My advice is to create a budget NOW, before you get that raise. When the raise does come, do not increase your discretionary (aka "fun stuff") spending. First contribute to long-term savings and investments, and when you're doing very well in those and are still swimming in cash, THEN increase your discretionary…

Comparing it to other places doesn't change the fact that Starbucks sells expensive coffee. Most places that sell coffee do so quite expensive. The same exact thing happens with tea. It's a couple of dollars for a mediocre cup of tea (to get good tea, you need to go to a relatively expensive restaurant. If you're into…

Something else to explore is GRANTS. FAFSA was a life saver when it came to paying for my college. Pell grants (there are income restrictions on this one) also helped tremendously. (FAFSA protip: try to apply on Jan 1 every year - the same day applications open. Those who apply later are likely to get less money, as…

Halfway through the article I started thinking, "wow, compared to most Jezebel articles, this is actually journalism. It's informative, analytical, not racist or feminist... *finishes article* oooohhh, that's why... it's a repost from a different blog."

Am I the only one who thinks college students tend to act the exact opposite of this?

I take it a step further. Instead of putting off the cleaning until spring or any other time, why not just spread the workload out across the entire year? Just pay attention to what needs to be done, and do it. A single 10 minute clean per day will keep your house near spotless year-round. Keep a list. If you spot…

The answer is potentially more big-picture than the question. First, evaluate if you are using the right OS. If you must constantly virtualize/dual-boot, can a single one of those OSes satisfy all your needs alone? (I'm looking at you, mac people who spend 90% of your time in a virtual windows instance). If your…

I've found the exact opposite to be true. I took several years of French in high school and college, but have since forgotten most of it. One thing I noticed is that students who failed to get the accent correct were consistently speaking slower and couldn't make their words flow as well. Students that did have an…

Don't wear them.

I preach number 4 religiously. Despite the fact that many "lifehacks" end up complicating things, it's important to know when to simplify things instead. The greatest lifehack in my opinion is to simplify your life.

Why is curiosity a better course of action than anger? Because just about anything is a better course of action than anger. Anger has a time and place, but it is few and far between compared to how often it is used. To quote my father-in-law talking to his son recently, "Just some advice of wisdom, gained from over 30…

It's intended to be punitive, not just compensatory.

The only time I ever use a shortener is if I plan on giving the URL to someone in a manner that needs to be manually typed. Generally, this occurs when texting a URL to a friend who doesn't have a smartphone. Since I don't use twitter, I don't have any other case where I need a shorter URL. In most cases where a…

I have a heavy-canvas version of this type of container. I use it all the time for yardwork. I don't want to drag my huge trash can all over my yard, but neither do I want to make trip after trip to take clippings etc to it. Solution was to get a small trash can I can use to ferry stuff to the bit trash can, yet it…

To continue this topic, I agree that "wrinkle free" shirts are NOT wrinkle free. They wrinkle a bit less, but honestly I still iron my "wrinkle free" shirts because you cannot replicate the well-ironed look without ironing it. If you prefer an un-ironed look, then that's fine with me. I just prefer my shirts to be a…

Want to find out of someone is an alcoholic? Remove their ability to drink (I'll leave it up to you to figure out how) and watch how they react. If there's any anger in there, they're an alcoholic, no matter how little they actually drink.

A few tips from a fellow Californian-desert-dweller:

Programmers tend to think in a more exhaustively analytic manner. The non-programmer will just stare at the sequence and see if the answer jumps out at them. The programmer will tend to create a list of characteristics of those numbers and iterate over them to attempt to match every one of those characteristics to see…

"ergonomically optimize your workspace" link points to the laptop link instead of its intended target.

Yes, shame on Lifehacker for claiming that a ticket for changing your music should be contested in court.