I won’t lie, I am a Mint user. I love Mint’s simplicity, functionality, and, well, prettiness. There, I said it. However, I wanted to see what all of the Quicken hype is about. And not to mention, I got it for free from work as part of a drive towards “Financial Literacy” in the workplace.

A lot of people tell me that Quicken is much more comprehensive when it comes to investment tracking and budgeting. So, are they right?

One of the biggest perks of a college degree is that it gives you the opportunity to get a great salary. Notice I said opportunity, there are never guarantees.

The average starting salary in 2009 for all graduates was $49,307, a little below the average of $49,693 in 2008. The slight drop is understandable – as companies have been cutting benefits and instituting pay freezes.

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), here are the Bachelor degrees that garnered the highest starting salary offers.

Every single year… EVERY single year I do not plan for Halloween. If I played it well, I would get a costume the week following Halloween for 70% off and save it for the next year. I mean, it’s not a big burden to do that. But alas, I don’t. And how can you go to all of the fun costume parties and bar events if you are the guy in normal clothes who says “Oh, I’m… uhh… the guy from the Real World. Yeah, get it?”

Last minute costumes are one thing for a solo person. You throw a few things together and BAM, you got a decent enough costume to get into the party.

Had I written this article two years ago, it would have been a lot more positive. But I didn’t, so it’s not. For the class of 2010, overall hiring is expected to decrease by 7%. This is a far cry from the projections for the current class of 2009: a 1.3% increase over the class of 2008 (which is still the lowest in 6 years).

Even though 43% of employers intend to maintain their current level of college hiring, they say they want to focus on fall recruiting and cutting costs by attending less job fairs. If they are attending less job fairs, that means you will have to be more vigilant then your fellow classmates to get noticed.

Every year the IRS updates Publication 590, a document on Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs). Two of the key components of the document that you want to look at are the contribution limits and the income phase outs. These two things enable you to make your financial plans and goals for the next year.

Just in case you don’t feel like reading through pub 590 (and I can’t blame you, the IRS is very good at dragging out documents), I will summarize the key takeaways from the document.