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What You Need to Know About IBR Student Loan Consolidation

21 Jul

Many Americans have just earned their degrees with a June graduation, and that might mean confronting a cold, hard, and unpleasant reality: student loan debt. With tuitions rising and more and more people choosing a master’s degree in addition to a bachelor’s degree, this debt can quickly get out of hand. And when all those nice in-school deferments run their course, some students might experience some soul-crushing payments from multiple lenders that add up to $500 or more each month.

One solution to reduce the headaches—and the money flying out of your pockets—is a direct consolidation loan through the Department of Education. And there are a few reasons why this makes sense for a lot of people.

Consolidating your loans reduces three or four lenders down to one. For those of us who don’t want to spend every waking moment figuring out who has loaned what and which variable interest rates go with which lender, this is a beautiful simplification. The Department of Education will pay off all your existing lenders, stick a low, fixed interest rate on your consolidation loan, and then ask for just one payment a month instead of three or four.

 

But perhaps more importantly, ex-students experiencing some degree of financial hardship (which is not uncommon coming out of school, and particularly not uncommon in this economy) have access to repayment plans that factor in adjusted gross income (AGI) and family size in order to calculate a monthly payment that’s not so onerous. While amounts vary, a typical income-based repayment (or IBR) plan on a “biggie” total loan of $160,000, given a family size of one and an AGI of $26,000, would result in a fixed monthly payment of around $125. This is terrific relief for the same individual who might be paying $500 or $600 in a non-consolidated environment with private lenders. Naturally you’re paying more interest, but you avoid the crush of huge and often impossible payments. And that’s priceless.

There are a few catches any potential consolidator should bear in mind. The IBR plan requires regular submissions of tax forms and other supplementary financial information because the plan is based on your current income, so there is some bothersome paperwork involved. Private students loans are ineligible for federal consolidation: yes, those wonderful private loans are essentially credit card accounts without the credit cards. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly for the mightily-struggling ex-student: you’re not allowed to adopt the IBR plan if you’ve defaulted on your federal student loans. If you’re in a real financial funk and you haven’t paid your student loans in a few months, step on the gas and consolidate as quickly as possible before any defaults. Defaulting on federal loans isn’t like defaulting on credit card accounts: Uncle Sam has much bigger and sharper teeth. So IBR is truly your lifesaver in a sea of debt, and you should grab it while you can.

Have you begun tackling your student loans? Are yours already paid off?  Share your thoughts and experiences below.

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Borrowing Writing Tips from the Business World

13 Jul

When you look up “storytelling” on Google, the majority of relevant results that pop up are about oral storytelling. And the results aren’t really of the “sharing a cultural fable” variety – they involve practical information for business people or other public speakers trying to liven up presentations.

And that got me thinking – surely our kind of storytellers, the writers, can borrow some tips from these “business storytelling” techniques and translate them to the printed page. After all, the only thing better than being a writer is being a well-paid writer, right? And if the business world has found some truisms for storytelling, maybe we had better sit up in our chairs and take notice.

So let’s see what we can uncover.

Business storytelling: Convert personal experiences into engaging anecdotes
What we can take away: It doesn’t matter if it’s a swords-and-sorcery fantasy or a period fiction about the Civil War: you should always find a way to personally relate to the art you’re creating. If art (through storytelling) is about expressing an aspect of the human condition, your very best resource and inspiration is you: your own life and your own feelings and experiences. Plus, naturally your work will be more personally satisfying.

Business storytelling: Have a point, and don’t make it about “me, me, me”
What we can take away: Sure, you’re completely entitled to making a very personal story just for yourself or your family, and then tucking it away on your shelf. But if you want to write for popular consumption, you have to turn your storytelling outward and make it relatable. Your fiction can’t be the equivalent of an inside joke; you have to tap into the realities and truths we all share, and then find a way to say something significant about those realities and truths.

