During recessions, interest in graduate school rises as people lose their jobs or otherwise decide to go back to school for better prospects. Are you thinking about law school? I’ve thrown the idea around, as I think estate law would be a growth area. Well, check out these stats from the National Association for Law Placement () first.

The NALP found the national median starting salary for full-time law jobs for the Class of 2009 was $72,000 and the average was $93,454. After adjusting for the fact that many smaller law firms don’t report salary details (and also tend to pay less), it found the adjusted average salary to be $85,198. But you should also consider the as well, shown below.

Distribution of Reported Full-Time Salaries — Class of 2009

From this :

That’s because salaries are clustered in two areas — a phenomenon known as the bimodal distribution curve. One cluster is in the $40,000 to $60,000 range and the other around $160,000. The lower range tends to include attorneys in public interest and government jobs, while the higher cluster includes associates at large law firms.

This means that after three years of law school and probably accumulating more student debt, lots of new grads are still far away from . For the C

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Tags: Graduate, Law School

Every year here on erica.biz, at the start of the year, I post goals that I want to achieve. Some of them I’ve achieved with wild success–like growing my blog and starting a startup–and some I’ve miserably failed on. But all have been learning and growth experiences.

In December, realizing the new year was coming up, I again sat down to write goals. At first, I wrote them privately–in my notebook. (One of them manifested almost right away, which was surprising.) I fully intended to faithfully copy them down and expound on them in a blog post for the New Year. I even started writing the blog post.

But I never finished it. And the more I wrote, the less it felt “right.” It got to the point where I didn’t blog for three weeks because I was stuck on that post.

I was stuck on my #themeword for a while in December, too. Actually, it kept coming up for me, but I felt like it wasn’t right. The word? Breathe.

I feel as though I’m sitting on the cusp of a huge transition in my life. On one hand, there’s the strong, powerful, business side of me that has been in charge for so many years. That’s the part that

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Tags: Goals, Goals 2011

This seems rather strange, perhaps, but Sarah and I have our summer plans more or less penciled in through 2015.

That’s right, 2015

This summer, we’re going to Seattle. The following summer is a trip to New Orleans with my family. The summer after that will feature a trip to Boston, with the summer after that featuring some extensive national park camping. The summer after that? Disneyworld.

We’ve even started talking about subsequent vacations, including trips to Norway, Japan, and France by the end of the decade (we want our children to be older before traveling internationally).

Why plan ahead so much, you ask?

It’s simple. Planning ahead on your summer vacations is an enormous money saver. Sure, maybe we’re going over the top a little bit with the advance planning, but having a firm grip on where you’re going at least a year in advance can save a huge amount of money.

Here are some of the reasons such advance planning really helps.

The day of the week you travel on really matters. If you watch airline ticket prices, you’ll quickly see that not all days are created equal. Tickets for f

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Tags: Summer, Summer Travel

Before talking specifically about long term care insurance, let’s remind ourselves of the function that insurance plays in our lives.

Insurance is our financial defense. Anyone who is attempting to build wealth or move forward financially must be sure that nothing devastating or unexpected will undo years of responsible financial planning. Imagine a person who has slowly been building wealth for the last two decades but does not have health insurance. It only takes one major surgery to burn through hundreds of thousands of dollars of savings.

Thus, when we consider the topic of insurance, it is not an offensive financial move, but a defensive one.

What is Long Term Care Insurance?

Long-term care insurance (LTCI) is insurance that will pay your expenses if you are admitted to a long term care facility. These facilities are often referred to as nursing homes, but are typically institutions that help provide the requisite daily living services when an individual is unable to care for him or herself. This may include bathing, transportation, cooking, eating, and dressing assistance.

Since a vast majority of people will enter a nursing home eventually, it is essential to have a plan to deal with the cost of long term care. O

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Tags: Care Insurance, Insurance, Term Care, Term Care Insurance

Holding a college diploma or certificate may be the way that many moms can gain prosperity and happiness. The available financial support in the form of

grants for single mom

enables mothers to return to school without all the tensions of thought on how that cost will be covered. Moms should not consider the loans as a final option if some other types of financial assistance can be found.

