The Amateur Financier

The week before last, we covered some techniques on job interviewing techniques, which turned out to be perfectly timed, as I had two job interviews last week and the blog entries were a nice refresher course on the dos and do nots.  Of course, as I mentioned in that entry, your job hunting task doesn’t end when the job interview is over; you need to do the proper follow-up if you want your name to be on the top of the pile for the post.

The most important part of the follow up is a thank you letter.  Remember, the people you spoke with during your interview have been working hards to find someone for this position, and frequently are pulled from other areas of the company in order to have experts in the field present at interview time.  In any event, a positive response, however brief, would definitely be appreciated by everyone you spoke with during the interview.  Sending thank you notes to everyone with whom you spoke during the interview (or at least, everyone who provided you with a name and contact information) will help you to show your appreciation.  It can also help to set you apart from other interviewers or prevent yourself from being singled out as one person who did NOT appreciate the interview enough to send a thank you note.

Given the number of styles (hand-written, informally typed, business letter style) and methods of delivery (regular mail, email, faxes) that exist, it might be tough to determine just what sort of thank you note to send.  Unfortunately, there are few hard and fast rules out there to guide you.  A thank you guide by Quint Careers notes that emailed or faxed thank yous might be acceptable, depending on the culture of the company to which you are applying; I would tend to play it safe and opt for a mailed thank you, unless you were told specifically to send your thanks by email (or don’t have a street address for your interviewer(s) ).  As for the style, that’s a bit more flexible; although, if your hand writing it truly atrocious (as mine tends to be), it might be best for your chances at the job to stick with a word processed thank you.

More important than the style of the note is the timing; the opinions of job search experts are almost unanimous in suggesting that thank you notes be written and sent within twenty-four hours of the interview.  So, if your interview was on Monday, you should have your thank you note in the mail by Tuesday.  If by chance you can’t send the letter within that time frame, send it anyway; a late thank you note is better than no note at all, and many places have such long job filling processes that you might be able to get your thanks expressed before a final decision is reached.  Also, be sure to send a note to everyone involved in the interview; determining who will have influence over the hiring process can be tough, and you don’t want anyone to feel insulted by your lack of consideration.

As for what to put in the thank you note, it’s best to keep it brief; one or two paragraphs, at most.  Use the first paragraph to express your thanks, preferably by referencing something memorable that occurred during the interview.  (It’s always good to differentiate yourself from the crowd, as well as help the interviewer to put your name to the particular interview.)  The second paragraph, if included, can be used to clarify one or two points from the interview, to elaborate on something you discussed, or simply to further comment on the job itself.  Several example thank you notes can be found at About.com.  Be sure that if you are sending notes to multiple to people at the company, that you vary them between recipients, even if all the letters have the same general format.

Now, you’ve sent out all your thank you notes; you can just sit back and wait until you get the job (or at least a second interview), right?  Not quite.  While you may get a response with no more effort on your part, you might instead have to keep asking the interviewer in order to find out the final decision.  If you don’t hear back from the interviewer within the agreed upon time frame, or it has been a few weeks without a response, you should try to follow up on the interview.  In these circumstances, a formal letter is not usually called for; instead, a simple phone call or email can suffice.  Should you find that the job hunt is still ongoing, ask politely when a decision is expected.  You migh not get a response right away; don’t be discouraged and follow up every few days (once or twice a week).

If you end up getting the job, congratulations!  I hope this guide proved to be helpful.  Should you find yourself called back for a second (or third, or even fourth) interview, simply follow the hints for interviews already provided, and follow up with another set of thank you notes.  If you don’t get the job, try to contact one of the interviewers to ask how you could have made a better impression.  That way, when the next interview arrives, you will be in much better shape to get the job.

That’s it for following up on your interview; good luck to all the job seekers out there, and hopefully we’ll all be employed soon!

Thank You image by Kitera Matar

Once again this week, we’re looking into insane ways to save money.  This time, we’re going to show you one possible way to cut down on those energy bills: hamster power!  I like this cartoon in particular because one of the pet names I have for my fiancee is Hamster.  (It’s a term of endearment, I say!)  I think it came out looking pretty cute.

