Americans who waited until the last day to pay their taxes online got an unwelcome surprise: The IRS website to make payments and access other key services is down.
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الثلاثاء، 17 أبريل 2018
Queen Bey Awards $100,000 in Scholarship Funds to 4 HBCU Universities
All four schools are on the Historically Black Colleges and Universities list, higher-education institutions in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intent to serve primarily the African-American community.
The new scholarships are part of the Homecoming Scholars Award Program organized by Beyoncé’s philanthropic initiative, BeyGOOD.
Students interested in studying literature, creative arts, African-American studies, science, education, business, communications, social sciences, computer science or engineering are eligible to apply.
“We salute the rich legacy of Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” Ivy McGregor, Director of Philanthropy and Corporate Relations at Parkwood Entertainment, which houses BeyGOOD, said in a statement. “We honor all institutions of higher learning for maintaining culture and creating environments for optimal learning which expands dreams and the seas of possibilities for students.”
This is the second time Queen Bey has bestowed scholarship money to U.S. universities. In 2017, BeyGOOD’s Formation Scholars program awarded a total of four scholarships to female students at Berklee College of Music, Howard University, Parsons School of Design and Spelman College.
Details and application deadlines for this year’s scholarship program will be available through the colleges, so contact the financial assistance office at Xavier, Wilberforce, Tuskegee or Bethune-Cookman for details.
If your school or major isn’t part of the Homecoming Scholars Award initiative, check out our massive list of 100 college scholarships for more opportunities.
Lisa McGreevy is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Need to Bag a New Job? Kroger Is Filling 11,000 Positions Nationwide
The grocery store chain has made some splashy announcements over the last week, including a plan to hire 11,000 new employees and to invest in improved employee benefits.
You can apply for many of these new roles (including 2,000 management positions) on the company’s jobs website, said Kristal Howard, head of corporate communications and media relations at Kroger, via email. The company, which has added 22,000 employees since 2016, will continue to add new jobs throughout the year, including in retail, technology, digital, pharmacy, restaurants, corporate, manufacturing, logistics and more.
On Monday, Kroger detailed how it’ll enhance and improve long-term associate benefits, including a new program for continuing education, increased company 401(k) match and higher wages. The new staffers get to enjoy the improved benefits right away.
Feed Your Future, Kroger’s continuing education benefit, offers Kroger employees and its subsidiaries grants towards completing high school equivalency exams, professional certifications and advanced degrees. These grants can amount to up to $3,500 annually ($21,000 over the course of employment at a Kroger).
This program also gives associates the opportunity to take educational leaves of absence to focus on school and not lose their job or seniority within the company.
The grocery chain says it also plans to invest $500 million in wages, training and development over the next three years and increase its 401(k) company match to 5%, up from 4%.
Kroger operates more than 2,800 grocery stores in 35 states under a variety of names, including Fred Meyer, King Soopers, Ralphs. The Kroger family of stores collectively employs nearly half a million people.
Click here to search for all positions with Kroger available in your area.
Matt Reinstetle is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Here’s How to Get Your Money Back if You Have Recalled Eggs in Your Fridge
More than 206 million eggs have been recalled nationwide due to a salmonella outbreak.
There have been 23 cases of salmonella and six hospitalizations reported across nine states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Everyone who was infected reported eating eggs.
And the list of restaurants where they ate those eggs helped the Food and Drug Administration link the outbreak to Rose Acre Farms in Hyde County, North Carolina, where they identified the same salmonella strain that caused the illnesses.
Rose Acre Farms, the second-largest egg producer in the United States, voluntarily recalled eggs produced at its North Carolina farm due to the findings.
How to Know if Your Eggs Have Been Recalled
So far it has been confirmed that contaminated eggs made their way to Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
Eggs from the Hyde County farm are sold in stores under many brand names including:
- Coburn Farms
- Country Daybreak
- Food Lion
- Glenview
- Great Value
- Nelms
- Sunshine Farms
The FDA listed Waffle House as one of the restaurants that received contaminated eggs.
The tainted eggs were packed between Jan. 11 and April 12. The cartons should have plant No. P-1065 printed on them, along with a code of 011 through 102.
What to Do With Recalled Eggs
Do not eat any eggs that have been recalled.
You can return them to the place where you purchased them to receive a full refund. My local Publix said they would refund recalled eggs without a receipt.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll be skipping omelettes and holding the egg dishes for a while, especially since I live in one of the affected states.
Maybe I should just get my own chickens?
Stephanie Bolling is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She just discovered it takes 53 gallons of water to produce one egg.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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Trump and the Trillion Dollars Myth: Why the CBO's Deficit Claims Are Wrong Again
There is an old saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and we've learned that again with the Congressional Budget Office and its latest highly misleading fiscal forecast.
