Category Archives: Learner

5 Tips For Gen Y’ers to Avoid and Manage Medical Debt

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everything-changes-cover2Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Kairol Rosenthal, author of Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20’s and 30’s.

I travel the country writing and blogging about twenty-somethings living with cancer, many of whom are facing astronomical debt. But, it does not take an illness as catastrophic as breast or thyroid cancer to rack up serious medical bills. Even healthy Gen Y’ers have ginormous amounts of medical debt from routine care. Consider these statistics:

  • Out of every age group in the United States, 18-34 year olds have the most medical debt.
  • More than 35% of all young adults have problems with medical bills including getting calls from collection agencies, paying off medical debt, or having to seriously alter their life to accommodate for medical expenses.

While researching and writing my book Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20’s and 30’s, I collected myriad tips to help young adults – both healthy and ill – manage their healthcare and finances. Here are five:

Ask For a Discount

Fifty-percent of people who ask for reduced medical costs get them. Make the ask face-to-face rather than in writing or over the phone. Approach your doctor, or the office or billing manager. Red tape is infuriating and their response might be as well, but remember to be polite; hostility will get you nowhere.

A discount might not be granted with your first ask. Be persistent and don’t take no for an answer. If you are dealing with a hospital, work your way up the chain of command. Many staff are not familiar with their own hospital’s policies and will deny a request simply out of ignorance. With my own cancer care and medical disputes, I never had qualms about calling the CEO of a hospital. You should not either.

Build your argument. Obtain a copy of the hospital’s free and discounted care policy. Check to see if they have signed on to The American Hospital Association’s Billing and Collections Practices Policy. If so, they have agreed to assist patients who cannot pay for all or part of their care. Use this ammo to your advantage. If you are at a non-profit hospital, try contacting your State Attorney General, who can help enforce the institution’s commitment to providing charity care.

Scour Bills for Errors

Eighty-percent of medical bills contain errors. Read your medical bill carefully and dispute any incorrect charges. I recently received a comment on my Everything Changes blog from a breast cancer patient with a high tab that her insurance was not covering. When she investigated further, she learned they had accidentally used the billing code for a sex change operation.

Read carefully to find duplication of charges or charges for services not used. Check for simple accounting errors. If you have health insurance, make sure your company is accurately calculating your deductible and out-of-pocket expenses. If you find an error, dispute it relentlessly and keep meticulous records of your phone conversations with billing departments.

Avoid Credit Cards

The worst thing you can do with medical debt is to put it on your credit card. Once you put a medical bill on a credit card that bill is subject to compounding interest fees with no recourse for further dispute with your doctor or hospital. Hospitals are getting craftier at persuading patients to pay debts with credit cards. Resist their pressure.

Negotiate A Payment Plan

Instead of using a credit card, talk with the billing department to negotiate a payment plan. Hospitals are more receptive to this than you might think; they would rather work out a way to get some money from you over time than no money at all. Payment plans are so attractive to some hospitals that you can use them to leverage a deduction in your total bill, especially if you offer to make your payments in cash.

One of the people I interviewed was Nora, a 24 year-old cancer patient who could not afford her chemotherapy. She thought, “Wow, I’m going to die because I have no money?” Then, she sat down with the financial department of her hospital and was shocked when they suggested working out a payment plan. When you take the initiative to show that you want to pay off your debt, and are not just ignoring your bills, you can buy yourself a lot of leeway.

Get Credit Counseling Now

Billing departments, collections agencies, and bankruptcy lawyers can make the horrifically complicated world of medical debt even more stressful. Get counseling from a non-profit organization whose mission it is to advocate for patients. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling is an excellent place to start.

In the current economy, twenty-somethings are struggling even more so with joblessness, staggering COBRA payments and premiums, and high deductibles. As we wait around for government and industry to resolve the healthcare crisis, we needn’t sit idle succumbing to medical debt statistics. Fighting large medical institutions is a time consuming drag. But so is a future with the ball and chain of medical debt.

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How to Deal With Your Hacked Twitter Account

I should be writing about my recent trip to Cancun, and my safe return without the swine flu. Or how I need to update this blog more often.

