PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Sarah Feinberg was on the job as the nation's chief railroad regulator for just three weeks when a packed commuter train slammed into an SUV stopped on tracks north of New York City, killing six people.The February 2015 crash highlighted a problem that has plagued the railroad industry since the invention of the automobile: the potential for danger wherever tracks and roads meet.Feinberg, a former Obama White House adviser whose lack of railroad [...]
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الأربعاء، 18 يناير 2017
We Salute This Decision: 16 Million Veterans Will Get Access to Big Savings
If anyone deserves some extra savings, it’s military veterans. (We thank you!)
So here’s some good news: Starting this Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2017, veterans with an honorable discharge will be able to access military exchanges online, giving them big savings using their computers or smartphones.
The Department of Defense announced upcoming changes to its online military exchange access policy last week.
Currently, access to military exchanges is limited to active-duty military and the several million veterans who are retired from the military, Medal of Honor recipients and or honorably discharged with a 100% disability rating due to service-connected injuries, according to Military Advantage.
Now, about 16 million honorably discharged veterans will be able to access the exchanges online.
What You Need to Know About Shopping at Military Exchanges
Since 1895, military exchanges have been available to service members to make their lives more comfortable both at home and overseas.
On average, exchanges provide about a 20% discount compared to commercial department stores when you factor in both the lower prices and the military’s exemption from state and local taxes, according to Military Advantage.
The decision to include honorably discharged veterans is part of an effort of military exchanges to increase revenues that have suffered due to bases closing and active-duty numbers dwindling. The new inclusion is also meant to reward those who were honorably discharged for their service.
Veterans’ spouses and other dependents will not receive access to the online exchanges.
Your Turn: Will you share this article with any military vets you know? Let us know in the comments!
Kelly Smith is an junior writer and engagement specialist at The Penny Hoarder and a senior at The University of Tampa. Her best friend is in the Air Force.
The post We Salute This Decision: 16 Million Veterans Will Get Access to Big Savings appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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4 Companies Now Hiring Freelance Writers to Cover Sports, Travel and Weed
Whether you’re planning to start a freelance side hustle or take your writing career to the next level in 2017, we’ve got some fun job opportunities for you.
Here are four companies hiring new and experienced writers around the country.
1. Research and Write About Cannabis Laws
Are you obsessed with rapidly-changing cannabis laws? This company will pay you to write about them.
A medical marijuana industry publisher is looking for a writer interested in cannabis laws and to cover emerging legislation. Previous knowledge is a plus, but not required — you should just be passionate about the subject!
Your job would be researching and writing about cannabis laws and regulations around the country, important rulings, upcoming votes, information on starting a cannabis business, licensing updates and more.
The work is very part time — four to six hours a week — and pays $12 an hour.
You should be a great writer and have some experience with blog writing and research.
To apply: Fill out the online application here.
2. Write Articles to Help Women Reach Their Professional Dreams
If you’re passionate about millennial women’s lifestyle and helping young women succeed, 1,000 Dreams Fund is looking for you.
This organization is working to fund the dreams of 1,000 high school- and college-age girls and women across the U.S. It’s seeking several freelance editors/bloggers to contribute to its blog.
Your job would include pitching, writing and editing your own short articles, plus editing content from a network of college bloggers.
Compensation is $50 per completed post.
Applicants should have at least two years’ experience writing and editing for the web, and some experience managing freelance writers. You should also understand how to make articles clickable and SEO-friendly.
To apply: Fill out your online application here.
3. Write About Travel for TripExpert
This is a great opportunity for new writers interested in travel to get some clips — and get paid for it.
Travel review site TripExpert is adding tons of new content to its site, and it’s hiring part-time writers to help for the next two to six months.
As a content editor, your job will be to read reviews in travel guides, magazines and newspapers and condense them into short summaries.
It’s not a glamorous gig for a creative writer, but it’s a good way to hone your chops! You should be a good writer, but you don’t have to have professional experience.
Plus, it pays $12 an hour for at least 25 hours a week.
TripExpert expects the bulk of the work to happen in the next six weeks (starting immediately), but the project will likely continue for the next two to six months.
To apply: Submit your writing sample and fill out the online application here.
4. Write About Sports and Sports Video Games
Calling all couch potatoes! If you’re into sports and sports video games, SGO (Sports Gamers Online) could have a job for you.
The sports news and review site is looking for writers to create lists, features, opinion pieces and more for its website.
You’ll be responsible for keeping an eye out for relevant breaking news and turning around timely articles, plus writing more in-depth reviews and features. You’ll have access to games to review and get into industry events and conventions like PAX, GDC and E3 — partially covered by the company!
An SGO rep told us pay is 2 cents per word and can go up to 3 to 4 cents per word depending on performance.
You should have previous experience writing and be comfortable with WordPress. Writing on your own blog counts!
To apply: Contact the email listed here.
Want to be the first to know about other fun and interesting jobs like this? Like The Penny Hoarder Jobs on Facebook to stay in the loop!
Your Turn: Have you found any interesting freelance writing jobs lately?
Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more, attempting humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).
The post 4 Companies Now Hiring Freelance Writers to Cover Sports, Travel and Weed appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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Love Coconut Water? You’ll Love This $1 Million Class-Action Settlement
Coconut water has exploded onto the beverage market in the past few years, gaining popularity among athletes, health foodies and people hoping to get over a wicked hangover.
Whether you’re trying to rehydrate or just want to sip something sweet, you might see some crazy claims on coconut water packaging.
One company is now paying for its bold claims.
Harmless Harvest will pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit about the wording on its coconut water labels.
Why Harmless Harvest Will Pay Customers $1 Million
The bottles, which Harmless Harvest labeled as organic and raw, allegedly contained nonorganic ingredients “reportedly purchased from street vendors and unknown supply sources,” according to our friends at Top Class Actions.
The suit specifies four of the brand’s varieties: Harmless Harvest 100% Raw Coconut Water, along with its Dark Cacao, Cinnamon & Clove and Fair Trade Coffee flavors.
If you purchased Harmless Harvest coconut water in the United States between Sept. 30, 2011 and December 2016, you may be eligible for a portion of this $1 million settlement. Details for filing a claim have not been released.
Harmless Harvest released a statement to Top Class Actions denying wrongdoing, but saying it agreed to the settlement to avoid a longer legal battle.
