Let me just say that if you google “graduate school scholarships,” the search results are disappointing. Has it not occurred to anyone to create scholarship websites that at least appear legitimate? Honestly, when your google advertisements take a more prominent position on your scholarship website than the scholarships, it says something to me. It says, you’re not in it for the kids. After a few initial mishaps, I did come across some valuable information (though, not nearly as much information as I would have liked.) Stay tuned to my Dollars for Students Page for any worth while websites that may allow you to actually win some scholarship money.

Exhibit A

Free Scholarship Guide: This free e-book is virus free! (You laugh, but with these scholarship websites being as questionable as they are, I was concerned.)

Exhibit B

Scholarship Experts : It takes 20 minutes (if you’re lucky) to register for this site. Yes, it’s tedious, but if you can remember your login information, it’s smooth sailing from there. (That’s assuming you have no problem with writing essays for scholarship money.) Some of the scholarships are as easy as providing your contact information for a scholarship sweepstakes, others may require a bit more thought. The site adds new scholarship based

Exhibit C

CollegeNet: If you can handle hanging around this forum for long enough, you’ll win the $4000 weekly scholarship sooner or later. The first time I won, I won it sooner. I will be eligible for the scholarship again on the 29th of this month. If you want to support me in my quest to win another scholarship vote for me weekly.

Of the three scholarship resources for graduate students that I’ve featured here, CollegeNet has definitely been the most time consuming and frustrating. I know that I might be shooting myself in the foot by insulting the source that funds my education, but it’s not exactly like that. The concept of CollegeNet is brilliant. You post topics, you reply to other people’s topics and if what you say is informational or inspirational or elicits some strong emotion from your peers, they vote for you. Each week, he with the most votes wins. My gripe with the website is that it can be a black hole of intellectualism. I don’t even need to go into it, you’ll see what I mean if you just visit the site. CollegeNet’s motto is “It Pays to Think,” yet the most “thought-provoking” thing on the front page is “Advise for the College Virgin.” Are you kidding me? People who can’t even spell are winning thousands of dollars a week! It really gets to me sometimes.

Edit September 2nd 2010 – I was just brought back to reality by a fellow College Net user. At the time that I wrote this post I was particularly frustrated with College Net, but reality is that even I make spelling mistakes and I was totally right about shooting myself in the foot by insulting the source that funds my education. You live, you learn.

Hopefully exhibits D through F will manifest shortly.

I have a lot on my mind these days. I’m still relatively unemployed…or better put I’m just not making as much money as I would like to be making. You know, enough money to live the way I was living before my life got turned upside-down. As it turns out, the job situation (or lack thereof) was meant to be. I’ve had time to think about me, to find a plan and to go with it.

Unfortunately, my plan is very expensive. I always expected to find an amazing company that would fund my career as a graduate student and also be flexible with my hours. (Oh..and also pay me an amazing salary so that I could continue my life of semi-luxury.) Well…those jobs are all taken.

With all of the good jobs being taken, I am on my own when it comes to funding my academic career (and the living expenses that come with focusing on school rather than focusing on work). Seeing as how money really doesn’t grow on trees (especially when it comes to graduate school when no one just gives you money anymore the way they did when you were an undergraduate student), I’m going to have to borrow that money from somewhere. So I decided to do a little research on exactly where that money is going to come from.

Subsidized Loans
According to StaffordLoan.com a subsidized loan typically has a low interest rate (under 6%). You have no payments while you are enrolled full or part-time in school. (This means the government pays the interest on your loan while you are in school. Only once you finish school and your deferment is over do you start paying interest.) The amount of the loan is dependent on FAFSA (which takes into account your income, any family contributions and some other not-so-fun-stuff). Receiving the loan is as easy as logging into whatever program your university uses for financial aid and clicking accept. Funny how easy it is to accept and how hard it is to pay it back!

Unsubsidized Loans
These are a bit more daunting, because although you don’t have to make payments while you’re in school, eventually you’re going to have to pay all of that interest. The interested is added to your principal balance, should you choose not to pay it while you’re in school, which means you just end up paying even more interest. For example if you borrow $1000 with an interest rate of 50% (that’s insane, I know, but just focus on the math), at the end of the year you will owe $1500. The interest rate of 50% then applies to the $1500, rather than the $1000 that you originally borrowed. Which means the next year you would owe $2250, but you still only got $1000 worth of school/food/rent.  To top it all off, the interest rates on these not-so-attractive unsubsidized loans is higher than the subsidized loans, making them that much more unattractive. Naturally, you would want to have subsidized loans over unsubsidized loans, but the government is pretty smart, you see. They offer you A LOT more money in unsubsidized loans than they do in subsidized loans. (Side note: accepting your unsubsidized loans is just as easy as accepting your subsidized loans, but even harder to pay back.)

Scholarships
While it’s not easy to find scholarships for graduate students and it can be time-consuming, it may be worth it for those of us who are not that comfortable with debt. My first two semesters of school will actually be funded by a scholarship I was awarded from College Net. Students (both graduate and undergraduate) are eligible for a College Net scholarship once a year and a scholarship is awarded every week. As I apply for scholarships I will keep a list here.

Mom and Pop Loans
These are my personal favorite, because you may be able to get away with paying no interest at all on them. However, it requires that your parents be in a position to loan you a lot of money on a regular basis and it also requires you to swallow your pride and ask for it. I haven’t gotten to this point yet. Mom…Dad…if you’re reading this, don’t be surprised if you add Loans Specialist to your many jobs over the next couple of years.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my kind-of-boring-but-as-interesting-as-I-could-make-it summary of how to get poor and stay poor during graduate school.