Business storytelling: Use stories to ingratiate yourself with your audience and get them on your side
What we can take away: We’re not exactly concerned with selling ourselves when we write a story, but there’s an undeniable “contract” that takes place between writer and reader. Just like attending a presentation, seminar, or lecture series, there is an expectation that the speaker will provide something entertaining or informative that will be worth the listener’s time. As a writer of stories, you have to walk the line between telling the story you want to tell and servicing the needs of the audience. That means concerning yourself with things like narrative intelligibility, story world believability, and character likability.

Business storytelling: Raise a question, answer it, then allow time to reflect on the answer
What we can take away: I love this piece of advice, because it’s really just one more way to state the necessity of the classic three-act structure. You get your audience’s attention by asking a question (Act I); you maintain that attention by answering that question (Act II); and then you take a moment to allow your audience to reflect upon the question and the answer (Act III). You can’t get more essential than that.

Have any more tips for storytelling? We’d love to hear from you!

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What the Charge Off Means to Your Personal Debt Negotiation

1 Jul

Unfortunately, our sagging economy has led to increased indebtedness and problems with paying off credit cards and other loans. For many Americans, and particularly those struggling to make ends meet, debt settlement may be one option.

In debt settlement, you resolve to stop paying all of your credit card bills (or other significant bills like medical bills) in a bid to settle each of them for less than what you owe. Sound scary? Well, yes and no. Your credit score will tank (scary). You will absorb a slew of robo collection calls (scary). And if left unresolved, creditors may eventually try to sue you (scary). At the same time, hey, this isn’t 18th century England – there’s no such thing as debtor’s prison. You’d emerge from debt settlement with a destroyed credit score but with a much more valuable thing – lack of debt (or at least credit card debt). A credit score can be repaired in a couple of years; soul-crushing debt can last a lifetime.

With the caveat that we’re not purporting to offer legal advice (I’m not a lawyer and I do not even play one on TV), it’s important to understand what a “charge off” is if you are considering the debt settlement option. A charge off is what happens when a debt has gone uncollected for a period of 180 days (6 months). If your credit card company has received no payment from you in 6 months, they are required to “charge off” your debt. They can no longer legally claim your debt as an asset on their books; they have to write it off as bad, and thus send it to a collection agency or a lawyer to try to collect.

Obviously, credit card companies don’t like charge offs—it impacts their bottom line and balance sheet and all that good stuff. They want to do everything they can to collect something prior to that 6-month deadline. Before, say, Day 120, they’re not overly concerned about the charge off and will do the usual robo-calls and gleefully tack on the late charges. But between Day 120 and “Doomsday” (Day 180), they’ll start to sweat.

What does that mean for you? This 60-day window before charge off is the best time for you to negotiate a steeply discounted settlement of your debt. In exchange for a lump sum payment, credit card companies have been known to offer 30%, 40%, or even 50% or more discounts. They figure that in the preceding months, you’ve demonstrated that you’re perfectly willing to not pay anything, and so something is better than nothing. Once you settle your account in this manner, the account will appear as “settled” on your credit score, which is bad but not as bad as “defaulted,” and still definitely repairable over time.

So for personal debt negotiation, the key factors are a) knowing about the charge off window, and b) your willingness to sacrifice your credit score for the greater goal of debt freedom. If you don’t give a fig about your score, the credit card companies have a lot less leverage. And that’s good news for you. If you’ve ever used these suggestions or have tips of your own please feel free to share your experience in the comments section!

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Cloud 9: 9 Advantages of Using Cloud Infrastructure

30 Jun

Finally Fast Cloud 9At Finally Fast we are currently in the process of making the switch to “the cloud”. I’ve spent countless hours this week migrating our email data from our current legacy system to Gmail’s enterprise service. Personally, I’m of the opinion that “the cloud” is very much just the buzz word of choice for technology that has essentially been available since Hotmail hit the scene in 1996, but there are several smart reasons to migrate your current legacy system over to a cloud-based one. Reasons that encompass more than just the idea that cloud computing is en vogue. In order to assist my fellow IT managers who are interested in migrating to a cloud based system I’ve put together a list of 9 reasons supporting a cloud based infrastructure. Feel free to include them in a future proposal or just in your next conversation with the CEO!

