Shift4Freedom

A Community College Education is a Good Start

Many people search and search for the university they will attend upon graduation from high school. Eager students look forward to their time at the university while parents wring their hands hoping that their children choose to attend a university that is not only close to home but also within their budget limitations. Another worry that parents have when their children decide to attend college is whether that university they attend will have the specialized and individualized services that their children were accustomed to receiving in high school. Face it, larger universities tend to be rather impersonal when it comes to the education of their students. One of the primary reasons for attending higher education is to learn more about a chosen subject and develop networks.

One answer to all those worries and more is to transition your students from high school to a two-year college rather than throwing them to the university wolves so to speak. Many people find that two-year colleges can in fact provide superior educations to four-year universities for those first two years or foundation college level courses. You will not get the specialized or specific instruction in a two-year college that is available to upper level students on a university level but most students find the first two years of their college educations focused on getting the requirement and pre-requisite courses rather than the specialized courses in their intended field of study.

Many people also find that those first two years at a community college-transitioning from a small pond to a larger lake-are much easier to handle than going straight from high school to a university-out of the pond and into the ocean. Universities often have lower level classes as auditorium classes. These classes offer little individual instruction and are often sink or swim sorts of classes. Those students who have special learning needs are often lost in the shuffle when entering a university. Community colleges offer smaller classes and ample opportunities for tutoring as well as classes on how to learn to study.

Two-year colleges are also much easier on the budget than most universities. Most people find that community college does not place nearly the financial burdens on families that universities place. Add to that the fact that most community colleges offer very flexible class scheduling and even some courses online and you will find that there are many reasons to consider community college that go well beyond mere budgeting requirements.

Another benefit to students who wish to enter the work force sooner rather than later is that you can get a degree or certification in certain programs from a two-year college. This means that you can graduate and begin earning much sooner than if you were to attend a four-year college in search of a degree. If you aren’t sure you want to invest the next four or five years of your life in pursuit of a degree or you simply aren’t ready to commit yourself to one line of work for the rest of your life it is a good idea to spend two years in a community college rather than making the leap straight into a university setting.

If you are considering whether a community college or two-year education is the best course of action for your specific needs, I recommend creating a list of pros and cons of each and balancing your budget to see where your needs are most likely to be fully met. Remember you can always transfer to a university once you’ve completed your two-year college education or at any time during that education if you meet the universities admission requirements. Good luck and remember that your college education is one of the largest indicators of your future earning potential so take it seriously.

Don’t try to set all your goals in one day – instead, Click here to view a video with more life tips! In closing I invite you to share your commits on this and all the posts. Like us on Facebook and Google Plus. Remember to open your mind and Shift 4 Freedom.

Are You Setting the Right Goals for Yourself?

There is a lot more to goal setting than just picking a goal and moving forward. While that is important, it’s also important to ensure that you are setting the right goals at the right time so that you can truly be successful. In order to ensure that you are setting the right goals for yourself, answer the following questions:

Are You Setting Specific and Realistic Goals?

It takes a little research to ensure that a goal is realistic. If you’re not sure if something is actually achievable then you’ve not done enough research. Once you’ve set a goal that is indeed realistic, then you need to be specific enough in your description of it so that it’s also easy to take the goal, and work backwards to create a schedule of actions needed to succeed.

Are Your Goals Multifaceted?

Focusing on only one part of your life is a bad idea. People live multifaceted lives and need to make goals for all areas of their lives in order to feel successful. If you have a wonderful business and career but your personal life suffers, then no matter how successful you are, you will not feel successful. Something will always feel as if it’s missing from your life if your goals aren’t inclusive. Therefore, make sure your goals include something from each aspect of your life.

Is Your Scheduling Representative of Real Need?

Once you create the schedule for yourself to reach each goal that you’ve set, you need to truly consider how representative it is of reality. Say your goal is to be healthy and reduce your cholesterol by 10 percent in six months. But, you haven’t set aside the time needed to exercise and eat right. If you don’t schedule in the time needed, you won’t succeed because something will always be in your way taking time away from you. It will be very frustrating to practice your schedule because it doesn’t represent reality.

For instance, if you are going to exercise 30 minutes per day, setting aside only 30 minutes isn’t going to be realistic. You’ll probably need to set aside an hour to account for getting ready as well as cooling down or getting cleaned up to go back to work.

Are You Learning from Failure?