I have been so busy spending money. Even after I created a budget (and adhered rather closely to it) I am still wishing that I could find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I will be out of debt next month (amazing!) and so I suppose my pot of gold will come then.

Until then, I will share with you the things I pine for that occasionally cause me to stray from my budget.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lululemonathletica/ / CC BY 2.0

Yoga: my favorite way to start the week and end the week and survive the middle of the week. I loved doing yoga when I was in college. I only wish I had done more of it, because back then the classes were free. Now, at $15 a class, it’s a sweet sweet luxury and I have to choose my classes wisely. So far I’ve tried two different Bikram Yoga studios and the absolutely charming Full Circle Yoga studio (which just might be where I choose to plant my yoga roots).

Lulu lemon athletica - Flickr

Naturally, you need some sweet, yet zen, yoga gear in order to motivate you to deepen your yoga practice.  Lululemon is definitely not the most budget friendly way of acquiring this gear, but it is guaranteed to be comfortable and adorable! I can’t wait to get myself into some of their yoga-inspired athletic wear at the outlets this weekend!

My latest aspiration (graduate school plans aside) is to become a yogi and open my own studio. Call me crazy if you must, but yoga is the only activity I’ve found thus far where I can let go of the stresses of the real world and the dirty dishes in sink and focus on myself. If that isn’t reason to preach the gospel of yoga, then I don’t know what is. However, until I achieve yogi status, yoga is simply another reason why I’m broke.

Happy Monday!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiderpop/ / CC BY 2.0

In college, I aced finance.  I was the only marketing major who got excited about test day. I was also the only marketing major who was kicking the finance majors’ butts in that class.

Unfortunately, my “expertise” in annuities, perpetuities and stock valuation has done nothing for me in the real world. Maybe I should have taken Personal Finance.

Until now, the “budget” that my parents have so lovingly encouraged me to create consisted of buying necessities first and then emptying the rest of my bank account (and then some) on whatever satisfied me.

Where did that get me? Based on the information given, (hint hint: I spent more money than I had) you can probably assume that after following this budget for 4 years, the results were less than desirable.

And so this week I created a budget!

I estimated what I expect to spend in groceries, gas, bills, dining out, entertainment and even beauty. If all goes well, there will still be money at the end of the month!

Money at the end of the month could mean vacations at the end of the year or a few new pairs of jeans (10 pounds from now).

My first month’s budgeting failures and successes will have their big debut on Feb 1st!

In the meantime, share your money-saving strategies and secrets. Please!

Only a couple more days until my Recessionista Party.

Don’t forget to email me at chasingeducation@gmail.com to get your discount code.

Send me your phone number for a text message reminder an hour before the event.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clkg/ / CC BY 2.0

I mentioned in my ‘Tis the Season for Sweet Deals post that I would provide a strategy for participating in JoJolie auctions. I don’t have a strategy for you, but I do have a review and it’s not pretty!

Everyone is looking for a great deal. Times are rough for everyone and looking fabulous requires a lot of creativity. My recent experience with JoJolie goes to show that some things are too good to be true. Do your research ladies!

You receive 5 free bids when you sign up for JoJolie and then you have to purchase the rest of your bids in packages. For details on how this works check out  How to Shop at JoJolie.

If you’re seriously bidding to win, forget about getting by with your 5 free bids. You have to be serious. You have to buy bids and you have to buy a lot of them. Don’t let the $3 price tag on JoJolie’s homepage fool you. The bids can cost you nearly $1 each depending on how many you purchase.

Let’s do the math.

If you check out the JoJolie website you’ll see that the Coach Nubuck Brooke Bag sold for $6.55.

Bidding starts at $1 and it goes up a penny for each bid. So it took 555 bids to get the price up to $6.55. Let’s say each one of those bids cost 75 cents (which requires you to buy a bid package of 25 bids that costs you $18.75…wait a minute $18.75 + $6.55 is $25.30, which is NOT $6.55, even if it is a good deal. And chances are you won’t win a bag with just 25 bids, but I digress.)

It took 555 bids to get to $6.55 cents meaning that at 75 cents a bid (which is generous, because some people may have paid more for their bids depending on many (or few) they bought) the price of that purse was more like $416.25. That cost is shared amongst all the bidders, which is great if you win. But if you lose (which, by the way, is most likely in a game of chance), you just paid for some stranger’s Coach bag.

Sounds a lot like gambling, doesn’t it? Maybe you win, maybe you lose, either way they’ve got your money.

It was a frustrating–and expensive!–experience that I do not wish to repeat.

My online Recessionista Party, however, is not a game of chance. You’re not gambling! You’re getting awesome deals and free shipping!

I have been selected to be one of the first to host an online recessionista party!

This means that you will receive an additional 30% off already discounted Recessionista Shop prices on designer handbags, shoes and accessories.

There will also be new products available in the shop just for our party!

As of right now the party will be held this Friday from 7:00pm tp 9:00pm EST. Stay tuned to my blog for any changes! (I’m considering changing the date to Saturday during the day. Let me know what works for you in the comments. Thursday is also an option, but I fear it’s rather short notice.)

If you would like to join the fun, please provide me with your email address in the comments.

If you’d like a text message reminder, email me at chasingeducation@gmail.com with your phone number.

Rest assured that all of your personal information will be kept private!