Elastic Capacity – with Software-as-a-server (SaaS), there is no physical “ceiling” to hit with your IT resources. You’re free of physical server limitations, which means you don’t have to build your infrastructure expressly for peak usage times. You can simply borrow a bit more of the cloud for your peak. And that brings us to a very concrete advantage…

It’s Cheaper! – The cloud beats up physical servers in terms of marginal cost, which relates closely to elastic capacity. As mentioned, it’s more trivial to “cloudburst” and borrow more cloud than it is to build, install, and run another physical server.

OPEX Flexibility – Outsourcing cloud infrastructure is a little like running up an electric bill. You pay for what you use, as you use it. As such, it has less of the upfront, substantial, capital investments we associate with traditional IT infrastructure. The cloud can be treated like an operating expense.

Focus Where It Should be – Not that the “dirty work” of IT management suddenly becomes nil with cloud infrastructure, but with the cloud as a bit of a “black box” compared to physical servers, IT personnel can focus on high-level IT strategy rather than low-level, down-and-dirty maintenance and related activities.

Resource Scalability – in SaaS environments, your servers can be trivially “rebooted” to run with less resources at off-peak times, or terminate entirely or partially when not needed. Try pulling that off with a physical server!

Fast Launches – Remember when server launches took many days and significant manpower, kind of like the pyramids? Cloud infrastructure can be launched and implemented near-instantaneously.

Transcience – This advantage is more subtle, but nonetheless crucial. Non-physical servers can be blown up, rebuilt, and relaunched without much of an effort. The ability to design infrastructure that can be easily replaced—that’s meant to exist only for a short time, in fact—keeps your IT nimble.

Fault Tolerance – It stands to reason that a “transient” system is more fault tolerant. Just blow it up and build a new one. Plus, virtualization can give you the freedom to break up processes that used to reside on a single physical server, and split them out into many different virtual servers.

More Secure – Splitting up the systems through virtualization also means you have the capability to multiply your access controls. It’s the idea of hiding money in several places in your house. If the robber finds one stash, you’ve still got money left over.

The 9 reasons above are very much the reasons that led me to proposing the migration of our servers to “the cloud”, but as someone who is currently transitioning to a cloud system, I’m definitely curious as to what other IT managers have experienced either during the course of their migration or post-migration. If you’ve got any tips for a smooth migration or warnings for post migration please share them in the comments!

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5 Tips to Restoring Sanity for Work-at-Home Parents

28 Jun

Finally Fast InsanityThe work-at-home life has tremendous appeal for parents. In addition to the “being your own boss” thing, you get to be closer to your young child or children, and that’s priceless. However, to establish a serious business that’s not just a hobby, you have to establish some rules, and you have to learn when to be a parent and when to be a businessperson.

In fact, the trap of working from home is the very issue of accessibility. You’re always home, and so the children expect you to be always accessible. Your children might be too young to understand there’s a time to be together and there’s a time when Mom or Dad needs to sequester themselves and work. Heck, a lot of work-from-home adults can’t even make that distinction.

In any case, it’s important to lay some ground rules, and here are five tips for walking the tightrope between parent and home-based entrepreneur:

  • Start early, start often – If you’ve spent a couple years muddying the waters between parenting and working, it’s hard to correct yourself mid-stream, and it’s hard for the children to understand the change you have to make. Prior to starting your home-based business, draw that line in the sand and develop the discipline from the get-go.
  • Schedule yourself around the kids – You probably started a home-based business to be your own boss and set your own schedule. What better schedule to set than one that maximizes your time with the kids? Whether it’s scheduling around school, dinner, family game night, or extracurricular activities, work when your kids are otherwise occupied, and take off when they’re available. It’s a win-win!
  • Establish a definite office – The children need to understand that work time is work time (and so do you). The clearest way to do so is geographically. When you have a dedicated home office, it’s easier to close the door and roll up your sleeves. When your home office doubles as the play room and the movie room and whatever else, it’s much harder to get things accomplished.
  • Keep them occupied – Whether it’s arts & crafts, a movie, homework, reading, or something else, get creative about developing activities that will keep them busy when you need to be busy. You might even involve your children in some simple aspect of your work (depending on age, of course). They’ll feel engaged, and you have an opportunity for another connection.
  • Involve a nanny – For those you can afford the luxury, a nanny offers the best of both worlds: you get to remain close to your kids, but you can also rely on a responsible adult to care for them when you need to work. There’s also the option of day care somewhere else, but that would seem to defeat the purpose, right?

