Funding Your College Education

The grumblings over the rising cost of college education are not without reason. According to College Board's annual survey on Trends in College Pricing, the average total tuition and fees paid by students at four-year public colleges and universities in 2006-07 was $5,836, while the average total tuition and fees at private colleges and universities was $22,218 for the same period. (collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/cost06/trends_college_pricing_06.pdf)
The bad news is that tuition fees are just the tip of the iceberg, as it constitutes only a fraction of the overall cost of college. The expense shoots up several notches if you add room and board to the total cost of attending college.
There are several other factors that can make college a financial burden for many. One of the biggest factors is juggling several responsibilities with education that prolongs graduation time for many students and adds to the overall cost.
But the good news is that help is available in the form of financial aid for college, especially if you're among those whose parents did not have the means to save money for college and have to depend on loans to finance higher education.
In fact, a lot of people delay going to college until they have built some savings to avoid taking loans. While it's admirable on their part to save up for college, there's a high probability that such individuals would never be able to go back to school as they get embroiled in the nitty-gritty of life.
College Financial Aid
If you want to graduate from college debt free or at least reduce it to the maximum extent possible, then it's important to explore all avenues of college financial aid. According to the College Board survey, full-time students of private four-year institutions receive an average of $9,000 of aid per year in the form of grants and tax benefits, whereas those enrolled in public four-year institutions receive $3,100 as financial aid for college. (collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/cost06/trends_college_pricing_06.pdf)
If this data is any indication, then grants play a very important role in helping students fund their education. Unlike loans that have to be paid back by students once they start earning, money for college provided by grants generally does not have to be repaid. These grants are primarily need-based or awarded on the basis of students meeting certain eligibility criteria.
A case in point is the Pell Grant, which is one of the most popular federal grants. The Pell Grant is awarded to undergraduate students who come from low-income backgrounds. The Academic Competitiveness Grant is also a federal grant available to undergrad freshman and sophomore students who demonstrate academic excellence and a propensity towards leadership and service.
In addition to these federal grants, several states also offer grants to students based on need, merit, or their chosen major. There are also other grants that are constituted especially for students belonging to certain ethnic or disadvantaged groups such as African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, etc. These grants could be administered by the government, universities and colleges, or ethnic organizations.
Scholarships are another source of financial aid for college. Unlike grants, scholarships are mainly merit-based and have to be competed for. Many individual colleges and universities also administer in-house scholarship programs that students can vie for.
So, if pursuing graduate or undergraduate programs from a college seems like an impossible dream, don't forget that financial aid can be an option for those that qualify. This might help you turn your dream into a beautiful reality!

A Financial Education in Investment Basics

Never has a financial education in investment basics been more important. Since the financial crisis of 2008 it has been difficult to find attractive investment options. The question is: where to invest in 2010 and beyond. In answering that question, this article will start you on your road to a financial education by focusing on the investment basics that few average investors understand.
You have the same basic investment options that a big money manager with a financial education from one of the best universities in the country has. The difference is that he or she has to decide where to invest billions of dollars. The good news is that there are only four basic investment options out there. The bad news is that deciding where to invest in 2010 and beyond is not an easy task. Let's look at the four options, often referred to as asset classes: safe investments, bonds, stocks, and alternative investments.
SAFE INVESTMENTS are savings products and cash equivalents like: bank CDs, savings accounts, money market securities like U.S. T-bills, and money market mutual funds. These safe investments pay interest, but with interest rates near all-time lows, they don't pay much. Most safe investments are paying less than 1% a year in interest.
BONDS are long-term interest-paying investments. Today you can make over 5% in interest income a year in bonds and bond funds. This might make them sound attractive, but there's a catch here: interest rates are presently very low and are likely to go up in the future. When interest rates go up the price or value of bonds will fall. That's the investment basics of bond investing. It's called interest rate risk, and it is real.
STOCKS were the investment option of choice for the big money managers in 2009 and early 2010. Looking at the two above investment options you can see why. The big money went into stocks and this sent prices higher. Then, uncertainty returned to the international financial scene, and stock markets fell as a debt crisis in Europe took center stage. If stocks continue to fall, deciding where to invest in 2010 and beyond will get even tougher, with only one basic investment option left to consider.
ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS are the final frontier, and they are increasing getting attention from big money managers who manage pension funds and other large pools of money. Included in this asset class: gold, silver, other commodities, real estate, and natural resources like oil and natural gas. Virtually any other investment, or security that is traded on an organized exchange (other than the first three basic investment options discussed) could be classified as an alternative investment.
Given the state of today's financial markets, you can see why deciding where to invest in 2010 and beyond is a challenge. One more thing should be crystal clear. Without a financial education the cards are stacked against you. The best way for most people to invest in all of the above asset classes is through mutual funds. Invest in all four of the basic investment options with funds; and in times of high uncertainty like today... diversify, diversify, diversify.

