Graduate With a Profit : Make Money While in School

Craigslist.org is an amazing site and in my opinion is better than eBay in some cases. For those of you who don’t know, Craiglist is basically a HUGE classifieds website. It is actually ranked the 11th most popular website on the internet for US traffic according to Alexa.com, an internet traffic monitoring company. The site has various categories ranging from housing, jobs, personals, community, services (like contractors), and my personal favorite: the for sale category. Just like on eBay, someone can post something that they have for sale and others can view it, but the big key differentiating factor between eBay and Craigslist is that Craigslist is divided up by cities, so they are all local posts and Craigslist strongly discourages shipping products. If you want a unique item, then your better bet is on eBay, but if you are looking for a cheap sofa for example in your area, Craigslist has got you covered.

Bad
However, the bad thing about Craigslist is that it *could* take some time to find what you are looking for. To start a search you need to do the following:
1) Go to www.Craigslist.org
2) Select the State (Maryland)
3) Select the one city that you want to search in
4) Enter search & See results
5) If you dont see what you are looking for, go back to step 3, select a new city, perform a new search, see results, etc.

Overall: This could be a very slow process of back and forth searching. What you need to learn how to do is search Craigslist on multiple locations!

What to find: Bose 201 speakers

Use Google!
Go to Google and enter in the following query: site:craigslist.org bose 201
Good: It will show results of multiple cities that have the posting.
Bad: However, the bad thing is that they are not local.
*The more you add to your query, the better the results. But sitll, not the best.

http://www.craigshelper.com/
**WOW** - This website is my personal favorite. It gives you the ability to search by individualize cities, entire state, multiple states, region, or entire country. You can also filter it to include only posts that have a picture and various other options. The BEST feature about this is that you can have all of the results show up on one page (”staked frames” in the Options page).

http://www.crazedlist.org/
DECENT
- The ever popular “search craiglist like a madman” website. At first,
there is a lot of clicking check boxes to select which cities/states
you want to search though. When you actually search and the results
come up, it looks exactly like the “stacked frames” version of CraigsHelper. The neat feature that I DO like is the RSS feed feature which pulls the postings into an RSS feed that you can use in Google Reader. Another feature that I DO like that CraigsHelper does NOT have is that this one DOES give the user the ability to re-search without going to the main page.

http://www.craigslist-search.com/
FAIR - I’m not a fan of this. There is too much clicking, the tabs are too sensitive, and the X’s to close the tabs aren’t good. Granted you do have the option of not using the tabs, but first impression lasts for me. I also don’t like the light blue color scheme, but that’s just my personal preference, I know colors dont have anything to do with the performance of the site.

http://www.searchentirecraigslist.com/
BAD - This does the SAME EXACT thing as using the Google Query string as I described above. The only difference between the first one and this one, is that the webmaster of this website makes money for every search you perform. The purpose of the Google query search was to show that it is possible, I wouldn’t use it, but, to each their own.

http://www.craigspal.com/
Don’t know? - I haven’t used this, it is a PC Download program. I dont want to download anything for Craigshelper - if I can do everything online, I would prefer that than actual software so I can use it anywhere. I hear good reviews from a lot of people, so if you use this, feel free to post a comment.

http://craigslist-search.qarchive.org/
Don’t know? - This is simply a website that lists Craigslist programs that are either freeweare or shareware. There are too many listings to review each one.

Disclaimer: This is solely for educational purposes only, I am not endorsing any of the above providers. Enjoy!

My father loaned me this book which he highly recommended: Who Moved My Cheese? I read through the introduction of how it has helped so many people and how it is a good motivator to have people step back and look at their life, change, and how they deal with it. On the cover it says “#1 Bestseller” so I would assume it’s got to be good. Anyway, I read through it, and yes, it was indeed a great little book. There are a total of 82 pages, 13 of which was the introduction, 52 of actual story and 17 of the discussion. The author says how some people do not read the discussion part so they can interpret what the book means to them (I’m one of them). The story is about 4 characters; 2 mice, and 2 little people; all in a maze, looking for cheese. “Cheese” is just an object used in the story and can be interpreted in whatever it is in your life. Without giving away the story, it’s about how to deal with change in your life/situations. I clearly see different parts of myself in each of the 4 characters, but reading this has definitely helped put a new spin on things for me.

My personal take away is my new life after college, living at home with parents, and with my new job at Lockheed Martin. Specifically, to me it addresses how I am comfortable with my “previous life” - living with family, in the same city that I’ve lived in for over 15 years, with the same friends, and still eating ham sandwiches that my mom makes for lunch. To me, this is kind of like one of those things saying: “It’s okay, move on with your life” hinting to me to get my own place, make new friends, work hard at my new job, and to keep everything flowing smoothly - keep blogging. However, that would contradict my previous post about staying with parents. I do believe that living at home is the best thing for me right now, save money for new life expenses and then take change slowly at a time instead of jumping into it full force. But the main thing, is to be open to change and to not close it out. “Old beliefs do not lead you to new cheese.”

I am very lucky in that I have moved in with my parents so I can save some money in my new career. My dad said that I have am rent-free until August 1st, and then he’s going to start charging me $250/month. Some of my friends are like, “What?! Your parents are charging you rent?!” but seriously…$250? That is less than a car payment, insurance, food, gas costs for some people, and other rent prices around here. What is my incentive to move out? At $250/month, that type of savings could lead to some really sweet toys:

Okay out of these 3 toys, honestly, the only one I would maybe be able to afford in a couple months is the new TV…but still, you get the point. I can have dreams. And once again, with TV, Internet, Food, and Rent all included in that price, there is no way I can complain at all, I am very grateful. It is much better than living in a 1 room condo for $1,200+/month ($14,400/ year!).

Yesterday I wrote about reward checking accounts and I figure, it wouldn’t be fair if I left out the savings accounts, so today, I introduce you to ING Direct Orange.

There are some cool things about ING Direct:
1) No minimum balance
2) High yield interest (currently 3% APY)
3) FDIC Insurred
4) Easy $25 just for joining! *Only if referred from an existing account holder*

Let me put this in perspective: Say you have a current balance of $1,000. In order to earn $25 of interest at an average bank which pays 0.5% PER YEAR, you would need to invest at that same bank for 7 YEARS just to earn that. On the contrary, if you had the same $1,000 in the ING Direct account, at 3% you would earn $30. So, if you did in fact follow this plan, the first year you would earn $55.75 total ($25 starting bonus + $30.75 of additional interest on the new balance of $1,025). This in effect, is basically a 5.575% return the first year!

Catch: You can only get the $25 referral bonus if you have someone who is already an existing ING Direct account holder. Otherwise, you don’t get any referral bonus and start with whatever is your initial deposit.

Disclaimer: I am not posting this to *intentionally* make money off you. As I said before, you can get a referral from anyone who is an existing member. Whoever it is that you receive your referral from is going to get a $10 “thank you” from ING Direct to gaining a new client. I am not saying that you have to use me as your referral, but it’s an option.

How to get a referral? As a perfect transition would be to say that I can extend referrals to anyone who is interested. Simply email me your First Name, Last Name, and Email Address.

Once again, this is not an *intentional* scheme to make money off of you. I personally use this account, strongly recommend it, and have had two of my closest friends use it which they swear by it.