5 Benefits of Studying Abroad (And Why It’s a Shrewd Career Move)

In a career workshop focused on teaching University of South Florida (USF) students how to constructively talk about their study abroad experiences, some descriptions were banned from the discussion.

Amazing. Awesome. Life-changing.

Studying abroad no doubt ticks all three boxes. So why were they banned?

“We want to see students dive in a little deeper,” said Chris Haynes, assistant director of student services at USF’s education abroad office.

By dive deeper, Haynes wants students to articulate exactly how their study abroad experiences translate to tangible skills.

Whether applying for grad school or trying to land a good job right out of college, studying abroad prepares students for the future in ways that might not seem evident at first.

Here are the biggest benefits of studying abroad.

1. Distinguish Yourself From Other College Grads

Studying abroad helps graduates stand out from their peers, as less than 8% of bachelor-degree seeking students studied internationally in the 2017-2018 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE).

“Employers look very positively upon study abroad,” said Lesa Shouse, director of the career center at USF’s St. Petersburg campus. “And I think it’s going to continue to grow.”

In October 2017, the IIE released a comprehensive study that examined the employability of 4,500 study abroad alumni. 

Dr. Christine Farrugia, head researcher and author of the study, said there’s been an assumption in the higher education industry that studying abroad helps alumni land jobs. But she wanted to put that assumption to the test with empirical research.

The biggest takeaway?

“There is an association between studying abroad and positive career outcomes,” she said. Among those positive outcomes, respondents reported technical- and soft skills development, improved self-confidence, job offers, promotions and more.

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2. Sharpen Your Soft Skills

For a long time, college students have been told: You need engineering, computer science or coding skills because STEM jobs are the best paying and most in demand. 

But that’s not the whole picture.

In 2013, Google conducted an experiment on its own hiring and promotion practices. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the best coders or computer scientists probably performed the best at the company, right? 

Wrong. Google audited all of its recruitment data since 1998 and found that the top factors of career mobility within the company were all soft skills — problem solving, communication and insight into others. 

Worried about the costs of international education? We compiled a list of study abroad scholarships to get you overseas for cheap — or free.

And according to Farrugia’s research, study abroad alumni reported huge increases in those exact skills. In her research, she defines these skills as the “most desired by 21st century employers.”

In terms of career trajectory, those soft skills also happen to be what makes a good manager.

“As your career progresses, and as you get into the working world,” Farrugia said, “you’re going to find that… technical skills are important but not enough.”

3. Jumpstart Learning a Second Language

Year after year, employers report that fluency in a foreign language is a sought-after skill. And there’s no better way to learn a foreign language than to be embedded in a country where it’s spoken.

Besides the cognitive, spatial, problem-solving and metalinguistic benefits of learning a second language, it’s also practical. Bilingual workers earn 5% to 20% more than their English-only counterparts, according to Salary.com.

As IIE’s employability study notes, the length of the study abroad program is a big factor in making gains in a foreign language. Studying abroad for an academic year had the “strongest impact” on foreign language and communication skills.

As the job market continues to globalize, experience with different cultures is at a premium. Nothing says “나를고용해요!” (Hire me!) like second-language skills.

“What better way to stand out on a resume or in an interview?” Haynes said.

4. Expand Your Network

Studying abroad offers a host of opportunities to meet new people: professors, international students, locals and potential employers — all of whom can enrich your personal and professional life.

According to research from Gallup, establishing a connection with a professor and finding a mentor in your career field are two crucial factors in having a fulfilling college experience. Those bonds are often overt goals of international education programs. 

For example, “faculty-led” programs are a growing trend at USF and campuses across the nation. These types of programs are led by U.S. professors who take small groups of their university’s students overseas, often with much lower student-to-faculty ratios than a typical class. The effect, for students, is that they can directly interact and work with their professors, who were otherwise orators in stadium-sized lecture halls.

Pro Tip

Depending on where and how long you studied abroad, you may be eligible to join your host school’s alumni network, which could lead to additional opportunities.