But instead, I’m writing about this stupid person who hacked my Twitter account and started following hundreds of spammers who started sending me hundreds of direct messages with hundreds of stupid links that I’m afraid to click. So I can’t tell you where those links go.

What I can tell you is that the incident completely freaked me out. First, because I was only gone from social media and internet access for one week, and someone managed to violate my privacy in that time frame. Second, because I had to unfollow everyone to get rid of the spammers. And I was afraid to unfollow everyone because I know lots of people have auto-unfollows and I knew my followers count would drop. Fast. Wait. It’s still dropping. Like hundreds of people every few hours.

Then I realized I just don’t care. Seriously. I know that people who would only follow me if I was following them are using me to boost their egos. And I know that cleaning out my Twitter following was unmanageable without starting from scratch. And I know that I need to get over the idea that numbers define something about my online presence.

I feel a lot of things right now. Mad at the hacker. Annoyed with the source of the originally hacked account. Annoyed with myself for using the same password for both accounts. And then, relieved that I have an excuse to unfollow everyone and delete the noise in my Twitter account. And then, back to annoyed, because I will probably spend a lot of time adding people back.

But. I can breathe again. I can hear myself think. And if that costs me a thousand followers, it’s probably still worth it.

Here’s what to do if your Twitter account is hacked:

  1. Change the password.
  2. Identify the source, so it doesn’t happen again.
  3. Unfollow the spammers, even if you have to unfollow everyone.
  4. Use this How-To to delete your DMs.
  5. Be patient. You can’t fix your account in one day.

If I owe you a follow, let me know. And be patient. Because it’s going to take me awhile to get back on track on Twitter.

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How to Start a Blog Without Making the Mistakes I Did

If you haven’t heard yet, I launched my new website called the Resourceful Marketer on Sunday night. I wish this were a happy post to tell you how excited I am. I mean, I am excited, sort of. But I’m also very tired and very annoyed, because I did not want to start another blog when this one is finally seeing some success.

So here is the convoluted version of why I started my new blog, in the form of mistakes I made when starting this one:

I highlighted my age. Wait. I harped on it.

If you want to harp on your age and inexperience, it doesn’t get any better than declaring yourself a twentysomething or Gen Y blogger. I needn’t remind anyone that there is very real discrimination against young people in the workplace. It’s fine to pigeonhole yourself as “young and bright” when you first enter the workforce; but 3-5 years in, you’ll be begging for people to stop looking at you as “one of those millennials” and start taking you seriously.

Chuck Westbrook says it best: “Rather than trying to be the Penelope Trunk of Gen Y or the Gary Vaynerchuk of the next generation, the real accomplishment is to start showing up on ‘Best Bloggers’ lists, without generational qualifications.”

I agree. Growing into your profession means gaining respect as peers. Which is nearly impossible to do if you classify yourself as a Gen Y blogger.

I thought blogging was just a hobby.

Blogging is a wonderful hobby, don’t get me wrong. But look. When you build a blog of nearly 1,000 subscribers, you don’t have a hobby anymore. You have something that you should take more seriously, because you might be able to take it further.

When you first start a blog, you have no idea how popular you might get, so you should plan ahead 5 years just in case. Okay. Don’t really plan that far, but at least consider where you might be 5 years from now. Because now that I have a moderately successful blog, I can’t do anything with it because I messed up when I chose my focus on Gen Y personal development, which morphed into just personal with a dash of Gen Y. Which brings me to my next point.

I wrote about twentysomething careers instead of my career interests.

First, the Gen Y train has left the station. The market for more bloggers on this topic is small, the B2B business is going to already-established Gen Y companies, and even the bloggers who started the Gen Y train are struggling to make money from it. So please do not start a blog about twentysomethings in the workplace, or any other place. It’s done.

Second, I think twentysomethings get very mixed up about blogging being good for your career. It is, but mostly when you write about topics that are relevant to your field. (You know, establishing yourself as an “expert” in your industry, and all that.)

Sure you can learn a lot about yourself and grow as a person, personal development, yada yada, from any blog you start. But if you want to take a long-term view, you shouldn’t write about the ins and outs of your actual career unless you want to be a career coach or human resources professional.

