Entries from March 2008 ↓

Several years ago, many of my classmates graduated into a recession and had hard times finding jobs. It seems that this situation may repeat itself again in the next couple years. There have been studies that state graduating in a recession sticks with a person’s career for a long time. Those who start off their careers in a recession generally has lower pay because they started at a lower point. Here are some tips for my younger friends who may suffer the misfortune of getting a diploma in an economic downturn.

1. Don’t devalue your time - In a recession, I have seen people accept jobs at firms who paid very little or jobs completely outside of their field of study just because it is the only jobs they could find. I don’t think it is necessary to devalue yourself just because the general economy is in the ruts. Your time could be used to learn things or start your own ventures. If you are not desperate for money it is probably best to continue searching for a job that you want and a company that would value you for your services.

2. Consider graduate school or professional training - Recessions are popular times to get more schooling because jobs are scarce. However, a full graduate school program can be extremely costly and you need to consider carefully if it is worthwhile. It may be cheaper and quicker to get professional certificates. I know there are many different certifications in IT and finance that could enhance a young person’s career without costing an arm and a leg.

3. Be frugal - A lean economic period is probably the best time to learn to be frugal and use your money wisely. You may have to be a boomerang kid and move back home with the folks or eat 50 cent spaghetti, but you may be unemployed for a while and learning to survive on a shoestring is essential.

4. Keep your eye on the economy - Make sure you keep yourself informed about the general economy. The reason is that if you did accept a lower payrate during the recession you should know when your pay should be adjusted to the market rate. Otherwise, new grads who graduate after you may be paid more than you, and that may seem unfair, but you need to be aware when this happens and ask for a change. Otherwise, companies are happy to pay you less.

5. Do your own thing and forget about looking for a job - There are some people who started their own businesses and never needed to find a job. For example, Ben Chui of Ben’s Bargains was class 2002 or 2003 at my school, and he never needed to find a job amidst the recession because of the success of his website. If you want to start your own company you should go for it while you are young and have nothing to lose. It takes a lot of work to succeed and make a living, but it is definitely possible.

The bottom line is, don’t let what you can’t control discourage you and cut down your future. As long as you are flexible about what you want to do and have a drive to improve your life, you will beat any economic downturn and graduating in a recession would not matter at all.

Have any more advice for new graduates? Feel free to comment!

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Our best man’s wife is giving birth this week. They are expecting a girl named Grace and we all can’t wait to meet her. On the note of childbirth, today I saw an extremely eye opening documentary called The Business of Being Born. This is a film made by Abby Epstein after her friend Ricky Lake (yes, the talk show host) didn’t have a good experience with having her first child in the hospital. It explored the history of childbirth in America and how as a society America has phased out natural births in favor of hospital births with various interventions. It also reveals a startling fact that America has the second highest infant and mother mortality rate out of the world’s developed countries even though 99% of American women give birth in a hospital. In contrast, developed countries such as Japan has a home birth rate as high as 70% and have a lower death rate. Here are some things I learned about the business of childbirth from this film, and it is really amazing. If you don’t want any spoilers or if you feel queasy about this subject you can stop reading right here.

1. The birthing position women are in in hospitals is highly unnatural - When you see women have babies in hospitals on TV you often see their legs up in stirrups and ten people telling her to push really hard. The film explained that this is the most unnatural position to have a baby because there is no way for the baby to come out when a woman is lying down. A doctor always has to use a clamp, hands, or a vacuum to extract the baby. It is much easier for a woman to have a baby standing up or squatting because gravity helps her do her work and the baby’s head will be lined up with the vaginal opening making the process natural. This made a lot of sense when a childbirth coach showed a fake hip and a baby trying to get out. When the hip is sideways the opening of the hip is angled in such a way that it is pretty much impossible for the baby to fall out. The baby also receives more stress in the horizontal position because it would be pushed up against the hip bone.

2. Hospitals want women out as quickly as possible - This makes sense for the hospital. They want their beds available so they could serve more people and make more money. The result is a great increase in Caesarean section procedures and the administration of drugs that speed up the delivery. They also say that the number of C-sections is higher during 4pm to 10pm because doctors just do not want to stay around. The average vaginal delivery takes 12 hours, but a C-section takes about 20 minutes. So when the doctors and hospitals want women out, they schedule a C-section. The fact is that C-sections are much more risky than vaginal delivery.