Source CBNNews.com https://ift.tt/2vpLDhs
Source CBNNews.com https://ift.tt/2vpLDhs
ABC Financial Needs Customer Service Reps to Work From Home in 9 States
You never have to get out of your pajamas (especially important in these frigid winter months — or weeks, for those of us here in Florida), you never have to make a long and terrible commute and you never forget your lunch (unless you forget to go to the grocery store, but if that’s the case, I can’t help you).
All jokes aside, though, working from home can mean so much more than just pjs and all-day fridge runs.
Working from home can mean freedom and flexibility, additional financial empowerment or just the peace of mind of a steady stream of income for those who can’t be in a traditional work environment.
All of those things mean that people can free up some time and money to live life on their own terms — and we think that’s pretty great!
So today, we found a company that’s hiring people to work from home as customer service representatives in nine U.S. states.
(By the way, if you’re looking for a great work-from-home job but you don’t live in one of the states mentioned here, be sure to like our Jobs page on Facebook. We post awesome work-from-home job opportunities there whenever we find them!)
Customer Service Representative for ABC Financial
ABC Financial provides membership management software to health clubs and gyms.
The company is currently looking for customer service representatives to work from home in nine states: Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas or Virginia.
Pay: Competitive, with added monthly incentives
Schedule: Full time, with set work schedules and weekends off
Responsibilities include:
- Handling inbound and outbound calls
- Dealing with payment delinquencies and disputes
- Helping fitness club members and staff with billing and payment issues and contract questions
- Reviewing accounts and answering customer questions
- Maintaining individual standards including an average talk time of 315 seconds or less on member calls
Applicants for this position must:
- Have a high school diploma or GED equivalent
- Live in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas or Virginia
- Have a stable work history
- Be willing and able to work an assigned schedule
- Have a minimum of one year of call center experience
- Have excellent verbal communication skills
- Have experience with AS400 and Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook
- Be able to stay confident and upbeat in stressful situations
- Be empathetic to customer needs
Requirements include:
- A quiet, dedicated home office space
- A hard-wired, high-speed internet connection
Benefits include:
- 100% paid training with bonus structure
- A 401(k) with company match
- Paid time off
- All required equipment provided
To apply to become a customer service representative, go here.
Grace Schweizer is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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First 50 Funds Interview: Stewart Investors Asia Pacific Leaders David Gait & Sashi Reddy
Moneywise’s Helen Knapman talks to David Gait (pictured above) and Sashi Reddy, fund managers of First 50 Fund Stewart Investors Asia Pacific Leaders.
What is the fund?
Sashi: The fund invests in companies that are involved in the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan. Our aim is to generate absolute returns in the long term – we’re benchmark agnostic and risk for us is all about not losing our clients’ savings.
You say Japanese firms are excluded, but you have about 5% in Japan. Why?
David: We look for companies that have most of their work in Asia Pacific, excluding Japan, but these can be listed anywhere in the world. Where a company is listed is becoming meaningless – it’s where it operates.
Sashi: We’re not trying to find Japanese firms that only operate in Japan. Unicharm is a Japanese-listed company we invest in that makes sanitary products and nappies, but half of its profits and even more of its revenues come from outside Japan.
What do you look for when buying companies?
Sashi: The fund wants to invest in leaders. So we look for companies with a minimum market cap pre-float of around £1.5 billion dollars, with good track records. We try to buy quality companies. For us, that means quality of financials, quality of franchise, and quality of management.
David: We also look for companies that follow a sustainable development path. It could be about using more renewable energy, more efficient transport or better use of packaging. Diabetes, for example, is an Asian problem now, so if you’re in the food business, you need to ensure products are part of the solution.
How often do you buy and sell?
Sashi: Our ideal time frame is to buy and hold for ever, but this is never the case. We start with a 10-year outlook when searching for companies. But the holding period tends to be closer to fi ve years, as markets are a bit irrational and share prices can go up a bit too much, at which point the right thing to do is to sell some shares. We would also sell when the governance or franchise is broken and there is no way a company will come back.
At the other end of the scale, gloom in the market allows us to buy more shares [at a better price]. The fund has about a 20% annual turnover.
David: The fund tends to hold 40 to 60 stocks. We like our top 10 positions to equate to 40% of the portfolio.
What have you recently been buying?
Sashi: We’ve been adding over the past few years to IT services companies in India because they’re reasonably valued, high-quality businesses.
David: These include Tata Consultancy Services, Tech Mahindra, and Mahindra & Mahindra. We’ve also been adding to Unicharm in Japan and we’ve been building our position in President Chain Store in Taiwan, which runs 7-Eleven store franchises. A lot of retailers have struggled to migrate their business to the 21st century, but these 7-Elevens have migrated into becoming community hubs – half 7-Eleven and half post office, where you can also pick up online shopping. It is relatively exposed to food and sugar, so we spend a lot of time talking to the managers about improving this – for example, by rolling out an organic fruit and vegetable trial. Our role as shareholders is to challenge the companies we invest in. What have you been selling?
