White collar is a term used to describe a particular kind of job. Basically any work that’s not manual labor (i.e. work that’s harder on the brain than on the body) can be described as a “white collar” occupation.
Think research analysts, administrative assistants, and nurses, versus the local plumber or a high school janitor. (Those would be considered blue or pink collar occupations.)
Carla Holtze and Kimberly Skelton used business school as an excuse to do what they already wanted to do: create a social website that roughly imitates the experience of having your best friend give you the thumbs-up or thumbs-down in the dressing room. Thus was born WingTipIt.com.
But starting a company isn’t easy – especially when it involves learning new technology in a relatively new industry. Watch them talk about what’s worked and what hasn’t:
>> TILE brings you exclusive opinions, explanations, and interviews from experts in every industry. Have a burning question or an expert you’d like to see interviewed? Just Ask TILE!
(photo credit: paalia)
Now, debt isn’t necessarily a bad thing, okay? But this is a little crazy. For the past 25 years, people in their early and mid-twenties have reported feeling a thrill of maturity and self-confidence when they first started to dig themselves into the debt hole.
Whether the money was going toward education or just going into the “I’ll pay for this pizza later” pile, young adults – especially those in the lowest 25% of income earners – said they experienced greater “self-esteem and perceived mastery” when they began to run up a tab.
Some kinds of debt are better than others. In general, debt that can be considered an investment in something – like a home, or an education that can get you a better job – is a good thing. But debt that gets you nothing but fees, interest rates, and a pizza that has long since been digested and forgotten – i.e., credit card debt – is not good.
The most important factor in determining whether your debt is good or bad is whether you’re able to make payments in full and on time. If you don’t, your credit score will suffer and you’ll find yourself on the road to Massive Debt.
Which, by the time you reach 28 (according to the study), will start to make you feel kind of bad about yourself.
(credit: Marketplace)
Labels: not just for food anymore. Companies have to organize their customers somehow – otherwise they’d be marketing denture cream to 8-year-olds and tampons to middle-aged men. Are you a High Rise Renter? Part of Main Street USA? Live in a college dorm? There’s a label for that.
How do they do it? Well they used to just make their best guess about who was watching a given channel at a given hour (guess who was watching Oprah at 4pm every day?) and tailor their advertising appropriately. But now marketers have all sorts of information about us. From online profiles to credit card transactions to Google searches and Foursquare check-ins, everyone with some kind of connection to the outside world is pretty much leaving a trail of data every where they go.
So – surprise! – a huge industry has sprung up to collect and analyze this data (called “data mining”) and sell it to the companies that want to sell you stuff. You can read all about it here, and “identify your lifestyle category” here.
(Official White House photo)
President Obama was recently caught off guard when a personal finance reporter asked him a question about his budget. No, not that budget. His family budget. A U.S. president earns about $400,000 a year, not counting outside income. And while he probably pays someone smart to help him make major financial decisions, he’s still got to have some basic money management lessons to teach his kids.
So what kind of advice does our nation’s leader have for financially illiterate citizens?
Save part of your paycheck and believe in the power of compound interest.
His answer was so simple… it was kind of disappointing, really. Isn’t there some secret to achieving financial control? A magic formula? Hot stock tips? No. Well, at least, not according to the president.
Interesting. How far could compound interest take you? Find out using the Compound Interest Calculator!
(photo credit: Mike_tn)
Here’s how insurance works for you: Instead of paying $200,000 to rebuild your house after it’s been destroyed in a natural disaster, you pay $200 a year (called a premium) to an insurance company that will cover the whole bill in the event that such an unfortunate thing occurs.
Here’s how insurance works for insurance companies: A lot of people pay you $200 a year for protection against the very unlikely possibility that their house will be destroyed in a natural disaster. You profit.
(Of course, you have a team of people with calculators and maps who spend every single day figuring out the likelihood that your customer’s house will, in fact, be destroyed in a natural disaster. If the odds look good, you’ll either charge them a higher premium or refuse coverage altogether.)
Here’s what happened between May 20th and 27th: Hundreds of tornadoes destroyed $7 billion in property, which the insurance companies now have to pay for. That makes 2011 the most expensive year EVER for these companies.
But… better them than you, right?
(photo credit: fimoculous)
If you were a major luxury fashion house going public in an attempt to raise $3 billion from Asian investors, would you spend hours working on your investor PowerPoint presentation, or would you wrap a bunch of models in snakeskin and have them walk around at the Plaza Hotel?
Guess which way Prada went?
The Italian company is pursuing an IPO, which means it’s going to sell off pieces of itself to public investors, in Hong Kong this month. In order to woo potential investors, it held a relatively small fashion show for tycoons and their wives and daughters. Female tycoons either didn’t exist or were mysteriously lost in the editing of this WSJ piece about the event.
Prada is valued at $15.7 billion, so with this initial public offering, they’re giving up ownership of almost 20% of the company. But they’ve got to raise that cash somehow if their plans for world fashion domination are going to work out.
In other news, here’s a handy list of some of the biggest IPOs in U.S. history.
Hey, investor. Would YOU be wooed by a runway show?
The Great British pound (£) is the official currency of the Great Britain. The currency’s official name is “the pound sterling,” but everyone calls it the pound.
Tax-exempt is exactly what it sounds like: excused from taxation. This usually applies to organizations that aren’t required to pay federal income taxes, but it can also refer to some kinds of personal income. For example, interest that you earn from bonds issued by cities, counties, or states is tax-exempt.
Taxable income equals the portion of your earnings the government is allowed to tax. Most income is taxable, so if you have a job, odds are that whatever money you make at that job counts as taxable income.
Things that are tax-deductible, like most charitable donations, reduce the amount of your taxable income and so may reduce your tax bill.