Kansas State University

With graduation fast approaching, many seniors find themselves brushing up their resume, job searching, and scheduling interviews. Salaries and benefit packages can be confusing, but understanding what a company has to offer can help the transition from student to employee to go smoothly.

The first detail to think through is how much do you expect to be paid? Do your research so that if you would be asked in an interview you would be able to come up with a reasonable amount. Career One Stop is a great place to start your research! You can search by occupation and location to see what is a practical asking salary. Some things to remember:

• The cost of living varies from city to city. You will need a higher salary in order to live in a place like San Francisco than you would to maintain the same standard of living in Kansas City.
• If you are planning on moving, look into different community resources to help get you settled such as voter registration, childcare providers, health care facilities, and ways to give back by volunteering.

Secondly, you should evaluate the benefits package provided by the employer. Employee benefits can be just as valuable as compensation, and will vary between employers. Health and life insurance, retirement benefits, gym membership, flexible spending accounts and tuition reimbursement are some of the possible benefits you might be offered.  Make an appointment with a Peer Counselor at Powercat Financial Counseling to compare benefits so that you can make a well informed decision!

Tired of receiving phone calls and preapproved offers? – It’s time to Opt Out!

Are you annoyed with the amount of preapproved offers in your mailbox?  Are you irritated by telemarketers wasting your time on the phone?  Good news – there are ways to be proactive to stop this from occurring!

If you no longer want your mailbox filled with preapproved credit and insurance offers, you can choose to opt out of receiving them.  The four consumer credit reporting companies (Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion) sell your credit information to credit card and insurance companies wanting to find new customers.  If you visit www.optoutprescreen.com, this website gives you the choice to opt out of receiving these offers for either five years or permanently for free.  This means the four consumer credit reporting companies stop selling your information to these companies. However, if you choose the five year option, you must opt out again at the end of five years in order to continue to not receive the preapproved offers.  If at some point you decide you would like to receive preapproved offers again, you can do so by choosing the opt in option at the same website.

By choosing to opt out, this will reduce the majority of your unsolicited mail.  Because not all mail travels through the same mail service, only the companies that use the Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) Mail Preference Service (MPS), the mail service allowing you to opt out, will stop. Mailings from organizations that do not use the DMA’s Mail Preference Service can continue.

The website does ask for some personal information including your name, address, social security number, and birth date.   If you are uncomfortable providing your social security number and/or birth date, these two items are not required.  That information is just added to help ensure the success of your request.

To reduce the amount of your phone calls with telemarketers on the other end, the federal government’s National ‘Do Not Call Registry’ is the answer.  You can register your home phone and your cell phone for free by visiting www.donotcall.gov. It will ask for your telephone number and your email address.  After pressing the submit button, you will receive an email asking to for you to open a link to finalize your registration.  After you have opened the link, you have completed the registry and should print the page to keep for your records.  By registering your phone number(s), you have opted out permanently.  Telemarketers have up to 31 days to stop calling you from the date you register.  Like the preapproved offers, you can choose to opt back in but only by calling the toll-free number at 1-888-382-1222.

For more information on the National ‘Do Not Call Registry’ and unsolicited mail, see www.ftc.gov.

You receive an unsolicited magazine in your mailbox stating that this is a trial offer.  Or you send in a card for a free trial offer on a magazine, and when it arrives you decide you do not like it.  It said “No obligation”, so you pitch the magazine in the trash and are surprised when a month later, another copy arrives with a bill.  Ah!!… the fine print!!  Might have looked at that more closely…  There may have been instructions about writing to cancel if you did NOT want to continue receiving the magazine.  The idea here is that you need to be proactive.  Begin the process immediately to cancel the subscription.   (You cannot wait until you have received six copies of the magazine and then try to cancel without paying).   If you have a copy of the offer or sales agreement, read it carefully and follow any instruction for cancelling the order.  Make sure to keep documentation (and copies if you can) of any correspondence.

At this point, immediately return the bill and write “Cancel Subscription” clearly across the bill.  It would also help to include a note that you wanted a trial issue only and are not interested in the magazine, requesting them to cancel the offer.  Most of the time, this will stop the order.

However if you get another copy, return everything unopened and mark very clearly on the outside, “Refused, return to sender- Cancel order immediately”.   As long as you do not open the package, the post office will return it without having to pay return postage.   If the first step did not work, this one should take care of it.

If you continue to receive a bill and magazine, I would call the company’s Customer Service number and make efforts to stop it that way.  Document who you talked to in Customer Service as well as the date and time of the call.  Explain to them what has happened so far.  Mention that at this point you will consider any magazines received as gifts.  By now they should be getting the point that you are not interested in their magazine.

You probably should not have to take it this far, but as a last resort if nothing else has worked, contact the Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov or call 877-382-4357, and ask for help getting the company to stop billing you.

Sources: General life experiences and “Solve Your Money Troubles”, Nolo Publishing.