Sashi: We’ve sold out of Ezion – a small company in the oil and gas services industry as the franchise was quite poor and the balance sheet was not in good shape.
What’s next for the Asia Pacific region?
Sashi: There are roughly 3.5 billion people in the region who don’t have access to basic services, so there’s a lot of potential for economic development. Why has the fund underperformed against the benchmark lately?
Sashi: There may be times when we underperform relatively against the benchmark – usually when markets rise too quickly or show signs of a bubble – as we will not keep up with this. But for us, it’s not about underperformance on the way up, but looking after the money we’ve made when markets go down.
Has the fund changed since its former manager, Angus Tulloch, left in 2016?
David: The short answer is no; it’s business as usual. I’d worked for 20 years with Angus, so everything I know about investment I’ve learnt from him – it would be strange if we took a new direction. When you hand the baton from one person to the other, you would expect to see some small changes as we’re not robots doing the same thing as each other, but it’s only a two or three company difference.
Sashi: The only philosophical difference was gold. The fund had a big exposure to gold mining companies. That was a sector we sold out of because we feel that it’s not the best thing to mitigate against high inflation.
What’s your top tip for a beginner investor?
Sashi: Try to take a long-term view, choose your companies very carefully – for every good there are at least nine bad – and pick managers carefully. Do your research into which companies you are giving your money too.
Stewart Investors Asia Pacific Leaders: Key stats
Launched: December 2003
Fund size: £8243.1 million
Number of holdings: 43
Yield: 1%
Source: Stewart Investors Asia Pacific Leaders factsheet, 31 January 2018
The duo behind the fund
David Gait is responsible for leading the Stewart Investors Sustainable Funds group and generating investment ideas across all sectors in emerging and developed markets. David joined the company
in 1997. He holds an MA in Economics from Cambridge University and an MSc in Investment Analysis from Stirling University.
Sashi Reddy joined Stewart Investors in August 2007. He is responsible for generating ideas across the Stewart Investors Sustainable Funds group. Sashi worked at Irevna Research, an Indian equities research house from 2005 to 2007. He has an engineering degree from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, and an MBA from the Schulich School of Business, York University in Toronto.
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Lessons from an all-female investment club
If you fancy dipping your toe in the stock market but would rather not do it alone, then why not set up an investment club? This is exactly what these 10 women have done. Moira O’Neill met them to find out more.
In July 1999, a group of 10 women working along the beautiful Yorkshire coast, with no connection to the world of finance, decided to form a share club.
They were all used to making decisions as professionals in education and managing their own finances, particularly with an eye on future retirement. They felt confident in committing a relatively small amount of money to buying and selling shares directly on the stock market, and learning a bit more about the world of business.
The 400 Investment Club was born and is still going strong today.
Members each paid in an initial £100 and set up direct debits for further monthly payments. They reached their agreed total investment per member of £1,000 in 2002. They receive a small payout each Christmas and, by 2012, each member had received their initial investment back in payouts. They are now enjoying real profits.
The club has 10 members, nine from Yorkshire and one based in London. Eight of them have been together from day one. Members take turns to have meetings in each other’s home, sometimes travelling miles each way to attend.
To find out what they have learnt from more than 100 meetings over 18 years, I travelled to Bridlington in Yorkshire to see a meeting in action.
Marjorie Sutcliffe, co-founder and treasurer, is a retired teacher. Marjorie says: “We found each other through work. Sue and I had our own portfolios with Barclays Stockbrokers. We used to talk about it at lunch and people got interested. I’m from a farming background. I’ve always been aware of money and careful with money.
“We’re all professional women who have made our own money and bought our houses. Seven of us are single women. A few have children and grandchildren. Every 18 months, the meeting is held at your own house,” she explains.
“You don’t want someone coming along for the ride. It must feel like a genuine decision. Trading is important. It’s important not to get attached.”
THE MEETING
Marjorie begins with an account of transactions based on decisions at the previous meeting. She has sold 47 United Utilities shares, raising £402.55 – a 22% profit on the purchase price. But they still have 56 shares left in United Utilities. The club has had a good two months for dividends and is still getting 4% dividend income.
They discuss that the big change in the portfolio has been Fever Tree, a producer of premium drink mixers that has reached 60% profit on the price they bought it for. Club member Wendy says: “I’ve just came back from Crete and it was the only tonic served.”
Members then discuss their investment in fertiliser development firm Sirius Minerals, which is of particular interest as its York Potash project is in their local area.
Shirley says: “There was even a Sirus van down my drive. Is it a sign of a turning point?” They conclude that its price has drifted, but they’re not concerned.