As a work at home mom these tips have made a huge difference in my ability to maintain a good working / parenting balance, but I’m always open to hearing how other work-at-home parents are managing their double duties. If you’re a work at home parent and have developed other effective ways for balancing a home-based business and being a parent please share them in the comments!

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Maximizing WordPress on the Go – For Free

15 Jun

WordPress for iOSSometimes we feel a little chained to the desktop computer with blogging. What’s the secret to productive blogging on the go using the iPhone or iPad, for example? Two free plugins can help you out, and particularly if you don’t use WordPress.com to host your blog.

    

The first free app is the official WordPress plugin for iPhone/iPad. There are a lot of great things about this app, and just a couple not-so-great things. The good? How your blog is visually presented is extremely intuitive, and basic things like creating a new post, adding photos, and typing in your entry are easy. The bad? Those of us who are HTML-allergic might find the lack of a WYSIWYG editor a bit imposing. Hyperlinks in particular are cumbersome to add. The ugly? Nothing! It’s really a pretty presentation. And as an added bonus, you can change from landscape to portrait mode in iPad.

You might not want to write entire entries with your small phone or on your iPad without a physical keyboard—that gets tedious. But this plugin is essential for two activities related to blogging—checking out visitor stats, and managing comments. Integrated stat functionality is an essential tool for road warriors addicted to visitor data.

The other free plugin is called JetPack. It takes some of the best features exclusive to WordPress.com users and makes it available for all WordPress users. This includes stats, which JetPack also presents in a very palatable, easy-to-digest way. Whether you’re happy with the WordPress plugin’s stat presentation or prefer JetPack’s is largely a matter of personal taste.

But JetPack brings more to the table. A “Shortlinks” function gives you an easy way to shorten URLs within your blog in order to share them more easily. And as any Tweeter can tell you, every character counts (plus, the less you have to type on a small phone, the better). Similarly, “Shortcode Embeds” give you much simpler lines to embed media elsewhere on your blog for your newest post. You also have to love the Twitter Widget, which puts a small sidebar on your blog showing your latest few Twitter posts. That’s synergy, people! Finally, also handy is After the Deadline, a spell checker on steroids that also looks out for grammar. This is useful on the go when you’re not typing in a traditional word processor and transferring over to WordPress.

Have any tricks to share for maximizing WordPress blogging on your iPhone or iPad?

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6 Tips to Battle Computer Eye Strain at Work

13 Jun

From the FinallyFast Optical Ergonomics Desk:

EyeFatigue. Lack of focus. Blurry vision. And all-around grumpiness. These are the telltale symptoms of computer eye strain. The modern world—especially for us office folks who spend our days at a computer and then… spend all night at a computer—is hard on the eyes. And you’d definitely be less of a grump if you could fight the end-of-day strain. In that spirit, here are six steps to you can take to combat eye strain at work.

  1. Take Care of the Physical – Fighting eye strain is an all-body act. Maintain good posture, including sitting straight enough to where there’s a small space between the hollow of your back and the chair back (except in cases where there is a special lumbar support that sticks out). Keep the computer monitor a little less than two feet away from you. And the top of the monitor should roughly coincide with your eye level, such that you are looking right at or a little down at the screen.

  2. Control the Light – You should not spend long hours at the computer in a room that is either dark or extremely bright. If you take steps to make the room’s brightness similar to the screen’s brightness, your eyes won’t have to strain as much. Also, use a desk lamp near your screen. The best lamps to use are “natural daylight” lamps that mimic actual sunlight, if for the simple reason that sunlight is nourishing and energizing.

  3. Optimize Your Display – There are naturally a couple things you can do as far as computer settings go to ward off eye strain. Increasing both screen resolution (amount of pixels) and monitor refresh rate (in Hertz) can help. Decreasing brightness, particularly in dark rooms, is beneficial. And you can increase font size to increase readability of text. If you find yourself squinting or bringing your face close to the screen to read something, it’s time to increase font size.

