How to Make $1 Million Before You Graduate
Helen Coster and Melanie Lindner
Saturday, February 20, 2010 Buzz up!47 votes
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In Pictures: How to Make $1 Million Before Graduation
at Forbes.com
Millionaire High School Dropouts
at Forbes.com
Meet Seven Grade School Entrepreneurs
at Forbes.com
This article is part of a series related to being Financially Fit
Valuable lessons from preternatural wealth builders.
American philosopher Eric Hoffer said, "If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must know how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, attitudes, values and fantasies on everyday life." Too bad Hoffer never met Jamie Murray Wells.
In 2004 while studying for final exams at University of the West of England, Wells, then age 21, went shopping for a pair of prescription glasses. Nonplussed by the $150 pound ($300) price tag, Wells decided to funnel his $2,000 student loan into what would become Glasses Direct, a London-based online retailer that now generates $5 million in annual revenue.
Wells is part of an elite club of preternatural wealth builders who managed to cobble million-dollar enterprises before they graduated from college. The "million-dollar" measure refers to either total revenue generated or the value of the enterprise built (as opposed to the size of the total profit pile). That's no mean feat for any entrepreneur, let alone one who can barely buy a drink legally in the States.
The nine entrepreneurs featured in our slideshow -- six from the U.S. and three from the U.K. -- started launching businesses by the tender age of 15, and one before he broke double-digits. Some of these wunderkinds, like Wells, identified problems and created companies to solve them; others turned their hobbies into money-making ventures. Some teamed up with friends, siblings and mentors; others plowed ahead on their own. Their common thread: singular focus, preternatural financial savvy and the optimism and confidence to wrest financing from seasoned investors.
Here's a look at how a few of them pulled it off.
Smelling Opportunity: Jamie Murray Wells
When Wells was bemoaning the price of his lenses, four retailers dominated the U.K. prescription glasses market; all relied on pricey retail stores to move their merchandise.
Wells figured he could move the entire purchasing process online. All he needed was a factory to make the lenses, assemble them with frames and package them. He would then ship them to shoppers, who would simply e-mail or mail in their prescriptions and pay for their glasses online. Without the costly infrastructure, Wells could sell glasses for about one-tenth the price of the established brick-and-mortar players.
Getting Started
A nifty new business model isn't nearly enough to launch a thriving company, let alone when you're 21 and have no track record. "I was knocking on the door of an industry, saying, 'The way that you're selling glasses is wrong, and I've got a better idea,'" says Wells.
Luckily he had friends and family members who agreed to put up a few thousand pounds to help him get started. Wells didn't disappoint: In the first year, Glasses Direct's revenue topped $2 million. And unlike many zealous entrepreneurs, Wells figured out how to manage his cash flow to bootstrap the business. The company took credit card payments upfront but didn't pay suppliers for another month. Wells used part of the float to hire a public relations firm to hype his low-cost strategy.
The next year Wells turned to professional angel investors. "With some investors, I simply walked in to a meeting with a sales graph and let that speak for itself," says Wells. As demand grew, Wells raised $34 million in venture capital from the likes of Highland Capital, Index Ventures, and Munich-based Acton Capital Partners. That should tide Wells over until he turns his first profit.
Asking for Help
Wells believes his age and inexperience helped him. "Having a young founder helps to add a lot of personality to a business," he says. Still, you can't cover payroll with personality.
Recognizing his limitations (yet another challenge for many entrepreneurs), Wells sought out mentors, including ophthalmologist Dr. David Spalton, and David Magliana, a marketing guru who helped bag the 2012 summer Olympic games for London. While Spalton lent credibility with the eye-care community, Magliana worked with Wells on getting the word out about Glasses Direct.
"As an entrepreneur, it's a lot easier than you'd think to reach out to people," says Wells. On the flipside, "entrepreneurs love to be written to and asked for their advice," he adds. "If your question is appropriate for them and they're emotionally interested in you, you will get a letter back, and you will get to meet them for coffee."
Running on Empty: Michael Furdyk
In 1996, as the dot-com boom started to simmer, Michael Furdyk started a Web site, called MyDesktop.com, an online computer magazine, in the basement of his parents' home in suburban Toronto. Furdyk was 16 and a bona fide computer geek. His site was filled with tips and advice Furdyk gleaned in online chat rooms, where he also came across fellow teenager Michael Hayman in Australia. The twosome figured they could turn their passion for technology into a paying business. Hayman was so convinced that he moved to Toronto to get things started.
Just one problem: Their only source of income was Furdyk's paper route. Solution: barter. In exchange for Web site storage space, they ran their host's ads on MyDesktop.com. They negotiated cheap rent on their modest office by designing their landlord's Web site.
Soon MyDesktop.com was bringing in $60,000 a month in advertising revenue from blue-chip clients like Microsoft and IBM. Furdyk and Hayman used some of their excess cash to scoop up smaller technology sites for $5,000 to $10,000 apiece. By 1999 the company was attracting 1 million unique visitors a month (serious numbers back then). Furdyk, Hayman and a third partner sold the company to Internet.com for "over $1 million," says Furdyk.