Babcock, which provides skilled, bespoke engineering services, is their big loss in the portfolio.
Marjorie says: “It’s a slightly unfashionable sector, but its news is consistently promising. I think we should hold on to it. It’s a very important company in this country.”
The investment discussion then moves onto the topic of the £600 that the club has to spend on investments. Several members have been investigating opportunities.
Jennie offers her thoughts on Michelmersh Bricks, which produces clay bricks, tiles and pavers. “It’s very good and doing well in a niche market. It also buys up cheap land and fills it with landfill and sells it on,” she explains.
Pamela has been looking at Merlin Entertainments. “It’s mega successful and second behind Disney in visitor attraction operators,” she says. “I think there will be a lot more ‘staycations’ (with one or two special days out) because of Brexit. It offers a good deal on an annual pass for two adults and two children.”
Julie has looked at the storage and warehouse sector, finding a fairly new investment called the Warehouse Reit.
She says: “I do much more online shopping than ever, so I think it’s worth doing.”
Shirley has been looking into opportunities in Drones and 3D printing, but concluded: “The biggest companies are not here – they are in China.”
Sue has been looking into Pets at Home, which has 434 stores. “The target is 500 and it is opening grooming practices in store at a rate of 50 a year,” she says. “It also does its own brand of dog food – it’s the best-value dog food for 2017. But part of me thinks we should have bought it a year ago.”
Now it’s time to vote on the investments. Marjorie proposes the Warehouse Reit, with Wendy seconding. Pamela proposes Pets at Home, with Sue seconding.
The club votes a 60/40 split between the two, with the Warehouse Reit getting the larger share. And then it’s on to the social calendar.
HELPING YOU TO GET STARTED
If you would like to set up a share club, here are some useful websites:
Proshareclubs.co.uk Free guidance on starting and running an investment club. Plus, register your club’s details for free and receive a monthly email newsletter.
Share.com/accounts/dealingaccounts/investment-club/accountoverview Investment platform the Share Centre offers an Investment Club account designed to make investing in the stock market quick and easy. Charges apply.
Hl.co.uk/investment-services/fund-and-share-account/faqs Investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown offers investment club accounts, but you need to apply by post. For more information, call 0117 900 9000. Charges apply.
Gov.uk/tax-sell-shares/investment-clubs Explanation of how to work out your gain differently if you’ve bought and sold shares through an investment club.
MEMBERS’ COMMENTS
Jennie: “Becoming a member of this club is one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
Pamela: “The club has helped me plan and make my own decisions about my financial future.”
Gill: “Our diversity as individuals – and respect and liking for each other – enables us to see each other’s points of view and make measured, collective judgments.”
Julie: “The club is still in business as we are a group of people who are committed and reliable in our financial dealings – and true friends I can rely on, trust and look forward to meeting every two months.”
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The Expendable Employee
Quite often, I’ll read or hear stories from readers, from friends, and from other online sources that revolve around a company treating an employee pretty poorly. Tell me if any of these stories sound familiar…
Your company hires a new employee doing the same job as you and pays them a significant amount more than what you’re earning after having worked there for a while. You bring this up to management and, regardless of what answer they give, your salary stays low.
Your boss quickly says no to any request for a raise, even after a long history of good performance reviews.
Your scheduled time off is constantly altered without even consulting with you at all, often forcing you to cancel personal plans at the last minute.
People who engage in negative, backstabbing behavior in your workplace are rewarded, while people who don’t engage in that behavior end up with a knife in their back and lose their jobs or opportunities for promotion.
You are constantly asked to take on difficult tasks from other workers, often even from higher-paid workers, but aren’t compensated for it.
Stories like this are extremely common, and they all come back to one key point: if your business treats you in a disrespectful manner like this, they view you as expendable. They either do not see you as valuable, or else they believe you will just accept the poor treatment and bear it. In either case, you are nothing more than a cog in the machine to them.
The root cause of this situation is twofold. One, companies today often have a very short term focus. It’s far better to get as much value out of an employee as possible this quarter and not really worry about things beyond that, unless the employee is exceptional and a key asset to the organization. Two, many employees are forcing themselves into subservience by continuing to wear “golden handcuffs,” an idea I covered in detail in my recent article on regretting working too hard. Once you put yourself in a position where you have ceded power to your employer because you need that paycheck, then they can push a lot of mistreatment right back at you.
In short, many companies believe that most individual employees need them far more than they need the individual employees, and will treat individual employees accordingly.
If you’re being treated in an unfair way at work, there’s really only one way to change that mistreatment: you need to move from a position where you’re expendable and they’re not to a position where they’re expendable and you’re less expendable. Without that shift, you will never receive the salary or treatment that you should receive for your work.
