This weekend I was at a bar with some friends laughing about first jobs.

Some common first jobs in our group were: babysitter, lawn mower, waitress, fast-food employee, candy striper, and school “junior janitor staff” (supposedly the best gig for unlocking school-owned property during off-hours!).

When they say you gotta “pay your dues”, they were right.

My favorite early-job memory was a college job. A friend and I worked briefly at a Lazer Tag facility. Lazer Tag!

Imagine black lights, techno music, smoke machines, and screaming 15-year old boys. We were essentially waitresses. We had to wear silver mini-skirts and 60’s-futuristic boots. Oh, and ropes of fake ammo. We took food orders and demonstrated the proper use of lazer guns to teenage boys and lumpy losers of all ages.

I lasted about three weeks.

Your friends, your money — do they ever mix?

Two sayings pop to mind:

1. Never mix friendship with money. [But, as we all know, this is somewhat impossible].
2. Your financial net worth is roughly equal to the average of your five closest friends. [True?]

Some obvious factors play into it. For instance, your friends tend to share common interests and socio-economic backgrounds. You can’t deny that where you come from (financially-speaking) will tend to influence how you see the world of dollars and cents. We tend to hold a similar outlook on life as our friends. This plays a huge role in terms of subtle positive or negative peer-pressure when it comes to handling money.

So do you have to get new friends to get a new financial life?

Well, I think your REAL friends will be there through thick and thin wallets. But consider how you behave around these friends:

Spendy Friend — This is your friend who shops for recreation. For entertainment. For the latest gadget/fashion/thing-to-own. Hang out with this friend too much and your wallet will suffer.

Impulse Friend — This is your friend who is generally penny-wise but pound-foolish. They are usually great fun. Too much of their company, however, can lead you to owning items you’ll never use again. Inflatable river raft, anyone? (”Dude! We’ll use this all summer!”)

Frugal Friend — Your frugal friend tends to suggest things to do that cost little to nothing. Walks in the park. Outdoor events. Free lectures. This friend is good to have if you’re paying down debt. Just be careful you or your friend don’t cross the line and become the Miserly Friend.

Miserly Friend — This is your friend who too frequently crosses the line of “frugal” into “cheap” territory. Somehow, every time you go out to eat with them there isn’t enough money for a decent tip at the table. Or, they hold grudges that they contributed 25 cents to the parking meter four months ago (even though you drove there!).

Always Broke & Whiny Friend — Avoid these friends. Their focus is always negative and want you to suck, too. You’ll find yourself doing the same to fit in. Life is too short.

As the saying goes: Choose your friends wisely. You’ll end up just like them.

P.S. Who else saw the movie “Friends with Money” — and thought it pretty much sucks?

How big of a Red Sox fan are you really? I figured this is the best question to ask yourself right now as the Red Sox move into game 1 of the World Series tomorrow night. So, here’s your chance to figure it out…try this quiz online! I’m always watching the Sox and I thought many of these questions were really hard – so try your luck! Oh yeah, and GO SOX! )

http://boston.about.com/library/quizzes/bl_redsox_quiz.htm

How much Coca-Cola do you drink? What is it worth to you in para-money?

I didn’t think I drank all that much until I started saving my “Coke Points”. You may know how this and similar programs work. You purchase something (airline tickets, drugstore items) — in this case diet Coke — and earn “points”. These points are redeemable for items and services.

In the book “Revolutionary Wealth” by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, arrangements such as these create a kind of secondary currency called “para-money”. Unlike regular money (which is fungible, meaning it can be spent on anything), para-money can only be spent on certain things.

About once a week I go to the deli downstairs and grab a Coke. I wouldn’t call this a heavy-use activity but my “Coke Points” are now plentiful enough for me to “buy” a few album’s worth of music. Yikes! What’s all that corn syrup and artificial-ness doing to my body?

This past week I’ve been traveling. I haven’t saved any “Coke Points” although I’ve had a few sodas.

Meanwhile, I had an interesting discussion with another artist. We were talking about bartering. We were talking about the assumption many people make that we would gladly accept X goods/services in exchange for our work. In fact, specifically we were talking about how people quickly assume we will make such trades yet would never think to ask (or assume it was even proper to ask!) other professionals to “trade”. I was saying that from my experiences bartering rarely works to both parties satisfaction. As a result, I’ve mostly stopped this practice.

But that got me thinking about “Coke Points”. Could a para-money system be developed for the arts that would be fair? I tried this once with Millionaire Artist Money (MAM). That didn’t really go anywhere, but it got me thinking again of alternative money systems.

Alternative money systems are great… except, of course, they don’t include the cold hard cash required for living. I can’t redeem my “Coke Points” for student loans! (Note to Coke: great idea!)

(Created the above graphic titled “Gates of Coke”…you decide what it means!)

Hooray, Geezeo now tracks your investments!

In the last year or so I’ve become a big fan of investing. Yes, you read that right. Self-employed me. (Or you?!)

So here’s a run-down of investing tips I’ve learned:

If you are self-employed you can use a SEP-IRA and fill it with any mutual fund you want. Many no-load (ie, “no fee”) funds will let you invest as little as $50/month. You can save up to $45,000/year that way! If your saving pockets aren’t that deep you should at least save into a Traditional or Roth IRA (max this year: $4,000 if you earn less than $99K/year)

You can cash out IRAs but the tax consequences are steep. Set it and forget it, I say.