Coconut Water’s Ongoing Regulation Woes
Harmless Harvest dropped the “100% Raw” part of its label in August 2015 and changed the name to “Harmless Harvest Harmless Coconut Water.”
It once used a high-pressure processing method rather than pasteurization to prevent bacteria from growing in its bottles, according to Ray Latin at BevNet. But the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture expressed concerns about whether this manufacturing method is effective enough to make it safe for human consumption.
Harmless Harvest temporarily suspended production in late 2015, but introduced a new filtration process in April 2016 to satisfy FDA concerns.
Opinions also vary as to how beneficial coconut water really is compared to typical hydration methods of water plus a healthy diet with fruits and vegetables.
Your Turn: Do you drink coconut water? Will you file a claim in this settlement?
Lisa Rowan is a writer and producer at the Penny Hoarder who usually drinks coconut water after a night on the town.
The post Love Coconut Water? You’ll Love This $1 Million Class-Action Settlement appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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5 Bad Habits That are Costing You — and Some Money-Saving Alternatives
I’ll tell you one of my money-wasting habits if you tell me yours.
OK, I’ll go first.
I binge watch bad TV.
I’ve never seen a “reality” cooking show I didn’t like (oh, Gordon Ramsey, you slay me). To be honest, I can happily rack up hours of TV time on the weekends if I’m not careful.
I feed my TV habit mostly through Netflix and Hulu, but sometimes there’s a fun show or two on Amazon Prime. I wasn’t feeling anything (but excessive hunger) by binging these shows…until Lending Tree’s new bad habit calculator showed me the error of my ways.
At $9.99 a month for Netflix and $7.99 a month for Hulu, it turns out I’m dropping $215.76 per year to live vicariously through goofy celebrity chefs.
I also watch shows on Amazon Instant Video, but that’s included with my Amazon Prime membership, so I don’t pay any extra.
On the other hand, if I end up keeping Sling TV after my trial period is over, that extra $20 a month bumps my yearly TV subscription cost to $455.76!
That’s almost my family’s entire food budget for the month — and I sometimes splurge on expensive ingredients.
The bad habits calculator righteously shamed me into finding ways to cut back on my TV subscriptions. Fortunately, I have options.
I can watch Groupon for great deals on Hulu or ditch Sling and add free HBO to my Amazon Instant Video account instead.
I don’t have time to work for Netflix as a tagger, but at least I can download some of my favorite Netflix shows to my iPad (hello, “Chef’s Table”!). Then I can just let them play in the background while I work on my side gig projects.
Bad Habits, Better Alternatives
If Lending Tree’s bad habits calculator tweaks your guilt-o-meter, check out some of our money-saving alternatives.
Smoking
Look, there are no good alternatives to smoking except to quit altogether.
It’s hard, though. Believe me, I know.
On the bright side, there are at least 20 different things you can do with the money you save when you ditch the cigs.
Drinking expensive coffee
If you don’t want to give up getting your java conveniently handed to you by a professional barista, at least consider switching it up once a while at 7-Eleven, McDonalds, or even the local gas station.
If you’re really bold, follow my fellow writer Dana’s example and give up coffee entirely. She saves $500 a year!
Eating at restaurants
Even meals at inexpensive restaurants add up quickly once you factor in tax, tip and parking.
Stay home and try one of these easy, inexpensive recipes that taste like fine dining. Let me know if you need more inspiration. I can recommend a cooking show or two.
If you must eat out, at least try some of these ways to save money at restaurants.
Playing Powerball
Like smoking, this falls into the just don’t category.
When you start to feel the pull to plunk down $10 or $20 bucks on Powerball tickets, take a minute to read about these 21 lottery winners who had it all — and lost it all. Here are a whole bunch of better ways to spend that cash.
Grabbing money from out-of-network ATMs
Expensive ATM fees are the scourge of Penny Hoarders everywhere. Avoid them by keeping your accounts at banks that waive their fees.
Your turn: What’s a bad habit that’s costing you money? I’ll take your confession now.
Lisa McGreevy is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. Her other bad habit is spending too much time on Twitter, but at least that’s free. Go say hi to her @lisah.
The post 5 Bad Habits That are Costing You — and Some Money-Saving Alternatives appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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Over half of Moneywise users happy for garden villages to be built near them
More than half (52%) of Moneywise.co.uk users agree with more garden villages being built - even if it’s near where they live.
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This Freelancing Company Now Offers Benefits (Including Health Plans)
Every time a gig economy business offers benefits to workers, a freelancer gets their wings.
Care.com, the nationwide company that connects family members to independent home care providers, recently announced plans to offer new benefits to its cadre of freelancers.
Care.com’s pool of over 9 million professional caregivers now have access to:
- Health and dental plans
- Retirement benefits
- Unemployment insurance
- Worker’s compensation
- Real-time payments
- A new Care Benefit Bucks program to cover doctor copays, prescription costs, and more
Care.com says disability insurance is coming soon. The company is also talking with corporations about participating in a contribution program to bolster its new Care Benefit Bucks program.
How Care.com Works
Families post a notification on Care.com’s website seeking a caregiver to provide one or more home-based services, including:
- Child care
- Tutoring
- Adult and senior care
- Errands and odd jobs
- Pet care
- Special needs provider
- Home care
Job seekers create a profile outlining their skills and qualifications, then search for jobs in their area of interest. Families review applicants, check references, interview candidates, and hire caregivers right through the platform.
How Care.com’s Benefit Bucks Program Works
Care.com began offering insurance plans to caregivers early last year, but the Care Benefit Bucks program is fairly new. While the benefit offerings are generous, the company isn’t footing the bill. It’s simply providing a funds collection and distribution platform.
When families disburse payment to caregivers through Care.com’s platform, the company tacks an additional 12% fee to the wages. Of that, 2% goes directly into a benefits fund for caregivers and Care.com pockets the additonal 10% (hey, they have to make money, too).
Once a worker earns $15 in Benefit Bucks, they get a reloadable prepaid card to use for all kinds of stuff, from insurance premiums to gas for their car. Caregivers can spend up to $500 per year in Benefit Bucks.
Unused benefits stay with workers, even if they leave one family to work for another within the Care.com system.
