The facebook of finance

I’m as much a victim to an Internet addiction as the next person - I fought the Facebook news feed, but now find myself checking in every day, just to quench my boredom. I visit all the sites on my blogroll more than once a day, just to see if they’ve posted something new.

The New York Times has even fed my obsession with tracking things by setting up Times People - which lets you follow story recommendations from readers you know.

Those things are all great. But I’ve hit the motherload. Mint.com, an online money management system. I’ve heard about Mint.com before but was always a little worried about giving out literally all of my banking information. Mint.com now owns my life. But I’m okay with that because it’s fantastic.

Basically, the site links with your bank accounts, savings, investments, loan companies - anything at all you’re associated with that has to do with your money  - and puts it all together in a convenient sort of news feed of your finances. AND THEN after you obsessively categorize all your purchases, the site gives you a color-coded pie chart of your spending trends AND ideas on how you can save based on your personal trends. PLUS it compares your spending habits to the national or local average!

So far I see only one drawback, I’ve had an urge to spend money all day just so I can track it.

Consumed by Consuming?

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. How’s that for a book title? A little dramatic? Yes. Completely true? I think it might be.

I recently read this book by Benjamin Barber about how our capitalist society has turned citizens solely into consumers and how a society of consumers is empowering the corporate world to actually manufacture our needs. To be fair, most of the students I know who have read this book found serious faults in Barber’s argument and in general, just didn’t enjoy the book. It was hard to get through (there are 91 citations in the first chapter) but I totally bought his point (pun intended, haha).

I’m not necessarily recommending anyone read his whole book because it was a little painful, but check out the excerpts below and follow the link to a video clip and take his message into consideration - YOU DON’T NEED HALF OF THE THINGS YOU ARE BUYING!

While you’re watching/reading, take this into consideration: In his last book, Jihad vs. McWorld, Barber predicted that religious extremists in other parts of the world would soon feel so trapped by the West’s intrusion into their cultures that they would be forced to retaliate violently (read: 9/11). He’s a regular Nostradamus.

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Dropped your camera in the toilet, again?

Here’s a little known perk: your credit card may offer extended warranties on your recent electronics purchases. Talk about beating the system.

Now, I’ll be the first to say that credit cards intimidate me (so you can expect to see plenty of posts in the near future on how to choose one and how to make sure it’s working for you rather than against you) but I’m definitely all about taking my perks where I can get them.

Here’s a video from the CNBC show On The Money about a few credit card perks you might not know about, including the extended warranty bit. Honestly, a lot of these probably don’t apply to you as a student, but the best advice: Call up your credit card company and ask them to send you a one page summary of your perks. Take advantage, they’re working for you, remember?

Click on the image to check out the video, p.s. the guy being interviewed writes the I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog in my blogroll (which works now).