And when USF students return to campus, they have an organization of fellow travelers ready to greet them and several career advice programs at their disposal.

“Even if you’re not planning on having an international career,” Farrugia said, the benefits of studying abroad will help you back home.

5. Nail the Job Interview and Land Your Dream Job

Recent college grads generally don’t have years of work experience, but international experience is a big asset. Being prepared to talk about it on your resume, in your cover letter and in the job interview is key.

But you may not be asked about your travels directly, so it’s up to you to connect the dots. The best way is to inject your international experience in answers to common interview questions.

“You’re going to have some kind of questions about how you deal with people that are different than you, or how you deal with difficult people,” Shouse said.

Bingo. Those are ripe for study-abroad anecdotes.

“It gives you those concrete examples that interviewers are looking for,” Shouse said. “You’re able to talk specifically about an experience and how you learned from it.”

So yes, studying abroad is amazing and awesome and life-changing. But at the end of the day, it will also help you land a job.

“We’re not doing it just to send students to Spain,” Haynes said. “We’re trying to prepare them for the workforce.”

Adam Hardy is staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. He studied abroad as a low-income, first-generation college student. That gave him the self-confidence to move to South Korea, where he taught grade schoolers and North Korean refugees. Read his full bio, or say hi on Twitter @hardyjournalism.

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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Dear Penny: I Don’t Have a Credit Score. How Can I Build Credit?

Dear K.,

When you don’t use credit for a long time, you become a blank slate to the credit bureaus. They have no information about how you’ve used credit in the past, so they can’t predict how risky a borrower you are.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reports that about 1 in 10 adults in the U.S. is “credit invisible,” meaning, like you, they don’t have a file with any of the three major credit bureaus.

When you haven’t had an active account that’s regularly reported to the bureaus — which will almost always be a credit card or loan — in the past 24 months, there’s a good chance you won’t have a credit score. 

That’s kind of ironic when you’re 59 and haven’t owed anyone in years, huh? You’ve managed to survive without debt, which seems like a show of financial responsibility.

But credit scores don’t measure of your overall financial health. They don’t show how much you earn or how much you have saved. They don’t reflect all the timely payments you’ve made over the years on rent, utilities and other bills, which are rarely reported to the credit bureaus. They simply provide a three-digit snapshot of how you manage debt.

When you don’t have a score, you represent a big unknown to financial institutions.

So your challenge is to get creditors to take a risk on you. It’s not impossible. But you’ll have to start small, and you’ll pay more in fees and interest since lenders are taking a chance.

Usually the easiest way to build credit is by opening a credit card. Look for a card marketed as a starter card, ideally one that doesn’t have an annual fee.

If you can’t get approved for a regular starter card, you’ll probably have better luck when you apply for a secured credit card. You’ll put down a refundable deposit and use that deposit as your line of credit. After a year or so of making on-time payments, you’ll usually qualify for a regular credit card. Your issuing bank may even agree to convert your secured card to a regular one.

You could also apply for a store credit card, as these typically have lower minimum requirements to open compared with regular cards.

Credit-builder loans are a less common alternative to credit cards. They’re typically offered by small banks and credit unions. These work backward from regular loans, in that you make payments on a principal amount plus interest in installments, usually over two years or less. It’s only after you finish making payments that you’ll get your loan balance.

Regardless of how you start building credit, making on-time payments every month is hands-down the most important thing you can do to earn a healthy credit score.

If you go the credit card route, it’s important to make regular purchases with it so you can make payments on it. You’ll only build a credit history if you’re making payments that are reported to the bureaus.

A word of caution here: When you first get a credit card, your limit will be pretty low — often $300 or less. So you’ll only want to use your card for small purchases, because keeping your credit utilization ratio, or the percentage of credit you’re using, as low as possible is the second-most important credit score factor.

Try not to let your credit card balance get higher than 30% of your limit, and aim to pay off the balance in full each month.

The good news here is that it shouldn’t take too much time to establish a credit history. Within about six months, you should have a credit score. And while it typically takes about seven years to attain an excellent credit score, you can prove yourself creditworthy in far less time.