I didn’t blog on my personal domain.

I am so thankful I bought http://monicaobrien.com when I did. Because it wasn’t available one week, and then it was the next and I snatched it. And now I’m using it to write about marketing, because the domain “Twenty Set” just doesn’t make sense for that topic, and I want to be fair to my original subscribers here.

But there’s more. If you want people to know you, no matter what you write about or what your career is, you should be blogging at yourname.com. On blogs, people buy you more than your topic. And besides, it’s likely that as a twentysomething you don’t know what you want to do and will change careers often, and the one thing that is fairly constant is your name.

I have two blogs! Don’t have two blogs. Just don’t.

I will try to keep up with Twenty Set and grow Resourceful Marketer. But to be realistic, it is very difficult to grow even one blog to 1,000 subscribers, and trying to manage two blogs will probably be a nightmare.

Plan ahead so you don’t ever need two blogs! There are a million problems that come with it. Aside from having double the work, you have the trouble of building a following on two separate domains, from subscribers, to links, to content, to comments, to traffic. The thought of starting a second blog made me so crazy that I put it off for 5 months, hoping to find another solution. I kicked myself when I realized that I would be so far by now if I’d been building my second blog for the last 5 months instead of going nuts.

I hope you won’t make the mistakes I made. Thanks to everyone for supporting Twenty Set thus far, and a special thanks to those who have helped me launch the Resourceful Marketer (I am especially happy to finally have something to put on my business cards).

As you may have guessed, Twenty Set will officially become my personal blog, if it hasn’t already. The writing style and content of this blog will stay the same, so keep reading and check out Resourceful Marketer if you ever want more. I hope the topics I cover on Resourceful Marketer will peak the interest of some of my longtime supporters of this blog too!

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Cut through the bad advice with these tips

I am good at giving advice. This is not to say I’m good at giving good advice. Honestly, I’m just good at giving advice I like.

Jamie Varon recently wrote a post about reading bad advice in the blogosphere that inspired me to elaborate on my thoughts about advice-giving.

The hard thing about getting advice is, as humans, we have a tendency to ignore and discredit advice we don’t like, while heavily weighing advice we do like. The dangers of this approach are that we still don’t know what to do and end up just doing what we want, which may not always be the best decision.

Here’s a checklist I go through whenever I need to disseminate what is good advice and what is BS.

Has the adviser done this before?

Experience is king. The best advice givers write and speak about things they know. Trust the person who has experienced something similar to your problem or has achieved a goal you are aiming for.

How well does the adviser know me?

Blanket advice is rarely useful to understand situational problems. The best advice is tailored to your specific situation and who you are as a person. Weigh advice given by someone who asks you questions more heavily.

What are the adviser’s motivations?

Beware of the tendency of humans to give advice that benefits them. Everyone does it. If you are working with a career coach, remember they are trying to sell you something in the end. If you are working with your boss, remember he wants to advance his own career too.

How much can I trust this adviser?

Even if someone has experience and seemingly good intentions, if he has a questionable character, I still might not take his advice. Look at the way this person has handled situations in the past. Are this person’s techniques consistent with your own values?

What else is important to cutting through bad advice? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

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Why We Should Reward Risk-Takers, Even When They Fail

I just noticed I hadn’t written in a week. Well, actually someone sent me a message. But whatever. Either way, I need to write.

It’s hard to write a blog post today though, mostly because my last blog post did well. And now I want the blog post with lots of comments to be at the very top of my homepage, because someone important might be watching and I want to give a good impression about how interesting and smart and likable I am.

But today I said to myself, this is ridiculous. My most recent success is holding me back from generating more successes. I’m afraid of failure. We all are to some extent – and here, I’ll prove it.

Which is worse – someone who loses $1 million for their company because they made an informed decision with a calculated risk, or someone who loses $1 million for their company because they missed a profitable business opportunity?

Economically, these outcomes are the same. But in our careers, we are comfortable with one decision and we would most likely get punished for the other. Isn’t that the opposite of what most companies want? The curse of the risk-taking careerist is that you are only rewarded when things turn out well. And hindsight is 20/20 – Your once supporters all of a sudden “knew” it wasn’t going to work from the beginning. How convenient for them.

