Tips from a college student

After about a 10 month lapse I am back. I have been extremely busy with school and work, and got burned out on blogging for a while but now am back and ready to update.

It has been a while since I have written anything, but I have been working my butt off trying to find new ways to make money as a college student. It has been difficult with school and my regular job, but I am working on a few different things that could end up bringing in some income. Some opportunities have more potential than others, but all are worth the time for sure. I will write more about these things very soon.

In the mean time, I have been socking away all the extra money I make into savings, waiting for a real estate opportunity. I am almost ready to buy my first investment property, and have a cosigner ready to go when I decide I am ready. I will write a post about what I plan on to do in real estate and my strategy after I update some of the other opportunities.

Stay Tuned...

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Dumblittleman has a guest post that is great for college students. It has some great websites that every college student should use that are free. Check out the list here

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Many people are going to provide you with a ton of study techniques for exams and tell you all these so-called secrets to passing exams, but lets be honest. There is no secret to passing exams, it is obvious. The basics is you have to know the material and regurgitate what the teacher wants you to know. There are some things that can help you do a little better on the exam though.

Definitly get plenty of rest the night before. If you don't you will be so tired that you can't focus on the exam and all the studying you did will be wasted.

If it is an essay exam, write wayyy more than you need to. In my experience I always get a better grade when I write way more information into it than I think I need to include, because it shows the teacher that you know your stuff. Essay grading is subjective, so you want to be on your teachers good side. Even if you don't know a lot about what you are writing about, if you write a lot of material, even if most of it is b.s., as long as it isn't just crap you will probably get a decent grade.

Take your time. Do not rush through the exam, but on the other hand don't second-guess yourself on every answer. I have realized that almost everytime I start to second guess I get the answer wrong. If you don't know the answer skip it and come back to it.

Always ask the teacher for extra credit. The worst thing they can say is no, but sometimes they will give you a very easy way to get extra credit. I think anyone would be happy to get some extra credit at the end of the semester!

Eat before you take the test. Do not eat a whole lot, because that can make you sleepy/groggy and mess up your concentration. But you do want to eat something because you can focus better with food in your stomach.

Pray. Alot. Duh.

Don't panic. Never ever ever panic during an exam. If you do, you may as well leave because you will fail. When you panic all of your logical thinking goes out the door, along with your good grade. Always stay calm and don't stress if you don't know one answer.

Make sure you give yourself adequate study time, and do a good review of the information. This one should be obvious also.

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If you open a Zecco trading account now through my link you will recieve a free book titled 'China Shakes the World'. With Zecco you receive $0 Stock trades for up to 10 each month. I opened a Zecco account 2 weeks ago and am very pleased so far. It is great that the prices are free for regular trades, and if you go over 1o or do options trades they are only $4.50 each, which is still a great deal!

If you are new to stock trading, Zecco has a community forum where members answer questions, and after reviewing it I found it to be very informative and helpful. If you have been wanting to try stock trading but have never signed up, now is the time. You can purchase just one stock if you like through Zecco, just to get the feel of it. I am starting out slow, but eventually will probably trade more.

If you sign up through my link, you get the free book and I get $50. I just wanted to put that out in the open. So don't wait, sign up now!

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I have finally given up on high yield savings accounts. Okay, that isn't completely true, but I'm going out on a limb here. With the FED cutting interest rates what seems like every day now, no one is earning any signifcant interest on their savings. The stock market is down as the recession is freaking everyone out, so I decided now would be a good time to begin investing in the stock market.

I began researching a few different stocks about a week ago and finally chose a few to begin with. I am going with Apple, Microsoft, Verizon, and J.Crew to begin with. I am watching a few more right now, but I want to see how things go and get used to things before I put too much money out there.

After choosing stocks, I realized that I needed to choose a broker or dealer or whatever you call the place you buy stocks from. I began looking online, and quickly realized I was looking for a discount online broker. So I started googling every name I had heard, E*trade, Sharebuilder, Zecco, and a few others. I decided on Zecco for several reasons, the main one being price. As long as you have $2,500 in your account, the first 10 trades a month are free. I don't plan on doing a lot of trades, so this should be perfect for me.

I read several blogs about it and all of the comments, and I read every bad story I could find about it. It appeared to me that all of the bad stories were from people who didn't do what they were supposed to, like send in the correct paperwork. And most of the problems people had were in the application process, which I found to be very simple and easy.

I have now completed the application and been approved, and everything is great so far. Many of the things I read that were complaints I noticed were not problems in the application. It was completely online, so nothing needed mailed in. I am now waiting for my ACH transfer to go through and complete funding, and then I will be ready to trade!

Check back for a complete review of Zecco once I have had time to do a few trades and see how everything goes.

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I have been analyzing my spending, and have realized that my two biggest expenses are gas and food. I'm still working on the food thing, but for gas I started doing some work on Google. I realized that I have two options: I can buy a small fuel efficient car, or I can make my truck more fuel efficient. I decided to go with the latter, because in the end that will be cheaper than buying another car, plus I don't like little cars.

After looking on Google some, I came across this website that this guy has made that talks about putting acetone in your gas and getting better mileage. At first I didn't believe it, and I'm still not convinced yet, but I was just enough intrigued to finish the article.

There are several reasons that this sounds legit to me. First of all, he emphasizes experimenting with it yourself and tracking the results. I don't see how he could make any money off of this, and it seems like he is legitimately looking for better gas mileage instead of just trying to rip you off like most people do.

Then I said, how come I haven't heard of this before? I think the oil industry is so powerful that they do their best to keep all of this out of the news. The article kind of alludes to this several times, but it just seems like everything is tied to the oil industry. All the politicians seem to have ties, rumors going around that the war is about oil, and some people are getting very rich off of it all. If it gets out that you can get significantly better gas mileage another way, then it will hurt them.

Anyway, without wasting anymore space, here is the link. Read it, if nothing else I think you'll find it interesting. I will probably try this if I ever get around to buying acetone and putting it in there. If I do I will give my results.

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Evidently the IRS decided to waste $42 million of taxpayers money so people could know they are going to get a refund soon. I love our government, they use our money in such productive ways. I mean seriously, that $42 million could not have been used any better. People really need to know that they are going to get their refunds. Who cares about starving people, or kids who can't afford to go to college, or AIDS, or the budget deficit, or the war? Lets waste money on mailings to let people know they are going to get refunds.

(sarcasm off now)

Here is the link

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