Jasper Jones

For my economics class I have to do an analysis of an existing business and try to change it’s business model to an alternative form. The Professor used the example of a Subway Sandwich shop, which is a franchise. So if you look at what makes a Subway Sandwich shop successful and identify the advantages of it being a franchise, can you theoretically operate the same business under a different business model and have it be comparably successful?

He handed out slips of paper with actual businesses to be assigned and examined by each student. By the luck of the draw, I got a Wilmington NC auto repair shop. The business is a family owned and operated, single location repair shop. At least the subject is interesting to me and they have a web site, so I can do a lot of research from my computer in my room. I might also make a couple of telephone calls during the day and see if the owner would be willing to talk to me.

The shop is named Atlantic Car Care and their web site is pretty nice. It has the hours open and their street address on the sidebar, which is probably what most people will be looking for. They also list all the credit cards that they accept for payment. One cool feature they have is that you can schedule your car repair or maintenance on the internet from their site. It’s got enough informaiton on the site to know that this is a successful business and I can start my analysis with this.

College kids are constantly bombarded with offers of credit and loans. Let’s face it, these are the people most likely to need a little boost with money. If taking a heavy course load, most student can only deal with a part time job at minimum wage to keep some spending money coming in. It’s a time of great sacrifice and limitation for a lot of people, but unfortunately, life happens and sometimes we need to raise cash quick to take care of unplanned expenses.

One solution to covering small emergencies is to take out a short term personal loan. An easy way to apply for Personal Loans is to use the internet to apply for the loan. But kids need to use this resource sparingly and responsibly. There’s no sense getting off to a bad start with a lot of debt right out of college, but if you need help to get through this difficult time, its good to know what resources are available to you and sometimes a short term personal loan is really the best solution to the problem.

Alex has a younger brother back in California. I met him last year when the whole family came out here for spring break to pick up Alex and then they all went on down to Orlando and spent the week at Universal Studios. His brother is a senior this year and called tonight about getting some help with his college applications.

Alex had a great high school counselor who helped him with most of his applications and although this school was not his first pick, he liked this one the best of which ones accepted him. But Lil Bro isn’t getting much help from his school counselor and Alex is trying to help him get things moving by talking on the phone and sending him instant messages, texting, emails, etc. The boy is not dumb but I don’t see why he needs so much help from Alex. It’s not that hard, especially if you go to the web site called Collegezaps and get help with the college application process from CollegeZapps.

There’s a link for students, a different links for parents and a third link for counselors. The link for students is totally easy to work through. You choose your schools, you fill in their online questionnaire, print the documents and proof them for spelling and grammar, and then you send them in. I mean, how hard is THAT?

I told Alex to make sure his brother applies to multiple schools and gets a new email address to use with just his name and not a silly gamer or hiphop name that he uses in the chat rooms. Other than that, the rest is just common sense and getting help from the right people or places.

My jump drive totally freaked me out today. I had all my documents and data from home transferred to my jump drive before I left home and I planned to copy those files to my computer here at school. So on the desk was what I thought was my jump drive and when I plugged it into my computer, none of my files were there. Instead, there were a bunch of items on there with a file extension of DMG. I was so freaked out! I though someone had corrupted all my files from home!

So I woke up Alex and asked him what was up with my jump drive? Like, did he take it and do anything to it like erase my files? Did he see anyone else messing with my jump drive while I was at work last night? I was so freaked.

Of course, Alex didn’t do anything to my jump drive. turns out the file extensions for DMG are for Apple computer image files. If I had thought about it for a minute I would have realized that I had picked up Alex’s jump drive and not mine. But I didn’t even realize that Alex used a jump drive that looked exactly like mine!

So I ended up learning about file extensions and even though the Mac runs a lot of the same programs as my PC, the file extensions for image files are different. In fact, the new Macs use different extension files than the old Macs, and sometimes you have to fix your old files to be read on the new Macs. There’s even a site online that does that for you automatically. They have a whole library of file extensions and ways to fix files. So I looked at the page for File Extension DMG and found all the information I would need to fix the extensions from old Macs. that’s good to know and when I showed it to Alex he bookmarked that site so he can find it again later.

Alex and I were talking last night about money and our job search. I can’t believe as young as he is that he owes so much money already and still has a year to go with classes before he can get a real job and have the earning power he needs to handle a debt load like his.

First of all, there’s all the student loans but most people expect to have that burden for a few years after school is done. But all last year he was living off of his credit cards, and his folks back in California were helping a lot at first by sending cash for spending money. But then after Christmas his Dad got sick and the money back home dried up. So he charged a lot of stuff on the credit cards. Then he got into a wreck and had to pay for his car repairs deductible ($1,000 out of pocket is a bite!). Then he got a bad case of flu and ended up with pneumonia because he wouldn’t go to the clinic like I told him to and he ended up in the hospital for 3 days with IVs and a respirator. So he has a load of medical bills. And even though he had a job out in L.A. over the summer, he’s in worse shape because of the DUI lawyer’s bill. This guys finances are a freaking train wreck and he’s the same age as I am.

We had a big talk last night about money and I shared some info with him that I’ve learned from my Dad and from the guys at work. He needs to get a grip on his debt load right now and maybe even check into a debt consolidation loan or something drastic to help get him out from under all these financial worries.