Worse yet – there is some limit to the number of mistakes you can make before people start to question your judgment. Like if I wrote 5 bad posts in a row, eventually some people would unsubscribe. It’s a scary thought - you could have tons of successes negated by just a few failures. Amazing, really. All because you were a risk-taker.

So what? Life sucks. Right?

The question is: who do you want to be?

Are there good decisions with bad results that damage reputations unnecessarily?

Are there bad decisions with lucky outcomes that get rewarded unjustly?

Is it worth changing our thinking about what’s important - focusing not just on achievements, but process?

I hope so, because making the comfortable decision keeps you from reaching your potential. Comfortable is doing the same exercises over and over again and not getting any thinner. It’s the person who won’t speak in class unless she’s called upon. It’s the easy road, because it only takes you to destinations you’ve already been.

Will your company be the one that rewards risk-taking – that pushes your employees beyond their comfort levels and the status quo?

I want to be the risk-taker, and I want to work for someone who appreciates how courageous that want is. So I’m writing the blog post. It might be horrible, or it might be better than the last. I made my choice today, but will I make it again tomorrow?

Risk-taking, after all, requires real commitment. You have to be in it to win it.

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Retracing Your Footsteps Leads to Your Next Big Leap

People keep asking what my next post will be. Ever since I quit Brazen Careerist back in October, I’ve thought about writing an eye-opening, uncensored version of everything I learned while I was there (an option that gets more appealing every day as they drag post-breakup paperwork into December). But here’s what I’m going to write about instead: stopping. Because last week, I finally put work aside, put school aside, and actually relaxed for a good 72 hours.

Now, I’m the type of person who doesn’t stop. I can’t. I stuff my life full of too many tasks that I can never accomplish in the allotted time, because I’m afraid that if I let up for even one day I will have to address the very dark issues I struggle with. And that’s exactly what happened on Thanksgiving - I had time to self-examine and take inventory of all the parts of me that might be getting out of control.

Like my weight. I am not a fat person - never have been actually. But no matter what I weigh, I always want to drop 10 pounds. I weigh myself excessively. I eat the most random diet to try to drop more. I binge exercise after eating too much. And I worry, first that I am just keeping myself “fat” (because honestly, I’m not actually fat, I just think I am), and second that I am on the road to a more serious eating disorder that will require professional help. Is it enough to be aware that I’m close to crossing the line so I don’t actually cross it?

Like my inability to settle. My parents were Air Force, and I’ve known nothing else but moving. I am 24 years old and have lived in 11 different houses/apartments. The thought of living anywhere for more than five years is unfathomable to me, yet I want to provide a stable lifestyle for my future children. I want to support my husband’s career and bring him back to his family. Will I get used to the idea of staying - dealing with complicated relationships and problems - instead of wiping the slate clean every few years?

Like my escape tactics. Whenever I find a good fiction book, I can’t put it down. I shut down in my regular life (aside from the bare essentials) and get lost in the book, absorbed by the characters and living in someone else’s story. The drama is not about me anymore. The problems are not mine, but I get to share in the happiness as they are resolved. And then I call my obsession with the book “relaxing.” Am I unhappy in my normal life? Would I would rather live in books and television shows with fictional characters?

So maybe you are reading this, and thinking that I should get some help instead of confessing on my blog. But I write because I think people inherently want to become better and improve their lives, and that requires self-examination. Anyone who is successful is only that way because he or she has overcome a tremendous hardship in the past, and the only way to overcome tremendous hardships is when you don’t realize that’s what they are until you’ve already conquered them.

So if you want to get ahead, look at your past. Retracing your footsteps is the best way to figure out where you are going.

Where am I going next? Church. Because when I think back to when I was happy with my body, when I longed to stay in one place, and when I replaced reading books with socializing, that is the only common thread.

And not suprisingly, my inability to choose a next Twenty Set post is a lot like my inability to choose between helping others, even when it’s destructive to myself, or being selfish and putting my own needs first. I guess now you know what I picked.

