Money Blue Book

Well I voted. No one can blame me for not making sure my voice was heard. But yet I remain somewhat jaded and cynical at the fact that when all is said and done, my vote ultimately won’t do much to affect the outcome of election results.

Every 4 years it’s the same routine. I head to my designated voting station and pull the lever, poke the appropriate dot, or press the desired digital touch screen button to make my mark as a citizen of this great country. Unfortunately, any excitement or exuberance I may have in exercising my constitutional responsibility to participate in the political process is greatly tempered by the fact that I know my vote in all actuality counts for very little. It’s not because my vote is only one out millions that will ultimately be cast that makes the relative unimportance of my single vote seem so sobering. It’s the fact that I know with near definitive certainty that no matter which way I cast my vote, whether I vote for John McCain of the Republican Party, or whether I vote for Barack Obama of the Democratic Party, my home state of Maryland, a solid blue state as blue states go, will ultimately pass on all of its electoral college votes for the Democratic candidate no matter what. Such is the dilemma and troubling aspect of living in a state with such thoroughly entrenched political and social views, and in a country where Presidential elections are decided based on an electoral college system rather than through a national popular vote.

The Current Electoral College Voting System Unfairly Empowers Small, Rural States With Substantially Less People, With Disproportionate Power Over Larger States With Significantly Larger Populations

This ongoing sham in the electoral process is due to the fact that our founding fathers ratified a constitution that set forth a Presidential election process based on an electoral college system. Currently, instead of allowing citizens like myself the power and right to directly cast our votes for President, we instead merely submit our votes for state electors. Under the current troubled electoral college voting system, each state has a designated and apportioned number of electors based on the number of Senators and Representatives each has in the U.S. Congress. As such, the numbers of electors are generally divvied up based on population size, with more populated states like New York, Texas, and California receiving more electoral votes, and smaller states, like North Dakota and Nebraska  receiving fewer. While there are a few slight variations, the vast majority of states adopt a winner takes all popular voting approach where state voters choose between presidential candidates and the victorious candidate in that state wins all of the state’s electors and thus, electoral votes.

Perhaps, the old electoral college system was needed back in the late 1700’s when our country was passionately divided and individual states were understandably concerned that their individual states’ rights would be usurped and engulfed by a strong, overbearing federal government. However, times have changed and our former collection of rag tag individual states have since coalesced into a unified whole – a true United States. It is time we do away with the old process and abolish the electoral college in favor of a direct voting system based on true, popular vote.

Throughout our nation’s history, our populations have divided themselves among regions that many of us like to call blue states and red states. Blue states are states that tend to exhibit more liberal political practices and tend to have higher minority populations with large urban centers, located mostly on the western Pacific coast and north eastern Atlantic region. Red states tend to be clustered in the mid western and southern states, usually in areas that adopt more conservative political practices and views. However, in between the blue and red state gradients are the so-called wishy-washy purple swing states – states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida that have no solid political leanings. These swing states waffle back and forth from election to election due to the moderate and balanced views of its electorate population. However, because under the current electoral college voting system, there is no advantage gained by winning the majority of the national vote as the winner-takes-all system focuses on winning individual state majorities, the system tends to unfairly offer smaller states and residents of swing states disproportionate voting power.

Now why should my vote in a historically solid blue state like Maryland be essentially penalized and emerge any less important than that of a citizen living in Pennsylvania or Florida? Because of the current electoral college voting system, Presidential candidates have no incentive to spend time or resources in states that they believe they are likely to win or lose by a sizable margin, thus they frequently ignore a huge majority of states with sizable populations and votes (which is just baffling in a country ruled by the concepts of popular rule and democracy). Instead, all of the attention goes to the purple swing states. This to me seems completely counter to the democratic concept of majority vote and rule. Whatever happened to the idea that each person’s vote is just as significant and important as that of any other citizen’s? Why should citizens living in rural areas where populations are nil or merely in the thousands compared to the mega urban centers of larger states with populations in the millions be given such disproportionately overwhelming power over the lives of everyone else?