“Caregivers constitute one of the largest segments of the gig economy and the fastest growing large job category in our country,” said Care.com founder and CEO Sheila Lirio Marcelo. “Caregivers frequently work for multiple families and almost always work without access to professional benefits.
“Pooled, portable, peer-to-peer benefits represent a new model for household employment and an innovative step forward in professionalizing caregivers.”
No matter what industry you’re in, freelancing in today’s gig economy is hard work. If you’re thinking of taking a crack at it to make some extra cash, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Caregiving is a tough and thankless job. Hats off to Care.com for making the gig economy a little more rewarding.
Your turn: Have you ever gotten freelance benefits working in the gig economy? How’d you get so lucky?
Lisa McGreevy is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She loves to chat with other Penny Hoarders so look her up on Twitter @lisah.
The post This Freelancing Company Now Offers Benefits (Including Health Plans) appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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How to Get Your Boss to Invest More Money in Content Marketing This Year
Content marketing has come a long way over the last 10 years.
More and more companies have come to realize the tremendous return and savings from investing in inbound marketing like blogs, white papers, and video.
Still, there’s a surprising number of businesses that either don’t leverage content marketing at all or have fairly slim content budgets.
While some 88% of marketers are using content marketing to reach their audiences, only about 30% see their campaigns as effective.
That can create a problem when it’s time to try new things, launch new campaigns, and venture into new content formats.
Getting management to invest in more content is a difficult, especially if the company struggles to create engaging content and produce effective campaigns.
If the value of or return on the content isn’t readily apparent, you’ve got a challenge to win over your leadership when it comes to content marketing.
To get them to buy in, you need to be well prepared with a smart plan that makes them see additional content marketing as a worthwhile investment they can’t live without.
Here’s how to do it.
Build a case for content marketing
If content marketing is already a part of your strategy, you’re halfway there. I run into countless marketers who try to sell leadership on content after visiting a workshop, only to be shot down.
Thankfully, you don’t have to get that initial commitment as your boss is already behind content marketing to some degree. I hope at this point you’ve got some data to prove that content marketing is working in your specific business and industry to back up your claim that a greater investment is needed.
Regardless of the size of the investment or how lofty your goals are, you need to put together a solid pitch and presentation. It shouldn’t be a casual or passive ask.
Keep these points in mind when you’re preparing your pitch:
Education is still important
Just because your boss understands content marketing doesn’t mean they understand it to the extent you do. They may see the value in blogging but may feel video is costly with minimal return because they don’t understand it.
Basic education on the formats and channels you propose to expand into should be a large part of your pitch.
You can’t expect leadership to invest more in something they don’t understand.
Focus on the value
Make sure you’re expressing the value of the investment, just like you do when highlighting the value proposition when selling something to your consumer audience. This way you’re not stuck on the technical aspects of content marketing expansion.
Focus on things like education, relationship building, teaching, and entertainment—things that make for stronger relationships and greater return.
It’s also a good time to show how your content strategy aligns with company goals. For instance, give examples of how to use content to boost relationships, resulting in a greater customer LTV and revenue lift.
Back it up with data
It’s not always easy to show the ROI or effectiveness of content marketing, but pull the data, and find a way to present it. This could include content metrics such as:
- Increased on-site time
- Content drawing in new traffic that moves fresh leads into the sales funnel
- Increased opt-ins from prior content offer campaigns
- Sales and revenue traced back to email campaigns
Leverage the content marketing metrics and data you have to show that your current efforts are moving the needle.
You can also use data from outside sources. This can come from case studies as well as research, trends, and benchmark reports in the industry that support the type of content marketing you plan to expand into. That data shows that it’s not just you who is planning to expand—it’s a direction the industry is headed.
Showcase a competitive analysis
A smart way to sell an expanded content strategy to leadership is to show what the competition is doing (and what they’re not) with an analysis of your competitor’s content marketing efforts.
Part of selling the value of your proposed campaigns is detailing how it will put the company ahead of major competitors to grab more market share.
Performing competitive content analysis takes significant upfront time, but doing so will help you set a realistic content strategy that will allow you to compete, and eventually overtake, your competitors online.” Corey Eridon writing for Hubspot.
Rather than copying their efforts, show—while speaking to company goals—that what you’re doing (and what you plan to do) will help outpace competition.
Align with company goals
Demonstrate why content marketing makes sense for your business and how the company (and customers) will benefit.
This can include goals such as:
- Greater brand visibility and increased brand awareness
- Improved thought leadership
- Increased frequency and volume of qualified leads for the sales team
- Reduced cost of customer acquisition
- Improved customer satisfaction/delight
- Reduced customer churn
Alignment between marketing and company goals is critical. Be prepared to make your case and provide research to back up your claims that your proposed strategy and the tactics you’ll use will help the company meet current goals.
This is a good opportunity to circle back to the competitive analysis and present case studies in which other brands have used similar tactics to accomplish their own objectives and engage their audiences.
Be ready for objections
You’re likely to come across objections when making your case for a greater investment in content marketing. With an existing investment in content, you’re not likely to get a hard no, but you should still be prepared for some pushback and the need to negotiate.
For leadership, everything comes down to the bottom line. If you want the dollars you’re asking for in your budget, you need to be prepared to counter the objections that may arise.
Here are some of the most common:
- People don’t want to hear more from us (we’re not interesting enough)
- Let’s just move resources; limit old campaigns to run new ones
- We don’t have the budget for it
- We’re giving away too much
- We don’t want to hire more people
For cost and resource related issues
Make sure you clearly lay out how to get around resource limitations. If you don’t need to hire anyone or the costs can be minimized with strategic outsourcing, showcase that in the proposal.
Don’t just discuss how much the expansion of your content marketing will cost. Be sure to include details of how much they can save. Circle back to your existing data that highlights things like:
- Reduced customer acquisition costs
- Increased volume of leads through organic search and content
- Reduced load on service teams through top-of-funnel content
- Improved velocity of lead closure through the strategic partnership of sales and content marketing
All of it equates to savings, providing a greater return on the initial investment.
The “We’re Not Interesting Enough” argument
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, your prospective and current customers will have questions. They face issues every day in their businesses. Every issue, question, and concern is a content opportunity that can turn your business into a hero, solving problems while asking for nothing in return.
Counter this argument by presenting common questions and concerns from your customers and showing how your company can create content to solve their problems.