If you want some legitimate ways to cut down how much you spend on your electrical bills, you could switch over to compact flourescent lightbulbs, make sure your house is well insulated, and installing low-flow shower head.  You can find these tips and more on MSN, Not Made of Money, and Associated Content, among many, many others.  For now, enjoy the cartoon:

I’ll let you in on a little secret: whenever I am trying to learn something new, from using my computer to drawing, my first choice for a how-to book is the Dummies series.  They tend to be very clear, well written, full of useful information, and just humorous enough to make even the duller topics interesting.  So, when I was first trying to learn about investing, the rather extensive library of books for Dummies is one of my first choices.

In this way, I came across Investing Online For Dummies.  It was one of the first books I read about investing, and I still use the information included in order to improve my skills and knowledge.  So, let’s take a look inside, to see what we can glean about investing from Investing Online for Dummies.

Overview

Online Investing for Dummies is broken down into four different sections, covering the whole range of information available about investing online.  The books starts, as many beginning investment books do, with a primer on getting yourself financially ready to invest (by doing things like eliminating high interest debt).  Since this is a book about online investing, the second chapter focuses largely on the many sources of information about individual stocks and companies you can find online.  The next few chapters provide an overview on the different types of investment accounts and a brief summary of the brokerages you can choose for your accounts (very helpful, if you’re trying to decide where to start your investing career).  To finish off the first part of the book, there’s information about how to buy and sell stocks, the different types of orders that can be placed, and information about using margin.

The second part of the book helps you to find all the resources available for the online investor.  There are chapters that cover the basics of stocks (including how they move in the short term as well as longer term shifts in stock prices), how to find out information from other investors (hint: blogs are helpful), and ways of measuring your performance.  In this section, there are a lot of web addresses listed, most which I haven’t had a chance to review yet, but all of which seem to provide good information for anyone looking to learn more about investing.  The last chapters in this section cover asset allocation, mutual funds, and ETFs.

The third part of the book covers more advanced topics, from evaluating individual companies to determine good stock valuations, to using stock screens to narrow your investment possibilities.  There’s also some other advanced topics, such as buying individual bonds online, that are covered in the course of these chapters.  Most interesting (to me, at least) is the chapter on evaluating stocks, which provides a pretty decent introduction to value investing.

The last section of the book is the Part of Tens, a common feature of the Dummies series.  This section serves to sum up some of the pertinent points covered in the rest of the book, as well as going into depth on other topics that weren’t already covered.  Here, there’s a list of ten common mistakes made by online investors and a list of ways to protect your investments and identity while you are online.  But wait, there’s more: there’s also three chapters of the book available online, covering supplemental information about investing online, technical analysis, and initial public offerings.  You can view them here, if you’re curious.

Evaluation

Investing Online for Dummies has plenty of good attributes. It’s easy to read, written in a hand holding fashion, and provides plenty of outside resources.  If you’re brand new to the world of investing, particularly if you want to do so primarily online, it’s a must read.  Even if you’re a more experienced investor, the sheer number of resources available means there’s almost certainly something in there that you haven’t considered.

On the negative side, the number of links provided make the book feel a times like nothing more than a jumble of websites.  Furthermore, it’s sometimes overwhelming, reading through such a large collection of links and wondering which will be the most helpful to you.  While the books is very good at directing you where to seek information, if you’re just starting out, the nonspecificity will make it harder to determine where to get started with your investments.

Overall

I like this book; it was one of the first investing books I ever read, and I continue to glean new information each time I reread it.  I highly recommend it, although it’s best taken in a little at a time.  Attempt to visit all of the sites listed in a short time, and you’ll be overwhelmed.  But if you’re not sure how to get started, or want a guide to the myriad information online that concerns investing, be sure to give it a thorough read.

Well, it’s time again to gather up some of the more interesting posts on the interwebs for a feature I like to call, Thoughtful Thursday Friday!  If you recall from yesterday (oh please, it was only a day ago; you can’t have forgotten that soon), I’ve been doing a lot of traveling this week.  I’m not a big fan of traveling, especially when it involves me driving a total of twenty-four hours in the course of this week, just going from my fiancee’s house to my mother’s house and back, twice.  (Yes, you heard that right: I’m going to spend the equivalent of a full solar day in the car this week to complete two round trips from one end of the state to the other.)