Absorbing the Blows
As part of the MyDesktop sale, Furdyk and company received a small amount of venture capital funding for their next project, a product review site called Buybuddy.com. They raised an additional $5 million and brought on an outside management team. But the good times were short-lived. In 2001 the tech bubble burst; Buybuddy suffered and shut down within three years.
Furdyk hasn't soured on entrepreneurship; indeed, he is promoting it via TakingITglobal.com, a nonprofit social networking site he launched for youngsters and educators interested in using technology to solve global problems. "Never be afraid of failure," says Furdyk. "Just learn from it. When you're young you have even less to lose."
Going With the Flow: Fraser Doherty
While his fellow mini-moguls were making a mint on the Internet, Fraser Doherty was doing things the old-fashioned way. In 2002 at the age of 14, Doherty started making jams from his grandmother's recipes in his parents' kitchen in Edinburgh, Scotland. Neighbors and church friends loved them. As word spread Doherty received orders faster than he could fill them, so he leased space at a 200-person food processing factory several days a month.
By age 16 Doherty left school to work on his jams full time. In early 2007 Waitrose, a high-end supermarket in the U.K., came knocking, and within months there were SuperJam jars on the shelves of 184 Waitrose stores. Doherty borrowed $10,000 from a bank to cover general expenses and more factory time to produce three flavors: Blueberry & Black Currant, Rhubarb & Ginger and Cranberry & Raspberry.
Spreading the Word
Last year Doherty ramped up the company's marketing efforts, printing 50 million coupons in newspapers across the U.K. He also ran a promotion in the Sun newspaper offering readers a free jar of jam. Good moves: SuperJam's revenue hit $1.2 million in 2009, flat from the prior year. Doherty's retailers now include U.K. chains Asda Wal-Mart, Morrisons and Tesco. This year he plans to introduce three new flavors.
Doherty remains the company's only full-time employee, although he hired three part-time staffers to hand out samples in grocery stores. Within the next four months, he hopes to produce mini jars for airlines, hotels and gift boxes. Based on a reasonable valuation multiple of one time revenue (jelly maker J.M. Smucker generally trades between 1 and 1.5 times revenue), Doherty's debt-free stake is worth between $1 million and $2 million.
As for taking SuperJam up a notch, Doherty asserts that his supply chain and operations can safely scale to meet heavier demand. "We're sticking with what works," says the entrepreneur, now a seasoned 21 years old.
MyYearbook.com: Catherine Cook
In 2005 Catherine Cook, 15, and her brother Dave, 17, were flipping through their high school yearbook and came up with the idea to develop a free interactive version online. The Cooks soon merged their social networking site with Zenhex.com, an ad-supported site where users post homemade quizzes, more than doubling traffic to their site. By 2006 MyYearbook had raised $4.1 million from the likes of U.S. Venture Partners and First Round Capital. The business attracted advertisers such as Neutrogena, Disney and ABC, grew to 3 million members worldwide and raked in annual sales in the "seven figures," says Catherine.
Whateverlife.com: Ashley Qualls
Conceived by 14-year-old Detroit native Ashley Qualls as a personal portfolio with pictures and graphics, the ad-supported site evolved to offer free MySpace layouts and tutorials for teens who wanted to learn how to do their own graphic designs and coding. Whateverlife.com, which Qualls owns outright, claims to nab 7 million unique visitors a month and counts Verizon Communications as an advertiser. In March 2006 Qualls reportedly received an offer (from an undisclosed buyer) for $1.5 million, but turned it down.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
MES
Top CBSE officials visit MES, outline new exam policy
Web posted at: 2/18/2010 6:22:9
Source ::: The Peninsula
Doha: The Chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in New Delhi, Vineet Joshi addressing the teaching faculty at the MES Indian School yesterday said ‘examinations go proxy’ to various attributes right from the fervour with which students prepare themselves for the exam, burning midnight oil in a frenzy manner to take up a three-hour exam
Joshi, along with two senior education officers from the board Dr Sadana Parashar and Dr Srijata Das are on a three-day visit to MES Indian School. Joshi outlined the shortcomings of the existing examination system and the objectives of the new policies.
“The present system of examinations, to a greater extent promotes and patronises only the rote memory among the students. Scoring good marks has become a proxy to whether teaching or studying was done well,” Joshi said.
Stressing the need for reforms in the examination system Joshi also said exams have become a management exercise of three hours and if the teachers know the technique of the trade, scoring would be easy. Moreover disparity has been becoming all the more glaring in terms of standard and performance of students especially between those who hail from the family of highly placed, second or third generation learners and those from the first generation learners.
Thus the examinations have become not so a ‘level playing field’ and so discriminating.”
Joshi also said that the present system aims at developing the child in a holistic approach, in the area of life skills comprising communication, creative thinking, stress management, emotional balance etc where every child’s positive attributes are recognised and developed.
Continuous and comprehensive Evaluation (CCF) system does not compromise on academic quality, instead, all measures are being adopted to make the assessment as unbiased and holistic as possible.
“In the wake of the recent reforms in the class IX and X Examination system introduced by the CBSE, the visit by the top officials from the Board will help the students, parents and teachers to get over their apprehensions and uncertainties on the issue and realise the real merits of the system,” said Principal of MES Indian school A P Sasidharan in his welcome address.