  4. Release Tension – Frequent breaks are a must. Something like a two-minute break every thirty minutes is extremely helpful. An hour for lunch—and that’s it—is simply inferior to smaller, more frequent breaks. During your breaks, stretch and do neck rolls with your eyes closed.

  5. Wear Special Glasses – No, I’m not talking about 3D glasses (though we seem to be heading in that direction. But 3D eye strain is a whole different can of worms!). There are special treated glasses that are designed specifically to combat computer eye strain. The best glasses are not just tinted to exclude blue light; they are anti-reflective, and they also add a touch of focus strength (like prescription glasses) to reduce strain.

  6. Hot Water, Cold Water – For super-duper cases of eye strain, take an extended break and perform some water therapy. Soak a washcloth in hot water (not hot enough to burn, obviously), and slap it across your eyes like a facial. After a few minutes, do the same treatment, but with a washcloth soaked in ice-cold water. If you don’t have access to both hot and very cold water, either one is better than none, but the hot and cold alternation is very effective in relaxing the face muscles that control the eyes.

Have any other eye strain tricks that have worked for you? Let us know in the comments!

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7 Ways to Decrease Your Bounce Rate

10 Jun

Boucie BallsBounce rate is a hot topic in Internet marketing. “Bounce” refers to visitors to your site who leave before checking out any of your other pages. You want to keep your bounce rate relatively low – 50% or lower is terrific, but 55% to 60% is more realistic. Bounce rate is easy enough to keep track of with Google Analytics or similar tools.

Why strive to lower the bounce rate? Well, not only does a decreased bounce rate effectively multiply traffic, it’s a sign of “better” visitors, visitors who are more likely to convert (whatever that means for you), engage as a community member, buy products and services advertised on your site, or whatever the case might be. It’s kind of a chicken and egg situation, but some would argue that by keeping visitors around and interested, you’re actually creating better visitors.

So, in the spirit of attacking that bounce rate, here are seven tips you can try:

Quality Content! – Well, quality content is the Holy Grail of Internet marketing, right? If you’re providing unique, valuable, compelling content to your visitors, you’re going to pique their interest and they’re going to stick around. So quantity and quality of content is numero uno.

Meet Content Expectations – often, visitors will bounce if their expectation upon clicking the incoming link is not met. You can’t control the truthfulness and context of all incoming links to your website, but you can ensure you’re delivering what you’re promising with a web page’s name, headline, etc. This also means that your keyword phrases should not be misleading.

K.I.S.S. Principle – Build your webpages with the Keep It Simple, Stupid approach. Clean, readable pages with plenty of white space is key. Don’t confuse topics or bombard the viewer with too many subjects, offers, or multimedia fireworks. Use quality, relevant images.

Cut Up Your Content – Divide your content logically and stick it on different pages. This not only fulfills the K.I.S.S. principle, it will get people moving through your site. By dicing up content and making topics very specific, you’ll be better equipped to capture the valuable “long tail queries” that people are searching for.

Make It Easy to Search – You should definitely include a way to search your website. Make the search tool extremely apparent, such as at the top of the page. Don’t make it frustrating to find something on your site.

“Related” Topics and Interlinking – Particularly in a blog or news aggregate environment, create a space for related posts/links, and use copious amounts of appropriate interlinks within content.

Say “No” to Outgoing Links – Sure, there are times when you’ll want to incorporate an outgoing link. But minimize these links in favor of the interlinks. Keep traffic where it belongs: with you!

Any other techniques you’d like to share? Let us know!