Once you’ve built a solid credit history, you might want to use it for a larger purchase like a home or car, which can be tough to make without financing.

But in the meantime, don’t change a thing about your spending. Just use your credit for purchases you would have otherwise paid cash for. 

Keep living like you don’t have credit even once you get it, and you’ll do just fine.

Robin Hartill is a senior editor at The Penny Hoarder and the voice behind Dear Penny. Send your questions about credit scores to AskPenny@thepennyhoarder.com.

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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What happens to the inheritance tax allowance of couples when one spouse dies? Is it cut in half?

What happens to the inheritance tax allowance of couples when one spouse dies? Is it cut in half?

I read in Moneywise that the amount that couples can pass on tax free is double that of individuals. But what if one spouse has died? Would their children still be able to claim this when the second parent dies?

Patrick Connolly Fri, 01/03/2020 - 14:06

From

CJ/Orpington

Inheritance tax can be payable if the value of somebody’s estate, on their death, is more than £325,000. This is because individuals will typically benefit from a nil-rate band amount of £325,000, which means that the value of their estate up to this amount is exempt from tax.

UK-domiciled married couples and registered civil partners are allowed to pass assets to each other during their lifetime or when they die without having to pay inheritance tax, no matter how much they pass on. This is known as spouse or civil partner exemption.

In addition, the survivor of a marriage or civil partnership can claim the proportion of their partner’s nil-rate band which wasn’t used on their death in addition to their own entitlement. This means that if the deceased partner did not use any of their nil-rate band, perhaps because they left everything to the surviving partner, then the surviving spouse can benefit from a nil-rate band allowance of up to £650,000. So the answer to your question is yes.

The transferable allowance benefit also applies to the residence nil-rate band, which was introduced in phases from April 2017. This allowance is available for individuals who pass on a residence to direct descendants such as children or grandchildren, but also stepchildren, adopted and foster children. The residence nil-rate ban allowance is currently £150,000 a person, although it will rise to £175,000 per person from April 2020. These amounts are capped subject to the value of the property.

If unused by the first partner, the allowance can be transferred to their spouse or civil partner on death, meaning a couple could have a combined nil-rate band allowance of £1 million from April 2020. 

Patrick Connolly, certified financial planner at Chase de Vere

Do you have a money question for our panel of experts?

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If you have been treated unfairly by a firm send the details to Moneywise’s Fight for your Rights and we could take up the fight for you.

Email fightback@moneywise.co.uk

If you have a question about your investments or investing in general, put it to our Investment Doctor.

Email editor@moneywise.co.uk

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Email advice@moneywise.co.uk

Would you like a full money makeover? We will arrange a free one-to-one meeting for you with an FCA-regulated independent financial adviser worth over £2,000.

See Moneywise.co.uk/money-makeover for more details.

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Deal of the week: Get a Big Mac for 99p and 23 more McDonald's offers

Deal of the week: Get a Big Mac for 99p and 23 more McDonald's offers

McDonald's launches three weeks worth of food deals through its app. 

Brean Horne Fri, 01/03/2020 - 12:32

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From Saturday 4th January, McDonald’s will be offering 24 deals in 23 days, exclusively through the My McDonald’s App.

The first deal available will a 99p Big Mac, which will save customers £2.40 on average from the normal price. 

Early risers on Sunday 5 January will be able to grab a free Single McMuffin for breakfast until 11am. 

The remaining 22 deals will be announced throughout January and can only accessed through the My McDonald's App. 

The app is available for download on Apple and Android devices. 

Ben Fox, marking director for McDonald’s UK&I says: “We’re excited to offer customers 24 deals over 23 days to brighten up the month of January.

"The daily deals are exclusively available through the My McDonald’s App, which also enables our customers to beat the queue, enjoy table service, customise orders and remember their favourite orders.”

How does the My McDonald's App work?

Once downloaded, you can can use the My McDonald's App to browse through the food menu.

After selecting and paying for your meal through the app, your selected McDonald's will start preparing your food when you're close to the restaurant. 