Many times when setting goals and schedules, instead of learning from failure, people give up. Using the example above, once you implement your schedule to reach the goals that you have set, when you notice there are things you’ve forgotten to take into account, don’t give up. Learn from the failure and change the schedule to be more realistic.

You might find that in practice you have to rewrite all your goals and your schedule, but this is perfectly acceptable. Many people believe failure is something negative, but the truth is, if you don’t fail sometimes you’re not going to learn much and it’s likely your goals are too easy.

Do Your Goals Represent Your Needs and Wants or Someone Else’s?

A lot of people set goals that represent what someone else wants instead of what they want. This can really cause a lot of bad feelings and resentment which can derail the best laid plans. As you set your goals for your life, ask yourself if they’re really what you want for yourself or what someone else wants for you. Ask yourself if you’re okay with any goal you make being for someone else before you embark on your journey.

It’s okay to do things because of someone else, but it’s important that you are honest about that and make some goals for yourself too that don’t involve anyone else’s needs or wants.

Are You Checking in Often to Stay on Track?

Schedules are very important to the success of reaching any goal in life. To do lists pale in comparison to a well laid out calendar of tasks and activities that get you from point “A” to point “B”. Ensure that you look at your schedule every morning and every night and note when you succeed on sticking to your schedule and where you don’t. Noticing a pattern of activity can be helpful in fixing a poorly written schedule as well as staying realistic about whether or not you’re sticking to the plan.

Are Your Goals Focused Positively?

When writing a goal, it’s important to write them in a positive way, or at least a way that feels positive to you. In the quest to improve your life, try writing down a goal and then changing the words to sound more positive to see if it isn’t more motivating. For instance, “losing weight” seems like a good goal, but for some people it might signify deprivation. So instead, the person might frame the goal as “improving my BMI by 10 points” or “improving my cholesterol by 10 percent.”

Do You Have Too Many Goals Set at One Time?

Just as setting too few goals can be a problem, so can setting too many. Everyone has a personal life and a career life and points in between. If you have set goals in too many areas of life at once, you might tire yourself out and get overwhelmed. Instead pick one personal goal, and one other type of goal to focus on until you reach them, and then you can add more goals as time goes on. You don’t need to do everything today. Slow and steady wins the race is a good motto to hang on to.

Setting the right goals for yourself takes some thought and consideration. Don’t try to set all your goals in one day – instead, set some goals in different stages and in different areas of your life and give a lot of thought to why you’re making the goal in the first place. Click here to view a video with my life tips!

Can you Afford to Retire?

No longer do people retire and sit at home inactive. Today’s retirees are more active than ever. Unfortunately, those activities take money and unless you’re planning to sit at home and wait for death you should be making plans to take care of all those things you wish you had done earlier in life once you retire. See the 40/40/40 plan did not work. Working for 40 hours per week doing that work for 40 years to retire on 40% of your current pay.

While you are planning for your financial retirement you should also take the time to make plans for what you will do once you retire. Do you need to join a travel club now in order to have an established membership when the time comes to actually enjoy the benefits of belonging? How about that book of the month club? Many of these clubs are great to join while you have the extra ‘disposable’ income that goes along with working and having a career. You can take the time now to build up your library. Even if you read the books now, chances are that by the time you retire you’ll enjoy the ability to read them again.

If you are retiring today you will want to make plans to go parasailing, take cruises, ride horses, and maybe learn to golf and/or knit. You do not want to spend your golden years sitting at home waiting for the inevitable end. You want to leave this world laughing about all the fun and good times you’ve had. The stereotypes associated with retirees are changing quickly as the world evolves and people are living longer than ever before.

When you plan your funds you also might want to take the time to have a few daydreams about the places you will go and save a page or two to write about those dreams and sharing them with your partner in life. You should also take time to find out what he or she hopes to do, where he or she hopes to go, and the things that he or she would like to see when making plans for your retirement. After all, you have shared your lives together it only makes sense that you will share the best years of your lives with one another.

There is no better input to get when it comes to your retirement than the input of your life partner. You should also take things in stages and not try to do and see everything in the first months or year of your retirement. The novelty of not going into the office each and every day will wear off quite soon. You will then find that you can only mow your lawn so many times a day without actually doing more harm than good to your grass. You’ll know every leave of every flower in your garden, and you will know the inside and outside of every book on your shelves.