The “Move Resources” argument
Sometimes management might suggest turning off other campaigns in order to test new ones. When you want to fill a container faster, you don’t turn off one tap to turn on another.
You turn on multiple faucets to let more water in.
Use your data from previous campaigns to show that virtually every campaign has some ramp-up time, necessary to gain traction to see a return. Shutting down or limiting existing campaigns to move resources would actually cost more when you factor in revenue and leads lost in the interim.
The “Giving Too Much Away” argument
This is the point of content marketing: give away vast amounts of value-rich information in order to create a winning experience for your audience. It’s the only way to build your brand as a trusted, reliable thought leader.
All of that content has a tremendous influence over purchasing decisions. When customers feel you have their best interests at heart, they are more likely to buy from you.
Even if you share the bulk of your knowledge, your customers won’t go to great lengths to learn how to do it all on their own. They’ll still need you.
This is where you make the case that limiting the amount of information you share only provides competitors with an opportunity to be the better resource.
Conclusion
When you make your presentation, you should have a strategy to showcase your vision, including the expected results. Have a plan ready that shows how serious you are about the expansion of your content marketing.
Even if you are presenting a pilot program, detail its implementation, ownership, ways content is created, cost allocation, distribution, promotion, and the measurement of its success against company goals.
From there, all that’s left for you to do is to make your case and ask for the investment. With a detailed pitch outlining a solid content marketing plan, you should be able to overcome any objections your leadership may have and get them to buy into growing your marketing efforts.
Have you ever tried to convince your boss to invest more in content marketing? How did you do it?
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How (and Why) to Write a Career Plan
Last Friday, I published an article entitled Does Spending Pennies to Make Dollars Really Make Sense? In it, I made the case that spending money for convenience to save time really only makes sense if you use it effectively to make more money in your career or your entrepreneurial plans.
One particular paragraph stood out to a couple of readers, though:
The same thing is true if you’re trying to launch a strong career. Often, the early stages of a career require tons of time, tons of learning, tons of work, and tons of networking. Write a plan for that, too. How will you build connections to people in your field? What education and skills and resume lines do you need to advance to the next rung on your career ladder? How will you get them? How can you build a name for yourself in your field? Think about those questions. Come up with answers for those questions.
A career plan? Seriously? Many people have heard of and written a business plan, but a career plan seems to be a much less common idea.
Two different readers wrote in asking for more information about what a career plan would look like and what the purpose would be, so I thought I’d write a guide to a career plan here.
The idea for my career plan came about late in my college career when I sat down with one of my mentors, a wonderful college professor who looked a bit like Anthony Hopkins, and he asked me a simple question.
“What exactly do you want to be doing when you’re my age?”
I didn’t really know how to answer him, so I fidgeted a bit and he kind of chuckled. He then said, point blank, that most people don’t really get anywhere in life because they don’t figure out their destination until they’re almost out the door to retirement.
His solution? Figure out where you want to be when you’re 50 or 60 or so, and write a plan to get there.
So I sat down and did just that. At the time, my dream was to be holed up in a country house somewhere, writing books, and then occasionally talking about them. I was really into the natural world and conservation and the life sciences at the time (and I still am), so my vision was that I would be writing books on conservation topics for a mainstream audience and writing some fiction as well that had some conservation themes to it. Think of books like A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold or Walden by Henry David Thoreau or A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson or Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey or Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.
I wrote about four pages of material on how I would go from the college student that I was to the older man writing conservation books in his study. My mentor took one look at the plan and ripped it to shreds.
The problem wasn’t with my goal, but with the plan I created to get there. It was full of flights of fancy, with a vision of everything going perfectly without any real insight or research or consideration of potential failures.
You see, the purpose of a career plan isn’t to guarantee career success, but to increase the odds of it as much as is possible within the realm of your personal control. If I was guaranteed to eventually transform into that fatherly writer of conservation books, my plan would have been just fine, but nothing like that is guaranteed in life.
When I rewrote it, I used the approach of a business plan. I basically followed a business plan guide for writing it and it didn’t take long for me to see some gaping holes in my original plan. In fact, my original plan wasn’t much of a plan at all.
In the end, I came up with a 40-page document, one that I followed almost to a tee for most of a decade and one that, in some regards, I’m still following. After all, I’m a writer now and I spend an awful lot of time exploring and going on hikes and observing nature. That plan guided me directly toward some great career moves, particularly during the first several years of my career, and they were moves that, without that plan, I would have never made and thus I would have likely never wound up in the happy place that I’m at right now.
Much of what I have professionally – the income, the flexibility, and so on – is due to a well-considered career plan that I wrote many years ago and followed strongly for many years.
In fact, I wrote a new one just a few years go, except it was more of a plan to guide me into an early retirement where I could actually write some books without worrying too much about a profit incentive… and one of those planned books is definitely on a conservation topic.
So, what exactly is a career plan? A career plan is a detailed, written plan that explains exactly how you will achieve the following sentence: “In X years, I will be doing Y in my professional life.” How you choose to fill in X and Y is up to you, but that’s the first step in the plan, and it takes some soul searching.
Perhaps in 10 years, you’ll be working to make custom wood furniture for people.
Perhaps in 15 years, you’ll be a regional manager of several banks.
Perhaps in 10 years, you’ll be lead developer on a AAA video game title.
That exact goal and timeline is going to vary from person to person, but that’s the core of it. What exactly do you want to be doing professionally (with the realm of reality, of course) in five or 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 years? What’s your big dream or ambition?
Spend some time thinking about that big ambition. Make sure it’s something you really want, something that floats perfectly around in your thoughts about the future, because the entire purpose of a plan like this is to make sure that whatever you come up with has the maximum possible chance of happening.
Got it? The next step is the plan.
A career plan follows almost exactly the same model as a business plan (you can read about a business plan here). The idea is to create a roadmap of career success, one that’s more detailed in the actions you’ll take in the near future while providing more of a framework for when you’re approaching your goal. A career plan is a living document, one you revisit somewhat regularly to evaluate where you are now and what the road looks like going forward. You might find that your goals change, for example.
Much like a business plan, there are a few key sections to include.
