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Warren Buffett’s advice to students: avoid credit cards.

Last year, representatives of Bank of America sat down to negotiate a deal that would guarantee the company access to the home addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of University of Iowa students and parents. They didn’t deal directly with school officials. Instead, they talked to representatives of the school’s privately run alumni organization. The two eventually signed a confidential credit card marketing agreement in which the bank agreed to pay the alumni association an undisclosed amount of money. The alumni granted Bank of America access to publicly owned databases of information on students, parents and fans who attend football and basketball games.

The alumni associations say that because they are private, nonprofit corporations, they’re not subjected to public-disclosure laws that would otherwise force them to reveal their contracts with Bank of America.The alumni associations say that because they are private, nonprofit corporations, they’re not subjected to public-disclosure laws that would otherwise force them to reveal their contracts with Bank of America. With the associations acting as a conduit between public schools and Bank of America, the money that changes hands as the banks gain exclusive access to a campus remains largely hidden from view. For example, a memo of understanding between the U of I and its alumni association states that in connection with the credit card program the school “may, from time to time, disclose to the association” both public information and unspecified “non-public information.” It goes on to say that the university must provide, if asked, updated addresses and phone numbers of students and parents for use in Bank of America’s credit card marketing program. The U of I’s current contract with Bank of America calls for the athletics department to give the bank access to its electronic e-mail list.

The Register also reports that the University itself benefits from the Bank of America relationship through donations from the Alumni association, including $20,000 annually to help pay for “credit card education and counseling for students.” How sweet!

Women need to “connect” with investing because we live longer

Women now hold just over half of all professional and managerial positions, but investing skills and confidence haven’t kept pace. According to the research organization Catalyst, women now occupy 50.6% of workplace managerial and professional positions. Yet as investors, women still don’t get involved or they invest too conservatively, leaving money on the table.  

• Education. Women growing up are simply not socialized as investors. 76% of women wish they had learned more about investing while growing up. Parents, get your daughters involved.
• Experience. Most women don’t take the investing helm when married.
• Fear. Some 90% of women fear “losing it all,” and even 48% of those with incomes exceeding $100,000 annually cite that fear.
• Adviser Disconnect. Most financial advisers are men, and they’re still geared to talk to men. Most advisers still talk in jargon. There’s still a “tendency to tell women what they want to hear, to comfort them, instead of talking about the opportunities in a situation.”

About 80% to 90% of women will be solely responsible for their finances someday, according to the National Center for Women and Retirement Research. Here’s a fun stat: 96% of men think that financially secure women are sexy. Perhaps because too many women can’t get finances the moral way.

For women who may still be reluctant to wade into investing waters:

1. Think like a business owner.  Business owners understand how businesses work and how to handle the ups and downs. Women are good at this in the business world.
2. Buy businesses you understand.  If inclined to buy individual stocks, this is a fundamental Warren Buffett value principle. As a woman, you probably understand some businesses better than your male counterparts — use this to your advantage.
3. Get the right advice.  Research shows that women prefer the help of advisers. Some 75% of women who rely on advisers are “more comfortable with investing.” That said, finding the right one is important — one tuned in to the needs of women.
4. Follow role models.  In business and in investing it always helps to find good role models and to study their actions and response to business and market stimuli. Buffett, an investor role model for years, is a great place to start.

Tips To Keep Your Audience From Dozing Off

Whether you are watching a presentation or giving a presentation, chances are you know what sucks and what doesn’t. However, in case you don’t know the what sucks, here are ten tips to help insure you are giving a good presentation:

1. Don’t Abuse Your Visuals - Whatever your visuals may be (charts, PowerPoint, etc.), keep them simple and don’t put too many words on them. The audience isn’t there to read your slides, they are there to listen to you present.
2. Look at the Audience - Don’t just single out one person, but instead try to make eye contact with numerous people throughout the room. If you don’t do this then you aren’t engaging the audience, you are just talking to yourself. This can result in an utter lack of attention from your audience.
3. Show Your Personality - It doesn’t matter if you are presenting to a corporate crowd or to senior citizens, you need to show some character when presenting. If you don’t do this you’ll probably sound like Agent Smith from the Matrix. Nobody wants to hear him present.
4. Make Them Laugh - Although you want to educate your audience, you need to make them laugh as well.  In essence, it keeps the audience alert and they’ll learn more from you than someone who just educates.
5. Talk To Your Audience, Not At Them - People hate it when they get talked at. You need to interact with your audience and create a conversation. An easy way to do this is to ask them questions as well as letting them ask you questions.
6. Be Honest - A lot of people present to the audience what they want to hear, instead of what they need to hear. Make sure you tell the truth even if they don’t want to hear it because they will respect you for that and it will make you more human.
7. Don’t Over Prepare - If you rehearse your presentation too much it will sound like it. Granted, you need to be prepared enough to know what you are going to talk about but make sure your presentation flows naturally instead of sounding memorized. Usually if you ask experienced speakers what you shouldn’t do, they’ll tell you not to rehearse your presentation too much because then it won’t sound natural.
8. Show Some Movement - Make sure you show some gestures or pace around a bit (not too much) on the stage when speaking. Naturally people may forget to do so. Remember, no one likes watching a stiff. People are more engaged with an animated speaker.
9. Watch What You Say - You usually don’t notice when you say “uhm”, “ah”, or any other useless word frequently, but the audience does. It gets quite irritating; so much that some members of the audience will probably count how many times you say these useless words.
10. Differentiate Yourself - If you don’t do something unique compared to all the other presenters the audience has heard, they won’t remember you. You are branding yourself when you speak, so make sure you do something unique and memorable.

People will pay a premium for a language

For jobs in finance and sales, learning key languages (such as Mandarin, Arabic and Japanese) could give you an advantage. Workers who depend on commissions or are looking to introduce products overseas could also benefit, experts say. But bilingualism doesn’t come cheap. You’ll have to spend anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 or more for classes that will give you proficiency in a second language. Those who only speak English can get by in the business world. But if you’re going to study another language, some may be more helpful to your career than others.

Mandarin can be particularly useful, especially in fields such as manufacturing.  People with Chinese language skills are very much in demand. That definitely becomes in your favor when you’re negotiating salary increases. Financial-services professionals could benefit from leaning another language. There’s a lot of deal making around the world. Unless your company funds your instruction, picking up a language could be financially daunting.

A 10-week group class for two to four students costs about $1,500. The Boston Language Institute charges $499 per level — it provides five levels of instruction plus a conversational class — for its group Mandarin classes. Arabic will set you back $599 per level. “In most cases people come here on their own volition…sometimes reimbursed by their companies, sometimes not,” said Siri Karm Singh Khalsa, president of the institute. Many employers might not have a policy that dictates paying more for bilingual workers, says Kurt Ronn, founder of professional-level recruitment firm HRworks. “But if you’re bilingual, that’s going to make you a more desirable candidate. You have a better chance of getting the position and being successful,” he says. Experts also recommend taking time to learn cultural nuances, which can be just as important as speaking a language if you’re looking to close deals.

Requirement To Start Company: Laptop and Good Idea

In the old days, the entrepreneurial avenues that were open to minors could have been a paper route, mowing the lawns in your neighborhood, or a lemonade stand. But thanks to cheap bandwidth, online advertising, broadband access, and the ability to spread ideas through blogs or social networks, younger and younger people with little funding and few connections have been starting Internet-related companies in recent years.

In ninth grade, Zaid Farooqui cofounded Web design company Cyquester Technologies and hired an employee in India for $400 a month. In tenth grade, Steven Bao sold a Facebook program to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and started the Facebook Developers Meetups in Boston this summer. Entrepreneurs who launch companies in puberty are anomalies, but the Web has lowered the bar for people with skills and ideas. People don’t need a development team or a big budget - they just need a good idea and a laptop.

Y Combinator, started by entrepreneurs in 2005, introduces founders to investors, and doles out funds to the budding moguls who participate in its weekly dinners, giving striving entrepreneurs a community. Typically, the firm provides startups $5,000, plus $5,000 per founder, in exchange for a 6% stake in each company. The average entrepreneur in a Y Combinator session is 25, and he or she does not need an advanced degree, connections, or work experience. Jessica Livingston, a cofounder, said that there’s a trend of younger people launching startups.  “It was cheaper to start one, and you don’t need to ask permission” from investors, she said.