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Graduating Soon? Here are some Recommended Resources

Image Source: ykmm85 via FlickR

As school winds down for the year, there is a lot of talk about recession and the prospective job market for graduating seniors. The economy is not the best, but luckily, there is a lot of great expert advice for students looking for jobs or struggling with the quarterlife crisis. I’ll be posting any opportunities or resources I come across in this thread. I encourage others to leave comments of any resources they find as well - I’ll be adding those comments into this post with a link to the recommender’s blog.

Lindsey Pollak is offering free advice to graduating seniors and free professional consulting to those who were planning on working for Bear Stearns and have now had their offers rescinded. She writes:

For any of the 250 undergraduate student with a rescinded job offer from Bear Stearns, I would be happy to provide you with a free 30-minute career counseling session by phone between now and September 1, 2008. For the first 10 students to respond to this offer, I will mail you a free copy of my book, Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World (HarperCollins, 2007).

Get the rest of the details at Lindsey’s blog.

sampleissue2.jpgGen Y personal branding expert Dan Schwabel will be releasing the fourth issue of Personal Branding Magazine on May 1st. For less than 10 bucks, you get 25 articles about personal branding for HR recruiting.Here are some of the highlights:

  • An interview with Robert McGovern, former CEO of CareerBuilder.com and current CEO of a new job board, JobFox, which focuses more on personal branding.
  • An interview with Pamela Slim, blogger and founder of the acclaimed Escape from Cubicle Nation
  • 10 Thought Leaders Speak About the Future of Recruitment - Founders, CEOs, and celebrity bloggers in the HR world answer the question “If you could change one thing about recruitment, what would it be?”
  • 20 Personal Branding Tips to Make Your Career Recession Proof from personal branding consultant Paul Copcutt
  • Two Sides of the Recruiting Story from recruiter Justin Orkin
  • plenty more, including articles from gen Y bloggers Tiffany Monhollon and Adam Salamon

Still not convinced? Download a free 9 page sample of the issue here. You can purchase the magazine here starting May 1st!

Alexandra Levit’s new book just came out - How’d You Score That Gig?: A Guide to the Coolest Jobs-and How to Get Them I got my hands on a copy of the book and plan to give it a full review; but right now I will say if you are looking for your dream job, this book is a great resource to find very cool jobs that are tailored to your personality type.

JT O’Donnell is relaunching her book Careerealism in conjunction with a new website described below:

Launching in late spring, Careerealism.com plans to become the on-line encyclopedia of career options for college grads and young professionals. The site will offer career insights from those in the trenches, fellow twentysomethings, who will relay first-hand what work is really like. Careerealism.com intends to help the more than 15 million individuals seeking degrees in America answer the big question after college, “Now what?” Subscribe today by e-mail and you’ll be invited to the on-line launch party where they will be giving away thousands of dollars in career coaching products and services.

I’m looking forward to JT’s website launch and I will be contributing my own career story to her website. Her book Careerealism will be available on May 1st, but advance purchasers will receive 20% off her Professional Strengths Assessment Package.

Kristen Fischer’s new book is out as well, smartly titled Ramen Noodles, Rent and Resumes: An After-College Guide to Life. She says,

“Life after college doesn’t have to be an all-out crisis—it is more so a time of change that can be very beneficial for young adults if they have an idea on what they’re facing.”

This book helps recent graduates:

  • Determine what career path will bring satisfaction
  • Select a job hunting strategy that gets results
  • Decide if graduate school will benefit their career
  • Prioritize work responsibilities with personal commitments
  • Cultivate better relationships with family and friends
  • Organize a living plan—at home or on their own
  • Manage their finances with the future in mind
  • Overcome stress, anxiety or depression

I haven’t read the book yet, but what I like most about it so far are the topics covered span much more than just getting a job. Looks like it will be a great resource for recent grads who feel a little clueless about the transition to adulthood.

Finally, the women at LifeBeforeNoon are doing a series of guest posts about graduation and advice on life afterwards. I am excited to be contributing to their Week of Wisdom, which will start sometime in May.

If you know of any other resources or opportunities for graduating seniors, please leave a comment!

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