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The Do’s and Don’ts of Using Lists to Get More Done

3 Jun

listYou may have heard something about “the power of list making” when it comes to productivity. Why does drafting lists of things we need to accomplish give us extra incentive to actually do those things? Let’s roll through a quick four reasons:

  1. Lists make To-Do items more real. Counselors have suggested taking our worries – the car loan, a family sickness – writing them on a piece of paper, and then burning that paper in the sink to alleviate that worry. The same principle applies here.
  2. It’s very satisfying to cross things off. There’s nothing quite like a To-Do list full of crossed- off items to instill a certain sense of accomplishment. And there is something viscerally pleasing about the act of scratching the thing out of existence (as with burning our worries).
  3. Lists provide a better picture of the day. You may have a sense of what you need to do in your head, but putting it on paper lays it out in a more graspable, at-a-glance way.
  4. The self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, it’s a self-help cliché to say something like, “If you can see it, you can be it.” But, psychologically speaking, if you write down an agenda, you’re more likely to accomplish that agenda. For this reason, it helps just as much to write down dreams and long-term goals as it does to write down the grocery list.

Now that we’ve established the “why” of list-making, let’s establish the “how” with another list of our own.

  • DO make list items short (text-wise). It’s not like you need to educate yourself on the particulars of an item. Again returning to psychology, short items are more doable (really).
  • DON’T make list items too enormous (reality-wise). To put “find a job” on your list is marginally helpful, but that’s kind of a tall order. Much better are four different items, such as “Update resume,” “Draft a template cover letter,” “Browse Monster.com,” and “Apply for four jobs.” This has the added benefit of giving you more items to cross off, which augments your sense of accomplishment. (Really, it does. The mind is a funny thing.)
  • DON’T use the computer to write your lists; use a medium-sized notebook, a cool blue or black pen, and an even cooler red pen to cross things off. Remember item number 1 above: Lists make not-yet-accomplished activities more real. So it makes sense to eschew the digital realm and get your hands dirty. Make it a mini-event.
  • DO maintain two kinds of lists; long-term and short-term. This simply mimics how the mind works, and it’s better for practical organization. Remember, no dream, career aspiration, or goal is too outrageous to put on a list. See it, and be it.

Any listing tips I missed? Let me know in the comments!

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Controlling Your Social Media Persona

6 May

Dictionary Definition of ControlOne of the many consequences of our new Internet age is that the past is always present. What I mean to say is this: y’know all those dopey things we said years ago? They’re still around to haunt us. And remember that drunken frat party picture our friend took of us? Yep, it can still crop up to embarrass us.

Naturally, as the social media gathering places du jour, Facebook and Twitter have a special potential to be that kind of bogey man. Prospective employers are now hopping on the Facebooks of interviewees, half idle curiosity and half a serious attempt to get a better sense of who they’re dealing with. There are even recent reports of attorneys mining Facebook for incriminating “evidence” in child custody cases and the like. And we’ve already had innumerable incidents of celebrities and others getting into trouble with tweets posted out of anger, haste, or just plain poor judgement. Fair, unfair… it doesn’t really matter, it’s a reality.

It all comes down to a sometimes uncomfortable blurring between the private and public spheres, the personal and the business worlds. We’re dealing with an ever-diminishing expectation of privacy. And, depending on your business or your personal associations, an opinion you post or the persona you project through pictures, tweets, blog entries, or forum comments can really and truly harm you.

At the end of the day, we all have to come to terms with the fact of our mini-celebrity status, as enabled by social media. And so we have to take a page from actual celebrities if we want to develop social media strategies for how to craft and maintain our online personas.

You have to realize what you can and cannot control. You can’t control who follows you on Twitter. Thus, anything you tweet is carried out there on the digital breeze for all to see. Think twice about posting anything angry, defamatory, low-brow, highly controversial, or otherwise objectionable content if you indeed need to control your social media persona.

Facebook is another matter. You can theoretically control the privacy of your profile, and befriend only those you really know. But we all have “friends” on Facebook we can’t explain if you paid us, and if the goal of your social media is to grow your network—which it often is with internet marketing—you’re going to have plenty of strangers among your “friends.” So, again, you can’t “pop off” on Facebook and expect to get away with it. And you have to control the pictures you are tagged in, as these also make up an important part of your persona.

So, are we saying you have to become some politically-correct, neutered robot with your social media platforms? No, because actually the blurring we talked about works both ways, and people are a little more forgiving of times you inject your private life into your public life. But you do have to be mindful, at all times, of the impression you’re transmitting to the world.

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