It has been proven that over 20% of government grants available to single mothers are actually used. So there are many projects available to single mothers; all you might have to do is to apply. Applying for grants is the next thing after the discovery of those grants available to you. Federal grants are the most common grants single mothers can ask, but some schools even have their own individual grants. Federal grant application ultimately requires you to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The FAFSA is the first step in determining your needs and demands of potential scholarships. To become eligible for federal funds that you should at least become valid U.S. residency and pay taxes on income.
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On the upper right hand of the application, there is some light grey print that you might overlook that says “Offer Valid For New Cardmembers only”. However, it wasn’t really clear what this meant. You can’t have a current Discover More card? any current Discover card? any Discover card ever?

It turns out that there is a new Discover policy that anyone can only have one open Discover Card of any type at a time. As long as you don’t have an open Discover card currently, you can apply for a new card.

Below is the text from my Live Chat sessions with Discover. Basically, if you want this no balance transfer fee promotion and you already have a Discover card, you must cancel that card first, and then come back and apply for this new card. You can’t switch cards and still get this promotion.

Patricia: I appreciate your interest in the Discover Card. What questions can I answer regarding your application today?

Jonathan: Hello, I am interested in applying for this Discover More card. I don’t have a Discover More card, but I do have an old Discover Miles card. I am able to

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Tags: Card, Card Time

There’s little point writing a blog if nobody reads it. Mark Rushworth, search engine optimisation (SEO) manager at agency Blueclaw, gives ten tips for better business blogging.

1. Make sure your website links directly to your blog
In an ideal world your website’s blog should reside in an easy to remember address such as website.com/blog/. Make sure you have links to this page from your website’s home page or better still, link to it from your main website navigation to ensure that the search engines can view your content. As your blog’s default installation doesn’t link back to your website’s home page by default, make sure there is some way to navigate back into your main website.

2. Create search friendly URLs
When clicking around your blog, does the website address bar display URLs like website.com/blog/?id=123454&cat=34244? If so then your website isn’t correctly configured to maximise its search engine performance in Google and other search engines. Simply log into your control panel and click to Settings > Permalinks to fix this. In the box labelled ‘Custom Structure’ enter /%category%/%postname/. Now your we

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Tags: Tips

Debt has been plaguing American credit card holders for decades and since recent high interest rates and changes in the fee structures of many credit card providers have driven some people over the edge. Combine all that with the high rates of unemployment and a true credit crisis was upon us. In recent years, things got really bad for consumers. Now, there is legislation getting passed to help the consumer and protect them more from unfair credit card practices.

Since changes are being put in place, more consumers find there is less of a stigma associated with credit card debt burdens. They are turning to professional credit counselors for help and are more committed to facing debt head-on. Some consumers are also taking the bold steps of negotiating debt settlements on their own directly with their creditors. However the work gets done, the point is debt needs to be dealt with. It is one thing in life that will not go away as more time passes. It will only get worse.

So here at CreditCardAssist.com, we want you to make the right choices about your credit and personal finances.  Choosing the right credit card for your circumstances is important, but avoiding a huge debt load is certainly another important point that cannot be emphasized enough.  We have provided an all-in-one guide to seriously reducing your debt burden from start to finish. Wh
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Tags: Debt

“By setting goals and measuring their achievement, you can focus on what is most important, waste less energy on noncritical tasks, and achieve greater results. “ – Harvard Business Essentials

Most of us have heard the statistic: People who set goals are more successful. You know how to set goals. But do you know how to achieve them?

As a entrepreneurial coach I have seen a lot! I’ve used my clients’ successes and failures to set up a system for actually achieving goals.

Set Your Destination: One Year, One Goal

Pick one main goal. We get WAY too caught up in wanting everything now. Yes, I want everything now too! But if we don’t put a laser focus on our goals, we will water things down. Choose only one focus in 2011 for your business.

I love Erica’s idea of choosing a #themeword to describe your year. I do a similar thing by picking the one goal that will define my year.

In order to pick that one goal, you need to first figure out the priorities in your business.

Priorities. What is the #1 most important thing in your business? What ar
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Tags: Goals