So, how do you do that? There are several things you need to do.
First of all, as discussed in that “working too hard” article, you need to break the golden handcuffs. This is first and foremost. You cannot be fully financially beholden to the sustained continuation of your job. If you can’t financially survive a job loss of a few months or a significant reduction in salary, then you are financially beholden to your job. It is likely that your boss knows this, and thus your boss knows that the organization has leverage over you and can treat you quite poorly and get away with it.
After all, any risk to disruption of your job is financial risk to your current lifestyle and financial structure, so you’ll do everything you can to minimize risk at your job, and that often means accepting awful treatment.
That has to end.
The first step in breaking the “golden handcuffs” is to start living a lifestyle that’s below your income level. This doesn’t mean that you live like you’re in poverty. It means that you live as though you make, say, 20% less than you do, and you use the other 20% to give yourself some personal and professional freedom so that you’re never locked into an onerous employment situation again.
There are many, many methods for making that transition. Your goal should be to cut out the 20% of your spending that matters the least to you. Experimentation works well here. For starters, look for things you can do once that permanently reduce your spending going forward, such as replacing your home lighting with LEDs and installing weather strips where there is air leakage. Try replacing a lot of your everyday household purchases with store brand versions – things like hand soap, dishwashing soap, shower soap, pasta, and so on are typically unnoticeably different in store brand form. You should consider steps like eliminating your cable bill entirely by cancelling the service and switching to a mix of Netflix and free over-the-air signals for your television service. There are many, many things you can do to cut your spending – here are 100 of them, just to get you started.
When you’re doing this cutting, make sure that you’re not just replacing it with more spending. Instead, start doing automatic things with that money. If you’ve figured out how to cut $500 a month from your spending, have that money automatically transferred to your savings throughout the month, then do smart things with that money. Your bank should be able to set up this kind of automatic transfer for you. I suggest transferring small amounts each week.
The first “smart thing” you should do is build an emergency fund. Your savings account should always have at least $2,000 in it, and ideally should have at least a month’s worth of living expenses in there. This is money you can tap if things go haywire in your life without having to add to existing credit card balances.
Once you have an emergency fund, start eliminating your debts. Make a list of every debt you have, ordered by interest rate, with the largest interest rate on top. Make your normal monthly payments on each of these, but then make a big extra payment – as much as you can muster – on the top debt on that list. When it’s gone – and with this method, it’ll disappear in a matter of a few months – cross it off and move on to the next one, but don’t forget to add that newly paid off debt’s minimum monthly payment to the amount you’re automatically transferring, as described above.
Once that pile of debts is completely empty (or close to it), you’ve largely broken those golden handcuffs. You’re living on an income that’s far less than what you’re earning and you have a healthy emergency fund to boot. Losing your job is no longer the ominous threat that it once was. It’s now just an annoyance, but one you can easily survive and easily deal with.
Having this level of financial freedom changes a lot of rules for you. It enables you to consider job changes and even career changes. It gives you the resources you need to seek out additional training beyond what your employer might pay for. It also gives you the resources you need to be able to be more assertive at work.
That assertive part is key. Quite often, those who are held down with golden handcuffs are very afraid to speak up on their own behalf, so they accept whatever treatment they’re given. Without those handcuffs, it’s much easier to speak up on your behalf because there’s much less to lose. You don’t have to be afraid to ask for a raise. You don’t have to be afraid to ask for time off. You don’t have to be afraid to request and advocate for some reassignment of duties. The worst case scenario of standing up for yourself – a job loss – is far less frightening if you know you can survive comfortably for a while without your job.
What’s next, after you’ve broken your golden handcuffs? You need to make yourself as valuable as possible in your current position from the eyes of someone outside the company. Let’s break this down a little bit.
The first part of that statement is to make yourself as valuable as possible in your current position. This does not mean throwing yourself into endless hours of drudge work. It means evaluating the work that you do, figuring out where you actually provide a lot of value, and then maximizing that while minimizing the other stuff.
Ask yourself these two questions: what is it that you’re paid to do around here, the thing where you bring special skills to the table? and what can you do to be as valuable in that specific role as possible? Focus on doing those two things, and don’t worry about less important things.
The second part of that statement is just as important: make yourself as valuable as possible from the eyes of someone outside the company. What I mean by this is that you should be looking at every task you do in terms of how it will look on your resume and how it will lift your personal profile in your field. That shouldn’t be your sole criteria for deciding what to focus on at work, but it should be a major criteria.
Again, ask yourself two questions: what, among the things you do at work, looks best on a resume? and what things need to be on a resume to get a similar or somewhat better job at another employer? That’s the list of things you should be focusing on as much as possible at work.
