Entries Tagged 'Personal Finance' ↓

I wanted to take a second and let everyone know that Revolution Money Exchange extended their signup bonus of $25 to May 15, 2008! As I mentioned earlier, Revolution Money Exchange is a new competitor to Paypal that allows you to send or receive money without being charged. I’ve been really happy with it when I’ve used it.

Also remember that for everyone of you that sign up by using the link below, I get $10. It’s a great way to give a donation because you get paid to do it!

Here’s the link in case you want to run over and grab your easy $25.

A Special Theory of Productivity will be out either later tonight or tomorrow morning. It would have been done today but I can’t get it out quite right and finishing my taxes took longer than anticipated.

Thank you for your time and support.

There’s a new money transfer game in town besides Paypal, and they want your membership so much so that they are giving $25 for you just to sign up. There are no strings attached, no obligations to use the service, no trial offers that you need to remember to quit, and the process is really quick.

Actually, to be correct, I should say that you make $35, because I get $10 for every one of you that sign up - so, even if you don’t use the service, consider it as a donation that you actually get paid to give. If you don’t need to know anymore than that to get your easy $25, then click this link and sign up for Revolution Money Exchange.

Okay, so you may want to know more information if you’re still reading this. There are a lot of things I don’t like about Paypal, but the biggest thing I don’t like about it is that the recipient of the transfer is charged Paypal’s processing fee. For instance, if you were to send me $20, Paypal takes $.88. Larger amounts of money come with a larger percentage of the cut. Not cool.

Revolution Money Exchange doesn’t do that. There’s no charge for either sending or receiving money. This makes it a great service for friends, families, and non-profits, as the full amount of money is received on either end.

I believe in this service so much so that I’m a) writing about it and b) going to put it as my primary link for donations. Paypal will still be there, unfortunately, but only because I think so few people know about Revolution Money Exchange.

I appreciate your time and consideration. Sign up for Money Exchange by clicking the link. The offer is only good until April 15th, so hurry to sign up if you haven’t yet.

(Don’t forget to switch to Productive Flourishing’s new feed, if you haven’t done so already. Click here and your browser will do the rest of the work.)

This is part three of a three part series on the Identification and Removal of Leeches. This part covers financial leeches and concludes the series.

Financial Leech

Description: Financial leeches are people who drain your financial resources.

Removal:

1. Recognize that you have a leech on you

It may be hard to recognize a financial leech because they commonly attach themselves by having a legitimate problem or issue that they need help with. The financial leech, however, remains with you after the initial problem was solved and may continue to (intentionally or unintentionally) create problems so they can continue to drain you.


2. Find out where it’s actually attached:

Identify how the leech attached itself to you. Trace back to the initial problem, determine whether it was remedied, and move forward from there. If the initial problem was solved, determine why the leech is still attached to you, and figure out a way to detach it as soon as possible.


3. Calmly inform the leech that you will no longer provide it with financial support and give it a deadline to be on its own.

A financial leech has no plans to remove itself from you and may actually think that it’s not attached; this is especially the case with adutolescents. Calmly inform the leech that you will not sustain their lifestyle indefinitely and that they will be on their own after a certain date. Hold firm to that date (see note below) and make their living off of you as uncomfortable as possible.


4. Once the leech is detached from you, get rid of it immediately, as it will try to reattach itself.

The financial leech may “try” to get back on its feet after you have removed it. Make sure that the leech understands that you will not be providing it support, and under no circumstances should you give the leech any free or discretionary money. If the leech begins to struggle, point it to resources for it to support itself, but under no means should you become that resource. Note: remember that having the leech live with you is draining finances from you, as you will be paying for utilities and buying groceries.

Notes:

• A financial leech will feed on you for as long as it can or until it finds someone else to provide a better standard of living. At that point, it will move on, as your money has provided it with its standard of living for several months or years.
• Financial leeches that are removed poorly will find a way to reattach themselves. Successive attempts to remove financial leeches become increasingly difficult, as their debt and expectations have increased while your finances have decreased, and your support has only made them less capable of taking care of themselves.
• The relatively small amount of money drained by the financial leech will initially not bring about your financial ruin. You will recover your money and manage to get back on your feet within a few months. The aggregate effect of many financial leeches, or one leech that has drained you for too much for too long, may cost you your financial stability and may lead to bankruptcy, unemployment, and depression.
• Financial leeches require a relatively stable, financially secure person to attach themselves to. Less dependable hosts do not provide the standard of living they are looking for and will not be able to support them for the long-term.
• Emotional leeches are incredibly perceptive and can sense whether a person has both enough money to help them and the disposition to do so. Avoid flagrant displays of wealth or income and be careful who you disclose your financial success to.

Real leeches only thrive in very specific parts of the world, and they actually aren’t that hard to avoid. The human leeches, though, thrive world-wide and can be far more dangerous to your flourishing than the squirmy kind. If you every feel yourself being drained, take a step back and figure out if you’ve got a leech. If you do, remove that sucker and move on!

One thing that many academics hitting the job market overlook is the importance of negotiating the initial offer made by the interested institutions. (Historically, women and people of color are much less likely to negotiate for that few extra grand.) What I want to stress is how important this becomes in the long run. Let’s suppose the offer is $45,000 per year and you just take that. Assuming a 2% increase per year after twenty years, you will be earning $66,867.63 (this only factors in annual raises and not raises based upon increased seniority). Your colleague that hits the market the same year, but is just a little more aggressive at negotiating the starting salary, negotiates her initial salary up to $48,000. After twenty years, she is making $71,325.48.

So what? She’s only making roughly $4,500 more per year? Take the long view, though, and you get a different picture. In that amount of time, she has earned $77,349.95 more than she would have had she just taken the initial offer. Obviously, the difference in lifetime earnings only gets greater when you consider that most academics stay in there jobs for closer to 35 years rather than 20. In that case, she has earned $155,983.10 just because she negotiated for an additional $3,000 more than what she was offered.

Universities and colleges go into the hiring process expecting that there will be some negotiation. They work with budgets in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. The three thousand dollars you’re negotiating is a very small matter to them, but, as the calculations above show, they’re a huge deal for you. Keep the long term in mind, and ask for a higher starting salary. The worst they can say is “no,” but not asking that question may end up costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars.