Do you agree with the artist? Who really has spare money? The above image describes an all too familiar situation. According to the St. Louis Fed the personal savings rate has recently come back above 5%, up from around 2% prior to the recession. While some people are able to effectively manage their debts, I believe it is too socially acceptable to abuse credit.

When walking through the streets of downtown Portland, I sometimes give money out when asked, but usually I try to avoid it. I avoid it not because I don’t have compassion for the poor but that I feel giving out money is only a short term fix.

When waiting at my bus stop, the same woman comes by everyday asking people for money. I saw her elsewhere once downtown, walking and talking on a cell phone. I don’t know if it was her cell phone or not but it made me think.

I feel strange when I am at an intersection and I see a person with a sign asking for help. It would be dangerous to stop my vehicle to give them some money, but I think it’s their intent to get money from people who end up stopped right next to them. When I see a sign that mentions being a veteran my heart aches that much more.

This topic is hard for some to talk about. I grew up in an area with less visible signs of poverty so maybe I am more impacted by people I see on the street asking for help. What are your thoughts?

Living in an apartment complex, I get other people’s mail all the time. Typically from the outside of the envelopes I can tell if it is a credit card application, appeal for a donation, or junk mail. I receive this type of mail weekly for the previous two to three people who lived in my unit before me. (This still is hard to believe considering the post office once stopped delivering my mail until I submitted this card with my name, yet they still send me other people’s mail – very strange). I had never opened another person’s mail until yesterday; I usually put it into the outgoing mail box or in the case of junk mail, I recycle it.

Yesterday I was performing some car spring cleaning. When going through the center console I found something peculiar. It was a Christmas card that I had intended to put back in the mail. I then remembered the origin of this envelope. This was the first letter that had an actual return address on it. It was addressed to Person X from Persons X (X signifying the same last name). So instead of simply throwing it away or putting it back into the outgoing mail, I decided in December I was going to send it back with a note, telling the senders (seemingly Person X’s family), that I had been living in the apartment unit since July, and Person X had moved out. I placed the letter in my console for safe keeping and it stayed there until yesterday.

Impulsively, I decided to open the letter to see if it was even worth my time and energy to send it back. Low and behold, I open the letter and find a heartwarming Christmas card. Persons X had not heard from Person X in a long time and wished to see her again. I was taken aback for a second feeling pretty concerned for Person X. Was she in some sort of trouble? I hope that her family had heard from her since December 24th (the date the letter was post marked).

There was also $50 cash inside the card. Not for a second did I think about keeping the money. While the 50 bucks had been hidden in my car for 4 months, the money was never mine. Seeing the money motivated me to take action. I wrote out a letter explaining what I had initially intended, that Person X had moved, and I never knew her. I expressed my hope that they had heard from her, put their card with the money inside into my envelope and sent in back. See: http://goo.gl/cSAZB for better ways to send money through the mail.

The past few years have seen a significant boom is consumer savings opportunities. The most well-known, of course, are companies like Groupon and LivingSocial. More recently, Yelp initiated their effort for group buying and Google rumored a new service called Google Offers. These types of services are likely to flourish during the twenty-teens.

GroupOn is a service that has a deal of the day, per geographic region, which allows you to buy goods and services usually at more than 50% discount. There are a few restrictions but most people rave about it. Personally, I still have not adjusted to the idea of paying for a coupon. One downside of the service is that you have to opt-out of getting daily emails. I am a person who prefers to click my bookmark and see what the deal is – only when I feel like buying. There is nothing that annoys me more than receiving a daily bacon email (bacon emails are one step above spam because you know the service but still don’t want them in your inbox every single day!!!). LivingSocial is a similar service that offers even steeper discounts when people who you refer to the deal also purchase it. Yelp has joined the daily deal market and keep your eye out for Google offers.

With the boom in mobile computing technology, there are numerous opportunities to hunt for deals using services such as Foursquare, Facebook places, Gowalla, and Scvngr.

Location based social media is the next huge wave is consumer computing and Foursquare is leading the charge. Foursquare is a service that allows users to check-in to locations using their smartphones such as iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. The service has exploded in popularity and has over 7 million users. Not only can you check-in with friends and review stats on their website, local companies offer specials that are only visible to customers who use Foursquare. Just last week, I checked into a bar and saw that upon check-in, I could claim a free slider. Starbucks is also big supporter of Foursquare. At numerous Starbucks across the country, the Mayor (the person who has checked in the most time in the previous sixty days – maximum of one check-in per day is recorded) is able to claim a free cup of coffee every day! Facebook places, Gowalla and Scvngr came after foursquare and offer similar services.

Let’s say you are ready to get rid of you old phone and upgrade to one of the fancy smart phones so you can use Foursquare. You could trade in your phone old phone on Gazelle.com. This is a service that gives you cash for your gadgets.

If you have not already, you should try these great opportunities. I have reviewed some traditional websites and some location based services. If you want to know more, please feel free to contact me: josh@financialbeginnings.org.

My third experience with the middle school class was by far the hardest. The class had become very comfortable with me and as such it was very difficult for me to keep them quiet. Suffice it to say, it was not the most fun for me constantly trying to keep their attention. When I left I was unsure if the students had learned anything that day.

In the classes I taught since then I have not had such a hard time. I have been glad to have students that are well behaved and attentive. I have found that the enthusiasm of the class definitely varies by time of day. I can say the same thing in one class and get blank stares as I do in another and get tons of responses. The more I teach, the better each class has become. I have perfected not only my jokes but also by activities, questions, and visual aids. Each time I look forward to trying something new. (Quick note: if you are ever teaching multiple classes and you have jokes, the students talk to each other so it’s smart to have plenty of material).

Sometimes my ideas work well, other times they don’t. An example of something that did not work is when I tried to illustrate to a middle school class the importance of diversifying their investments. Since there math skills were not at the level I thought they would be, the game crashed and burned. I had to spend the whole time explaining how to do the math. It was not good. Since then, I have learned to have a contingency. If something is not working, I simply move on to something I know works well.

Of the limited hours I have spent teaching; it has mostly been middle and elementary school students. I look forward to teaching high school, because I am most enthusiastic about the higher level concepts I learned in economics classes throughout college. I was first turned onto economics in high school and I know the students have the capacity to understand the material. Find out next week what I love most about economics.