You can then choose to collect your meal at the counter or have brought over to you via the McDonald's table service. 

The My McDonald's App allows you to collect and store loyalty points for the McCafé too. 

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HSBC launches £175 bank switch bonus for new customers

HSBC launches £175 bank switch bonus for new customers

Eligible customers could get a three-figure cash reward for opening an HSBC bank account.

Brean Horne Fri, 01/03/2020 - 08:43

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HSBC has relaunched its popular £175 current account switching incentive for new customers opening a Premier or Advanced bank account.

The bank is also offering a £75 cash bonus for those switching to its basic current account too.

To be eligible for the bonuses you will need to switch accounts via the Current Account Switch Service (CASS) and set up two direct debits or standing orders within 30 days of opening the account.

You must not have been an HSBC current account holder since 1 January 2017.

For the HSBC Advance account, you will also need to pay in a minimum of £1,750 a month or £10,500 every six months, excluding transfers from other HSBC accounts.

Meanwhile for the HSBC Premier account you must pay in your full salary and satisfy one of the following three criteria:

1. Have an income of £75,000 and have either a HSBC mortgage, investment, life insurance or protection product;
2. Have savings or investments of at least £50,000 with HSBC;
3. Hold HSBC Premium in another country.

All three of HSBC’s accounts give customers access to a regular saver paying 2.75% on monthly deposits of between £25-£250.

How does HSBC’s switching deal compare?

While HSBC’s switching bonus is the highest-paying incentive in the market right now, it requires the highest monthly pay-in.

The table below shows how the HSBC switching deal compares to other banks.

Account	Reward	Pay-in	Deadline
HSBC Advanced	£175	£1,750 per month	Ongoing
HSBC Basic	£75	None	Ongoing
first direct 1st account	£100 + 0% overdraft	£1,000	Ongoing
M&S Bank	£100 gift card + £80 gift card after 1 year	£1,250 per month for second gift card	6th Jan 2019

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Premium Bonds January 2020: are you a winner?

Premium Bonds January 2020: are you a winner?

The first Premium Bond winners of the decade have been announced

Brean Horne Fri, 01/03/2020 - 07:44

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Two lucky Premium Bond holders have won the first £1m jackpot prizes of the decade.

The first number randomly selected by ERNIE was 244DT242763, which belongs to a man living in Hertfordshire who purchased his winning Bond in April 2015.

He has a total holding of £40,000 in Premium Bonds and becomes the tenth jackpot millionaire from the county.

January’s second jackpot recipient is a woman from Cheshire East with the winning Bond number of 278CW859665.

She bought the winning Bond back in August 2016 and holds the maximum amount allowed in Premium Bonds with a total holding of £50,000.

She becomes the ninth winner in the Cheshire East area to be visited by Agent Million

The winners were visited by Agent Million, on New Year’s Day to receive the good news.

In the January prize draw, a total of 3,471,112 prizes worth £99,215,975 will be paid out.

Since the first draw in June 1957, ERNIE has drawn 466 million prizes with a total value of £20.1 billion.

The table below shows the January 2020 Premium Bonds prize breakdown.

Value of prize	Number of prizes
£1,000,000	2
£100,000	6
£50,000	12
£25,000	23
£10,000	59
£5,000	119
£1,000	1,984
£500	5,952
£100	27,221
£50	27,221
£25	3,408,513

Unclaimed Premium Bond Prizes

There are now more than 1.7 million prizes worth over £64 million still waiting to be claimed by Premium Bonds holders.

In Hertfordshire, for example, there are 38,407 unclaimed prizes worth over £1,366,000.

The highest value unclaimed prize is worth £10,000, won in December 2017 with Bond number 148LB252543.

In Cheshire East, a total of 9,094 prizes worth £322,875 have been unclaimed.

The highest prize waiting to be claimed in the area is £1,000.

You can check your Premium bonds and whether you’ve one on the NS&I website, via the Prize Checker app on iOS and Android or through an Alexa-enabled device.

Premium Bond holders can also opt to have winnings paid directly into their bank or building society account, to make certain that their prizes are always claimed.

