Im glad I never fell into the college credit card trap.  I remember my first year at school, I used to see all these people giving away things like free pizza in exchange for signing off on a credit card, which is very tempting when you are a broke college kid.  Luckily for me, I had parents that taught me the dangers of messing up credit and overcharging credit cards before I went off to school.  I do see, however, how it is easy to fall into that trap.

OK, enough drama, but credit cards are a real problem these days. The average household gets over 260 credit card offers in the mail a year. How is a person supposed to find the right credit card??

Geezeo’s summer launch will include plenty of money saving strategies, including how to find the best credit card to fit your financial situation. Here’s an exampe of the types of cards Geezeo will recommend to you based on your unique financial situation:

Geezeo will sift through all credit card offers and recommend the appropriate card(s) for you.

Get on our mailing list or keep checking the blog! The summer release of Geezeo will also include strategies to help pay down your debt more effectively, save and invest smarter, and learn other creative financial tips from the community. Geezeo is not only going to change the way you manage your finances, but also give you peace of mind!

We’ve received a lot of emails from visitors asking us about Geezeo. When is going to be ready? What features is it going to have? We feel that it’s incredibly important for our readers to know what we’re working on and what’s “coming soon”. So, in an effort to keep our users plugged in to Geezeo’s progress we will be doing a couple of things.

For starters we will make regular product related blog posts like this one. Any posts related to the Geezeo product will contain the “Geezeo” tag so it will be easy for you to filter out the posts related to product updates. But make sure you read the other posts too though, there’s a lot of good stuff in there

In addition to product related blog posts, we have also created a user forum for users to discuss Geezeo, post questions to the Geezeo team or other users in the community. This forum can also be used to suggest enhancements and improvements to the site. User feedback is soooo important to us so we hope you speak up.

As far as when the complete application is live, the best we can tell you is sometime this summer. We’re pretty close to unvailing the complete app to the world but we want to make sure we have most of the kinks worked out and that the application is as elegant and user friendly as possible. If you are interested in helping us tighten things up a bit, feel free to shoot us an email and we can see about getting you access to Geezeo as a beta user.

Features, Features, Features!

So what is Geezeo going to do for me? you ask. Well, here’s the run down on some of Geezeo features you can expect:

Stay tuned for the next preview of Geezeo. If you want to be notified when we launch, please send us an email

I read a great article the other day, about how so many college graduates base their jobs on the salary they will receive. Obviously this is a huge concern, none of us want to be struggling for money. But it got me to thinking, we can’t let money control us. No matter what the job, you will be making money, some jobs more than others, but the thing is…some jobs will also make you much happier than other jobs will.

http://www.youngmoney.com/careers/monstertrak/career_fields/81

The article talked about how you should have a strong understanding of what you want in a job and in life. Such as what interests you, what skills you posses, your values, and even your personality. All these things are so important…more so than money since you don’t want to change who you are just so you can make some money. Settling for a job with a lower salary to begin with, may be beneficical for you so that you are able to find your place and what you truely enjoy in life.

So before you accept a job for just the money, take a moment and sit down and ask yourself — am I really going to be happy? Because if you aren’t happy with what your doing, there is really no point in doing it at all…for in the end it can change who you are as an individual and you won’t enjoy going to work each day!

So find a balance between the two! Obviously you need money, but think about what really makes you happy…what skills that you have that you can really put to work and enjoy getting up every morning for work. Cause lets face it, when we graduate, the summer vacations and the Christmas vacations that we get now through school…UNFORTUNATELY for all of us, those just don’t exist anymore!

Enjoy what you do have left of your vacations, and search for the job that you will enjoy while at the same time make some money, just don’t base your decision solely on the money aspect of it all.

The Geezeo team is continuing to build a strong network of Brand Executives. We are represented primarily around New England, but as Geezeo gets closer to launch, we have plans to branch out nationally. Every day more resumes are submitted and more students are excited about potentially working with our innovative company and amazing team.

This week we are welcoming three more Brand Executives!

Katherine Wu

Boston University, Graduating May ‘10

Major: Business Administration

Katherine is an active member of the Student Union, American Marketing Association, Entrepreneurship Club, and is the secretary of the Academic Affairs Committee. She has also participated in various social groups in her home state of California, and worked at a financial company last summer. Katherine is full of energy and a pure pleasure to be around!

