Well, a rice cooker is good for making regular rice as well. I eat regular rice w/ tofu and veggies, and I use it for sushi every day. It's seriously the best $17.99 we ever spent. The kid brings sushi to school instead of spending $$ on school lunch. I bring sushi to work every day instead of buying fast food or eating sandwiches (that leaves me hungry). My husband (who is not Asian) uses it to make some sort of New Orleans dish. I think it's a good deal!

Well, is she looking for a paid internship? Is she trying to get biglaw? Getting a summer associate position at a large law firm is extremely, extremely difficult in this economy (and OCI has already passed, so I assume the hiring is pretty much finalized by now). Or is she just looking for any internship at any law firm, paid/unpaid?

Are you only looking for law firms in the DC area? My brother is working for a mediocre law firm in Dallas, and they're always hiring people, but they pay like $15/hr (not sure if that's what she's looking for).

+ 1. I am totally like that, too. I adore my slightly run-down apartment. I don't wear fancy clothes, and I don't have a shoe addiction. I am deliberately keeping my family small so that we don't ever have to do the whole suburban house kind of lifestyle.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I want enough to make ends meet with a little extra so we're not scraping by and sacrificing too much. Of course, scraping by is exactly what I've been doing for a while now.

Other then that it's not that important to me. I don't care about living an extravagant lifestyle. I don't care about a huge home. I don't care about having a housekeeping service and a lawn service and a wipe-my-butt-for-me-service. I'd rather have less money and less stress/more time then more money and more stress/less time.

THIS! even if I had a lot of money, I would still live in my modest apartment and drive my beat up car. The only thing I will spend it on is travel.

My DD and I are vegetarians. DH is not. We cook our own meals and then sit down together to eat. He doesn't mind eating mostly vegetarian, though, so that makes it easier.

We never go out to eat anymore for financial reasons, but when we used to back in 2010, we'd go to Noodles & Company. It's moderately priced (like $8/person). I LOVE Noodles & Company, and it's pretty healthy.

I'm a vegetarian too, so can't give you advice on the fish part. The $17.99 rice cooker from Target is awesome. Lundberg's sushi rice is good but kind of expensive; if you go to any Asian food store, you could get a huge sack of rice for a much better price. I'm not a fan of the bamboo sheets myself; I just roll them on my own.

Um, most people are grateful to have a job anywhere.... No one is disputing that. My point is that signing up for community college/re-training/volunteering to get new skills is a PART OF LIFE and not some absurd, unfair expectation in most of the country. How the h*** is that trolling? Do you just declare anyone you disagree with a "troll?"

Anonymous wrote:

twentysomethingmom wrote:Most people I know from my hometown are totally unskilled, have tons of kids, and manage go to community college/work crap jobs while staying off welfare. It's not that hard (unless you live in a place with literally NO internet/access to community college). It may sound like an obscenely hard life to some, but this is kinda how the rest of the country lives...

Many people live like that here, as well, but most of them will say that they are lucky to have a job at all. It's harder in the big city, and harder when people aren't "twentysomething" any more. If, that is, you're not trolling.

DH pays for rent and car (though the car will be paid off in a couple of months). I pay for groceries and gas. We split the rest of the bills.

Interesting article. I've actually suspected this for a while. When our cousin got into West Point in the early 2000s, my brother and I were like... um... HOW? His GPA was under a 3.0. His test scores were good, but not really good enough to make up for a sub-3.0 GPA. He tried really hard at sports, but he was not a natural athlete. He had no leadership positions, though he joined a lot of extracurricular activities and volunteered once a week at church. It was bizarre. I always thought those academies were on the level of Ivy Leagues.

Weird -- that's my EXACT prediction. I was just talking about this with my friend over lunch today. I don't think the GW model of higher education is sustainable. When the student loan bubble goes down, there will be the uber-elite schools + state schools + community colleges.

