WHERE SMART PEOPLE READ | EARLY CAREER ADVICE 🍀 PERSONAL FINANCE
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Achieving financial freedom is a journey with these roadblocks
Achieving financial freedom is a journey I am on, not complete, but I am sharing along the way because I think there are more takeaways during the partial financial freedom phase than there might be further down the road. Balancing the books and doing accounts to understand your basic expenses, living costs, and expenses that…
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How to achieve partial financial freedom
Achieving partial financial freedom starts with taking control of your basic expenses. This means knowing what these expenses are. What is your monthly cost of living? This would include: Housing bill: your mortgage payment or rent number; Utilities: home gas bill, electric bill, water bill; Food: groceries or basic food cost; Internet: this one you…
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Taking a career risk: regret or not?
Over a year ago I took a career risk and moved from Ohio to Boston and left a secure job in the government to become a federal subcontractor. In this post, I thought it was a good time to give an update on how that is going. Leaving all the benefits of being in a…
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Buying a home in 2023 – keep waiting or go for it?
How to get a mortgage in America in 2023 (and how high rates are impacting affordability) Buying a home is one of the biggest financial decisions you’ll ever make, and getting a mortgage is a key part of the process. A mortgage is a loan that you take out from a bank or other lender…
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What 3 degrees in America did not teach me (but TikTok did)
What 3 degrees in America did not teach me but TikTok did has to do with a high-yield savings account. Recently, I was talking to my friend about potentially saving for the down payment on a home. Neither of us owns a home right now. We are both in our early 30s and we both…
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529 Plans: A Smart Way to Save for College
529 Plans are a smart way to save for college, but I am not going to lie, I never heard of them until a few days ago. I follow personal finance advice on social media and found this lady’s comment asking about funding her child’s education. Then someone nondescriptly mentioned 529 Plans, and I googled…
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High-Yield Savings Accounts: Earn interest on your cash!
High-Yield Savings Accounts can be a good way to earn interest on your cash right now while maintaining an emergency savings fund. First things first: Build your emergency savings fund We will get the Number #1 most important priority for personal finances out of the way first! That is to build an emergency savings fund…
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What is your MAGI and how to lower it
What is your MAGI and how to lower it is a topic pertinent to how your taxes get calculated among other things. MAGI is relevant to understanding your retirement savings contribution limits and contributing to a 401K and HSA can lower your MAGI. So let’s get into it! Understanding Modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) requires…
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Open jobs at Lincoln Lab – how to apply directly
Open jobs at Lincoln Lab may be hard to find if you don’t know the exact website/link where they are posted! I have been working in this organization for over a year now and only recently discovered the website! So I thought I will share the exact link in this blog post so others may…
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Personal finance strategy: What I wish I did in graduate school
What I wish I did in graduate school for my personal finance strategy involves obtaining a Roth IRA! Not getting a Roth IRA sooner was a blunder that you should avoid. For context, when I am writing this post, it has been almost 5 years since I graduated with a Ph.D.! I am still in…
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3 example stocks that pay dividends
Investing in stocks that pay dividends can be a great way to generate passive income while building long-term wealth. In this blog post, we will take a closer look at three stocks that pay dividends: JEPI, SCHD, and SPHIX. We will compare them based on their dividend yields, historical performance, and other key factors that…
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How to PhD in penny-hoarding to earn $3000 in one day
Money saved = money earned. Since money does not grow on trees don’t expect magic methods in this post to make money. This is how I saved money by spending one whole day on CHANGING my life in the following methods, each yielding savings. I had to take the day off from work today due…
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What ChatGPT told me about the ChatGPT Playground
ChatGPT Playground is a web-based platform where you can interact with ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI. It is a fun and educational way to explore natural language processing (NLP) and the capabilities of language models. On the ChatGPT Playground, you can ask questions, give prompts, and have conversations with it on a…
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How I ended up going to college in America from India
I went to college in America as an international student from India. Coming from a completely different education system and jumping into a new culture and country made college more interesting than average. This blog covers what helped me to bridge that gap between never being on this side of the world to moving here…
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My former employer Booz Allen is hiring
We are in a recession, people are getting laid off, and the government needs your help. In this climate, I wanted to point out job opportunities in the government sector that I hope you will find immediately helpful. I have been working in the government sector myself, starting with Booz Allen, since graduating with my…