The answers to those questions are going to vary widely depending on your career path. However, I will say that there are a few things that are really appealing in most fields: leadership, project completion, clear communication skills (particularly written skills), and technical skills within the field. Those things are almost always valuable regardless of your specific field, and you should be doing everything you can to bring evidence of those things to your resume.
Your focus should be on maximizing your personal value in your field through the skills you’ve built and the things you’ve achieved. That should ideally provide value to your current employer, but it should also provide a lot of value to you if you were to seek another position.
As you begin to add high value things to your resume, keep that resume updated on public sites such as LinkedIn and Monster. This does not mean that you are actively searching for a job, but that you are prepared in case something happens at your current job. Plus, there’s an extra benefit: headhunters. You may find that hiring agents for other companies may discover your resume and come directly to you with a job offer or at least an offer to interview, which basically gives you an option without you having to lift a finger.
This is an important factor because, quite often, people who are in a position where they are viewed as “expendable” are hesitant to run the risk of actively seeking another job. Having a solid resume out there makes it easier for people to come to you.
So, what do you do if you actually get an offer? Let’s say all of this clicks and you actually find yourself with another employment offer. What do you do?
It’s simple – you take the offer to your current job and ask them to match it. If they can’t or won’t, take the new offer. It’s that simple.
Obviously, this is the moment when you’re turning the tables, transforming the situation from you being an expendable employee to them being an expendable employer. If you are a valuable asset to them, they’ll treat you as a valuable asset. If not, well, they’re now expendable to you, so move on.
Beyond that, having a good resume that’s out there in the world adds to your own confidence in standing up for yourself at work. Combined with breaking the golden handcuffs, you now have the pieces in place to wonderfully handle the fallout from a short term job loss, or perhaps even a longer term one. You won’t fall apart financially and you’re already prepared for a career step, so why not be an advocate for yourself at work.
Another piece to this puzzle is building up a strong professional presence in your field. The way to do this is to make yourself known to people in your field beyond just your employer, particularly to those who may be involved in decision making. Do this by participating in professional groups (especially locally, if that’s available), participating in online groups related to your field, attending and being actively involved in professional meetings and conferences, and being helpful to those in your field that you can help (particularly when you’re not directly competing with each other). The more that you’re “known” as a positive force in your field, the better off your career prospects are going to be.
There is one final ingredient in this pie, however: you need to have the self-confidence to do this. It takes a degree of self-confidence and willingness to stand up for yourself in order to stop being an expendable employee who gets the raw end of the deal.
Assertiveness is that middle ground between passiveness (that’s the person who gets the raw end of the deal) and aggressiveness (that’s the person who runs roughshod over the rights and values of others). There’s a balance to be had there – you need to value your own needs and goals while also respecting the existence of others. It’s that state that strikes the balance best between your needs and the needs of others in the workplace. It doesn’t have to be all one (passive) or the other (aggressive).
So, how can you be more assertive at work? The first step is to set some boundaries by identifying what you personally won’t negotiate on. These may be things that you’ve negotiated on in the past, but if those things are untenable to you, you need to stop negotiating on them and never do so again. This may include things like a minimum salary, working hours, or workplace boundary issues. Focus on what really matters to you and what you would need at a minimum to be a happy employee. Then, simply don’t negotiate on those things, and if you don’t have them, allow yourself to be a little aggressive in getting them back. Be clear about them, too.
You need to take responsibility for your own problems. No one is going to come along and magically fix the things that you don’t like in your life. Stop waiting for your boss to make things better, because your boss isn’t going to do it unless you make it happen yourself. If you keep waiting for your problem to be fixed or for your boss to notice your exceptional work, it’s not going to ever happen. You have to make your problem known (in an appropriate way) and have a plan ready to fix it, and you have to make your good work known (in an appropriate way). Also, remember that you are only responsible for your own behavior. You can’t make other people behave a certain way, but only you decide how you behave. No one else can make you behave a certain way – you choose to do so.
A good first step on the path from passivity to assertiveness is to simply identify the two or three most pressing issues you have with your current job situation, formulate reasons why they need to change and a plan for those changes, and bring them up to your boss. Again, this becomes much easier if you’ve broken the “golden handcuffs” and even easier if you’ve made yourself a valuable asset in terms of the marketplace of your career.
All of these actions serve to facilitate one core goal: you want to transform the situation where you’re an expendable employee that relies on his or her employer to a situation where you’re less expendable and much less reliant on your employer. You are shifting the relationship from your dependence on your employer to a relationship of equals, and everyone benefits from that. You benefit because you’re no longer burdened by low pay and poor treatment, and they benefit by having a much better and more engaged employee.
This all starts with you. Start by breaking the “golden handcuffs” and building a little bit of financial independence for yourself. While doing this, bolster your professional situation by building yourself up into an employee that’s valuable at your position at any company, not just your own, and tell the world about that transformation. Finally, build up some assertiveness and develop a plan for the changes you want to see in your working life.
