Have you come across any great articles lately? If so, then please share those links in the comments below. And one more time for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend using Feedly as an RSS reader. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

But aside from all of these books and reports I really like to read blogs written by everyday people who accomplish extraordinary feats. I have a small cadre of such blogs fed into my RSS feeder. Some of these blogs are written by people who have lost tremendous amounts of weight, others are written by people who have gone from a skinny physique or a chubby physique to winning bodybuilding competitions. Some of the blogs are written by guys who were introverted and wound up changing their lives to become social butterflies. Other blogs are written by people who have managed to travel around the world for an incredibly small amount of money before they were a certain age.

I don’t necessarily identify with any of these blogs or their writers because none of them really speak to my direct experience. In other words, at one point I lost 125 pounds so I already know how to accomplish that goal, I’ve never been an introverted person so I don’t need tips or pointers on how to get out there and meet people, and I’m not the biggest traveler so those lessons really don’t apply to my life. What I do enjoy about these blogs is reading the sense of accomplishment that these people achieve when they meet their goals. As someone who has met (and continues to meet) certain goals in my life, I understand how great that sense of accomplishment feels.

It’s awesome.

However, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in many of these blogs. All of these amateur writers are missing commentary that speaks to a growing number of individuals in our country. Let me be more direct: not one of these bloggers, these self-professed self-help gurus, these accomplished weight loss success stories, these people who have overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, etc. have accomplished their major goals and retired a tremendous amount of debt.

While these bloggers build their own ego and create their own hype because they lost [insert large number here] pounds or because they traveled to [insert large number here] countries, you can’t find someone who has managed accomplish a major goal while saddled with a tremendous non-mortgage debt burden. And it’s like this all over the blogosphere. For example, I read a lot of guy blogs (those blogs focused on items of interest to guys in my age group). These blogs range in variety and type from guys who spend a lot of their time working out and talking about the best techniques for working out to guys who claim to have a lot of social success to guys who manage to weave the fundamentals of their faith throughout their daily lives.

All of the writers that I read on guy blogs eventually wind up writing an entry about how their readers can become better at [insert whatever here]. Well, the impetus for writing this entry was a piece of “advice” that I’ve seen pop up over and over again on these guy blogs. And that same piece of advice pops up on all of the blogs that I read – not just guy blogs. That piece of advice is that if you want to be the absolute best at [insert whatever here], then you absolutely cannot have any debt.

That’s right. I’ve read bloggers saying that if you want to lose weight, you can’t have any debt because you need the freedom to be able to spend as much time as possible working out instead of being stuck working one, two, or more jobs. I’ve read bloggers saying that if you want to increase the size of your social circle, you can’t have any debt because if you don’t have excess funds to do new and exciting things, how can you expand the number and type of people that you’ll interact with? I’ve even read bloggers who say that if you want to meet the type of girl that you think you’re most compatible with, then you can’t have debt because that debt weighs on you mentally and restricts your ability to see yourself with a successful girlfriend, fiancée, or wife.

But here’s the question that prompted me to write this entry…

Who doesn’t have some type of debt? I don’t mean that as a matter-of-fact type of question with the expectation that your response would be, “I guess everyone has some type of debt.” That’s not what I’m going for here. Think of the real answer to that question – who doesn’t have some type of debt? Well, you have independently wealthy people or those who come from tremendous wealth and don’t need to pay their own way through life. Okay. You also have those people who have worked their butts off and earned enough money such that they don’t have to carry any debt. Okay. And you know what? You might even find that people who are the exact opposite of these wealthy people also don’t have any debt. That is to say that those people who never took on college debt yet still didn’t graduate with a degree or those people who just graduated from high school (or not) and wound up living in their parents’ basement; the habitual underachievers out there.

Is there any other type of person who doesn’t have some type of debt? I really can’t think of any, but I would suggest that there should be a fourth category – those people who choose to write a blog focusing in depth about their success at achieving a goal other than retiring debt! After spending a few years reading some of these blogs I’ve come to the conclusion that people out there who accomplish what they believe are great things are not saddled with a tremendous amount of non-mortgage debt. They don’t have a significant amount of consumer debt and they don’t have a significant amount of student loan debt. They have that freedom that I referenced above – the freedom to not be tied down to one, two, or more jobs. And with that freedom comes the ability and flexibility to spend more of their time losing weight or working out or hanging out at local clubs or spending their time learning new hobbies or traveling around the world, etc.

They don’t know what it’s like to work an 8am to 6pm job with an hour commute wrapped on either side of that workday plus spending an hour each morning before you leave for the office working on freelance projects and several hours at night when you get home at night working a second or third job. And I specifically wrote that last sentence to begin with “they don’t know what it’s like” because that’s the problem that I’ve been having with a lot of the blogs that I read: the writers just don’t understand how self-righteous and, frankly, alienating they sound when they write their entries.

And here’s the prime example that I know so many of you out there have probably seen before… How many of you have ever read a weight loss blog or a weight training blog that condemns those who say they don’t have the free time to work out? Usually, the writer says that this is just an excuse and that you can make time to lose weight or work out if you really want to…

If you really want to? Really?

Are you fucking kidding me?

The only person who would write such an ignorant comment is someone who don’t wake up at 5am (exhausted) and then fall into bed at midnight after working the entire day to earn money in an effort to retire debt. Who would tell someone who keeps this schedule 5, 6, or 7 days each week that they are lazy or that they are the cause of their own lament because they don’t make time for working out? I know who would tell someone that – a blogger who has never had to try to tackle both [insert a personal goal here] and retire a significant amount of debt at the same time.

The reason why I wrote this entry is because I know I have a lot of random readers on this blog and I can track where some of you come from out there on the internet. Some of you are coming from some of these self-help, conquer the world type of blogs and that’s great. Believe me, I want to conquer the world and improve my health, wealth, and well-being just as much as those other writers. However, I live my life in the real reality – a reality much closer to where you probably exist, too. I understand that it’s hard to train to climb Mount Everest when you have a six-figure student loan debt crushing you and dictating nearly every move you make. I understand that it’s really hard and really difficult to lose weight when you’re working 16 – 18 hour days (or longer). I understand that it’s difficult to put the proper amount of time and effort into increasing your social circle or even finding someone worthwhile to date when you’re so focused and, unfortunately, controlled by crushing levels of consumer or student debt. I understand where you’re coming from – I get it.

And I don’t think that you’re lazy. I don’t think that you’re anti-social. I don’t think that you’re making excuses. Not at all.

What I do think is that you’re stuck in the same rut that the majority of population is stuck in – you’re forced to do things to retire debt (or generally improve your financial position) that prevent you from fully engaging in the other activities that you want to engage in. You’re not going to find this understanding on those self-help blogs or the guys’ blogs or in many other places out there because the truth is that those writers simply don’t understand. In about 6 years I’ve paid off nearly $100,000 in student loan debt and I have another $21,000+ left to repay. I repaid that amount while losing a tremendous amount of weight, gaining most of it back, losing much of it again, and gaining some of it back again. Professionally, I work around the clock; not just a 9-to-5 type of job. Believe me, I understand the burden of debt and how it really does dictate what you can and cannot do with your life.

And, like many of you, I’ve sat there and listened to people in my personal and professional life ask me why I don’t [insert whatever here] while I’m young? These people also have no idea what it’s like to be suffocating under crushing consumer or student loan debt. Folks constantly ask me why I don’t go away on vacation (my last real vacation was back in 6th grade). Well, I don’t go away on vacation because I can’t imagine spending a thousand or two bucks on vacating reality while I still owe money on my student loan. That would be financially foolish. People ask me why I don’t go out and find a “nice” girl to date (usually, their definition of “nice” is different than mine, but that’s another entry). They don’t understand that when you work around the clock, you don’t have much time for socialization outside of your standard circle. And, to mix a little bit of a guys’ blog mindset here, they don’t understand that the girls you meet while you are burdened with immense debt, while you are out of shape, or while you are working around the clock are typically not the girls that you want to marry! I assume it’s the same for the ladies out there looking for a man.

To sum it up, I just warn you all to read these self-help, self-improvement blogs for purposes other than examples to follow. Chances are very strong that the writer you’re reading doesn’t have the same life experiences as you do. And chances are even stronger that they never had to tackle an immense amount of undischargeable consumer or student debt before, during, or after they accomplished whatever it is that made them an amateur expert.

Be rational, believe in yourself, and tackle your debt first. Once you remove that crushing yoke, then focus on your health (losing weight, gaining muscle, etc.), and after that you can focus on your social life. There’s no way around doing what makes sense and this is the path that I really believe makes the most sense for the most people out there.

Now… back to the grind!

Let’s see if I can do it!

Do you know people who blindly follow everything that the leaders of their chosen political party or political point of view say? You know – that friend of yours who never thinks that anything a Republican/Democrat (depends on your friend’s point of view) does is worth any good at all. These people bother me. Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of these brainwashed people from both sides of the aisle emerge over the national debt debate. There are conservative minded people who think that the government should stop spending money, period. There are liberal minded people who think that the debt ceiling should have no limit because they don’t think it matters. And then there are the vast majority of Americans who believe that something needs to be done that includes both spending cuts and getting rid of loopholes that allow the ultra wealthy to not pay their fair share in taxes.

In other words, there are people who understand that compromise is the right way to go and there are people who have a blind allegiance to whatever one political party says.

Those people with the blind allegiance frustrate me.

However, forget about the national debate over the debt limit for a moment. There’s an example much closer to home that frustrates me even more. Here in New Jersey we have a very healthy charter school system. For those of you who do not know what a charter school is – it’s a free, public school just like any other public school. There are two primary differences between a charter school and the traditional public school system. The first is that a charter school does not operate under the thumb of the local Board of Education. They’re independent and not beholden to the sometimes crazy local politics that shape local Boards of Education.

The second difference is funding. You know all of that money that you pay in property taxes? Well, that money is filtered through the system in New Jersey a “per pupil” amount is decided for each school district. Ideally, you should be able to track your property tax dollars throughout the system and ultimately say something like, “My 2010 property taxes paid for X students to be educated in the local school district.” Except for charter schools. Yes, they are funded through the same revenue stream as the regular school districts, except they only get 90% of the “per pupil” funding.

Two major differences – independent of the local school board and given less money in an attempt to do a better job at educating your students. Got it? Good!

If you’ve followed the charter school movement in New Jersey, then you know that they are admired by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike. In fact, Governor Chris Christie has ramped up many of the charter school programs that were supported or enacted under former Governor Jon Corzine. There has been a gradual increase in the amount of charter schools operating throughout the Garden State – I think we’re at 70 something schools now. And the most important note to mention about the charter schools operating in New Jersey is that, by and large, they are succeeding.

All you have to do is look at schools like TEAM Academy Charter School in Newark or Camden’s Promise Charter School in Camden or Hope Academy Charter School in Asbury Park and you’ll find students whose parents have rejected the local school districts and are now achieving levels of academic success never before thought possible in these districts. It’s happening, folks – and it’s real. There are a lot of people out there who try to marginalize the charter school movement and their arguments are pretty lame. One of the biggest arguments that I hear goes something like, “Charter schools are private schools! They take money from the public system for a private school!”

That’s totally ridiculous.

Charter schools are totally free, public schools that you can send your child to if you so choose. If there are not enough seats in the charter school to accommodate all of the applicants, then the school holds a public lottery to allocate the seats. It doesn’t get any fairer than that, people.

But what aggravates me the most and what drove me to write this entry is that many of today’s complainers about charter schools didn’t say a word a few years ago when Corzine was governor. Not a word. In fact, many of them lauded the great work that Corzine was doing to support quality charter schools throughout the state. And now we have a very strong, very well-liked Republican governor in a predominantly Democratic state and all of a sudden the supporters of charter schools have become detractors.

It’s sad. It’s pathetic. It’s blind political allegiance.

Mark my words – as soon as a Democrat becomes the governor of this state again, you won’t hear a single peep out of the hate groups that run around these days lambasting Governor Christie’s heroic efforts to support the charter school movement. Those with blind political allegiance will hoot and holler about how great the Democratic governor is and how he or she is fixing all of the problems that Governor Christie “created.”

And amid all of that rubbish there will be nearly no truth.

The truth is that charter schools have succeeded under Republican and Democratic governors alike. The truth is that charter schools have been given a tremendous amount of support under Republican and Democratic governors alike. And the truth is that this state’s politics are so wallowed in people with a fiercely blind political allegiance that those of us with independent voices must continue to shout to be heard above the chorus of blind hatred.

I wonder how long it can last. I wonder how long before someone takes these blind political zealots to task. For the sake of the future of this great state, I hope that day comes very, very soon.

Click here to expand

Source: Accredited Online Schools.org and other resources

Pretty interesting stuff, huh? It’s amazing how many different ways you can break down the numbers and show these statistics.

Despite the proposal creeping up numerous times by so many people over the years, there has never been a solemn attempt to include personal finance as an integral part of the high school curriculum. There is no doubt that personal finance has always been an integral part of our daily lives. Children will have more command over their finances if they grow up acquiring knowledge about personal finance while in school.

These days millions of children leave school without any knowledge of personal finance. Even, many leave the University without a single class on the banking and fractional banking system, function of the Federal Reserve, currency devaluation, compounding interest and mortgage interest. It is really awful that the education system has now become a platform for job rather than proper knowledge and entrepreneurship.

It is quite evident that some fundamental things are wrong within the system. A question might arise that in whose interest the government is not employing personal finance education in schools. Again best-selling personal finance and business author, Angie Mohr says, “At the beginning of another school year, we find once again that our kids are learning more about theory and less about practical financial concepts. Our kids can explain the Pythagorean Theorem but can’t make change from a $20 bill. They can memorize passages from Shakespeare but don’t know how to compare the value of two items in a grocery store.”

However, as a single optimistic step toward implementing personal finance education as an integral part of our education system, President Obama has declared April Financial Literacy Month after witnessing years of personal finance decline.

It is obviously a good sign that President Obama has declared April Financial Literacy Month. However, that is not going to solve the whole lot. There are still some robust steps need to be taken to ensure personal finance classes for teens about how to mange their money.

The Federal government and the state machineries should jointly take initiatives to ensure compulsory teaching of personal finance in the States. Further, the parents should also be aware of the importance of personal finances in their children’ life. If parents compel the local schools and state governments to take positive steps in this regard, there can be a positive outcome. The government must be compelled by showing examples of the poor condition of the economy and the tearing consumer-debt that resulted from the lack of knowledge of personal finance among common people.

However, some pioneer schools have already started to figure out personal finance as a subject to be taught to teens. According to a study by the national Council for Economic Education in 2009, 13 states are required at least one semester of personal finance instruction (see the requirements in your state).

Now it is time for other states to include personal finance education into their core curriculum. Further, according to a June 2010 Capital One study, 45% of high school graduates are even not ready to manage their money after their graduation.

Author’s Bio: Patricia Briggs is a guest columnist, blogger, author for various websites and communities including Oak View Law Group, CCHFA, CSCDA etc. She has completed her Post Graduation in Social Welfare from California University and is currently working with a reputed bank located in California. She loves to write articles during her free time especially on topics like bankruptcy, debt settlement services, investment opportunities, monetary policies, etc.

Plus, from time to time I do find that I go on Twitter and bitch about something. For example, this morning I was listening to some blabbermouth on the radio and he was talking about education spending in New Jersey. I tweeted (that’s right, I “tweeted” a thought): Spend as much as you want on education – without proper support and reinforcement at home it’s all a waste.

And that’s the truth!

Anyway, if you haven’t already done so you should follow JerseySmarts.com on Twitter @JVince81. Just imagine – you can check my bullshit out directly on your smartphone as well as your own Twitter feed. Wonderful!

I’m glad that there are more movies and, specifically, documentaries coming out about what’s going on in the inner cities with respect to education. One of the better movies to come out is The Cartel. And while I understand that there are two sides to every story, my gut reaction to the entire education reform and the school choice movement is that one option works and one option fails. Put all of the phony baloney math and statistics aside and look at the results – the overwhelmingly vast majority of charter schools in inner city school districts (and the suburbs for that matter) are tremendous successes while the traditional public schools are failures.