The Electoral College Voting System Should Be Abolished Via A Much Needed Constitutional Amendment

I view the electoral college system as a form of political disenfranchisement and believe it is time we abolish it altogether. Having scenarios like in 2000 where President George W. Bush won the election by winning the electoral college but failing to actually win the national popular vote was just ridiculous, and completely flies in the face of democracy. What is wrong with an urban focused electoral system when that is where the population centers are? Isn’t that the ultimate democratic way of one man one vote? Concerns about maintaining the separation of powers or maintaining the preservation of state focused rights are unfounded as the reality is that our country has substantially changed over the years and we are much more united and interdependent as a country than during any other time during our history. If we truly want to substantially increase the numbers of Americans who vote and to encourage more to take part in the most important political process in the world, it’s time we amend the Constitution to strike out the electoral college voting system and put in its place, a more equitable and fair direct national voting process. One man/women, one vote – that is the democratic way.

However, despite any lingering frustration I continue to have with the current voting system, I still think it’s paramount that every U.S. citizen continue to exercise his or her civic duty to vote in all relevant local, state, and federal elections. Despite its immense flaws, it’s still the most profound tool we have today to effectuate change and make our country truly our own. But because of its current shortcomings, it’s also why I would still gladly give up my right to vote for a million dollars.

We live in an extremely politically correct country these days, which means anyone who even mentions anything negative about someone different (like negatively pointing out a foreign accent), or criticizes someone for their inability to speak the language properly, he or she is immediately labeled as prejudiced, racist, or somehow inciting hateful views. I’m truly none of those things, but I feel a personal finance blog platform is as good as any to express my own personal views about my own experiences on the matter. While I was born overseas, I came to the U.S. when I was only 2-3 years old, so I’ve pretty much grown up as an American and learned to identify strongly with the crux of American culture and its values. While a key component of American culture is the ability to embrace diversity and appreciate differences between different types of people, both foreign and domestic, there are some circumstances when I greatly prefer the services of a fellow American.

This preferential situation comes up whenever I call a live customer service help line. When I pick up the phone and make that affirmative decision to seek help via a toll free telephone number, my reasonable expectation is that I will reach someone who can communicate with me in an intelligible way, and help me resolve my consumer business problem quickly and efficiently, so that I can go along my merry way. It’s bad enough that I often have to spend 30 minutes or more waiting on hold before I can talk to a live technical support representative, but these days, it seems when I finally reach that live person, he or she turns out to be completely unable to communicate with me using comprehensible and discernible English.

I Can Deal With Difficult To Understand Accents In Real Life (By Using Hand Gestures), But When The Situations Happen Over The Phone, The Conversations Can Get Comically Tedious

I am terrible when it comes to understanding different accents. Even British English accents trip me up on occasion – but at least it is somewhat closer to American English in terms of speech and pronunciation, albeit a bit more deliberately pronounced I suppose. While I can understand the different types of American English accents such as a southern, Boston, and even accents that distinguish different races and ethnic groups prominent in this country, I still have frequent difficulty understanding the cultural nuances and accents that aren’t considered mainstream American English. This difficulty in understanding foreign accents is most pronounced and debilitating when it comes to conversations over the phone with someone from another land, especially when I find my phone call re-routed to some outsourced call center located overseas and wind up with a customer service rep who speaks with a thick accent that I simply cannot understand despite my best efforts.

While in a real life conversation and business work setting, heavy accents aren’t as significant a detriment as there are other methods of communication such as using writing and through natural hand gestures to punctuate one’s point, in the world of customer service telephone calls, this type of linguistic verbal diversity is a significant detriment and handicap. When it comes to customer and technical support help lines, communication and speed are two important elements to a quick and satisfactory resolution of the problem at hand. There are plenty of jobs where having a perfect American English accent is not crucial and one can get away with not having otherwise perfect American English, but a position as a customer service call representative that caters to Americans is not one of them. The job absolutely demands that the agent be able to communicate with the language of the target country. Is that really too much to ask? Oftentimes in such scenarios, time and patience are limited luxuries. In such situations, having a thick accent is a very undesired handicap to have, particularly when the issue needs to get resolved quickly over the phone in a short period of time without the benefit of time to get to know each other. This is the biggest problem many customers such as myself are having with companies that continue to outsource their customer service call center jobs overseas to English speaking, but heavily accented countries like India.

