learning about investing with the 1%

10Feb13

It's a rainy sunday afternoon, I'm drinking instant coffee with condensed milk out of a bell jar and reading through TIAA CREF's prospectus. While I generally suscribe believing the stereotype (demonization) of those working on Wall St, I decided I should educate myself a little on the process and this system.

What have I learned:

There are 8 main Accounts (if I open an IRA it would be investing in these products)

Bond related products seem more stable than the others (fixed income definition)

There are a fair amount of risks associated with each investment, I mistakenly didn't read through them yet.

The Social Choice Account is an interesting idea, investing 60% in companies that meet some cool criteria, environmental, ethical worker treatment and others. However the other 40% is invested in fixed income, which I think could include companies that don't meet the social criteria, so what's the point?

I thought taking text from PDFs was hard, all but the horizontal tables copied pasted well. I getting off track by thinking of writing a perl script to mine it.

I want to know if any of the accounts invest in student loan backed money, I have a suspicion that might be the next mortgage backed security.

Questions to ask the rep next time I call, 

There's alot of risks, I could read all of them, but could you just tell me?

With Bond's, I get paid interest while I'm waiting to for it to mature, or the interest is packaged with the maturing bond?

What's the definition for fixed income?

I would say this incomplete post fits in well with my theme of naive novice learning just a little.

Blog Redirection

I applied to 5 PhD programs, I have heard back from 3, interviewed at 2. I don't know what my chances are of getting in. I'm a little bit scared, excited, doubtful, hopeful and nervous. In the likely?unlikely? chance that I'm not accepted to a program I want to go into, I have a backup plan, MOOC grad student. It's funny that I am almost less nervous about being rejected from all the programs than going into grad school.

Short story short, the message of this blog might be changing from unorganized rage against the system, to either working inside the system to promote positive change OR working outside the system to promote positive change/more inclusion.

28jan13: Stuff I'm currently learning, TEs

Man, I haven't been posting for a while. Is this going to turn out to be a good place for taking notes? I guess we'll find out. For my last journal club I presented a paper on endogenous retro viruses. I have been reading up on them and discovering that they (and TEs {transposable elements}) hold very interesting genetic implications. A large part of eukaryotic genomes (and even more in plants!) is made of TE sequences, figuring out their role in evolution is going to be tricky. In some papers I was parousing last night, I found/learned that it's theorized that TEs played an important role in speciation by moving regulatory elements around the genome. When they hop around the genome, randomly inserting them selves in new places, they can interrupt genes and cause new isoforms. The high level of sequence homology also means that TEs might increase opportunities for recombination. In conclusion: TEs are a very interesting topic in genetics, and I think they'll end up earning someone another Noble Prize, after Barbara McClintock.

Anitoch University integrating MOOCs to lower tuition costs

It's finally happened, a university is has taken advantage of free MOOC to offer students a lower cost alternative to traditional courses.  Read Antioch's announcement here, and the Inside Higher Ed article.
This model is targeted to adult learners, (finish their BA for a price cheaper than community/state schools)  whether this would work for high school seniors and the traditional undergrads has yet to be seen.
(Turns out I had this idea a couple weeks ago, but I've been too chicken to send my letter to the Board of Trustees at my college).

Update:
I heard on the radio this morning that the University of Chicago is waving the application cost and tuition costs for Chicago high school graduates.  The program, UChicago Promise, makes it appear that the UC is really "making college more affordable" and with an average tuition cost of $61,000 / year, there is a need to at least act like they're doing that.  But the figure I found socking was that, on average only 50 Chicago resident students are admitted each year!

my direct loan has a new home

Last week my Direct student loan was resold to another lender.  This isn't the worst student loan experience I've heard of, but it's really common for student loans to be resold, hopefully this is the first and last time for me.

My main complaints are I have to set up a new account, direct payment with my account.  At least I wasn't trying to set up anything special, but I'm still worried about information not being transfered in time resulting in a late payment. This happened aprox 2 weeks after I paid $500 extra towards my balance. I don't doubt my debt was bundled and re-sold because some model rated it higher.  If I want to pay extra above my monthly payment, do I run the risk of my loan being resold again? Without my permission. I can't get too upset over this, because it is part of the contract and banks having the ability to do this is essential for the market place to provide loans in the first place, but it still makes me feel powerless as a borrower.

Alright I'm done gripping now. I'm sure people have worst stories than this.

on the other side of the college fair

Tonight I volunteered at a college fair representing my alma mater.  Despite being very different from what I expected, I think it was a good experience.  Going in I thought that being a recent grad would me a big advantage to high schoolers and parents who wanted to learn about the school, instead it was the professional recruiters who had lines of people wanting to talk to them.  I eventually got a rhythm for my greets and responses going, but I was still pretty awkward for my first time at a college fair.
I talked to the rep at the table next to me, (he knew all about my college, having the same first name as his institution he always ends up at the next table).  Going to college fairs are his full time job, this was half-way through the season, and he knew way too much about his college in his opinion.  Sounded like he was burning out.
I noticed the big difference in what questions the high schoolers and what recent grads (like myself) ask each other to compare their experiences.  I don't think these high school students had any concept what college experience was like.  Doesn't this put them at a big disadvantage because they don't yet know what factors are important to them or what questions to ask when comparing institutions?
I found it hard to sell a liberal arts degree, probably a sign of changing times.  Those who knew what kind of degree they wanted were all those found in technical colleges.

Maybe I should've worn my Justin Bieber T-shirt.

google search thursday night

  It's Thursday night, I have a glass(box) of wine and Google search at my disposal.  I'm going to see what new goodies the internets have to offer me, I thought I'd share some of my findings and typos.

The Center for College Affordability  blog is now one of my new favorite sites.  From five minutes of looking through the blog posts it seems to be run by some intelligent people covering important topics on the edu-bubble (my new favorite word of the night).  I haven't even begun to explore their following blog list.

I have to credit Edububble, I think I will buy the book.

Hack Education (omg, I just got the irony! clever girl)  is a blog I have been enjoying for a while.  I got sucked into Adury's post on a reddit troll and the Gawker article. A disturbing side to free speech.