To add to my aggravation, I had an appointment with my doctor this afternoon to see if my ribs or any of the underlying organs were seriously damaged during my fall.  She didn’t think there was any problem (her comments amounted to, ‘if you’re still moving around alright and haven’t been vomiting blood all this past week, you probably aren’t seriously hurt), but she decided to send me in for a few tests anyway.  I ended up getting lost on the way to the hospital, missing the appointment her nurse got for me, going to the emergency room to get my CAT scan, and waiting in the waiting room for over two hours because she wrote out the prescription wrong.  (During the two hours, the emergency room staff were playing phone tag with my doctor’s office.)  Eventually, because my doctor could not be reached, I was sent home without getting the CAT scan (although, the tech at the hospital concurred with my doctor: with no more serious symptom than a few bruised ribs, I was unlikely to be in any health danger.)  All I can say is I can’t wait for digital health records to be commonplace; hopefully, being able to store and send my health information digitally could have prevented me losing so much time over a single missing word on a prescription.

But, I’m still trying to stay optimistic; the job interview I had today went pretty well (PeTA ended up causing my would-be employers to laugh), and I should be able to go back to stay with my loving girl (although, if I get this job, I’ll have to move out, yet again).  Plus, it’s that time of the week to catch up on some of the good posts that have appeared on the personal finance blogs:

Carnival of Personal Finance #214: United States Presidents Edition – I normally don’t mention carnivals on my Thoughtful Thursday posts; they are typically just a collection of links (not enough of which lead back to me), frequently presented without much thought or flare.  In this case, however, Stephanie of Poorer than You has gone to the trouble of matching each submission up to one of the past (or current) US Presidents, including putting up the official Presidential portrait of each one.  In short, this is a carnival as carnivals should be; go and support Miss Stephanie, and hopefully we can more beautiful looking carnivals like this in the future.

How Do You Want to Pay Taxes? – An interesting question posted by the Weaknomist.  Besides the obvious answers (Never, or if that’s not possible, as infrequently and as cheaply as possible), there’s a range of possibilities from a sales tax to an income tax to a hybrid system like we currently have.  Personally, I’d prefer consumption taxes (like a sales tax) over income taxes if possible, with refunds or other mechanisms to keep the system as progressive as we can make it.  But that’s just me.

Going Green: Costs Big Bucks, Returns Big Bucks – One of the biggest problems with going green (now that you are no longer automatically assumed to be a tree hugging ultra-vegetarian commune dweller for even bringing up the concept) is the sometimes large up-front costs you pay.  On My Life ROI, such costs are considered with an eye towards the money you could save by, say, suppling part of your electricity with solar panels or meeting LEED standards for energy efficiency.  Luckily for the would-be greenie, the large upfront costs can (usually) be made up with energy savings in the future, although you’ll have to consider your specific situation to see if this is right for you.

Checklist for College Freshmen: Dorm Room Essentials – A little bit of nostalgia for me, I suppose, thinking back to my college days.  Studenomics provides a list of things that an incoming freshman should bring, from hangers to sandals.  Take away the coffee maker, add in an alarm clock, clothing, bedding, and toiletries, and his list matches my supplies, and freshman year went pretty smoothly for me.

Oakland Almost Stumbles on California’s Budget Fix – Taxing medicinal marijuana.  As reported on Lazy Man and Money, Oakland has recently decided to start taxing medical marijuana to bring in increased revenue.  This led to a discussion of whether legalizing pot would be a good thing, economically and societally.  I generally think it would be; legalization, monitoring, and taxing just makes more sense to me than the government spending money to prevent people from purchasing a good they want to acquire.  Of course, without having any independent research at my disposal to prove that in one way or the other, this is more a statement of my general feelings than a legitimate political platform.

Carnivals/Round Ups where I am featured:

The 99th Edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by The Skilled Investor, featured my column Risk Management Strategies

Weakonomics Links: Management or Egoeconomics, a round up by the Weakonomist, featured my column The Tragedy of the Commons