Staples shipped last week, the sensory overload might have put me in the emergency room.

A composition book with a leaf-and-ladybug design in pale pink and orange. Refillable mechanical pencils made just for small children, i.e., with “break-resistant” lead. Two-pocket folders with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle motifs. A clipboard with an oh-so-cuuute of a beagle puppy.

Three-by-five-inch lined journals in bright florals and random, boldly colored patterns. Erasers that look like lipsticks, complete to the plastic top — and in patterns that match the journals. Pencils in patterns that match both the erasers and the journals, and a Spongebob Squarepants pencil sharpener to ready them for writing.

Want some of this for yourself? Or anything else Staples sells? Enter this week’s giveaway.