He has so many different bills coming in, if he finds a way to consolidate debt and have only one payment, that will help the stress level and make the payments more predictable and easier to manage. He should have been saving his money over the summer instead of paying bills with it, especially the way the economy is going down the tubes. After the election, who knows what will happen to the job market? And the price of gas?

I showed him a web site about paying bills and managing your money. It has a whole lot of information about the ways to manage your debt and get out of trouble. I guess I’m going to have to mentor Alex on this for the next several months and help him through this with tough love. After all, I have my own money concerns and I can’t afford to have a freeloader chasing me around all year. I can help him get a debt consolidation loan and then I’ll have to be tough about not loaning him any cash and making sure he sticks to the plan. And I told Alex that I was putting this personal information on the internet to maybe keep his nose to the grindstone, and I’ll report his progress here.

My buddy Alex showed up over the weekend and I can’t tell you how relieved I am that he’s come back to school. We both thought that his DUI in L.A. was going to cost him this year’s schooling.

He found an awesome attorney out there who got the charges dropped. He charged a lot of money for it, but we consider it an investment.

Alex is hurting for money this year - worse than me because he owes for the DUI case. We’ll both be looking for work this afternoon. It would be awesome if we can find something to do at the same place or even as a team. He has some cool ideas to flesh out. We stayed up way too late last night making plans.

Have to load up the car and start back down to Chattanooga today. It’s pretty freaky to think that my summer has basically come to an end and that I’ll be back on campus next week. Also pretty freaky that I have picked up my last paycheck and won’t be having any money coming in for a few months while I start back with classes.

I’m thinking seriously about looking for a part time job first thing on Monday as I really don’t like the idea of not having any money. At first I thought I would wait until the Christmas selling season and just do seasonal help at the mall. But if I can work my schedule right, I’ll have the afternoons free and can put them to better use than most of the kids who would rather not take the early morning classes and sleep off the night before, then load up on afternoon classes. I’m an early riser and can still handle the occasional late night beer fest.

Decided to look into getting a second credit card so I have one for emergencies if anything comes up while I’m at school this year. I try hard to manage my money responsibly, but to be honest, college life take a lot of cash. I’ve saved up a lot from working at the warehouse over the summer and I think I’ll be fine, but it seems like a flat tire or a dead battery or something like that always happens at the worst possible time and you have to pay for it on the spot. Unless you have a credit card and then you can buy yourself a little time. After all, that’s what Credit Cards were originally designed to do.

The website called CardHub can be a big help when looking for a credit card. You put your search information into the left sidebar and the website pulls up the recommended list of available credit cards that match your criteria. It’s easy to use, and when you make up your mind which card you want, the web site has a link that goes right to the card’s own web site so you can apply right then and there.

I found a Discover card for students on there that has no annual fee and gives you cash back on gas. I think next to food, my gas costs will my biggest expense at school, so getting cash back on the gas is an attractive feature.

The only thing I don’t know from clicking through their site is I wonder if these are all the possible cards out there or just the cards that Card Hub signed up to be part of their site? I’d feel better if I knew these are all the cards or not. Even so, I found 7 or 8 cards just for students and they have a variety of terms, such as annual fee and interest rates. So I can read through the different card terms and decide which one makes the most sense for me.

My buddy Alex called today and I’m bummed. He was my roommate last year and I was thinking we’d bunk again this year. But now he’s got some drama going on out in California and he doesn’t know if he’ll be coming back to school next month or not.

He was at a wedding reception a couple weeks ago out in Orange County and took advantage of the open bar and had a grand ole time. But on his way home he was having troulbe driving so he pulled over into a parking lot of a church and thought he would be safe there to take a nap and sleep off some of the booze. But damn if a cop didn’t show up and bust him for DUI. He’s so mad - he wasn’t even driving the car and gets a damn DUI. The cop told him his biggest mistake was pulling into a church parking lot to sleep it off. If he had pulled into a motel parking lot or a 7-Eleven or something else he would not have been noticed. So much for church being a sanctuary.

So he’s facing DUI charges and is scared he might be going to jail or lose his license over it. I told him to get a lawyer right now and get busy finding a way to beat the charge. I used the web to find a great DUI attorney right in L. A.

Los Angeles DUI Lawyers | Drunk Driving Defense Attorneys in California

From reading their web site, I think the fact that the whole team of lawyers used to be prosecutors is a huge advantage when you need a defense lawyer. It’s all about who you know and what you know, and these guys know the players on both sides of the bench plus all the maneuvers you need to beat the charges. I sent Alex their link and told him to get this taken care of - I want him back out here in a couple weeks so we can finish up this college year and hang out together again.

I know I’ very lucky in that my parents are smart, successful and very involved in my life because that want me to be successful and secure in my future. And happy, of course. My dad says that the secret to success is a good education, a good career path and a good plan.

So, I’m almost done with the good education part. I graduate next May, God willing and the creek don’t rise.

The career path - I don’t have the job offer in hand, but I’ve been promised positions at a variety of companies when I graduate. I don’t want to commit to any of them until I get closer to graduation, but I have a good idea of where I’d like to go and I’m pretty sure they want me, too.

The plan is the hard part. People love to ask, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” Well, I don’t have a clue where I’ll be in 5 years. There are so many variables. I do know that I want to be working for a good company doing something that I’m good at and love to do, for a company that appreciates what I have to offer and that I can be proud to be associated with. I hope to have good people around me, both at work and at home, with an active social life and I intend to stay out of debt as much as possible.