A retired financial planner, James Leitz has an MBA (finance) and 35 years of investing experience. For 20 years he advised individual investors, working directly with them helping them to reach their financial goals.

3 Important Tips For Writing Effective News Articles

As a journalist, you need to be very responsible when writing your news articles. Remember, your copies will be read by a lot of people. It's important that you properly educate them without sensationalizing your stories and without overstretching the truth.
Here are the 3 most important tips for writing effective news articles:
1. Accuracy. As a journalist, you are in the position to influence decisions and form public opinions. People who read your articles will most likely to think in a certain way based on the information that you feed them. Thus, it's very important to make sure that all your articles are factual. The worst thing that you can do in this endeavor is to misinform the public by distorting the truth as this can seriously damage your credibility.
2. Write simply. Writing news articles is not the same as writing academic or research papers. Don't use big, fancy words that can make it too difficult for your readers to understand the stories that you're covering. Give them the information concisely and quickly without using fillers or data that are not really important.
3. Writing style. Develop a writing style that will help you serve your purpose (to educate, inspire, and entertain your audience). Write your articles in such a way that you'll be able to get your readers at the edge of their seats. Also, find ways on how you can stand out from the crowd. Remember, every article competes for readers' attention and you need to put your best foot forward to make sure that yours will be read by your target audience.

By the way, do you want to learn more about using articles like this to drive traffic to your website and increase online conversions?

Credible News Sources

Recently, Keith Olbermann, on his MSNBC news show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, cited Fox News as the "worst persons in the world." He claimed that the Fox News Channel is blatant right-wing propaganda. He also noted that President Obama, in a recent TV interview (the same interview, incidentally, as the now-notorious fly-swatting incident, in which, according to news reports on MSNBC, NBC, CBS, CNN and elsewhere, the President demonstrates his "remarkable fly-swatting skills") claimed that there was at least one news channel dedicated to undermining his administration at all costs. Olbermann suggests that the President was referring to Fox News.
Back in the day when the Republicans controlled both houses as well as the Presidency, a period that might well go down in history as a modern-day Dark Ages or Reign of Terror, the Fox News channel was considered to be the bastion of credible news. So much so that all other news agencies were too afraid even to question their authority.
Fox News, owned by Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., had started on the premise that conventional news sources like CNN and network news operated on a principle of a subtle left-wing cultural bias resulting from the educational and social milieu of their journalists. The solution that Fox News apparently proposed was to dedicate a news channel to supposedly "fair and balanced" news coverage. "Fair and balanced" became their watchword, but it soon proved to be ironic. Over time, their supposedly objective news coverage has been exposed as right-wing propaganda that was pretty blatantly pandering to the Bush administration while they were in power.
This brings us to MSNBC's news lineup. MSNBC is a news channel that is produced as a joint venture, as the name suggests, between Microsoft (the monolithic software giant founded by Bill Gates) and NBC. Their lineup of news shows supposedly offers us the alternative to Fox News, but, as implied by Keith Olbermann, what they are really offering us is left-wing propaganda that panders to the Obama administration.
The tragic consequence of all this government pandering and institutional propaganda is that the number-one casualty in mainstream news coverage is credibility. Where are the Woodwards and Bernsteins of today, with their stunning exposés of corruption in high places? Definitely not at either Fox News or MSNBC.
Perhaps the answer to where we can find credible news sources lies with CNN--still bland and presenting the façade of objectivity while concealing a subtle left-wing bias--who now, apparently, resorts to blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook posts to supplement their on-site correspondent reports. CNN even encourages you to submit amateur videos via the "iReport" section on their website, which allows them to feature the videos on their news shows after a process of vetting and verification. In fact, in the ongoing Iranian uprisings, where mainstream journalists are being banned and extradited by the authoritarian Iranian regime, western news sources are having to rely on Twitter feeds, blogs and amateur video from Iranian citizens as their news sources.
This brings us to the argument that mainstream news organizations have recently been making against the Blogsphere, especially in the wake of such recent films as State of Play, directed by Kevin Macdonald, namely that the Blogsphere is composed primarily of amateurs who are out of their depth, whereas if you are looking for cutting-edge Woodward-and-Bernstein style in-depth reporting, you will find it only at the major news organizations who have the skills and resources at their disposal to support that kind of news coverage.
The reality--at least two of the so-called major news organizations are dedicated to producing partisan propaganda that pretty shamelessly panders to politicians while the third is increasingly resorting to the Blogsphere to provide its news sources. As for Woodward and Bernstein, they are both retired and writing books for a living.
The moral of the story appears to be, therefore, that if you are looking for cutting-edge journalism, skip the news networks and, instead, check out the Blogsphere!