The guests were earlier accorded a warm welcome by the school officials and principals of Indian schools in Qatar accompanied by school scouts, guides and bands.
A welcome song by the school choir, composed by P J Beilbey, a solo song by Jemy Jacob, a classical dance by Sreelakshmi and classical fusion dance by MES student artistes and choreographed by Seema and Shiva Gouri, A Skit on life skills, directed by Rajendran, all made the function colourful.
Sanjeev Kohli, Minister from the Embassy of India, M R Qureshi, Second Secretary, M K Abdul Rahman, President of school governing body, K P Abdul Aziz, General Secretary, principals and vice principals of Indian schools in Qatar, the teaching faculty of MES and other schools took part in the formal function and workshop on “Exam Reforms and CCE.”
The sessions will resume today and continue till 1.30pm. An interactive session for parents in the current class 8 and 9 is scheduled tomorrow between 9 am and 11 am.
Web posted at: 2/18/2010 6:22:9
Source ::: The Peninsula
Doha: The Chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in New Delhi, Vineet Joshi addressing the teaching faculty at the MES Indian School yesterday said ‘examinations go proxy’ to various attributes right from the fervour with which students prepare themselves for the exam, burning midnight oil in a frenzy manner to take up a three-hour exam
Joshi, along with two senior education officers from the board Dr Sadana Parashar and Dr Srijata Das are on a three-day visit to MES Indian School. Joshi outlined the shortcomings of the existing examination system and the objectives of the new policies.
“The present system of examinations, to a greater extent promotes and patronises only the rote memory among the students. Scoring good marks has become a proxy to whether teaching or studying was done well,” Joshi said.
Stressing the need for reforms in the examination system Joshi also said exams have become a management exercise of three hours and if the teachers know the technique of the trade, scoring would be easy. Moreover disparity has been becoming all the more glaring in terms of standard and performance of students especially between those who hail from the family of highly placed, second or third generation learners and those from the first generation learners.
Thus the examinations have become not so a ‘level playing field’ and so discriminating.”
Joshi also said that the present system aims at developing the child in a holistic approach, in the area of life skills comprising communication, creative thinking, stress management, emotional balance etc where every child’s positive attributes are recognised and developed.
Continuous and comprehensive Evaluation (CCF) system does not compromise on academic quality, instead, all measures are being adopted to make the assessment as unbiased and holistic as possible.
“In the wake of the recent reforms in the class IX and X Examination system introduced by the CBSE, the visit by the top officials from the Board will help the students, parents and teachers to get over their apprehensions and uncertainties on the issue and realise the real merits of the system,” said Principal of MES Indian school A P Sasidharan in his welcome address.
The guests were earlier accorded a warm welcome by the school officials and principals of Indian schools in Qatar accompanied by school scouts, guides and bands.
A welcome song by the school choir, composed by P J Beilbey, a solo song by Jemy Jacob, a classical dance by Sreelakshmi and classical fusion dance by MES student artistes and choreographed by Seema and Shiva Gouri, A Skit on life skills, directed by Rajendran, all made the function colourful.
Sanjeev Kohli, Minister from the Embassy of India, M R Qureshi, Second Secretary, M K Abdul Rahman, President of school governing body, K P Abdul Aziz, General Secretary, principals and vice principals of Indian schools in Qatar, the teaching faculty of MES and other schools took part in the formal function and workshop on “Exam Reforms and CCE.”
The sessions will resume today and continue till 1.30pm. An interactive session for parents in the current class 8 and 9 is scheduled tomorrow between 9 am and 11 am.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
student loan exceeds
The $555,000 Student-Loan Burden
by Mary Pilon
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
provided by
When Michelle Bisutti, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000. Since then, it has ballooned to $555,000.
Andrew Spear for The Wall Street Journal
Michelle Bisutti borrowed $250,000 to pay for medical school. The debt has since ballooned to $555,000.
It is the result of her deferring loan payments while she completed her residency, default charges and relentlessly compounding interest rates. Among the charges: a single $53,870 fee for when her loan was turned over to a collection agency.
"Maybe half of it was my fault because I didn't look at the fine print," Dr. Bisutti says. "But this is just outrageous now."
To be sure, Dr. Bisutti's case is extreme, and lenders say student-loan terms are clear and that they try to work with borrowers who get in trouble.
But as tuitions rise, many people are borrowing heavily to pay their bills. Some no doubt view it as "good debt," because an education can lead to a higher salary. But in practice, student loans are one of the most toxic debts, requiring extreme consumer caution and, as Dr. Bisutti learned, responsibility.
Unlike other kinds of debt, student loans can be particularly hard to wriggle out of. Homeowners who can't make their mortgage payments can hand over the keys to their house to their lender. Credit-card and even gambling debts can be discharged in bankruptcy. But ditching a student loan is virtually impossible, especially once a collection agency gets involved. Although lenders may trim payments, getting fees or principals waived seldom happens.