Facing An Indian Customer Service Representative With An Incredibly Thick Accent Is Like Talking To A Brick Wall – Nothing Gets Through, and Time Is Wasted

When American call center customer service jobs are outsourced to other countries, I think it’s reasonable to expect the call agents that will be handling the calls to be trained to speak in proper America English. However that is not always the case. Especially when it comes to Indian call centers, the accent is often an interesting mish mash of British English, local Indian dialect, and butchered American English. What often comes out is an unintelligible murmur, resulting in humorous and frequently embarrassing exchanges between the rep and the customer.

A few years ago, I bought a Linksys wireless Internet router, but had major trouble setting up my wireless connection. I kept losing my wireless internet signal and so I embarked on a customer service phone call quest to solve the problem. I dialed the company’s 1-800 number and was promptly connected to an agent. Little did I know, but my call from Maryland, USA was instantly routed thousands of miles across the planet to a different time zone to a call center in India. Immediately when I heard the agent’s accent, I knew it was going to be a long day. It started as soon as my phone rep introduced herself with a thick Indian accented “Hello”…followed by a …”my name is Mary”, a presumably English name moniker chosen by the Indian customer service rep for the convenience sake of their mostly American clientele instead of compelling them to remember a more difficult Indian name. For the next 60 minutes, I struggled valiantly to understand her words and sentences. I tried to remain polite and understanding, but I kept asking her to please repeat herself, much to my continued embarrassment. Every sentence on her part would be followed by a “What?” on my end, or would be followed by a momentary pause as I scratched my head and tried to figure out what she was trying to tell me.

After a while, I could tell she was getting fed up with having to repeat herself after every instruction, but then what was I supposed to do? I desperately tried to understand, and I really did try – but it was a constant guessing game on my end. I simply could not comprehend the Indian customer service representative’s thick Indian English accent. At the end, I got little accomplished because she and I were simply unable to communicate. I found myself spending more than an hour repeating her own words back in my vain attempt to make some linguistic sense. Eventually I had to give up and seek help from another customer service rep. The next rep’s Indian accent was just as thick and I ultimately had to call back several times before I finally found an agent who’s accent was more bearable. But the experience left me with a very negative view of the company and their irresponsible cost cutting efforts to send customer service jobs overseas when the work could be better handled here.

American Companies Who Cater To American Consumers Should Seriously Re-Consider Their Indian Outsourcing Strategy Or Face Consumer Backlash In The Long Run

This is a serious problem that many major American companies who choose to outsource their call center jobs to low cost foreign countries will ultimately have to face. Customers such as myself may eventually take our customer service frustration out on the company and defect to one of their competitors. Based on some news reports I’ve read, many companies that have attempted to outsource their customer service functions abroad have not realized the cost savings they expected, discovering that there are hidden costs that far outweighed the potential savings in labor expenses. Oftentimes, due to significant customer complaints about difficult to understand customer service representative accents and great differences in culture, companies have had to expend significant amounts of additional money to train the agents on proper American English and terminology. Ultimately some of these outsourcers have brought those type of jobs back in-house and back into the country.

Faced with backlash from customers like myself who have great difficulty understanding heavily accented Indian English, some companies are actually taking the next logical alternative step by shipping the work over to other moderately English speaking countries, like the Philippines. As a former U.S. controlled territory, the Philippines at least offers a more Americanized work force with a better understanding of American culture that can potentially offer employees with lighter accents. There will still be an annoying accent to deal with, but at least the twang, so to speak, will be significantly less painful to understand than that spoken in India.

There are currently also signs that the trend toward outsourcing call center jobs to low-wage countries like India or even the Philippines may be slowing down. Research shows that some call centers are most effective when staffed by Americans and there is at least some growing attempt to keep jobs here. I’ve noticed that many companies are now trying to keep the bulk of their daytime customer service call center jobs in the United States where the calls can be handled by American English speaking agents. For customer service lines that provide 24 hour coverage and take on evening calls however, some still get routed overseas to places like India, but many daytime calls are now being mercifully handled by call centers in the U.S. At least that’s what I noticed recently when I called my cable internet provider’s help line several times recently. When I called during normal daytime office hours, I got a service rep that spoke perfect English, but at night, I basically played the ole accent guessing game, doubling and even tripling the length of time spent trying to resolve my problem.