3. Home births are cheaper than hospital births - A midwife said that her fees are about $4000 for all of her services. Keep in mind that many of these midwives are highly trained and qualified to deliver babies. The main midwife they featured on the film is a certified nurse who graduated from Columbia and had been delivering babies in hospitals for five years before she became a midwife. In contrast, a vaginal birth in a hospital costs on average $13,000 and a C-Section is major surgery that often costs more than $30,000. The documentary also shows that in a hospital they often pump the mother with various drugs that eventually puts the baby in distress and require a C-Section. The caveat is that insurance companies rarely cover home births and midwives because they think it is crock and the hospitals are part of the institution that shun natural delivery.

4. Drugs and other interventions ruin the natural bonding experience - The film listed the type of drugs they typically use in a hospital and what each of those drugs do. One is the epidural, which takes away pain but also slows down contractions, then there is Pitocin, which is used to speed up contractions and causes pain. So the two drugs work against each other and the hospital would keep on adding drugs until the baby comes or the baby is distressed so they have to do a C-Section. It is pretty scary and there were other drugs used in the past that caused erupted uteruses and babies without arms and legs. The body itself naturally produces hormones that make the birthing process easier and less painful and these artificial drugs really screw it up.

Despite the film having scenes of several extremely explicit home births, it made me less afraid of having a baby because the births seemed less painful and stressful than what is usually shown in TV. In one woman’s birth she just seemed to lay back and sigh and moan a bit and then her baby slipped out into her tub. Then her older child came by and touched the baby and said “eww” like it is extremely natural and cool. There wasn’t any crazy screaming or large amounts of blood covering the sheets and the whole experience seemed beautiful and calm. The film’s message is that women should have a choice to have a natural birth, and it is completely safe as long as it is planned well and the woman doesn’t have any complications. If a woman is enduring a high risk pregnancy, the hospital is still recommended. I don’t know if I would have a natural home birth because it is still pretty scary to me, and I know my health insurance would cover my hospital care. I will try to refuse all those drugs in the hospital, though, but I don’t know what will happen. Anyway, I think a lot of the information presented in this movie made sense, and I will never look at a pregnant woman the same away again. I highly recommend this film, and I think anyone who wants a child in the future should watch it just to see what childbirth is really like.

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I read the news almost every few hours, and here are some of the highlights of the business news that made me spit out my tea this week.

1. Countrywide fatcats get 19 million dollars in “performance incentives” - Bank of America is taking over Countrywide Financial, and they will be disbursing “stock valued at $10 million for chief executive Angelo Mozilo and $9 million for President David Sambol”. Gee, lets see what the performance of the company was. The stock price went from over $40 to around $6. The entire time the stock was in free fall Mozilo was dumping his shares. There are over 14,000 homes owned by Countrywide currently listed on their site valued at nearly 3 billion dollars. My only question is, how can I find a job where I can be a royal screwup and still get rewarded $10 million? Then maybe I could buy this house.

2. Walmart sues brain damaged employee - Apparently Walmart’s health plan states that if an employee gains healthcare money in a legal settlement, they are supposed to pay Walmart back. So a woman who suffered an accident that made her brain damaged and disabled is being sued by Walmart for half a million dollars. All she has is 277k left in her settlement and there is no way she could pay Walmart back. It is pretty sad and the case is inciting a lot of public outrage. Walmart makes billions of dollars a year, and they have a clause in their health plan that says employees have to pay it back if they had the money? That is a ridiculous health plan. The employee in this case paid for her insurance, and isn’t the point of health insurance to cover accidents? I’ve never bought anything from Walmart, and I probably never will.

3. The Fed loans another $100 billion - According to the article, “The Fed has worked some positive magic.” That phrase just invoked an image of Bernanke in a pink tutu flying around spreading wads of cash. I wonder when this fairy dust is going to come back and bite us in the rear.