More from WSJ.com:
• Investors Should Act Their Age
• Questions to Ask After 'I Will' but Before 'I Do'
• The Price of Safety Just Went Up
Yet many former students are trying. There is an estimated $730 billion in outstanding federal and private student-loan debt, says Mark Kantrowitz of FinAid.org, a Web site that tracks financial-aid issues -- and only 40% of that debt is actively being repaid. The rest is in default, or in deferment, which means that payments and interest are halted, or in "forbearance," which means payments are halted while interest accrues.
Although Dr. Bisutti's debt load is unusual, her experience having problems repaying isn't. Emmanuel Tellez's mother is a laid-off factory worker, and $120 from her $300 unemployment checks is garnished to pay the federal PLUS student loan she took out for her son.
By the time Mr. Tellez graduated in 2008, he had $50,000 of his own debt in loans issued by SLM Corp., known as Sallie Mae, the largest private student lender. In December, he was laid off from his $29,000-a-year job in Boston and defaulted. Mr. Tellez says that when he signed up, the loan wasn't explained to him well, though he concedes he missed the fine print.
Loan terms, including interest rates, are disclosed "multiple times and in multiple ways," says Martha Holler, a spokeswoman for Sallie Mae, who says the company can't comment on individual accounts. Repayment tools and account information are accessible on Sallie Mae's Web site as well, she says.
Many borrowers say they are experiencing difficulties working out repayment and modification terms on their loans. Ms. Holler says that Sallie Mae works with borrowers individually to revamp loans. Although the U.S. Department of Education has expanded programs like income-based repayment, which effectively caps repayments for some borrowers, others might not qualify.
Heather Ehmke of Oakland, Calif., renegotiated the terms of her subprime mortgage after her home was foreclosed. But even after filing for bankruptcy, she says she couldn't get Sallie Mae, one of her lenders, to adjust the terms on her student loan. After 14 years with patches of deferment and forbearance, the loan has increased from $28,000 to more than $90,000. Her monthly payments jumped from $230 to $816. Last month, her petition for undue hardship on the loans was dismissed.
Sallie Mae supports reforms that would allow student loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy for those who have made a good-faith effort to repay them, says Ms. Holler.
Dr. Bisutti says she loves her work, but regrets taking out so many student loans. She admits that she made mistakes in missing payments, deferring her loans and not being completely thorough with some of the paperwork, but was surprised at how quickly the debt spiraled.
More from Yahoo! Finance:
• Do Elite Colleges Produce the Best-Paid Graduates?
• MBA Pay: Riches for Some, Not All
• How to Improve American Education
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit the College & Education Center
She says she knew when she started medical school in 1999 that she would have to borrow heavily. But she reasoned that her future income as a doctor would make paying off the loans easy. While in school, her loans racked up interest with variable rates ranging from 3% to 11%.
She maxed out on federal loans, borrowing $152,000 over four years, and sought private loans from Sallie Mae to help make up the difference. She also took out two loans from Wells Fargo & Co. for $20,000 each. Each had a $2,000 origination fee. The total amount she borrowed at the time: $250,000.
In 2005, the bill for the Wells Fargo loans came due. Representatives from the bank called her father, Michael Bisutti, every day for two months demanding payment. Mr. Bisutti, who had co-signed on the loans, finally decided to cover the $550 monthly payments for a year.
Wells Fargo says it will stop calling consumers if they request it, says senior vice president Glen Herrick, who adds that the bank no longer imposes origination fees on its private loans.
Sallie Mae, meanwhile, called Mr. Bisutti's neighbor. The neighbor told Mr. Bisutti about the call. "Now they know [my dad's] daughter the doctor defaulted on her loans," Dr. Bisutti says.
Ms. Holler, the Sallie Mae spokeswoman, says that the company may contact a neighbor to verify an individual's address. But in those cases, she says, the details of the debt obligation aren't discussed.
Dr. Bisutti declined to authorize Sallie Mae to comment specifically on her case. "The overwhelming majority of medical-school graduates successfully repay their student loans," Ms. Holler says.
After completing her fellowship in 2007, Dr. Bisutti juggled other debts, including her credit-card balance, and was having trouble making her $1,000-a-month student-loan payments. That year, she defaulted on both her federal and private loans. That is when the "collection cost" fee of $53,870 was added on to her private loan.
Meanwhile, the variable interest rates continue to compound on her balance and fees. She recently applied for income-based repayment, but she still isn't sure if she will qualify. She makes $550-a-month payments to Wells Fargo for the two loans she hasn't defaulted on. By the time she is done, she will have paid the bank $128,000 -- over three times the $36,000 she received.
She recently entered a rehabilitation agreement on her defaulted federal loans, which now carry an additional $31,942 collection cost. She makes monthly payments on those loans -- now $209,399 -- for $990 a month, with only $100 of it going toward her original balance. The entire balance of her federal loans will be paid off in 351 months. Dr. Bisutti will be 70 years old.
The debt load keeps her up at night. Her damaged credit has prevented her from buying a home or a new car. She says she and her boyfriend of three years have put off marriage and having children because of the debt.
Dr. Bisutti told her 17-year-old niece the story of her debt as a cautionary tale "so the next generation of kids who want to get a higher education knows what they're getting into," she says. "I will likely have to deal with this debt for the rest of my life."
by Mary Pilon
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
provided by
When Michelle Bisutti, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000. Since then, it has ballooned to $555,000.