For those of you out there who are embarrassed to admit but also have difficulty understanding accents, I recommend making your 1-800 customer service and technical support phone calls during the day. Sure that means using up your precious anytime wireless phone minutes, but you stand a much better chance of reaching someone in this country than if you called after hours.

What Do the Credit Card Numbers Mean, and How Are Valid Credit Card Accounts Generated?

Have you ever wondered how credit card companies generate all those account numbers that appear on the face of the credit cards you carry around in your wallet? At first glance the numbers, while neatly arranged, appear to be completely random. But would it surprise you to know that there is indeed meaning and actual mathematical methodology to the way the numbers are sequenced? The process of generating real credit card numbers and validating them based on a proven mathematical formula is not only intriguing on an intellectual level and a hacker’s dream, the carefully calculated way the numbers are ordered is actually quite beautiful and elegant when you come to understand how it works.

Before I get down to explaining the anatomy of credit card numbers and discussing how credit card numbers are generated, I think it’s prudent to remind everyone the intent of this article. The goal of this blog post is not to encourage or get people thinking about how to go out and create fake credit card numbers on their own for improper means. The purpose is to shed some light on the science behind the mathematical sequencing technology of valid credit card numbers and offer some insight into something that many of us frequently see and use everyday, but oftentimes don’t pay much attention to.

Please take in the information provided for purely academic and entertainment reasons. I’m not trying to encourage anyone to create fake credit card numbers and get themselves in trouble with the law. For anyone even thinking about engaging in fake credit card number hacking, keep this in mind – using mathematically generated credit card numbers to purchase products over the Internet or in real life is not only unethical and highly illegal, it’s also not yet technologically possible (yet), based on the sheer probability of long shot odds of 1 in trillions. After reading everything I’m about to say carefully, you’ll also realize that there is no realistic way to generate actual working credit card numbers that could be used for anything but entertainment reasons. The math and science behind generating authentic credit card numbers are only good for validation purposes and not sufficient for creating workable numbers as several highly encrypted numerical components are still needed. So, with that obligatory disclaimer out of the way, here is a short guide on how anyone can generate and verify the authenticity of any credit card number.

Basic Background About Credit Card Numbers and How They Work

Rather than ask you to take out a credit card out of your wallet to examine it, I’ve provided a picture of a prototypical card – in this case, it’s a Visa credit card. While different card types offer different lengths of numerical digits, most major credit card issuers popular in the United States have 16 primary numbers on the front face of the card. Visa, MasterCard, and Discover cards all have 16 digits. American Express is the only major credit card issuer in the U.S. with one less number – at 15 digits. Regardless of the length of numbers, their numerical sequencing is still guided by the same Luhn validation formula, the mathematical check sum equation that makes all valid credit card numbers error free.

As you can see from the picture of the Visa card above, the very first 6 credit card number sequence is known as the issuer identification number (IIN) or bank identification number (BIN). These first 6 numerical digits denote the credit card network and the banking institution the card is a member of. The issuer identifier number also incorporates the card type’s special identifying numerical prefix.

• All typical 16 digit Visa account credit card numbers start with a prefix of 4.
• All 16 digit MasterCard account numbers start with a prefix of 5.
• All 16 digit Discover account numbers start with a prefix of 6011.
• All 15 digit American Express credit card numbers start with a prefix of 37.

There is less randomization during this initial set of 6 digits as the numbers are determined purely by the card issuing source. Validation systems that want to go the extra mile in verifying authenticity oftentimes scan this first numerical sequence to match the known bank and issuing location of the card with the provided customer billing address for further validation accuracy.

The lone digit at the very right end of the complete 15 or 16 digit credit card number sequence is known as the “check digit”, which often is the final number that is computer generated to satisfy the mathematical formulations of the Luhn check sum process. Meanwhile, in between the first 6 digits and the last single check digit is the actual personalized account number – the 8 or 9 digit sequence given by the card issuer. For more basic background information about credit card numbers, check out this credit card features brochure for more useful knowledge about the embossed and printed information found on your typical plastic credit card.