Now Teachers Throughout The US Can Help Each Other Out

Yahoo Inc. is developing a free online service designed to make it easier for educators to create, find and share lesson plans, worksheets and ideas. The product, Yahoo for Teachers, is a sort of social network that allows teachers to collaborate on course work and store information that they find online and want to showcase in class. Teachers have long complained about a lack of time to prepare for class and of the difficulty in collaborating with colleagues, even those just down the hall. Curriculum requirements that vary by state have also complicated the issue.

Yahoo for Teachers will be accessible from teachers.yahoo.com, which features a brief description of the service, video tour and announcement that the site will soon be open to the public. The service allows teachers to create and store lesson plans, worksheets and projects online rather than preparing class materials using a Word document, for example. Teachers can also search lesson plans posted by others and leave comments. For Yahoo, focusing on teachers is a departure from its usual mass-market business strategy and may signal a new willingness to cater to more-specialized users. Brillant idea!

Junk Food Companies Soon To Take A Beating Without Their Child Attraction

You won’t be seeing Jimmy Neutron, SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer and the Rugrats on anymore junk food. Nickelodeon, the children’s television network, said it would prohibit the use of its characters on junk food products, except on special occasions like Halloween. Those characters will be allowed to appear only on packaged food products that meet “better for you” criteria established by Nickelodeon’s marketing clients. The changes will become effective in 2009, when the current two-year licensing agreements expire.

The announcement was made just days after Discovery Kids made a similar announcement and nearly a month after 11 major food and beverage companies — including McDonald’s, Kellogg and Kraft Foods — agreed that they would stop advertising unhealthy products to children under 12. Those 11 companies represent two-thirds of the children’s advertising market. In October, Walt Disney announced that its characters would be allowed only on products that met certain nutritional standards. It’s about time! Let’s thank food companies and children’s networks for having contributed to the obesity epidemic among American children.

Why Aren’t You Rich?

It is still not well understood why some people are rich and others are poor. Luck, timing, parents, choice of spouse and many other factors play important roles in shaping an individual’s circumstances. Past analyses have mostly just looked at income, with studies of World War II veterans finding a link between smarts and a better salary. Looking at the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979’s latest round of survey answers from more than 7,000 randomly-selected participants, he tries to tackle the question of whether better IQs lead to bulging bank accounts and less bankruptcy. “Being more intelligent does not confer any advantage along two of the three key dimensions of financial success (income, net worth and financial distress),” says author Jay Zagorsky, looking at the data with statistical tests. And when it comes to financial distress, smarts are no help at all.

People with 140 IQ scores (a score of 100 is average) missed payments and maxed-out their credit cards more often than their lower IQ counterparts. “Only among people slightly above-average does an increasing IQ score lead to a reduced chance of financial distress,” says the study. “The survey provides no data to explain why this occurs,” but Zagorsky offers these explanations for High IQ types getting into financial hot water:

• They might be busier and less focused on routines like paying bills.
• They might lead a lifestyle that is closer to the financial precipice because they feel they are smart enough to get away with the risks of credit card spending and saving less.

“Since intelligence is not a factor for explaining wealth,” he writes, “individuals with low intelligence should not believe they are handicapped in achieving financial success, nor should high intelligence people believe they have an advantage.” Having a high IQ can sure lift your ego, but when a female is very good looking and has well developed large breasts or a male is physically strong, athletic, very good looking and has loot, those attributes will do more for the person than being “gifted mentally”.

Test scores? Check. Application? Check. And now, the slideshow

University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business will begin requiring prospective students to submit PowerPoint-like slides with their applications this fall. PowerPoint and similar programs have become ubiquitous tools in the business world. But the school says so-called slideware, used correctly, can also let students show a creative side that may not reveal itself in other application materials. The requirement could be called corporate America’s surrender to a technology that often gums up the flow of information up by encouraging bureaucratic jargon. Imagine what a kick the admittance council must be having just judging your life based on a slideshow.