Anonymous wrote:The way things are going with the economy, the internet, information management, on-line education...schools like GW are going to get the shaft. They are too expensive and not prestigeous enough. Its going to be Ivy League, Hopkins, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, U of Chicago + State Research schools (UMD, Penn State, Michigan etc..) Community colleges and on-line schools. The Kenyons, Miami, G W's, of the world are going to be F'd.

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I've reflected on this a lot. I'm not a greedy person, nor am I super-ambitious. I will never make 500K or even 250K like so many people on this board. However, I also don't want to make 30K and live paycheck to paycheck like my friends and family members back home.

I was laid-off earlier in 2011 and it was HORRIBLE. I was a miserable, unhappy person. Then I got a job, and even though it's not like I'm rich these days (nor did we upgrade our lifestyle -- in fact, we downgraded to pay off debt), I'm so much happier.

I guess I need to have a "real" career (i.e. full-time with benefits, over 40K, etc.), but I don't need much more than that.

We had significant debt. We got rid of one of the cars, which helped lower our expenses a lot. I went back to school this fall and also got a job, which helped our budget tremendously. It's kind of insane how we work our schedules around one car, but basically I am going to school like 40 minutes away from where I work, AND my husband has work in the opposite direction (thankfully his work is near DC's school)

We also don't have cable, and we're on the smallest family phone plan possible. Our lifestyle is no fun right now, but we're down to 4K of credit card debt and our one remaining car will be paid off in February.

re: the OP's original statement -- I can think of worse ways to spend welfare money (unfortunately, I have personal experience with this thanks to many irresponsible members of my family when I was growing up). At least the person in question spends it on gifts for *other people.*

Nursing has a long wait and is hard to get into, and dental hygiene has a long wait (usually two years). PTA and OTA usually has fall-only admission, so that can be a problem for those who are in need now. The rest of the programs are NOT closed, and even if they are, you can take the pre-reqs now as a degree-seeking student (making yourself eligible for the Pell Grant and getting access to career services) and wait until the fall to start the core classes. Believe me, I've researched over 50% of the state universities and many, many community colleges in my frantic state of need earlier in 2011. Calling each program individually can be expensive if the individual has limited phone minutes (as I did), but it only takes a few seconds to copy and paste "Hello, I was wondering if this program is still offering admission X semester?" into email format and email them to tons of colleges. Then, once you get in, use your university email address to apply for jobs.

I'm puzzled by why this is so hard to believe around here. I'm not a troll, and I'm not some psycho conservative person who wants to end all welfare programs. The only explanation I can think of is that maybe people are very, very rich in this area vs. very, very poor, and that those at the higher end don't understand how normal people do this. Most people I know from my hometown are totally unskilled, have tons of kids, and manage go to community college/work crap jobs while staying off welfare. It's not that hard (unless you live in a place with literally NO internet/access to community college). It may sound like an obscenely hard life to some, but this is kinda how the rest of the country lives...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not the PP you're responding to (I'm 14:43), but that's why they need to go back to community college or start volunteering in a professional-
sounding position ASAP if there's a gap in the resume (do welfare moms even HAVE resumes? my welfare dad didn't...).

Both of these are good ideas. Now, however, times are hard, and community colleges overcrowded, especially the most desirable programs and classes. Even volunteer opportunities can be hard to come by because there are so too many recent graduates and people who've lost middle-class jobs. If you have a specific volunteer organization that could use untrained help, most counties around here have volunteer coordinators who would love to hear from you.

I hate it when people call me that. I honor my commitments, I'm actually a much better friend to some of my friends than they are to me (I fly across the country for them, buy them Christmas & birthday gifts even when they forget my birthday completely, listen to their problems for hours on end, help them with job searches and homework, etc. and never ask for anything in return). However, they have actually called me "flaky" because I won't return to the small town where we grew up (where they still live). They think I'm some struggling "urban woman in the city" who doesn't know when to give up and move back home already. Ironically, I'm not a careerist at all; I just want a little more out of my career than what is currently available in my tiny hometown.