First of all, you’re going to want to have a background research section. For this, you simply want to find out how other people were able to make it to the destination you desire. Find people who have done what you hope to do and ask them if they’d be willing to have lunch with you for some basic career advice. Simply ask them how they got from where they started to where they are now, and also for any potholes they managed to dodge along the way. What advice do they have for someone starting out? Take lots of notes and talk to lots of people in this way. You’ll want to take the common threads of their stories and see how they fit in your life, and you’ll also want to keep track of their potholes.
You’ll also want to do some homework on the job itself, independent of individual stories. What traits and education and other factors would be needed to get there and to succeed when you arrive?
These elements should be providing you with a long list of ingredients that you need along with some things that you should avoid.
The next question is structure; how do you turn all of that into a plan? Try to figure out which steps come first and which ones come later. What things can you really start working on right now? What do you need to put in place to grab ahold of and succeed with the first rung in that ladder? What follows after that?
Try to create something of a timeline, not of the success you expect to have, but of the things you need to do in order to get there. What classes do you need to take? What skills do you need to build? What kinds of people do you need to meet? What personal traits do you need to cultivate? What kinds of relationships do you need to build? What kind of reputation or personal brand do you need to create?
Make everything actionable, to the best of your ability. Always ask yourself what you should be doing to progress to the next step based on the homework you did earlier.
Another very valuable aspect to consider is your “uniqueness.” What can you bring into this that isn’t just duplicated by another guy or gal in your field? Can you speak a particular language? Do you have some special insight that might be valuable? Do you have some strong transferable skills, like the ability to present material well? Maybe you have extensive knowledge on something that’s relevant to people in the field somehow.
Think about what you can cultivate in yourself that makes you unique. What can you bring – or what can you build up within yourself to bring – that will make you stand out and help you bring extra value to the table?
I would strongly encourage almost everyone with a career plan to think about marketing and networking – in other words, building good professional relationships with lots and lots and lots of people in your field and in related fields. Go to meetings. Be a great guy in your office without any “backstabbing” in your reputation. Build as many relationships as you can by helping people out. Look for opportunities to present your work. Build a strong social media presence and stick with it. (When will you have time? Use any and all work downtime for those things rather than online window shopping or sports news or whatever you check frequently.)
If some of these steps require money, think strongly about a section on personal finances. What steps are you going to have to take in terms of your spending to make those career options happen? I didn’t really have a section on this, but I now wish I had, as it would have made me think about career choices and life choices very differently. Are you going to need to get a degree of some kind? Certifications? Will you have to pay for some conference travel or admission? What will you have to invest in yourself, and how will you pay for that?
If your head is whirring with all of this, good. You’re starting to think about what needs to be in your career plan.
What now? Go through each of those bolded items above and write down a section outlining what you’ve learned and what you’ve thought about regarding each of them. What background research have you done on your potential career destination? What can you bring to the table that’s special? What steps will you take to get there? How will you build relationships and make your name known? How will you personally pay for some of these plans, not just in terms of money but also time, too?
Write it all down. Save it as a document somewhere. Revisit it in a week or two and edit it like crazy, because a week or two will give you time to see lots of giant holes in it. Do it again, revisiting it in a week or two. When you can open it and you’re reasonably happy with what you see, then pass it on to a few trusted friends and mentors for their comments and take those comments seriously. If they’re negative or suggest improvements, don’t brush them off as “jealousy” or “not getting you.” They’re probably seeing angles that you’re not seeing. Ask some non-accusatory questions for clarification and don’t feel hurt by their responses.
When you feel good about the plan and a few trusted friends and mentors do as well, start putting it into action. Start nailing those things you identified as things to take care of immediately and do your best to achieve them. Focus on things you can control and don’t worry about things outside of your control; just make yourself the best possible solution for the problems that you’re wanting to solve in your career.
Once a year, revisit your career plan. Revise it if you need to. If you do a major revision, talk to some mentors and friends again. This should be a living document.
All I have to say is this: A document just like this took me from being an awkward college kid about to graduate and without a job through a series of progressively more challenging jobs until I found myself in a position where I got to meet tons of interesting people with lots of insights and thoughts and build lots of relationships. I was clearly on the right path at that time to reach my dreams, and it was only due to dreams changing somewhat that anything changed.
Yes, there will be things you can’t control in life. Sometimes people just won’t like you. Sometimes unfortunate events will happen. The goal of a career plan – and the reason to follow one – isn’t so that you have a perfect path, but that you have a path that maximizes your chance of making it to wherever it is you want to go.
Good luck!
Related Articles:
- Nine Things I Would Do Differently for My Finances and Career if I Graduated Today
- The Value Line: Building More Skills for a Better Life
- Five Signs You Need a Career Change
The post How (and Why) to Write a Career Plan appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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5 Amazing Employee Perks Starbucks Offers — Even Part-Timers Get These
When I decided to pursue freelance writing as a career, I knew I needed an additional source of income. Or a winning lottery ticket.
A job seemed like the better bet.
I applied to work at Starbucks because I had heard it’s an ideal place for a part-time gig. I could receive many of the same benefits as my friends who had full-time jobs, but I would only be working 25 to 30 hours per week!
The Hidden Perks of Working at Starbucks
Starbucks is known for treating its partners well. (“Partners” is what Starbucks calls its employees.)
Chances are, you’ve heard the company offers its partners retirement plans and free education through Arizona State University.
But after a few months, I began to realize that most partners at my store weren’t taking advantage of all the benefits Starbucks offered us — myself included. We either didn’t know about the perks or didn’t understand them.
I decided to do some research, and it really paid off. Who knew working at Starbucks would help me listen to music for free? Or join a fancy gym for a fraction of the price?
If you are a Starbucks partner, here are a few money-savers you may not know you have at your fingertips.
1. Free Spotify Premium
My friends and family all know I’m cheap. Well, let’s say “frugal.” That sounds nicer.
While planning my wedding, I was determined to find an alternative to paying hundreds of dollars for a DJ. I figured I would just get Spotify Premium so I could play all my music without dealing with ads or the tunes being on shuffle.
Then I realized I was too… ahem, frugal, to pay $9.99 per month for Spotify Premium.
Thankfully, a co-worker told me Spotify and Starbucks have a deal that gives partners free Spotify Premium! I signed up. And in case you were wondering, my wedding reception was the bomb.
2. Free Coffee and Tea
It’s no surprise that another Starbucks benefit is free coffee.