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How to Send Money Securely Through the Mail

Over the last few years, I’ve become completely accustomed to sending money electronically for pretty much every purpose. I use online bill pay for almost all of my transactions. I use credit cards for a lot of merchant transactions. I use Venmo and PayPal to give money to my friends (and to receive money from them).

Yet, every once in a while, I find that there’s still some reason why someone wants me to send funds through the mail.

Sending money through the mail comes with a lot of security risks. Your envelope is handled by quite a few people along the way and if one of them opens that envelope, they have access to whatever’s inside the envelope and whatever information it contains. This goes beyond simply cashing a check — they may be able to “wash” that check and change the amount or simply scrape your banking account information, name, and address right off the document.

This leaves us with a key question: how does one send money through the mail with maximum security?

As with most things, there are a bunch of options and tactics, each with different costs and benefits and drawbacks. Here are some of the most cost-effective options and strategies you can use that get rid of most of the risks of sending money through the mail.

Never, ever send cash through the mail. The second someone opens that envelope, that money is gone. I wouldn’t send cash to a person I trusted deeply simply because of the risk of sending cash, as it’s completely irrecoverable if it’s stolen.

The only time I might even consider it is if I were slipping a $5 bill into a child’s birthday card or something like that, where the effort and drawbacks of writing and sending a check aren’t worth the cost.

Rather than sending a check, send a money order. You can get a money order at most post offices for a small fee (currently between $1.20 and $1.60) and you can get them even cheaper at Walmart, where the fee is currently below $1 for money orders up to $1,000.

The advantage of a money order is that it can only be converted back into cash by the recipient at the designated location (the post office or Wal-Mart) with some identification. Even better, a money order does not have personal identification from you on it, plus you can usually track it and ensure that it’s been cashed (I can personally verify that the postal service has a nice money order tracking system).

Yes, it comes with that pesky fee attached, but it definitely makes sending payments through the mail much more secure.

Send a cashier’s check. Another option is to send your money via cashier’s check, which is a special document that can be prepared at your bank. In essence, a cashier’s check is a more secure form of a check that’s also more reliable for the recipient because your bank is guaranteeing the check, not your personal guarantee. Cashier’s checks usually come with a few security features that minimize the security risk of sending one. It does come with a fee that varies from bank to bank.

Use indelible ink. Whenever you send a payment document through the mail, especially a check, use a pen that has indelible ink to send it. This way, the check cannot be “washed,” meaning that a nefarious person can’t remove the ink from the check and write in a different amount.

While this doesn’t guarantee that the check was cashed by the correct party, it does ensure that no one will be tampering with the amount on the check.

Send a restricted check. You can restrict what the recipient can do with the check by simply flipping the check over and writing “for deposit only to account of payee” in the endorsement section on the back of the check. This means that the check can’t be signed over to someone else and makes it much more difficult for anyone to cash the check unless they’re, well, the person whose name is on the check depositing it straight into their account.

Whenever I’m sending a check to anyone I don’t strongly trust, I always do this by default without any problems.

Make sure the check is well disguised within the envelope or package. If you’re sending it in an envelope, make sure that it’s a security envelope so that it can’t merely be held up to the light and read. A plain white envelope should never be used for sending any sort of financial document through the mail.

A better option is a bubble mailer, which will similarly restrict the ability to read the document and also severely restricts potential damage to the check or money order.

Of course, you can do both! Put the financial document in a security envelope, then pop that envelope into a bubble mailer. If you do this, fully address the inner envelope to maximize the chances that it still gets to its destination.

Put tracking on the envelope. No matter how you send it, you can get a tracking number for the envelope or package to ensure that it makes it to its destination. Again, this is a service that the post office can provide very inexpensively upon request. It usually simply involves applying a sticker to the outside of the envelope or package which is scanned upon delivery.

Send via certified mail. Another more secure option for sending money through the mail is to send it certified. This involves the postal service putting a special seal on the item that should only be broken by the recipient after signing for and providing identification for the item.