Andrew Spear for The Wall Street Journal
Michelle Bisutti borrowed $250,000 to pay for medical school. The debt has since ballooned to $555,000.
It is the result of her deferring loan payments while she completed her residency, default charges and relentlessly compounding interest rates. Among the charges: a single $53,870 fee for when her loan was turned over to a collection agency.
"Maybe half of it was my fault because I didn't look at the fine print," Dr. Bisutti says. "But this is just outrageous now."
To be sure, Dr. Bisutti's case is extreme, and lenders say student-loan terms are clear and that they try to work with borrowers who get in trouble.
But as tuitions rise, many people are borrowing heavily to pay their bills. Some no doubt view it as "good debt," because an education can lead to a higher salary. But in practice, student loans are one of the most toxic debts, requiring extreme consumer caution and, as Dr. Bisutti learned, responsibility.
Unlike other kinds of debt, student loans can be particularly hard to wriggle out of. Homeowners who can't make their mortgage payments can hand over the keys to their house to their lender. Credit-card and even gambling debts can be discharged in bankruptcy. But ditching a student loan is virtually impossible, especially once a collection agency gets involved. Although lenders may trim payments, getting fees or principals waived seldom happens.
More from WSJ.com:
• Investors Should Act Their Age
• Questions to Ask After 'I Will' but Before 'I Do'
• The Price of Safety Just Went Up
Yet many former students are trying. There is an estimated $730 billion in outstanding federal and private student-loan debt, says Mark Kantrowitz of FinAid.org, a Web site that tracks financial-aid issues -- and only 40% of that debt is actively being repaid. The rest is in default, or in deferment, which means that payments and interest are halted, or in "forbearance," which means payments are halted while interest accrues.
Although Dr. Bisutti's debt load is unusual, her experience having problems repaying isn't. Emmanuel Tellez's mother is a laid-off factory worker, and $120 from her $300 unemployment checks is garnished to pay the federal PLUS student loan she took out for her son.
By the time Mr. Tellez graduated in 2008, he had $50,000 of his own debt in loans issued by SLM Corp., known as Sallie Mae, the largest private student lender. In December, he was laid off from his $29,000-a-year job in Boston and defaulted. Mr. Tellez says that when he signed up, the loan wasn't explained to him well, though he concedes he missed the fine print.
Loan terms, including interest rates, are disclosed "multiple times and in multiple ways," says Martha Holler, a spokeswoman for Sallie Mae, who says the company can't comment on individual accounts. Repayment tools and account information are accessible on Sallie Mae's Web site as well, she says.
Many borrowers say they are experiencing difficulties working out repayment and modification terms on their loans. Ms. Holler says that Sallie Mae works with borrowers individually to revamp loans. Although the U.S. Department of Education has expanded programs like income-based repayment, which effectively caps repayments for some borrowers, others might not qualify.
Heather Ehmke of Oakland, Calif., renegotiated the terms of her subprime mortgage after her home was foreclosed. But even after filing for bankruptcy, she says she couldn't get Sallie Mae, one of her lenders, to adjust the terms on her student loan. After 14 years with patches of deferment and forbearance, the loan has increased from $28,000 to more than $90,000. Her monthly payments jumped from $230 to $816. Last month, her petition for undue hardship on the loans was dismissed.
Sallie Mae supports reforms that would allow student loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy for those who have made a good-faith effort to repay them, says Ms. Holler.
Dr. Bisutti says she loves her work, but regrets taking out so many student loans. She admits that she made mistakes in missing payments, deferring her loans and not being completely thorough with some of the paperwork, but was surprised at how quickly the debt spiraled.
More from Yahoo! Finance:
• Do Elite Colleges Produce the Best-Paid Graduates?
• MBA Pay: Riches for Some, Not All
• How to Improve American Education
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit the College & Education Center
She says she knew when she started medical school in 1999 that she would have to borrow heavily. But she reasoned that her future income as a doctor would make paying off the loans easy. While in school, her loans racked up interest with variable rates ranging from 3% to 11%.
She maxed out on federal loans, borrowing $152,000 over four years, and sought private loans from Sallie Mae to help make up the difference. She also took out two loans from Wells Fargo & Co. for $20,000 each. Each had a $2,000 origination fee. The total amount she borrowed at the time: $250,000.
In 2005, the bill for the Wells Fargo loans came due. Representatives from the bank called her father, Michael Bisutti, every day for two months demanding payment. Mr. Bisutti, who had co-signed on the loans, finally decided to cover the $550 monthly payments for a year.
Wells Fargo says it will stop calling consumers if they request it, says senior vice president Glen Herrick, who adds that the bank no longer imposes origination fees on its private loans.
Sallie Mae, meanwhile, called Mr. Bisutti's neighbor. The neighbor told Mr. Bisutti about the call. "Now they know [my dad's] daughter the doctor defaulted on her loans," Dr. Bisutti says.
Ms. Holler, the Sallie Mae spokeswoman, says that the company may contact a neighbor to verify an individual's address. But in those cases, she says, the details of the debt obligation aren't discussed.