Routing a portion of proceeds to your investments automatically helps. It’s really helped me.

TRowePrice.com; Vanguard.com; Fidelity.com; USAA.com; Zecco.com (for individual trades)

‘Nuff said. But if you’re keen to get started and put all your money into one particular stock, consider a broker-free DRIP.

The library is a great (free!) place to start.

Financial blogs are great, too, because they give real-people accounts (forgive the pun). I like: My Open Wallet, Tired But Happy, MapGirl’s Fiscal Challenge, Frugal Zeitgeist, Moomin Valley, and of course, I have my own, Millionaire Artist.

To your investing success!

In case you missed it…last week we announced that you can now track your investments on Geezeo. Woot!

This is pretty exciting…our users have been asking to be able to add investments since we launched earlier this summer and we’re fired up to have this feature now live on the site. Geezeo gives you access to over 3000 investment related financial institutions, so chances are we have yours. Whether it’s an account with a discount broker or a 401k you’ll be able to add it to your Geezeo list of accounts and get the most comprehensive look at your finances possible.

In addition to investment account aggregation, It‘s our goal is to provide our users access to valuable stock rating information in a community atmosphere. In the spirit of this community approach, We have partnered with The Motley Fool to integrate that their CAPS stock rating service, in which investors predict whether stocks will outperform or underperform the S&P 500 and over what time frame this will happen. CAPS ratings currently cover over 5,000 stocks and are generated from more than 1 million individual predictions. The Motley Fool is a great company and we couldn’t be more excited to working with them.

So what’s next? What are we working on now? Well….here’s a recap of features that are currently live and a few that will be rolled out over the next few months.

Features now available on Geezeo!

-Aggregate over 6000 financial accounts (checking, saving, credit cards, loans, investments)
-Smart Tagging makes it easy to see where all your money is going
-Financial Goals linked to accounts and spending making it easy to track your progress
-Create and join groups where you can discuss certain money related topics
-Access account balances from your mobile phone using text/sms
-Facebook Application iWant. An extension of Geezeo Goals on Facebook.

What’s next!

-Set spending targets and check your progress at any time
-Compare your spending to the community (not to an individual)
-Improved product rating, recommend financial products you use to others
-Custom alerts (email, sms, IM)
-Improved social experience. Tighter integration between discussions around groups and goals

So…as you can see we’re jamming. It’s been a busy summer. We’re incredibly proud of our product and what our team has been able to accomplish. Honestly…we have the best development team ever…guys that spend days, nights and weekends making Geezeo the best social finance management site in the world.

To all of our early adopters, thank you so much for your support and feedback. It’s your ideas and suggestions that make Geezeo what it is today so please keep the feedback coming.

How do you prioritize your investments? If you are just learning about personal finance there is an element of discovery and a desire to act right away. Even if you are seeking professional advice (you should!), you are also responsible for knowing enough to make informed decisions.

The other week I talked about DRIPs. They are a great way to invest a small amount of money ($250-$500 to start), and then let the investment ride. If you’ve got a long time horizon they can be a good choice.

I got all excited about buying my first DRIP stock. Should I invest in Sallie Mae, owner of my student loans, as well as yours? Ha! Profiting from the beast! Or maybe invest in something else..?

Whoa, Nelly!

I looked over my current financial picture and decided that a DRIP, as beneficial as it could be, would have to take a back seat — for now. Why?

What made me decide to wait was that I tallied up what I’ve contributed to my IRA so far this year.

What have you contributed to your IRA? Time is a-tickin’…use it or lose it!

As you know, its a tax-preferred vehicle whether you take the Traditional, or the Roth (which is funded after-taxes, and never taxed again). I’m funding mine in small amounts ($50/month), with the occasional additional contribution. Still, I have a way to go to maximize the $4,000 limit. (Arguably more as a self-employed individual… but I’m trying to reach that benchmark first).

Here’s a link on IRA contribution limits: http://beginnersinvest.about.com/cs/iras/a/iracontribution.htm

To maximize dollar-cost-averaging make sure to take a look at your monthly budget and determine how much you can spare to put away. And put it away first. This is particularly crucial the younger you are!

As they say: be fearful when the market is greedy, and greedy when the market is fearful.

Should we add another one? Be flexible with your strategy, but committed to it. Sounds like an oxymoron, right?

Here’s what I decided: I’ll maximize my IRA contributions before striking out on individual investments. My first commitment was to that. Perhaps later I’ll add more.

We’re excited to announce that we will be presenting at Finovate 2007 tomorrow, October 2nd in New York City. Finovate is hosted by Jim Bruene of Netbanker and Online Financial Innovations. We were proud to be presenting along with some of the most innovative companies in the financial, banking and lending industries including Lending Club, Prosper, CheckFree, iPay, Billeo and many others.

We’ll have 7 minutes to “wow!â€? an audience of 200 leading executives, investors, analysts, members of the press and bloggers with an actual demonstration of Geezeo so wish us luck!

This new wave of financial portals, service providers, social finance and investment sites is so exciting. It should be a lot of fun getting together with so many like minded individuals in this space.

If anyone would like to connect while Shawn and I are in town, shoot us an email at pglyman[at]geezeo.com or sward[at]geezeo.com

See ya there!