Many people debate whether or not college students should get credit cards. I dont believe every student should get a credit card, but I believe that they should consider one if they can use it responsibly. I opened my first credit card while I was in college and used it to help build a strong credit score. I believe that when used properly, credit cards are a great tool and can help teach financial responsibility. However, when not used properly, credit cards can become a financial burden. That is why I put together this list of tips to help students learn how to properly use credit cards and begin building a solid foundation for their credit score.
Credit cards have many benefits, such as helping you build your credit score, extended warranties on purchases made with your credit card, cash rewards, integration with budgeting tools, ability to dispute charges, limits on liability against fraudulent activities on your card, and other consumer protections.
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This month’s CBA Record has a nice article by Mary Dory Cascino on the disposition of remains act and how it interacts with a health care power of attorney. I don’t want to summarize that article (available here as a PDF), but I do want to address a recent case that Ms. Cascino discusses in her article.
The case in question is Carlson v. Glueckert Funeral Home, Ltd., which is available as a PDF here. The case involved a woman named Eleanor Carlson, and her two children (Scott and Denise). Eleanor was evidently estranged from Denise at the time of her death, but Scott was a fiduciary for his mother in lots of capacities.
After his mother’s death, Scott made arrangements for his mother’s funeral and burial with the Glueckert Funeral Home. Soon after, Denise also contacted the funeral home, and tried to make other arrangements for the funeral and burial. At this point, the funeral home told Scott that the funeral would have to be delayed because of this dispute, but that Eleanor’s body would not deteriorate. Later, the funeral home sent the body to the Lake County coroner’s office.
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“That’ll be $187.”
I just blinked at the pharmacy technician. “And you ran that through my health insurance?” I asked. “Yep. That new medicine isn’t available in a generic yet.” I mentally started running through ways to carve out an extra $200 a month in the family budget to cover my son’s new asthma medicine without upsetting our carefully planned budget. While in shock over the out of pocket price, I was still thankful that he only had to take medicine for 6 months out of the year. Some families aren’t so lucky. I’ve had many patients over the years who have had to make the hard choice between paying for medications or paying for utilities and groceries. Prescription drugs can be brutal to pay for, even with decent health insurance coverage.
These days, I often find myself providing in-depth lessons on how to get the most out of your medications thanks to the ever-rising cost of healthcare. Here are a few tips I give my patients.
Getting the Most Out of Your Medication
- Take your medication at the same time everyday. Set a timer if necessary and stick to your schedule. Varying administration
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– The major U.S. index futures are pointing to a sharply higher opening on Thursday, with sentiment getting a boost from the plan chalked out by European leaders to solve the debt crisis faced by the region. Additionally, traders may also take kindly to some in line domestic economic data released earlier in the day. The U.S. third quarter GDP growth came in line with expectations, while jobless claims for the recent reporting week also fell roughly in line with estimates. The focus now shifts to the pending home sales index to be released shortly after the markets open.
Earnings news has also been fairly encouraging. Earlier in the global trading day, Asian stocks closed on an upbeat note, while European stocks are also rallying strongly. In line with the general increase in risk aversion, commodities and risky currencies are also advancing.
The much-awaited Euro summit concluded with the member countries agreeing on bank recapitalization, models to boost the power of the EFSF and a voluntary 50 percent haircut on the private sector’s holdings of Greek debt.
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My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.
I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr.
Good stuff I found this week: Submit My Press Release – Online press release submission tool that does a great job integrating social media.
SizeUp – Interesting startup that aims to provide research and data on large list of industries by city. Could be a nice way for small organizations to get some big data.
MailPow – This service allows you to create cards with sound. Kind of like the musical birthday idea but you get to do it for your business. They also have an option that allows you to record a message on a card by card basis to make each one a personal message.
This hasn’t been a good week for Amazon.com (AMZN) shareholders.
On Wednesday, the leading online retailer’s stock took a nearly 13% hit after Amazon posted disappointing quarterly results, and it didn’t gain much back Thursday after the shock wore off.
Folks are still flocking to Amazon.com in record numbers, with net sales soaring 44% to $10.88 billion during the last three months. Top-line growth has rarely been a problem for this dot-com speedster. The real concern here is the suddenly congested path down the income statement to a shrinking bottom line.
Taking Heat on the Kindle Fire
Selling Kindles at freefalling prices has been murder on Amazon’s already meager markups.
Investors have accepted this. It’s the price that Amazon must pay if it wants to make sure that it keeps up with Apple (AAPL) in tech gadgetry and keeps Barnes & Noble’s (BKS) Nook as a distant second in the e-reader market. However, analysts figured that Amazon would only earn half as much as it did during last year’s third quarter.
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