From www.ChristopherSPenn.com Yep, another economics crossover. Blizzard Entertainment’s Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack for World of Warcraft dropped last week, and its impact on the economy has been fascinating. Veteran players of the Auction House (the in-game free market) have been finding that since the expansion came out, very little has been selling.…
In reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers (advance release version, regular will be available November 18), one of the topics he brings up is the rule of 10,000 hours, from Daniel Levitin. Levitin cites that this is about 3 hours a day for 10 years, give or take. If you work 40 hours a week…
Yes, there’s a World of Warcraft Credit Card. With game time. Get it at StudentPlatinum.com/warcraft. Full Disclosure: It’s through work, which means I earn a very small amount of money for each new applicant. More important, I don’t get any mats or a zhevra, but it’s still neat, and I’d talk about it even if…
How To Monetize Your Social Media Outlet In a variation of a Financial Aid Podcast blog post this morning, here’s a brief economics 101 explanation of how you can monetize your blog, podcast, Twitter lifestream, or other social media outlet. Economics 101 Supply and demand are inversely related. When demand exceeds supply, you have to…
From the FDIC press release: Financial results for the second quarter are contained in the FDIC’s latest Quarterly Banking Profile, which was released today. Among the major findings: Provisions for loan losses continue to be the main cause of falling earnings. Rising levels of troubled loans, particularly in real estate portfolios, led many institutions to…
An important note for you. If your employer has a payroll account at a bank that exceeds $100,000 in cash, anything over the $100,000 is at risk if the bank that manages your payroll pulls an IndyMac and goes broke. Ask your employer today if there’s a backup plan to ensure that payroll funds are…
Here’s a scary thought. According to the Wall Street Journal and CNN, the failure of IndyMac, the second largest federally insured financial institution ever to fail, will cost FDIC approximately 10% of its insurance fund. FDIC is the backstop, the guarantee to depositors at banks that there will not be a repeat of the Great…
Image by tnkgrl via Flickr Submit your blog or podcast show notes to Amazon’s Kindle directory. They offer 30% rev share on your blog if they choose it for inclusion – and since you’re blogging ANYWAY, you may as well get some incremental revenue if you’re chosen to be worthy of inclusion! Apply here. Compensation…
April 15 is the deadline for filing a federal tax return. But not everybody can meet that deadline. If you need more time to get your paperwork in, make sure you file a Form 4868, Automatic Extension of Time to File, with the IRS by the April 15 deadline and you’ll get an automatic six-month…
Happy to say my Scholarship Search Secrets eBook was profiled on WCVB Boston 5 on the 6 o’clock news. That eBook, now in its fourth iteration, is one of the products of the Financial Aid Podcast – doing daily scholarship searches for 3 years makes you good at finding scholarships! Original blog post and eBook…