Dr. Bisutti declined to authorize Sallie Mae to comment specifically on her case. "The overwhelming majority of medical-school graduates successfully repay their student loans," Ms. Holler says.
After completing her fellowship in 2007, Dr. Bisutti juggled other debts, including her credit-card balance, and was having trouble making her $1,000-a-month student-loan payments. That year, she defaulted on both her federal and private loans. That is when the "collection cost" fee of $53,870 was added on to her private loan.
Meanwhile, the variable interest rates continue to compound on her balance and fees. She recently applied for income-based repayment, but she still isn't sure if she will qualify. She makes $550-a-month payments to Wells Fargo for the two loans she hasn't defaulted on. By the time she is done, she will have paid the bank $128,000 -- over three times the $36,000 she received.
She recently entered a rehabilitation agreement on her defaulted federal loans, which now carry an additional $31,942 collection cost. She makes monthly payments on those loans -- now $209,399 -- for $990 a month, with only $100 of it going toward her original balance. The entire balance of her federal loans will be paid off in 351 months. Dr. Bisutti will be 70 years old.
The debt load keeps her up at night. Her damaged credit has prevented her from buying a home or a new car. She says she and her boyfriend of three years have put off marriage and having children because of the debt.
Dr. Bisutti told her 17-year-old niece the story of her debt as a cautionary tale "so the next generation of kids who want to get a higher education knows what they're getting into," she says. "I will likely have to deal with this debt for the rest of my life."
Monday, February 8, 2010
CBSE exams
CBSE launches tele-counselling for students in Qatar
Web posted at: 2/8/2010 5:0:25
Source ::: THE PENINSULA
DOHA: As India’s Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) examination of Class 10 and 12 fast approaching, the Board has launched tele-counselling in Qatar to help the parents and students beat the exam worries. The Indian Board has also set up two similar facilities in Dubai and Kuwait.
Dr Mohamed Aejaz, Principal of Ideal Indian School, who has been appointed as the Tele-Counsellor of Qatar said he has been receiving a lot of calls from the worried parents and children ever since the helpline was launched last week.
The tele-counselling will be available for all the students and their parents appearing for the Class 10 and 12 exams on 4684849 on all working days from 7am to 1pm and 5pm to 7pm.
“Parents want to know how their children can score maximum marks and how many hours the students must learn during the study holidays and lot more queries. The number of callers would go up when the exam days get closer,” he said.
Dr Aejaz said the board’s decision to replace the mark system with the grading from this year has created a lot of confusion among the parents. This is one of the major worries of the callers. An estimated 2000 students from different Indian Schools in Doha are appearing for the Class 10 and 12 examinations this time. The exams are starting on March 3, 2010
In India, where an estimated hundred thousands of students appear for exam every year, 52 principals trained counsellors from CBSE-affiliated government and private schools, psychologist and social scientists are operating help lines from Indian local time 8 am to midnight. Weighed down by the examination pressures, an increasing number of parents and children are ending their lives. This has forced the Indian government to introduce the tele-counselling facilities a few years ago.
To ease the exam worries further, the Indian Government has recently issued an order making the grade 10 board exams optional from academic year 2010-2011, facilitating the students who want to go for pre-university course, he\she can appear for 10th board exam. But in case of a student pursuing the course in the same school, he/she need not appear in the class-10 exam for promotion to Class-11, based on an internal evaluation.
Web posted at: 2/8/2010 5:0:25
Source ::: THE PENINSULA
DOHA: As India’s Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) examination of Class 10 and 12 fast approaching, the Board has launched tele-counselling in Qatar to help the parents and students beat the exam worries. The Indian Board has also set up two similar facilities in Dubai and Kuwait.
Dr Mohamed Aejaz, Principal of Ideal Indian School, who has been appointed as the Tele-Counsellor of Qatar said he has been receiving a lot of calls from the worried parents and children ever since the helpline was launched last week.
The tele-counselling will be available for all the students and their parents appearing for the Class 10 and 12 exams on 4684849 on all working days from 7am to 1pm and 5pm to 7pm.
“Parents want to know how their children can score maximum marks and how many hours the students must learn during the study holidays and lot more queries. The number of callers would go up when the exam days get closer,” he said.
Dr Aejaz said the board’s decision to replace the mark system with the grading from this year has created a lot of confusion among the parents. This is one of the major worries of the callers. An estimated 2000 students from different Indian Schools in Doha are appearing for the Class 10 and 12 examinations this time. The exams are starting on March 3, 2010
In India, where an estimated hundred thousands of students appear for exam every year, 52 principals trained counsellors from CBSE-affiliated government and private schools, psychologist and social scientists are operating help lines from Indian local time 8 am to midnight. Weighed down by the examination pressures, an increasing number of parents and children are ending their lives. This has forced the Indian government to introduce the tele-counselling facilities a few years ago.
To ease the exam worries further, the Indian Government has recently issued an order making the grade 10 board exams optional from academic year 2010-2011, facilitating the students who want to go for pre-university course, he\she can appear for 10th board exam. But in case of a student pursuing the course in the same school, he/she need not appear in the class-10 exam for promotion to Class-11, based on an internal evaluation.