Starbucks partners get a free pound of coffee, K-Cup box or box of tea every week. It’s easy to take this perk for granted, but a bag of coffee can cost over $15 after tax.
Did you realize you are getting that much value each week?
My first few weeks of working, I didn’t take advantage of this benefit. My now-husband also worked at Starbucks, so I didn’t see the need for both of us to get a pound of coffee every week. I mean, I’m a coffee addict, but that’s insane!
However, to those partners who don’t see the need to use the full amount every week, I fully encourage you to start. Did you know there are countless uses for your free bags of coffee? One of my co-workers volunteered with military personnel and took her free coffee to them every week. My husband gave his groomsmen bags of coffee as thank-you gifts.
3. A 5% Jolt for Your 401(k)
Please don’t skip this section because you think retirement plans are boring and too complicated to understand. I’m amazed by how many employees don’t take advantage of this benefit: If you’re a Starbucks partner, making a little extra money for your future is pretty easy to set up through a Fidelity 401(k).
Many partners don’t know that Starbucks matches 100% of their 401(k) contributions, typically up to 4 to 6% of the employee’s salary. In 2016, it matched 5%.
Here’s an elevator speech on how it works: I put 3% of my paycheck before taxes into my 401(k), and the company would also contribute 3%. If I put 5% in, it would put 5% in, as well. If I put in a whopping 10%, it would still only match 5% of my paycheck.
I set my contribution amount to 5% so I could get the maximum contribution from Starbucks. I got paid twice per month, and my average paycheck included 60 hours. A mere $27 from those paychecks went into my 401(k), and Starbucks threw in another $27.
That’s free money that is growing on its own thanks to compound interest. I never missed it because I never touched it, and the government won’t tax me on it until I withdraw it.
Set up your 401(k) plan online, and it kicks in after 90 days on the job.
4. Gym Membership Discounts
This benefit is bittersweet: Sweet because everyone loves deals. Bitter because you are about to lose your excuse to skip going to the gym.
Starbucks has partnerships with gyms that are always trying to attract new customers. For example, Starbucks is partnered with GlobalFit. Starbucks partners in New York can join any New York Fitness Club in the GlobalFit network for only $10; typically, you’d pay a $50 initiation fee. Similar deals are available for partners in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Partners all over the country can also sign up at Gold’s Gym for free instead of paying a $25 initiation fee. Anytime Fitness also waves its $50 initiation fee for Starbucks partners. Joining Curves, which typically charges a $150 initiation fee, is just $10 for Starbucks employees. These deals are only a few examples of Starbucks’ year-round discounts to various gyms.
Discounted gym memberships just for being a Starbucks employee? That’s an advantage I never expected!
Now you have a way to burn off all those free pumpkin spice lattes you drink on the job.
5. Starbucks Partner Discounts Emails
In case you haven’t noticed, Starbucks provides employees a lot of goodies. They’re hard to keep track of, and new deals are always popping up.
Guess what? You don’t have to miss out on any of them.
I signed up for weekly emails from Starbucks. Once a week, I received an email about new discounts with companies ranging from AMC Theatres to Dell to Restaurant.com. It was the most foolproof way to make sure I didn’t miss an opportunity to save a little money.
As soon as your manager assigns you an ID number, you can sign up for these emails. They highlight certain deals but also lead you to Starbuckspartnerdiscounts.com, where you can find the codes you need to access your free Spotify Premium and gym discounts. You can also browse all your options for free and discounted goodies on this website!
Your Turn: Are you a Starbucks employee? What great deals have you received as a partner?
Laura Grace Tarpley is a freelance writer who is always looking for ways to save money. She recently moved to China with her new husband to teach English.
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Why Working as a Barista Was the Most Valuable Job Experience of My Career
If you have a career in your sights, you’re probably focused on learning the hard skills it requires. You might be studying programming, grammar, anatomy, law or plumbing, just to name a few.
You’re likely not focusing as much on soft skills, though.
You know, the personality traits and people skills that allow you to work effectively with a team. And they’re in high demand.
Soft skills are harder to teach than hard skills, so you might not think about developing them.
Many of these skills are ones you develop on the job, not in the classroom, so work experience is valuable. But that leaves you with a conundrum: How do you ever break into a field that requires experience?
You start with an “unskilled” job.
Before starting my professional career, I spent about 10 years in food service, and about six of those as a barista. While they weren’t related to my writing career, I credit them with a lot of the job skills that make me great at my job now.
Use those jobs you use to get through college to develop soft skills early, so you’re ready to break into the job market!
Here’s how being a barista taught me some of the most in-demand soft skills.
1. Communication
If you didn’t catch that, it means communication is key in 100% of career paths.
You’ll need to be able to understand information coming from your bosses, colleagues and clients. You’ll need to be able to convey information back to them, or pass it from one to another.
This sounds like basic human functioning, but it’s a real skill.
As a barista, it meant knowing what a customer wanted when they ordered “that one with the red sprinkles” or said “ventana” instead of “venti” because Starbucks speaks only in a silly mash-up language I like to call Eng-talian.
The patience and interpretation skills I learned from these across-the-counter interactions strengthened my communications muscles for my professional career.
Guiding a client through confounding edits to website content, for example, is a lot like finding just the right drink for a coffee-shop customer who asks for “something with a ton of espresso but, like, doesn’t really taste like coffee..?”
2. Organization
I’ve worked at coffee shops in the mall during the holidays, on college campuses during finals and in hipster neighborhoods on open mic night. We needed some serious chops to survive the lines.
Through these crazy rushes, I learned to lean into a challenge, instead of getting mad at it. I loved figuring out how much faster we could get a drink down the line just by re-organizing the flavored syrup bottles or delegating the whipped-cream-topping to a new hire.
In a coffee shop, you organize the bar for efficiency. You organize inventory to make ordering easier. Your organize retail merchandise for sales.
And — most importantly — you organize your customers to keep everyone in line and happy.
If you don’t feel like you have enough responsibility in your position to develop this skill, offer to take on a few extra tasks. Product ordering and employee scheduling both do wonders for your organizational skills and attention to detail.
3. Teamwork
A proper food-service business runs with military precision. Employees respect rank and stick to their assigned stations.
If a well-meaning regional manager drops in and tries to “help” by pouring an espresso and moving onto the Frappuccino counter before punching an order into the register, they’re going to muck up the whole operation.