This usually requires the recipient to go to a post office with proof of identity to be able to sign for the certified letter, but it’s a very secure way of getting the item to its destination.

Double and triple-check that address before you send the envelope or package. Before you send any important documents through the mail, double and triple check the address you’re sending to. Getting a single character wrong can send the item to a completely different town or state and can even render the item lost, which would mean it’s essentially impossible to know for sure what happened to the check or money order unless it’s returned to you.

Here’s what I do. At an absolute baseline, I always write checks with indelible ink, write “for deposit only to account of payee” on the endorsement section on the back of the check, and use a security envelope. I basically won’t send anything through the mail without at least those minimal steps.

Unless I’m using a reply envelope with the address preprinted on it, I’ll request a delivery confirmation on the envelope.

As the payment size gets higher and as the trust I have in the recipient gets lower, the greater the number of security steps I take. For example, if I’m making a payment to an unknown entity for a product or service that’s not local, I’m probably going to use a money order or a cashier’s check just so my checking account information isn’t being shared with that person. If it is vitally important that the document is received by a certain time and delivered to a certain person, I won’t hesitate to use certified mail.

Remember, most security steps you take are just to ensure that you aren’t the proverbial “low hanging fruit.” None of these steps will make your envelope or package perfectly secure, but what they will do is make your envelope or package a lot less tempting than the other options in the mail. Which envelope is more likely to get swiped by a nefarious person: the envelope that can be seen through the light and reveals a check inside or the padded envelope with delivery confirmation on it? There’s going to be a lot more hassle (who knows what’s inside) and questions asked with the padded envelope, so it’s much more likely to be left alone.

That’s a good way to think of almost everything you do in terms of personal security. You’re not making everything perfectly secure. Rather, you’re making it just difficult enough that someone acting nefariously isn’t going to bother and will move on to someone else who isn’t taking those basic steps to make things a little more difficult. Use that approach with any security issue in your life (like passwords, for example) and you’ll avoid a lot of issues.

What do you do if the check doesn’t arrive? First of all, call your bank and have that specific check canceled, then send a new one to replace it. After that, keep a watchful eye on your checking account for a while to make sure that no unexpected expenses go through. If you do spot anything nefarious, contact your bank immediately as they’ll have a process in place to switch your account number and get everything fixed.

Don’t be afraid to send money through the mail, but be smart about it. Make sure that you’ve taken at least a few basic security steps and your money should arrive safe and sound. Good luck!

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Boost Mobile Family Plan: Get 4 Lines for $100/Month

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Parents, you’re all too familiar with how expensive cell phone service is. If you’ve got lines for the entire family, it’s probably a huge chunk of your monthly bills. One way to cut this cost is to buy a family bundle. 

We found a company that’ll give you four lines of cell phone service for $100 a month. That’s $25 per phone number — three times cheaper than the average. And it’s unlimited everything: unlimited data, unlimited minutes, unlimited texting.

This is a limited-time offer from Boost Mobile, a cell phone carrier that operates on Sprint’s wireless network. 

For reference, the average monthly cell phone bill is about $80, so getting a cell phone line for only $25 is three times cheaper than that.

See if Boost is the Right Fit For Your Family

If you want to bring your own phone, Boost’s compatibility checker makes it easy to see if your phone will work with Boost. Then, use the coverage map on Boost’s website to see how strong its network is where you live.

Boost also has nearly 50 new phones for sale, starting from $50, or you can choose from about a dozen refurbished phones. No matter what phone you buy, you can pay it off over the next 18 months.

For you wireless data nerds, here are Boost’s stats: HD Video streams at up to 1080p, music at up to 1.5 mbps and gaming at up to 8 mpbs.

The bottom line here is still: four lines of unlimited cell phone service for $100 a month. And if you should need a fifth line, you can add one for only $30 a month. That’s a heck of a family plan.

It takes less than a minute to see if your phone is compatible with Boost, or, if you’re tired of your broken screen and sad battery life, shop new phones starting at $50.

Mike Brassfield (mike@thepennyhoarder.com) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. He’s got little kids who want their own cell phones.

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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