QIB issue bond
QIB ‘plans $500mn bond issue’
Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), Qatar’s second-largest lender by value, is preparing to tap the global debt markets with a bond issue worth at least $500mn, according to sources.
“They’ve mandated three banks and are pretty much ready to go,” one person with knowledge of the Islamic bank’s plans told the Zawya Dow Jones news agency yesterday.
Credit Suisse Group, HSBC Holding and QInvest, the Doha-based investment bank, are advising on the deal, sources said.
QIB didn’t respond to questions about the bonds.
The bank, which posted a 24% drop in fourth-quarter 2009 net profit last month, is looking to raise money to improve its debt to equity ratio as the company eyes growth and exposure to international investors. Shares in QIB closed down 1.58% yesterday at QR74.80 in a negative market.
There is growing investor appetite for exposure to Qatar, whose economy is expected to grow 16% in 2010 on the back of ballooning revenues from liquefied natural gas exports. Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of LNG by far.
In November Qatar sold $7bn of bonds on the global capital markets, the largest-ever sovereign debt issue in the Middle East.
Commercialbank of Qatar in the same month completed the largest-ever bond issue in the region by a non-government related entity in a two-part $1.6bn sale.
People familiar with QIB’s plans said any issue would most likely be open to investors in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, but not the US.
Another person familiar with the lender’s plans said the bank had been planning to tap the debt markets since the end of last year.
“They’ve looked at the debt markets on and off over the past few years. This has been in progress since the end of last year,” said the person who declined to be identified. Zawya Dow Jones
Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), Qatar’s second-largest lender by value, is preparing to tap the global debt markets with a bond issue worth at least $500mn, according to sources.
“They’ve mandated three banks and are pretty much ready to go,” one person with knowledge of the Islamic bank’s plans told the Zawya Dow Jones news agency yesterday.
Credit Suisse Group, HSBC Holding and QInvest, the Doha-based investment bank, are advising on the deal, sources said.
QIB didn’t respond to questions about the bonds.
The bank, which posted a 24% drop in fourth-quarter 2009 net profit last month, is looking to raise money to improve its debt to equity ratio as the company eyes growth and exposure to international investors. Shares in QIB closed down 1.58% yesterday at QR74.80 in a negative market.
There is growing investor appetite for exposure to Qatar, whose economy is expected to grow 16% in 2010 on the back of ballooning revenues from liquefied natural gas exports. Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of LNG by far.
In November Qatar sold $7bn of bonds on the global capital markets, the largest-ever sovereign debt issue in the Middle East.
Commercialbank of Qatar in the same month completed the largest-ever bond issue in the region by a non-government related entity in a two-part $1.6bn sale.
People familiar with QIB’s plans said any issue would most likely be open to investors in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, but not the US.
Another person familiar with the lender’s plans said the bank had been planning to tap the debt markets since the end of last year.
“They’ve looked at the debt markets on and off over the past few years. This has been in progress since the end of last year,” said the person who declined to be identified. Zawya Dow Jones
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
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Are you infuriated every time you open your cell phone bill? Livid when you buy a snack at the movies? These are some of the rawest deals around.
©John R. Coughlin
Text Messages -- 6,500% Markup
Text messages are short, quick and cheap to transmit. So why are they adding so much to your wireless bill?
The messages are such a tiny piece of data that they cost carriers only about one-third of a cent to deliver, according to computer scientist Srinivasan Keshav, who testified before U.S. senators on the issue last summer.
More from CNNMoney.com:
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: Premium Gasoline
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: Hotel Mini-Bars
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: In-Room Movies
But on a pay-per-text plan, the 160-character messages typically cost 20 cents outgoing and 10 cents incoming. That's a markup of as much as 6,500%. OMG!
"It's pretty much pure profit," Keshav says. "Carriers would argue they put that money toward investing in new technology."
Even if customers sign up for an unlimited texting plan for, say, $10 a month, carriers are still cashing in considering that their overhead is basically $0. That's a lot to pay for a few LOLs.
©Jupiter Images
Movie Theater Popcorn -- 900% Markup
A medium bag of popcorn costs just 60 cents to make but retails for $6, a whopping 900% markup. That's enough to make "Avatar" fans turn blue.
Richard McKenzie, an economics professor at University of California-Irvine, says theater owners mark up the snack so much because they don't make a profit elsewhere.
McKenzie, author of the 2008 book "Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles," says that out of your $10 movie ticket, only a tiny percentage goes to the theater's profits.
"Popcorn is what pays for a lot of stuff in the movie theater," McKenzie says. "A lot of theater owners tell me, 'I consider myself working in concessions, not movies.'"
©Neil Harris / CNNMoney.com
'Free' Credit Reports That'll Cost You
There's nothing free about forking over $179 a year for information at Freecreditreport.com.
Instead you can go to AnnualCreditReport.com, which is run by the Federal Trade Commission, and get a truly free report once a year from each of the credit agencies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
Freecreditreport.com's catchy ditties can get stuck in your head for days -- but subscribing to the service will haunt your credit card bill for a year. When you sign up, you're asked for your credit card number. Then the site automatically enrolls you in its "Triple Advantage credit monitoring," which pledges to continuously track your credit status for $14.99 per month.