You stick to your place. If you need something, you communicate it to the right person. The system is absolutely beautiful in its simplicity and effectiveness.
I’ve held onto this attitude in my office job, as well.
Note: This doesn’t mean adopting a “not my job” approach. It means respecting everyone’s position and knowing how to communicate the right issues to the right people. And it means stepping in where you’re needed — for the good of the team, not your ego.
4. Punctuality
Punctuality is also easy to achieve and demonstrate.
Be there on time, and your boss won’t have any complaints. That bodes well for references as you move into your professional career.
5. Critical Thinking
It’s the ability to look at something objectively, ask the right questions and make a good judgement call.
In almost every job interview I’ve had, I heard this question: “Tell me about a conflict you’ve faced in the workplace. How did you resolve it?”
For many years, I shared stories of customers returning with drinks they’d clearly ordered — but didn’t like — demanding freebies or refunds I wasn’t authorized to give.
These conflicts are relatively mundane, but they challenged my young, 20-something brain to balance what a customer wanted with what I’d been taught.
Just learning to determine whether a situation warranted calling my manager was a good exercise in critical thinking.
6. Social Skills
You might not notice them when they’re there, but you’ll definitely notice when they’re not.
Employers aren’t looking for extroverts or social butterflies, necessarily. But if you’re going to work and communicate effectively with a team, you need the ability to pick up and put out basic social cues.
Have you ever approached a server in a restaurant, and they tell you where the bathroom is before you even have a chance to ask? They’re reading your cues.
On the flip side, you have to know how to keep a lid on a bad mood at work. No reason to drag co-workers or customers through your latest family drama or the guy in the truck who cut you off on the way in.
Your social skills are also going to be vital in a job interview.
A potential employer has already seen your resume. This is their chance to see whether they could stand working beside you 40 hours a week.
7. Creativity
How much creativity you get to express depends on where you work. A corporate environment like Starbucks doesn’t leave much room for it — the company creates the recipes, dictates your uniform and hair color, and decorates the stores.
When I worked under these stringent rules, I used my creativity to streamline our workflow (see number two).
However, in a local coffee shop, you’ll find tons of little ways to be creative throughout the day.
I got to create daily drink flavors — and name them, a delightful opportunity for a good pun. I hand-lettered menu boards — visual art, not my forte…
Even if you don’t have work experience in a creative field on your resume, you can use examples like this to show potential employers what you’re capable of.
8. Adaptability
Unfortunately, we baristas and our managers had been trained on semi-automatic machines. We knew how to grind and measure espresso beans and tamp them with just the right pressure. We didn’t know how to fix a darn thing on the new digital machines.
My first year with a new machine was fraught with breakdowns. Not me, thankfully, just the machine.
Not only did I learn to make drinks a whole new way, but I also learned how to run the cafe and keep customers happy when the core of our business was on the fritz.
Even in a seemingly boring job, you’re going to need to know how to adapt to situations just as tricky. Sharpen your chops before you get there by taking customer service challenges seriously.
9. Friendly Personality
Well, we get great at faking it.
I’ve always been a little shy, and I don’t care for most people — especially when they’re making small talk. Being a barista is so much small talk.
I had to learn to be nice.
When someone said, “Cold weather, we’re havin’,” I couldn’t reply, “Yeah. This happens every year, you bore.”
Instead, I learned to say, “Yeah, I bet your kids are enjoying the snow, huh, Wendy?” And Wendy would smile and order a scone — instead of reporting me to my manager.
Learning to be friendly with a rapid succession of strangers every day really sets you up for those moments when a co-worker catches you in the break room and shares the story of her dog’s most recent surgery.
Or you have to congratulate someone on their engagement.
This one goes a long way in a job interview, too!
Your Turn: What useful skills have you learned working “unskilled” jobs?
Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more, attempting humor wherever it’s allowed (and sometimes where it’s not).
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A Frugal Wedding Adventure: The Planning Phase
I recently got engaged. I managed to stay frugal throughout the entire process. My ring did not set me back three months’ salary. I got a reasonably priced ring made from a small operation in Chicago that uses reclaimed wood to make beautiful jewelry. It confused my family, who was baffled by its lack of diamonds, but it delighted my fiancee. I proposed to her on a hike, not at a five-star restaurant. All in all, the proposal process fit our style, and it did the bare minimum of damage to my checking account.
But now we face the real challenge: the wedding. Not only are weddings expensive… they are stressful. According to the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory, marriage is the seventh most stressful event that we experience in our lives. Further complicating matters is the fact that one of the biggest sources of stress among engaged couples is the financial strain weddings cause.
Here’s how we’re tackling the problem of throwing a fun, low-stress wedding – while keeping our spending under control.
Setting a Wedding Budget
The average cost of a wedding in America is more than $32,000, according to wedding website The Knot.
My fiancee was a wedding planner at one point in her career, so she knew all about how expensive weddings tend to be. I, on the other hand, was stunned. I knew they were expensive — but not that expensive.
We decided the best plan of action was to set a small budget right off the bat. And I’m taking actually small, not small as determined by the wedding industry, which would probably be anything that didn’t feature a bespoke candy bar and a live band.
We settled on $2,500 dollars for our budget. Here are the different areas where we aim to drastically cut our spending in comparison to the national average:
Venue
If you want a truly cheap wedding, the most feasible way to do it is to throw a party at your home, a free public park (and they’re not all free), or the home of a friend or family member. Luckily, my fiancee’s family is going to let us use their backyard, free of charge.
While throwing a backyard wedding at a simple, middle-class home might seem crazy to a lot of people I grew up with, we’re happy with our decision. It reminds me of the Bar Mitzvah craze that sweeps through affluent Jewish communities in certain parts of the U.S. When I was 13, I went to many Bar Mitzvah parties (a celebration for reaching adulthood) that were like mini-weddings. These parties sometimes included fancy food, poker tables with real card dealers, and upwards of 10 hired dancers in charge of dragging awkward teenagers out of their huddled circles and onto the dance floor.
I thought all of this was quite normal at the time. Then, I spent some time living in Israel, and I realized we’re just a bunch of crazy, over-the-top Americans. Bar Mitzvahs out there are much simpler, family-oriented affairs.
