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This would be a good way to save a fair amount on a bulk order of paper towels, a case of baby diapers or toilet paper .    Theres several items like that on S&S that can normally run $20-50 and 50% of that is a good deal.



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What Percent of College Students Work While in College?

I almost always had a part time job during college and I think most people I knew worked in college as well.   I remember one guy in the dorms who didn't work at all and his parents were paying for his college and giving him an allowance of some sort.   At least one other guy was an athlete on scholarship and he didn't have a job.  In fact I'm not even sure scholarship athletes are allowed to have jobs while on campus but thats beside the point.   One guy had a part time type job as a street musician of all things.   I don't think his roommate worked.    But overall most people I recall seemed to work. 

I found data at the Dept. of Education in their Digest of Education Statistics :
 Table 503.20. Percentage of college students 16 to 24 years old who were employed, by attendance status, hours worked per week, and control and level of institution: Selected years, October 1970 through 2012

As of 2012 : 41% of full time students are employed and 72% of part time students work.

The rates are very similar for 4 year public, 4 year private and 2 year public schools as follows :

	FT	PT
4 year public	41.0%	77.6%
4 year private	40.4%	84.4%
2 year public	41.2%	66.1%

Here's the history over time for all students :

As you can see in the past 10 years theres been a fair drop in the % of students working.   I'm guessing thats a result of the recent recession and the employment environment, but thats just me speculating.

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Best of Blogs for Week of October 3rd

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

Retireby40 asks Do You Benchmark Your Net Worth?

 DoughRoller discussed The Complete Guide to Cash Back Credit Cards
and answered What Should You Do With Your 401k When You Leave Your Job

MyMoneyBlog discusses Feel Like You’re Always Eating Out? You’re Not Alone.

A piece on Yahoo finance covers The math behind McDonald's Monopoly sweepstakes shows the only properties that really matter
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How Fast is a Mortgage Normally Paid Down?

We've got a couple mortgages that we only recently got within the past few years.    The mortgages are both 30 year notes and so I'll still owe on them when I'm in my 60's and past retirement age.   I was curious how much I'd owe on the mortgages so I used the calculator at Mortgagecalculator.org to generate amortization tables.   

One might assume that when you're 15 years into a 30 year mortgage that you'd have it half paid down.  But thats not now it works.   Mortgages payments are mostly interest at the start and little principal is paid initially.   Then as the principal gradually wears down over the years when you get to the end of the original term the opposite is true and most of your payments are principal and (relatively) little interest is paid.

You can see the data below but roughly speaking, for a 4% loan you've paid down just 10% in the first 6 years, 20% in 10 years, 1/3 is paid off by 15 year point and 50% is paid off in 20 years then by the 24th year you've paid down 2/3.

I'm measuring the amounts in the % of original loan that is still owed.    So in the 1st year you still owe nearly all of the loan so its 99-100% (rounded).     I'm assuming the normal amortization repayment rate here and if you paid extra principal into the loan at any point that would accelerate the repayment and change the curve.

The 30 year mortgage pay off rates are shown in graphic form :

Here's a table for a 30 year mortgage at varying interest rates :

Year	4%	5%	6%	7%	8%
1	99%	100%	100%	100%	100%
2	98%	98%	98%	99%	99%
3	96%	96%	97%	98%	98%
4	94%	95%	96%	96%	97%
5	92%	93%	94%	95%	96%
6	90%	91%	93%	94%	95%
7	88%	89%	91%	92%	93%
8	85%	87%	89%	91%	92%
9	83%	85%	87%	89%	91%
10	80%	83%	85%	87%	89%
11	78%	81%	83%	85%	87%
12	75%	78%	81%	83%	85%
13	72%	75%	78%	81%	83%
14	70%	73%	76%	78%	81%
15	67%	70%	73%	76%	79%
16	63%	67%	70%	73%	76%
17	60%	64%	67%	70%	73%
18	57%	60%	64%	67%	70%
19	53%	57%	60%	64%	67%
20	50%	53%	57%	60%	63%
21	46%	49%	53%	56%	59%
22	42%	45%	49%	52%	55%
23	38%	41%	44%	47%	50%
24	33%	36%	39%	42%	45%
25	29%	32%	34%	37%	40%
26	24%	27%	29%	32%	34%
27	20%	22%	24%	26%	28%
28	14%	16%	18%	19%	21%
29	9%	10%	11%	13%	14%
30	4%	4%	5%	5%	6%
31	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%

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