Don’t become a victim of boredom in your retirement as that brings on spending sprees. Make sure you have some interests to occupy your time so you are not spending your precious retirement funds on unnecessary things. To learn more watch this short video before it is too late… Click Here!

A College Degree is Nearly a Necessity

Your education is the single greatest gift you can give yourself. While there are educational opportunities all around us, some of them come at a greater cost than others. A college education might require a hefty investment of time and money upfront but the payoff is much better over time than if you used your life experiences in order to achieve the same level of education that you can pack into 2, 4, or 5 years of an undergraduate education on the college level.

In other words, over the course of your lifetime you are likely to pay far less for your college education than you would pay (in earning potential) for not having a college education. At the same time, each level of college education you receive increases your overall earning potential. This means that a one-year degree in a technical field will provide a modest boost from a high school diploma when it comes to earning potential but an associate’s degree will provide an even better boost. You will see an even more significant improvement in earning potential when you increase from an associate’s degree to a bachelor’s degree. The vast majority of students enter the work force upon completion of a bachelor’s degree. Those students, however, who remain in school for graduate studies often, find that a master’s degree even further improves their lifetime earning potentials.

The problem for most when it comes to making the jump between degrees and educational levels is cost. There are times in life when we simply need to get out of school and get to work or pursue entrepreneurial interests. The good news is that it is gradually becoming easier for those with careers to further their education without sacrificing either their careers or their family during the process. Of course there will be some sacrifices along the way but it isn’t an all at once or nothing endeavor. You can work towards your degree by taking online classes, night classes, and Saturday classes. The information age has made it easier than ever before to achieve the educational goals you need to meet in order to satisfy your dreams for the future.

Your level of education will get your foot in the door when it comes to certain jobs and your lack of education will limit you far more than a lack of experience will limit you in many cases. As time grows on, more and more companies are seeking employees that have degrees rather than those who have experience in the field. If you hope to remain competitive in the business world you need to arm yourself with the proper education. Check with your company to see if they offer any sort of incentives for employees continuing their education. You might be surprised to find that your company offers to match your tuition funds or even completely reimburse them if you are working towards a degree that will assist you in your job functions.

There is no wrong reason to get an education. Even if you are applying for a job that won’t use your specific degree, you might find that having a degree at all gives you a boost over other applicants for the same position. A college degree is becoming more and more necessary in today’s business climate. You need to take every opportunity that is available to you in order to get your college degree.

Bad Credit Debt Consolidation Loan – The Secret To Getting One

A bad credit debt consolidation loan can get you out of a financial hole very quickly. The question is if you’ve got a bad credit history will the banks still lend to you? The answer is probably. That’s because a bad credit debt consolidation loan can make as much sense for them as it can for you.

You see the banks really don’t care about you. I know, that came as a surprise right? But they do care about themselves – second surprise! So they might be happy to make a loan to help sort out your bad credit. Debt consolidation loan is just another way of saying refinancing of course. And the reality of that is the bank will take the money you already owe them and spread the payments over a longer period, thus creating an income for the bank in the form of more interest payment and fees.

Now what happens is that because the money they are lending you is outstanding for a longer amount of time they can charge you more interest. See what I meant when I said they don’t care about you? Of course from your point of view you are probably going to be benefiting by having lower repayments, less worry and you’ll get your credit history back on track. So it’s win-win.

Now to actually get a bad credit debt consolidation loan you’re going to have to convince the bank or loan company that they really are going to be benefiting. Just telling them that they will make more money in the long run won’t cut it. You need to present a well thought out case as to why it makes sense to consolidate your existing loans.

You need to sit down and work out a plan before you even think of contacting them. In that plan you need to be able to tell them how your bad credit came about. Was it a problem with your job? Was it down to ill health? You also need to explain what has changed now and how you will be able to meet the new payments.

Try not to be over optimistic here. And for goodness sake tell them the truth, if you don’t they will almost certainly find out and you’ll fail. They’re trained to spot lying by applicants.

The secret to success is having a good, well-though out reason why they should grant you a bad debt consolidation loan. After getting the loan you will need a plan to not need that type a loan again. One method of getting out of debt is to track what you spend on for 30 days.

Yes, I really mean it. For 30 days write down everything you spend during this time. While you are doing this evaluate the importance of the item purchased in this order. Maintain, modify or eliminate. For more tips on eliminating debt “Click Here!“