A rep for Experian, which owns Freecreditreport.com, says: "We do realize there are a very small percentage of consumers who genuinely do not understand they have signed up for a credit monitoring service. We work to resolve issues with these consumers on a case by case basis."
Popular Stories on Yahoo!:
• Battle Over e-Book Pricing Begins
• 10 Things Retailers Won't Tell You
• Toyota's Slow Response Raises Questions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More From Yahoo! Finance
Technically, you have nine days to cancel the credit monitoring service before being charged, but many consumers have felt duped. The Better Business Bureau has received more than 11,000 complaints, and the site recently made its policy more prominent on its Web pages.
©John R. Coughlin / CNNMoney.com
Name-Brand Painkillers -- 60% Markup
Is Advil's sleek design worth 160% more than the same medicine in a plain package?
A 50-count bottle of 200 mg Advil tablets costs $8.49, versus just $5.29 for the exact same bottle of generic ibuprofen at a Duane Reade drug store in New York.
Brand names may give us more peace of mind, but the cheaper stuff works just as well, and in exactly the same way. It's required to, by law.
The Food and Drug Administration mandates that generic drugs must be as safe and effective as brand names. Generics have to use the same active ingredients, however they may contain different inactive ingredients like coloring or flavor agents. For its part, the company says it "stand[s] firmly behind the value Advil brings to consumers."
But at a time when many of us are already feeling the pinch financially, a fancy package just doesn't seem worth the headache.
©John R. Coughlin
Text Messages -- 6,500% Markup
Text messages are short, quick and cheap to transmit. So why are they adding so much to your wireless bill?
The messages are such a tiny piece of data that they cost carriers only about one-third of a cent to deliver, according to computer scientist Srinivasan Keshav, who testified before U.S. senators on the issue last summer.
More from CNNMoney.com:
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: Premium Gasoline
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: Hotel Mini-Bars
• More America's Biggest Ripoffs: In-Room Movies
But on a pay-per-text plan, the 160-character messages typically cost 20 cents outgoing and 10 cents incoming. That's a markup of as much as 6,500%. OMG!
"It's pretty much pure profit," Keshav says. "Carriers would argue they put that money toward investing in new technology."
Even if customers sign up for an unlimited texting plan for, say, $10 a month, carriers are still cashing in considering that their overhead is basically $0. That's a lot to pay for a few LOLs.
©Jupiter Images
Movie Theater Popcorn -- 900% Markup
A medium bag of popcorn costs just 60 cents to make but retails for $6, a whopping 900% markup. That's enough to make "Avatar" fans turn blue.
Richard McKenzie, an economics professor at University of California-Irvine, says theater owners mark up the snack so much because they don't make a profit elsewhere.
McKenzie, author of the 2008 book "Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles," says that out of your $10 movie ticket, only a tiny percentage goes to the theater's profits.
"Popcorn is what pays for a lot of stuff in the movie theater," McKenzie says. "A lot of theater owners tell me, 'I consider myself working in concessions, not movies.'"
©Neil Harris / CNNMoney.com
'Free' Credit Reports That'll Cost You
There's nothing free about forking over $179 a year for information at Freecreditreport.com.
Instead you can go to AnnualCreditReport.com, which is run by the Federal Trade Commission, and get a truly free report once a year from each of the credit agencies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
Freecreditreport.com's catchy ditties can get stuck in your head for days -- but subscribing to the service will haunt your credit card bill for a year. When you sign up, you're asked for your credit card number. Then the site automatically enrolls you in its "Triple Advantage credit monitoring," which pledges to continuously track your credit status for $14.99 per month.
A rep for Experian, which owns Freecreditreport.com, says: "We do realize there are a very small percentage of consumers who genuinely do not understand they have signed up for a credit monitoring service. We work to resolve issues with these consumers on a case by case basis."
Popular Stories on Yahoo!:
• Battle Over e-Book Pricing Begins
• 10 Things Retailers Won't Tell You
• Toyota's Slow Response Raises Questions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More From Yahoo! Finance
Technically, you have nine days to cancel the credit monitoring service before being charged, but many consumers have felt duped. The Better Business Bureau has received more than 11,000 complaints, and the site recently made its policy more prominent on its Web pages.
©John R. Coughlin / CNNMoney.com
Name-Brand Painkillers -- 60% Markup
Is Advil's sleek design worth 160% more than the same medicine in a plain package?
A 50-count bottle of 200 mg Advil tablets costs $8.49, versus just $5.29 for the exact same bottle of generic ibuprofen at a Duane Reade drug store in New York.
Brand names may give us more peace of mind, but the cheaper stuff works just as well, and in exactly the same way. It's required to, by law.
The Food and Drug Administration mandates that generic drugs must be as safe and effective as brand names. Generics have to use the same active ingredients, however they may contain different inactive ingredients like coloring or flavor agents. For its part, the company says it "stand[s] firmly behind the value Advil brings to consumers."
But at a time when many of us are already feeling the pinch financially, a fancy package just doesn't seem worth the headache.
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