Career Development

The last few months have been incredibly busy, but I'm ready to dive in again and get back to Bounteo. I wanted to highlight a few of the great articles I've read recently around the web:

The College Degree is Not Dead - Good post over at Free Money Finance about how the value of a college degree, while declining, is still very high.

Should You Look For A New Job? - Blueprint for Financial Prosperity gives some reasons why you might want to look for a new job, and some reasons why you might not.

Simplicity and being cheap - Philip over at Wise Bread has some great thoughts on simplicity and how living a life without a lot of stuff will help you attain financial freedom.

Here's a few good articles and posts on other sites that I thought readers might find interesting:

How to recover from a (big) mistake at work
Jay over at Dumb Little Man has a pretty interesting post about getting past a mistake at work without letting it do too much damage. The advice is basic but helpful and could be applied to other areas of life beyond just work.

How to Determine the Amount of Life Insurance You Need
Good post from Free Money Finance about how to determine the optimal amount of life insurance. I know that when you're 25, life insurance isn't at the top of your priority list, but there are times when it's important, depending on your circumstances. Take a quick look at the article and see if it's something you should look into further.

You must file a tax return to get economic stimulus tax rebate
Finally, Wise Bread has a post about the upcoming economic stimulus package rebates and how you need to file a tax return to get your cash. I'm posting it here because some college students may not make enough to need to file a tax return, but should definitely consider filing anyway this year. The post also has some good info about the dates that you can expect to receive your rebate.

And that's it! Please send me any links you might have and I'll try and include them in the next Links post.

Now that Bounteo.com is up and running (though we still are working on a design for the site), I want to start things off well, so I'm looking for post ideas and guest bloggers. Please contact me with any ideas you might have for posts and if you're interested in posting a guest post here, please send in any ideas you have. I would love to get some perspectives from other bloggers and authors about how young people can make good choices and make progress towards a life of success.

Bounteo.com is site that explores the pursuit of a life more abundant, particularly as it applies to young adults in their twenties.  However, readers of every age are certainly encouraged to interact and share their opinions and perspectives.  In subsequent posts, I'll explore a bit more about my own definition of success, the topics that I think are relevant to its pursuit, and why I've chosen to focus on young adults.  But first, a short introduction is in order.

My name is Ryan Waggoner, and for some time I've blogged at my personal website about personal finance, including a 12-part series for young adults on how to start investing for the future.  That content will form the genesis of Bounteo, but as we progress, I hope to add content in areas other than personal finance and investing, such as career development, entrepreneurship, time management, personal development and motivation, and other topics related to the pursuit of success in our lives.

Finally, I would like to say that I myself am a young adult (25 years old) and possess little in the way of credentials and professional experience that would qualify me as an authority of many of the topics we'll discuss.  I'm just a guy with a burning curiosity, a passion for learning, and a willingness to see others succeed.  I will do my best to ensure that I provide sources and solid logic and reasoning for the content on this site, but I hope that my readers will do their part to scrutinize my words and conclusions and challenge me where my own reasoning or research has fallen short.  In this way, perhaps we can actually accomplish something in our pursuit of the truth and a life more abundant.