Paying for your Child's College Education

Author : Cindy Morus

This is probably the most intensive short-term cash drain on any
family's finances. Unlike most other big- ticket items, such as
homes or automobiles, that can be paid off in monthly
installments, college tuition must be paid out over a relatively
short period of time. With tuition at staggeringly high levels
throughout the nation, a family's commitment to provide higher
education for children can be overwhelming.

Ideally, a long-term plan for college education was initiated
from the birth date of your college-bound student. There is no
better way to ensure a child's education that a systematic
savings plan. But this is not an ideal world, many of us must
finance part of the college education out of the monthly family
budget.

Before selecting a college, parents need to: Determine how much
funding can be available from conventional sources such as
savings, income from the family budget, trusts, and part-time
jobs, if more money is needed.

Explore the availability of scholarships, low-interest student
and parent loans, second mortgages, and conventional loans.

Examine their own life insurance policies and retirement
programs to ensure that college funds will be available in the
event of their death.

Cost is not the only factor to be considered when selecting a
college. While private colleges are generally more expensive
than public colleges, they often have a wealth of financial aid
programs that will make the tuition bite less severe. Many state
and community colleges also have scholarships and loans
available.

Libraries and bookstores carry many excellent college guides
that give detailed information on individual college tuition
charges academic programs. Keep in mind that most colleges have
a financial aid office to assist students in determining when
financial assistance may be available.

Tuition and associated fees increase by 6% each year (or more!)

Category : Music

New Jeep Patriot to debut at the Geneva Motor Show

Author : Lisa Ziegler

The Jeep brand is continuously expanding and conquering new territories with the premiere of its new Jeep Patriot at the Geneva Motor Show for this week. The Patriot is Jeeps new entry-level price point in the UK once it finally launches this summer. The Patriot combines interior flexibility and packaging of an SUV but with the performance, fuel economy, handling, and price of a family hatchback. According to Peter Lambert, managing Director of Chrysler Group UK, You cant escape the fact that the new Jeep Patriot looks like a classic Jeep- but there is nothing old-fashioned about the performance and fuel economy of this compact SUV or its state-of-the-art four wheel drive system. He also added, The market place is changing and the Jeep brand is leading that change as the Compact SUV market grows. Our research shows that the Jeep Patriot appeals to younger customers that want more from their traditional family car young families want a vehicle that looks different but still offers plenty of room and practicality, together with great performance and fuel economy.And since safety is becoming the primary priority for customers, Jeep has made sure that the Patriot is loaded with many standard features including side-curtain airbags, anti-lock brakes (ABS), ESP or Electronic Stability Programme with Electronic Roll Mitigation and the Freedom Drive I full-time and active four-wheel drive system. Add to that the top-of-the-line auto parts and accessories like Jeep car cover which boosts Patriots tremendous value. Lambert further stated, Small family cars with four-wheel drive systems are becoming more sought after as they offer better handling and enhanced safety on the road. The higher seating position of the Patriot, together with the new four-wheel drive system that automatically switches from front to four-wheel drive if you lose traction, offers drivers a real advantage in everyday driving conditions. The Patriot is as much at home on wet and icy tarmac as on mud, sand, or snow and still manages to achieve a class-leading 43.5 mpg.The Jeep Patriot is available in two variants: the Patriot Limited and Patriot Sport both are to be offered in the UK and will have a price below the Jeep Compass Limited model. The official launching of the Patriots range in the UK is scheduled in July 2007 and will also include the introduction of a VW-sourced 138bhp 2.0 liter six-speed manual diesel engine and a 168 bhp 2.4 liter petrol engine with a five-speed manual or a CVT automatic gearbox. Lisa Ziegler is a 29-year old native of Waldport, Oregon and is currently working as a senior research analyst in a top Automotive Research Consultancy firm.

Category : General Automotive

RSS Works: Hard Metrics to Prove It

Author : Rok Hrastnik
Marketers are constantly asking if RSS marketing works and if this can be proved.It's time to take a look at some real-life RSS metrics from real-life marketers. These will show you what kind of results you can expect to see from RSS.I first presented this data at the Syndicate Conference in New York City, the first conference entirely devoted to RSS.To make a point, we’ll take a look at RSS metrics from 4 different viewpoints, each demonstrating one facet of RSS marketing and a different way of capturing RSS metrics. This data combined will give you the answer of whether RSS marketing is for you, as an addition to e-mail marketing, or not.1. CLICK-THROUGH RATES FROM RSS FEED TO SITE: THE RSS AGGREGATOR SIDERSS statistics should be most relevant when coming from actual RSS aggregators and their vendors, since these people can measure precisely how their users are actually using RSS.Customer Reader [http://www.customreader.com], who just recently launched a desktop RSS aggregator, which marketers can brand for themselves and then distribute to their readers, supplied us with their latest data. This data is based on 3,500 users of their brandable RSS aggregator and on the last [two weeks ago] 48 hours of their reader usage.The most interesting piece of data is the 23% average CTR (click-through rate) from feed to site within last 48 hours, which proves that RSS works in terms of getting readers from the outbout message to the site. RSS users are actually clicking on RSS content!Now, what is the “feed-to-side” CTR? It simply means that 23% of the end-users that subscribe to various feeds, clicked at least once on one of the content items in the feeds they are subscribed to.2. CLICK-THROUGH RATES FROM CONTENT ITEM TO SITE: THE RSS SOLUTION VENDOR SIDEConsidering the different RSS metrics systems and the fact that no marketing tool whatsoever can be measured 100% precisely from the outside tracking service side, seeing stats from RSS solutions vendors is important as well.On this end, some basic stats were supplied from SimpleFeed [http://www.simplefeed.com], the providers of one of the more advanced RSS marketing solutions.The stats are based on an app. 10,000 end-user sample, 30 day average and 4 months of data.They are seeing a 6.8% average CTR from content item [individual content item in an RSS feed] to site and a 150% [1.5 clicks] average CTR from feed to site within 30 days.3. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CLICK-THROUGH RATES: THE MARKETER/PUBLISHER SIDEAnd finally, let's take a look at the stats from the publisher/marketer point of view.Lockergnome.com is one of the most popular tech sites on the internet.Although they are serving a more tech savvy audience, Lockergnome is an excellent example of the results you can ultimately hope to achieve using RSS.First of all, they are seeing a ration of 5:1 in favor of the number of RSS subscribers against e-mail subscribers, and even more interesting, a 500% better clickthrough ratio with RSS than with e-mail.4. SEARCH ENGINE VISIBILITYThe BTI Group is a smaller VoIP provider and, through their high ranking blogsite [http://blog.btigroup.com/], the proof that RSS works for search engine positioning.Here are just some of their achievements, as a result of their RSS marketing activities …a] 120 page-one search results on important industry search terms
#1 Voip vs traditional phone system
#1 VoIP solution provider
#2 VoIP small business
#2 VoIP architecture
#5 VoIP phone equipment
#6 VoIP benefits
#7 VoIP Small Business costsb] A 75% increase in traffic to the corporate websitec] BTI’s link popularity jumped from 164 in June 2003 to 1312 in December 2004 to 1405 in February 2005OVERVIEWThese metrics clearly show that RSS works for marketers and publishers.This data alone, also considering that RSS clearly gets 100% of your content delivered and actually provides you with an abundance of new marketing opportunities, such as podcasting, should be enough to make you do something about RSS now.Copyright 2005 Rok HrastnikRok Hrastnik is the author of »Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS«, acclaimed as the best and most comprehensive guide to RSS for marketers by leading RSS experts. The complete guide on RSS for marketers: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa7
Category : Extreme