Winning the Money Battle

I attended a lecture the other night about how to keep your head above water when it comes to managing your financial picture. The presenter was Adam Carroll. I enjoyed this presentation a lot. Adam was a great speaker and made it easy to understand. The main premise of the lecture was to stay out of debt. He told us that credit card companies and insurance companies want us to be in debt. They make most of their profits off customers that are in debt over their heads. What he suggested was a way for us to, in a way, be our own bank and borrow money from ourselves. At first this seemed sort of backwards, but he went on to explain how this can be done. One thing he suggested was when we graduate (assuming we do) continue to live like a college student at first. Basically, the big mistake that gets people into debt is spending money that they don't have yet. A 22 year old that just graduated and has a starting salary of let's say $50,000 will likely go out and buy a car, rent an apartment and live the life that he or she has been looking forward to. The problem is, if that money train ever stops producing for you, you have a huge problem. Monthly payments that can't be made, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, it has the potential to begin a downward spiraling vicious cycle for the rest of your life. Instead, if that college graduate lived with their parents for a year or two, ate cheap food they would be able to wipe away most of their student debt as well as save money to be used later on to "borrow from". This concept is very interesting and I buy into it completely. One thing Adam said that I had a hard time stomaching was "If I can eat it, wear it, or drink it, it does not go on plastic." He said that all of these things are consumable products. Once you eat something, drink it, or wear it, it no longer is an asset to you and that money can't be shown for. I like the idea of assets can be bought on credit but consumable products cannot, it is just a difficult rule to live by.

I thoroughly enjoyed this lecture and am glad to have attended it. Adam seems like a smart person to follow and I plan on doing that.

RFID

We just learned about RFID technology in my MIS 204 class at Penn State. This is an extremely innovative technology that will be pivotal to the success of most firms in the near future. One important thing I learned about this technology is its ability to authenticate anything using radio frequencies and antenaes. I did not know that this was the technology behind EZ pass either. Another thing I learned about this is the excited future implimentation of this technology. Once this new idea fully matures, you will be able to push your supermarket cart into a specified area, this will read all of the RFID tags on every item in the cart, which will in turn complete your entire check-out process in a matter of seconds. Observing science fiction becoming reality is exciting!


http://www.behrend.psu.edu/outreach/rfid/training.asp

Access

Today we began learning about Microsoft Access in my MIS204 class. I learned a lot because I have never worked with this program before. I now know how to name, create and input data into a database using Access. I also learned the difference between a table, field and record. As well as the significance and inter-relations between them. I learned about the different field types and when it is appropriate to use them. This was an interesting class and I look forward to applying my knowledge about this cool new program.

About me

Hello,

My name is Greg Borden. I am finishing my sophomore year at Penn State Behrend. I am in the school of business and have not yet confirmed my major. I will either be majoring in finance or economics. I entered college as an engineering student and switched to the school of business last semester which is why I am a little behind most of my peers right now. I don't really know what I am going to be doing upon graduation. Hopefully the job market recovers in the next couple of years or else my future is going to look very dim.