The Cartel tries to give us some reasons why this phenomenon occurs. Here is some information that director Bob Bowdon posted on The Huffington Post regarding his movie and education reform:

Education status quo defenders routinely call school choice “simplistic,” and they mean it in the bad way.

Their bullet points go like this:

The problems of American education are dizzyingly complex. There are issues of absentee parents, bad nutrition, and cultural breakdown. There’s an entertainment culture beckoning our kids to hours of videos games, television shows and gross out YouTube videos. Throw in a diminished economy where even some of the best students can’t find work after graduation, and you get a whiff of the enormous complexity. Why on earth do these reformers believe that (Insert: school choice, charter schools, vouchers, scholarships) would be some magic pill to cure this swirling array of ills? These fixes are simplistic.

Indeed, for many of these people, the very concept of “complexity” is comforting. They believe the best solutions to social problems strike ornate compromises between a wide variety of stakeholders, each of which need carefully designed provisions to preserve their interests.

If they hear news of a 2,000 page health care bill passed by the House (that most Representatives don’t read), they shrug and say, “What’s the problem?” If the 9,400 page federal tax code has obvious loopholes, they want to add more pages to plug them. If a 165-page teachers’ contract spells out the Monday through Thursday workday as six hours, 57 minutes, and 30 seconds, and the rest of us say, “are you kidding me?” — they say, “so?”

Running deep in their psyches: “Complexity is for smart people.”

What they forget is that all the great causes in American history were based on simple questions. Should slavery be legal, or not? Should women have the right to vote, or not? Should we remove our troops from Vietnam, or not? Of course entire libraries of scholarship can be collected about intricacies of these issues; yes, we’re aware of that. The point is that the decisions can all be boiled down to elegantly uncomplicated questions.

Parental school choice, in fact, is a simple concept, and just like movements for abolition, suffrage or withdrawal from Vietnam, its simplicity doesn’t make it a bad idea.

I encourage you to read through Bowdon’s entire post over at the other website. And if you have the inclination, I encourage you to buy or rent The Cartel to see what’s going on in the school choice movement today!

Unbelievable that this guy in Parsippany is so greedy. The system should not be gamed, damn it. That’s why it costs so much to live in this state. Thank God Governor Christie brought light to this issue. I hope that this public bashing helps deter future greedy public officials from trying to game the system in their hometowns.

Let me make this very clear, folks. There is not one thing in either of these videos that is defensible. Not one. And now, for your viewing pleasure disgust, the hateful, grotesque New Jersey Education Association as presented by the same guy who brought us the ACORN videos last year.

Feeling sick to your stomach yet? Look folks – enough is enough with the NJEA. This hateful organization needs to be dismantled and the local teachers unions need to be empowered. Just like any good bureaucracy, the people at the top of this chain have forgotten their mission and values and need to be removed. Let the local unions handle the local issues – not some filthy, unethical, immoral group of scum in the NJEA’s Trenton office.

How great is Governor Christie? This guy speaks with the voice of all New Jerseyans who are sick and tired of the wimpy, petty bullshit coming out of the pansy teachers who think that because they hold a position of power in front of minors that they can treat the Governor like he’s a piece of garbage. This arrogant, rude woman that began to mock the Governor seconds after he began answering her overloaded question ought to be ashamed of herself! What did she think? That the Governor was some grade schooler that had to bow down and do as she said? Get real, woman! That’s probably why this arrogant, rude woman decided to become a teacher instead of going out into the private market – that type of rude attitude wouldn’t be tolerated for a split second in the job market!

Hey look – I didn’t like Governor Jon Corzine one bit. I thought he was an arrogant, limousine liberal who was completely out of touch with the everyday man and woman on the street. I thought that Governor Corzine was the epitome of arrogant during his time in office. Yet, when I spoke with him and when I went and listened to him talk, I would have NEVER treated him the way these liberal losers are treating Governor Christie. Who do these jerks think they are? Talk about “do as I say and not as I do,” huh? Good grief…

Governor Christie is the man. Thank God he is our Governor.