Financial & Travel Musings

One of the problems of universities these days is that they offer just too much choice in terms of courses. So much so that it would be nice to get a little taster of what a course might be like before you sign up for it.

Thankfully, a number of universities around the world have started up “open” sections that allow anyone to have a peek in at what their course material is like. Now, chances are that you won’t find the particular course that you’re looking at within this selection or perhaps even that your own university has an “open” section for that matter. However, what you can do is look at some of those subjects that are offered by other universities to get something of a feel for what it might be like.

For instance, Yale university has its Open Yale facility which’ll let you sample some courses in the fields of astronomy, english, history, philosophy, psychology and a few others (they add subject areas and courses now and again). Chances are that you’ll not actually be going to Yale but even so it’s worth looking at these (they’re generally in the form of 22 separate one hour videos) if you are considering doing, say, a psychology course elsewhere.

Be warned though that several of the courses on offer are fascinating and can easily eat up your free time!

Popularity: 24% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

With the financial world seemingly falling to bits around the world one of the clear growth areas is that of debt collection agencies obviously.

Ordinarily, these have had fairly pedestrian growth but, of course, with the massive increase in people experiencing financial difficulties many financial outfits have outsourced their collection process to specialist debt collection agencies. They’re not necessarily “the bad guy” but it’s best to be aware of your rights ahead of their arrival (these vary considerably around the world) so that you know what they’re allowed to do and what isn’t on.

Typically for instance you’ll find that they’re not allowed to take the “tools of your trade” on the basis that they should leave you with some means of getting an income to repay the debt. The question, of course, is: what are the “tools of your trade”?

The problem of definition is endemic in this industry. Obviously, if they’re coming to take enough belongings off you to sell and thereby repay the debt, then clearly they will want to take the more saleable items yet in a lot of cases that will include computer equipment which a lot of us use to make our living.

Popularity: 30% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

You might think that it’s obviously in a garage, but that’s not the case.

Yes, a garage will shelter your car but the problem is that it doesn’t let it dry off so well and therefore you can find that you end up with more rust on a car stored in a garage than one that sits outside. In fact the best option is usually to consider carports instead.

These give you the shelter but the free flow of air around the car makes for a dry car and therefore less rust.

And, of course, they’re a whole lot cheaper too!

Popularity: 29% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!