If you do that, you’re going to alter the equation in your relationship with your employer in a way that’s very beneficial to you and your career while also providing more value to your employer along the way. If your employer doesn’t see it that way, you have the tools you need to move elsewhere, where you’ll be more appreciated and the relationship is closer to equality.
Good luck!
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The Key to Saving on Car Loan Interest: Treat It Like a Mortgage
I, like many, rely on my car to get me to and from work every day, and to ferry my toddler to daycare and various playdates. My former — paid off — Mazda2 wasn’t cutting it size-wise, so I made the decision to upgrade to a new Subaru Outback, which had plenty of room for my family.
Unfortunately, buying my car meant I now faced a somewhat painful monthly payment on top of all my other bills, like mortgage, food and utilities.
I started looking into how I could pay off my loan and was immediately surrounded by intimidating lingo about interest rates, loan terms and additional payments. So I did what every Penny Hoarder would do — I researched the best ways to achieve my goal and set off on my loan-ending mission.
Understanding Car Loan Interest Rates
You want to pay off your car loan ASAP to avoid paying extra interest. Depending on where you source your loan and your credit score, your interest rate can be anywhere between 2% and 25%, according to Nerdwallet. Bankrate’s interest rate tool shows the average consumer paid around 5% in interest in February 2018.
You also need to understand the type of interest you’re paying on your loan.
With a car loan, the lender will likely charge you simple interest, which is calculated solely on the principal balance of the loan.
Some lenders, however, charge something called precomputed interest. To determine how much you’ll pay, your lender will take the original term of your loan — say, 48 or 60 months — and use it to calculate how much you’ll pay total.
With precomputed interest, you cannot make extra payments to just the principal balance, so you end up paying the same amount whether you pay off your loan early or not.
If you’re stuck with a loan that charges precomputed interest, see if you can refinance with a lender that charges simple interest instead. Banks and credit unions are more likely to use simple interest.
When shopping for a car loan, make sure you ask how the lender calculates interest and stick to simple interest whenever possible.
Treat Your Car Loan Like a Mortgage
Many experts recommend adding a 13th payment each year to pay down your mortgage faster. Let’s apply that same thinking to knock out your car loan.
According to Payoff, you could pay off a 60-month loan for $10,000 in just 49 months by making an extra $500 payment each year. That would save $468.88 in interest over the life of the loan.
But scrounging up an extra $500 a year is easier said than done. Gina Horkey with the Huffington Post recommends nabbing that 13th payment by asking your lender if you can split monthly payments into biweekly payments.
This especially makes sense if you’re paid every other week. Spreading your payments out this way means you’ll end up making 26 payments, which is the equivalent of 13 full payments in a year.
Pay Extra When You Can
My monthly car payment was $325, but I had budgeted $350 before I began shopping for my car. So, rather than paying the minimum each month toward my loan, I paid the full $350.
With just that extra $25 each month, I paid an extra $300 per year on my loan. If I had just done this for the life of the loan and nothing else, I would have paid it off four months earlier and saved $108.77 in interest, according to Bankrate’s car loan payoff calculator.
Use Your Skills
Need some extra moola to help pay down your crazy car loan? Consider your skills and see if you can find a side gig to help you earn more.
For me, that skill was writing. I earned extra money on the side with freelance writing, which helped whittle my loan balance down to an amount I was comfortable paying off from my savings.
Maybe you’re good at math and can tutor on the side, or perhaps you love dogs or kids and can spend some time dog sitting or babysitting to earn extra cash. You can even put that car to work driving for Uber and getting five stars for that authentic new-car smell.
Whatever your skill, make sure the money you earn goes directly to your car loan.
Consider opening a separate bank account to directly deposit your side-gig money into, then empty the account toward your car loan each month.
No matter what you do to pay off your car loan early, you’ll love the feeling of making that final payment and knowing that your paycheck will be that much bigger in future months.
Catherine Hiles is a writer and editor living car-loan-free in Ohio. She plans to keep her ride as long as possible to avoid adding another loan to her monthly expenses.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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A Step-By-Step Plan for Naming Your Business
By Dawn Berryman Have you recently started a business, or are you in the process of launching one? Have you chosen a name for your business? If so, how did you go about it? A name leaves a first impression. A name gives a customer their first glimpse into your company and what you do. […]
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Five Tasty Ways to Use Discarded Sourdough Starter
If you, like me, have been sucked into the sourdough bread craze and are nurturing a starter on your kitchen counter or in the back of your fridge, you probably hate tossing the discard — even though you know it’s important to keep your bread baby manageable.
By dumping that discard down the drain, you’re both sending dollars down with it and likely gumming up your sink disposal. (And forget tossing it into the trash — after a few days, the smell will take over your kitchen.)