4. Qwest in Colorado tells employees to pee in plastic bags - Apparently some supervisor didn’t like the long bathroom breaks his reports were taking. So he distributed urinal bags! Wow, that is really one crazy boss.

5. Viagra turns 10 - It is kind of funny that the 10th birthday of this little blue pill made national headlines. I don’t see anyone celebrating the birthday of penicillin or digitalis. Anyway, I don’t have anything against Viagra except for all those annoying spam messages that say “xxVIAXXgra”. Oh crap, now my blog is going to get Viagra ads.

I wonder what next week will bring.  Have a great weekend everyone!

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story as told by my dad. In this chapter my dad goes back to college with teenagers! If you missed the previous posts please check out the series’ category here:

Fifteen Years in America

My success in Duke’s Lane strengthened my self esteem, but I knew that I couldn’t be a salesman at a souvenir shop forever. I was in America, and I was an alien. If I wanted to stay, I needed to go to school. In China I studied agricultural economics, and then changed my focus and studied economical law. My English skills were quite horrible, and law school in America required extremely high linguistic skills. I could not even understand the test to get into law school. So as I worked I tried my best to study English. I copied vocabulary words onto cards and tried my best to remember them. When I rode the bus or had extra time at work I would study vocabulary. After three months in America, I took the TOEFL and got a score of 540. This score was 10 points below the lowest requirement of the University of Hawaii’s economics department. Shortly after the test, I received a letter from the department informing that I was rejected. The letter also indicated that in addition to the TOEFL, the GRE was also required as of the spring semester of 1993.
When I read this letter, my heart sank to the floor. I thought that I have expended the effort of nine bulls and two tigers and I still didn’t qualify. Now I needed to study for the GRE, and I had no idea how long it would take for me to be able to get into graduate school. Actually, at that time I did qualify for Hawaii’s Pacific University, which is a private school that charged over $5000 per semester. There was no way I could afford the fee.

During this time, I took a day off from work. I helped Popo clean her yard and then fed the dozen or so red eared turtles in her backyard. Then I started to study. At this moment Popo’s third daughter Gloria came to visit. She is a highschool teacher and she takes turns with her siblings to take Popo out for strolls. Gloria is almost 50. She married a Japanese American many years ago, but he passed away more than ten years ago. She doesn’t have children, and so she visits quite often and is quite attentive to our family. Whenever she comes she would drive us to get groceries and sometimes she brought treats for my daughter.

This day, she saw that I was at home and asked about how I was doing. I told her that I was just rejected from UH, and I could not afford a private university. I was quite anxious and disheartened, but she told me to calm down, and told me that there is a community college named Kapi’olani Community College very close to the house, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to take a look.

I followed her directions and walked south on 16th Avenue for about ten minutes. Then I saw a beautiful campus surrounded by coconut trees and other tropical plants. When I walked into the campus I was pleasantly surprised. Due to a construction project that blocked the southern end of 16th Avenue, I didn’t see the campus when I first moved to Popo’s house. I didn’t know that there was such a beautiful place close to the house. I was mesmerized by the campus’ modern architecture, neatly landscaped gardens, and its grandiose backdrop of the ocean and Diamond Head. Nearly every building on the campus is named after a tropical plant native to Polynesia and Southeast Asia. For example, the cafeteria where I worked is named ‘Ohi’a, which is a small Hawaiian plant with bright red flowers. Another example is the art building, which is named after a very fragrant Hawaiian flower called Maile which is used in leis quite often. Basically, this college’s buildings and Hawaiian plants reflect the roots of Hawaiian culture.

If people say that Hawaii is paradise, then I would say that Kapi’olani Community College is like a small paradise inside paradise. When I first saw this beautiful campus, I fell deeply in love with the place.

To be continued! If you don’t want to miss a thing, please subscribe to the full feed!

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I totally forgot about this, but I will be hosting the Carnival of Twenty Something Finances  on April 7th.  This is a pretty good carnival for those of us in the twenties trying to juggle personal finance.

Even if you’re not in your twenties, feel free to submit your articles and give the young ones some advice!

If you are interested in reading some other great carnivals I have hosted in the past.  Here they are:

Carnival of Debt Reduction 

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Money Stories

Have fun reading!

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