Florence Zagrunzny

Boston University, Graduating May ‘10

Major: Business Administration

Florence “Flora” is the Chief Financial Officer of BU’s Entrepreneurship Club, the Treasurer of the Russian Cultural Society, a member of the Fashion and Retail Association, and a reoccurring name on the Dean’s List. Flora has already amazed us with her enthusiasm and excitement for Geezeo with her recent trip to Florida campuses, her plans to promote the site in New York and Boston, and with her creative marketing campaigns. Wow!

Jana Zislis

Babson College (Natick, MA), Graduating May ‘08

Major: Business Management

Concentration: Marketing & Management

Jana is an extremely busy socialite on campus as a member of the Campus Activity Board (Promotions Chair ‘05-’06), Personnel Chair of the Chi Omega Fraternity, Chair on the Pan-Hellenic Association, and member of the Babson Russian Club. Jana’s extensive “real world” marketing experience coupled with her outgoing and friendly demeanor makes her a perfect fit for the Geezeo team!

Great Job Team!

So lately Ive been realizing that gift giving can get extrememly expensive. But I mean, what are you going to do…? Be the only one to show up wihtout a gift for someone, I don’t think thats top on your list. So I found this list of the top ten gifts under $10.00. I mean $10.00 doesn’t seem like a lot, and you don’t want people to think your cheap, but these gifts are real nice when you put your own touch on them.

http://www.youngmoney.com/money_management/spending/041203

These gifts work for anything…graduations, 21st birthdays, Fathers Day, Mothers Day…the list goes on! They are very versatile and pretty much anyone would like them…its just another great way to save money when it seems like wherever you turn there is another birthday or holiday that needs a gift to be bought for.

Also, I’ve found if you buy these types of gifts when you DO have some money…then when an event comes up, you will already have a gift ready somewhere in your house — and won’t go out and spend so much money when you have to quickly find and gift and can’t find anything to work at such a low price.

Freshman year, I began pledging for a sorority. For one of the fundraisers, we had to get 50 people each to sign up for a citibank credit card. I walked around campus and made all of my friends sign up for them. I was still about 7 people short. There was no way that I wanted to walk back into that sorority house with only 43 people signed up. I decided that I would just sign up for the last 7.

Bad Idea.

Within the next month, I had received credit card after credit card until I had 7 citibank cards in my possesion. I figured that it can’t be so bad to have that many credit cards. I’ll just charge a little bit on each card and pay them off, and eventually I would have the best credit score! I guess I didn’t think it through, because first of all, I did not ask my father for permission to have any credit cards, and second, I had no money to pay ANY of them off.

Anyway, a month went by, and my dad received a bill in the mail. He was a little bit happy that I took the initiative to sign up for a credit card so he did not have to give me cash every time I saw him. The second bill came in the mail. Dad freaked. By the time I got the 4th one in the mail, he was on the phone with citibank asking how on earth they would let an 18 year old have 4 of the same credit cards. The last 3 came, and all 7 were then cut up. It might have been the worst next 6 months in terms of money.

I was not allowed to have a credit card for about a year. Eventually I was able to get a debit card. Since then, life has been pretty peaceful…

Geezeo Beta is now live! The beta includes Geezeo Mobile, a way for people to check their bank account balances from their cell phone, and Geezeo Student, a way for students to consolidate their student loans. If you would like to try out Geezeo beta, send an email to beta@geezeo.com Please feel free to register for an account or log in using your gmail address and password.

For more information about Geezeo Mobile, please check out our screencast (extra points for anyone who can count the number of times I say the word “actually” during the screencast).

I thought this was a really cool link…it just talks about 118 ways to save money throughout college. This list includes things like alcohol, food, computers, apartments, shopping, etc. Check it out, its really interesting!

http://www.scholarships-ar-us.org/student-living/save-money.htm

Also, on a side note — I ran out of checks the other day and went into the bank, they wanted to charge me around $20 until I reminded them that I was still a student. Take advantage of being a student while you can! They waived the cost of my checks, and they will be sent to me for free )