Sharing it with friends who want to cultivate their own batch is typically option No. 1, but their enthusiasm will run out way before your discard does. Luckily, you have more delicious options to choose.
If you’re the sort who likes to play in the kitchen and experiment with recipes, Cultures for Health (my go-to site for learning to make any fermented or cultured foods) has a few suggestions. A recipe generally works well using discarded sourdough, they say, when it meets the following:
- The hydration called for in the recipe matches that of the starter;
- Sourdough starter is included for flavor and sourness, and not for fermenting the grains or for leavening;
- No leavening agent is required.
As much as I love to bake, I still prefer to follow someone else’s recipe, so I’ve gathered five here to help you put that gloppy leftover mixture to good use.
Pancakes or Waffles
Google sourdough pancakes and the results are almost overwhelming. But this one-bowl recipe by Tastes of Lizzy T might make you forget about ever making bread out of your starter again.
I found, just as Lizzy says in her post, that they were “soft … fluffy … just barely sweet.” And for me, the sourdough flavor was a perfect complement to pure maple syrup, so make sure you’ve got some of that on hand too. (Sourdough waffles are also pretty common. I don’t have a waffle iron so I haven’t tried them at home, but even the folks at Saveur magazine say sourdough produces some of the “lightest, crispiest waffles they’ve ever eaten.”)
Banana Bread
When I began my search for discard recipes, the first one I came across was for this sourdough banana bread by Cultures for Health. I happened to have two overripe bananas and a cup of discard on hand and thought I’d give it a shot.
This particular recipe intrigued me because I like my banana bread heavy on banana taste and light on any other added spices or flavors. It was easy to prep and baked up like a dream. While it was a little tangy for my taste (which may just have to do with my particular starter), my husband really enjoyed it, and I would definitely bake it again.
Soft Pretzels
I’m a sucker for a soft vendor-style pretzel, and frozen ones don’t quite cut it, so this King Arthur Flour recipe has been sitting on my to-attempt list for a while. One of the benefits of this recipe is that you can use your fridge-starter cold, versus some recipes that call for feeding the starter, bringing it to room temperature, and/or resting it on the counter overnight before use. Most of the ingredients are pantry staples, but you’ll need to pick up powdered milk and coarse pretzel salt.
Pizza Crust
Homemade pizza really is the best. When it comes to adding in sourdough to the crust, it can be used simply to add flavor, or to help the dough rise. I’m leaning toward ease (and therefore flavor) here, and sharing this Genius Kitchen recipe, which requires just a short 30-minute rest after you’ve mixed it up.
One thing to note: Many of the discard-based recipes out there call for one cup of excess starter. This one needs 1½ cups. If you don’t have enough from one feeding cycle, you can collect and store discard in the fridge separately from your main starter until you have enough. Do know that the longer you keep it this way, the more sour the batter will be.
Crumpets
They sound fancy, and you could serve them with afternoon tea, but more likely this British staple will just take the place of your toast or English muffins at breakfast. I’m a big fan of Clotilde Dusoulier’s Chocolate & Zucchini website, and what’s particularly great about this crumpet recipe is that she also offers up a suggestion for hacking DIY crumpet rings out of empty tuna cans. Once you’ve got those, all you need is excess starter, sugar, salt, baking soda, vegetable oil, and some options for toppings (apple butter, almond butter, and marmalade are some of my favorites).
If you’re not ready to take on a whole recipe, here are two more pretty easy ways to do something productive with your discard:
- Compost it: While it’s not necessarily the most exciting option, it’s worth knowing that, yes, you can compost discard. The folks over at King Arthur Flour say the simple mixture of flour, water and microbes is a great accelerant, and can be stirred right into your bin. (Feel free to whisk some cold water into it to thin the consistency a little if you want to make adding it into your compost easier.)
- Make a loaf of bread — in a bread machine: When I don’t have time to commit to baking up a gorgeous boule, but still want some sourdough bread for the week, I pull out my bread machine. It feels a bit like cheating, because machine recipes call for extra yeast, and there’s very little work involved on my part, but it’s still dang tasty. If you own a bread machine, make sure it either has a sourdough or European setting, or alterable cycle programming. It’s also worth noting that bread machines can help cut down the hands-on time for standard loaves. Thanks to advice from my starter-baby momma, JL Fields at JL Goes Vegan — who regularly posts lust-worthy photos of her sourdough loaves on social media — I use my machine to mix and knead my dough, before transferring to a bowl for the rise period.
Got any favorite recipes for your sourdough discard? Share them in the comments!
Related Articles:
- Homemade Bread: Cheap, Delicious, Healthy, and Easier Than You Think
- 18 Ways to Use ‘Old’ Food
- Our Family’s Eight Favorite Slow Cooker Recipes
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