Welcome to Volume 3 of Monday Night Finance where we highlight recent personal finance articles.
Is college a waste of time and money? by Don’t Work Another Day
For many years the price of college has been rising faster than inflation. For many years, going to college was a great way to land a high paying white collar job and was clearly worth the investment of time and money. Now however, more and more people have college degrees, which lessens their value. At the same time, they cost a lot more (both in inflation adjusted and real dollars) than ever before. Is it time to re-evaluate whether college is a safe bet? Forrest from Don’t Work Another Day provides a lot of data in this post to help evaluate this question.
“The amount of debt American’s owe thanks to their further education now topples more than $1.5 trillion… With a “t”. That amounts to almost 10% of the entire United States Federal debt.” ~Don’t Work Another Day
In addition to providing data on the cost of college the article also provides information on jobs that don’t require a college degree. Interestingly, in the state of Oregon, the hardest to fill positions are jobs that don’t require a college degree. The top three are HVAC mechanics, sheet metal workers, and cement masons. If you do decide that college is for you, the article walks through tips on saving money such as completing some credits at community college.
18 Online Jobs to Make Money (Work from Home or Anywhere) by Financial Wolves
Who wouldn’t enjoy location independence in their job? The ability to work at home, often on your own schedule is an amazing perk. Furthermore, if you so decided, you could move to somewhere cheaper, and stretch your dollars further using geographic arbitrage. Online jobs are great way to earn an income while still retaining many of the benefits of early retirement. (See our story from Screw The Average in last week’s article)
The increased use of the internet in the recent past has brought about numerous money-making opportunities. You can now work comfortably from any location around the world and make money. ~Financial Wolves
In this article, the Financial Wolves detail 18 different jobs that can be done entirely online with location independence. I think we’ve all heard of people making a few dollars taking online surveys or being a Mechanical Turk. But the article details how to get started with other more lucrative professions, such as being a transcriptionist or a virtual assistant.
75 Dirt-Cheap Crockpot Recipes (all less than $3 per person) by Mealprepify
Food is one of everyone’s biggest expenses. For most Americans, food is their third largest expense after housing and transportation. One of the best ways to economize on your food spending is to make your own food rather than buy food at restaurants. However, it can be difficult to find time to cook. If you find yourself unintentionally buying food from restaurants more than you want to, then this post is for you!
All you’ve got to do is dump the ingredients in and set the timer. Come back in 6-10 hours and you’ve got all the food you could possibly eat. ~Mealprepify
This post has 75 different slow-cooker recipes that are all under $3 per person. (In fact, some of the recipes cost much less). The post is well written and the recipes are categorized by meal type. Are you a vegan? There’s a section for that? Eating a ketogenic diet? There’s recipes for that as well. There are so many great meals to choose from in this post. I know our family typically rotates about 10-12 typical meals. I’m looking forward to trying out at least one or two new recipes from this post to see if they will work into our regular rotation.