Likewise, if you explore wedding traditions in different parts of the world, you’d find a similar trend, especially in lower-income countries and communities. Family is more important than fancy.
Cost: Free
Food
One of the strategies my fiancee and I use to lower our stress levels is to constantly remind each other that this is our day. We don’t have to impress anyone. We aren’t the kind of people who go out to fancy meals — so why do we need to provide fancy food at a wedding?
We thought about cooking the food ourselves — as that’s what we do for 95% of our meals — but scuttled that idea after thinking about the scale. If we had a slow cooker that could serve 100+ people, this would be a more realistic option. (Get on it, Crock Pot!)
We are, though, planning to include local restaurants that are meaningful to us. My fiancee worked at an amazing steakhouse near her home throughout high school and college, and we go to that same restaurant to eat every time we’re in town. We’ll work with her old boss to get what we can from them, and she’ll give us a deal on all of it.
For everything else, we’ll run around town to pull it all together. My fiancee has a big family, and you can be sure that they’ll be helping with errands and deliveries. Family friends and neighbors will be able to provide equipment to keep everything warm, so we won’t need to spend money on catering supplies. Although it’s not as environmentally friendly as we’d like, we’ll get disposable dinnerware and glassware to save on cleanup time and rental costs.
As for dessert, neither of us are big cake people, and we’re certainly not going to spend hundreds of dollars for a cake with tiny plastic figures on top of it. Tubs of ice cream with a selection of locally made pastries is more our style.
Cost: $1,000
Entertainment
There will be no bands, no DJ, and no photo booths. However, we do love to boogie down, so we’ll collaborate on a playlist of songs we love, and those tunes will blast the whole night. We’re budgeting $100 for speaker equipment rental.
We’re also quite fond of board games and lawn games, so we’ll set those up in the garage and on the lawn. There will be volleyball, croquet, and Frisbee games, all of which will be crowdsourced – borrowed from neighbors and friends.
Since we realize most people don’t expect to run around outside at a wedding, we’ll be extra diligent to point out the casual dress code on the invitations.
Cost: $100
Invitations
This is a wedding cost that sneaks up on people. Invitations end up costing about $445 for your average wedding, according to The Knot.
Thankfully for us, this was the easiest decision of the whole planning process. We will send out an email. Simple as that.
I’ve never met a person who talked fondly about the process of creating and sending out invitations. In fact, the conversations I’ve had usually revolve around what a painstaking, expensive, time-consuming process it is.
As much as I’d like to brush up on my cursive handwriting and pound out some classy invitations, it’s simply not enough of a priority for me to take the time.
Cost: Free
Alcohol
There will be many people from Wisconsin at this party, and they love to drink.
Because we’re spending basically nothing on the venue, entertainment, and decorations, we’re fully prepared to pony up to make sure there are adequate adult beverages.
For light beer, we want to get kegs, because we’re confident there won’t be much leftover after the party. My fiancee says she’s mostly interested in kegs for cost savings, but I think she’s secretly excited to relive her college days and throw a “kegger.”
We ran the numbers and found that a keg of Spotted Cow (a very popular beer only sold in Wisconsin) will cost $140 and give us 165 12-ounce servings. Since we have to account for cups (50 Solo cups are $9, so we’d would need to add $27 to total), this will run us $167 per keg, or about $1 per 12-ounce serving.
If we were to provide the same amount of beer in bottles, it would cost us $1.42 per 12-ounce beer. And you can’t do keg stands with a bottle!
We’ll also be providing wine, which will most likely be Bota Boxes, a brand of boxed wine we enjoy. Not only are they cost efficient, but my fiancee’s brother will drink them — and he’s a wine buyer at one of San Francisco’s best restaurants. Good enough for me!
As for hard alcohol, we’re still deciding whether we’ll provide it. We’re thinking about inviting people to BYOB if they prefer hard alcohol to wine or beer. But if we do decide to provide it, you can be sure we’ll be buying it at Costco.
Cost: $700
Photographer
Everyone has a smartphone these days, and everyone loves to take pictures at a wedding. Why not just fully crowdsource our photography? If we send an email message to all of our friends and family after the wedding asking for them to upload their favorite images into a designated Dropbox folder, we’re sure to come away with plenty of fantastic pictures.
Cost: Free
Summing Up
My fiancee and I see our wedding as a way for people to get to know us better as a couple, as well as an opportunity for our friends and family from across the country to meet and have a good time together. This takes away some of the pressure to do traditional (and expensive) things.
If it’s not something Drew and Ashley value, it’s not going to be a big part of the wedding. This mindset allows us to make quick decisions with confidence. We’re also bolstered by the fact that couples who spend the most money on their weddings actually face a higher risk of divorce.
We understand that some people in attendance might find that things are different than what they’re used to, but we hope that serves as a way for them to understand a little bit more about who we are and how we want to live our life together. And if it’s intolerable, our guests can take solace in the fact that there will be plenty of adult beverages.
Related Articles:
- 20 Ideas for a Frugal (Not Cheap) Wedding on a Budget
- Check Out These Beautiful, Affordable Wedding Venues
- Why Your Spouse Is Your Most Important Money Decision
The post A Frugal Wedding Adventure: The Planning Phase appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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EE fined £2.7 million for overcharging customers
Mobile phone provider EE has been hit with a £2.7 million fine for overcharging almost 40,000 customers.
The network has been reprimanded after charging customers a combined £250,000 more than they should have paid for making certain phone calls. Regulator Ofcom says the network made “fundamental billing mistakes”.
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New generation of dads value childcare more than career
Nearly half of millennial fathers seek a less stressful job in the name of parenting, a study of 2,750 working parents carried out by the work-life balance organisation, Working Families, shows.
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10 Ways to Show Your Office Love While Working From Home
By Deborah Sweeney 3.3 million professionals consider their home to be their primary workplace, and in each of those homes, you’re likely to find an office where workers spend a minimum of 40 hours a week. Chances are, this office looks about the same as it did when it was first set up too. A […]
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Pensions: What to watch out for in 2017
In recent years the pensions landscape hasn’t stood still for long.
Even after the introduction of the pension freedoms in 2015, the government continues to tinker with pensions legislation as pressure on budgets continues.
Here, Richard Parkin, head of pensions policy at Fidelity, highlights what he thinks will be the big themes for the coming year.
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