What’s The Secret Behind The Luhn Algorithm, Also Known As The “Modulus 10″ Or “Mod-10″ Formula?

The Luhn Algorithm is the check sum formula used by payment verification systems and mathematicians to verify the sequential integrity of real credit card numbers. It’s used to help bring order to seemingly random numbers and used to prevent erroneous credit card numbers from being cleared for use. The Luhn Algorithm is not used for straight credit card number generation from scratch, but rather utilized as a simple computational way to distinguish valid credit card numbers from random collections of numbers put together. The validation formula also works with most debit cards as well.

The Luhn formula was created and filed as a patent (now freely in the public domain) in 1954 by Hans Peter Luhn of IBM to detect numerical errors found in pre-existing and newly generated identification numbers. Since then, it’s primary use has been in the area of check sum validation, made popular with its use to verify the validity of important sequences such as credit card numbers. Currently, almost all credit card numbers issued today are generated and verified using the Luhn Algorithm or Modulus, Mod-10 Formula. Needless to say, if you come upon some existing credit card numbers that fail the Luhn algorithm when put to the test, it is safe to assume that they are not valid or genuine numbers.

The one thing to keep in mind is that validity in terms of passing the Luhn test only means that it is mathematically valid for computational compliance purposes. It does not guarantee that the credit card number sequence is indeed a working number that is backed up with a valid credit card account on the card issuer’s end. It is not unremarkable for one to artificially generate a mathematically valid credit card number that passes the Luhn validation check, but still ultimately fails as a fake credit card number with no actual substance. The Luhn algorithm only validates the 15-16 digit credit card number and not the other critical components of a genuine working credit card account such as the expiration date and the commonly used Card Verification Value (CVV) and Card Verification Code (CVC) numbers (used to prove physical possession of the debit or credit card).

The Nerdy Process Of Applying The Luhn Algorithm To The Creation and Validation Of Credit Card Number Sequences

For those who hate math or get scared when they encounter a bunch of scary looking mathematical formulas and numerically inspired descriptions, you are not alone. I personally hate math as an academic subject and was rather terrible at it back in high school and college, but if you like visual, thinking puzzles like Sudoku, you’ll like working with the Luhn Algorithm. It’s pretty clever and remarkably well put together. It’s also pretty easy to explain.

1. First, you’ll need to lay out all 15 or 16 numerical digits of the credit or debit card number. The Luhn Algorithm always starts from right to left, beginning with the rightmost digit on the credit card face (the check digit). Starting with the check digit and moving left, double the value of every alternate digit. Non-doubled digits will remain the same. Remember that the check digit is never doubled. For example, if the credit card is a 16 digit Visa card, the check digit would be the rightmost 16th digit. Thus you would double the value of the 15th, 13th, 11th, 9th digits, and so on until all odd digits have been doubled. The even digits would be left the same.
2. For any digit that becomes a two digit number of 10 or more when doubled, add the two digits together. For example, the digit 5 when doubled will become 10, which turns into a 1 (when 1 and 0 are added together). Likewise, the digit 9 when doubled will become 18, which becomes 9 (as 1 and 8 are added together). Obviously, 0 when doubled will remain 0.
3. Now, lay out the new sequence of numbers. The new doubled digits will replace the old digits. Non-doubled digits will remain the same. Thus, you should be able to come up with a new sequence of 15 or 16 numerical digits depending on card type.
4. Add up the new sequence of numbers together to get a sum total. If the combined tally is perfectly divisible by ten (ends in 0, like 60 for example), then the account number is mathematically valid according to the Luhn formula. If not, the credit card number provided is not valid and thus fake or improperly generated.

An Example Of the Luhn Validation Technique In Action – Using Homemade Graphics

For the visual types like myself, let’s use the American Express credit card on the right to better demonstrate the doubling and addition mathematics of the Luhn Algorithm. Follow the numbers and you’ll realize that it’s not as difficult as it may first appear. It’s actually very easy once you get the hang of it. You won’t look at credit card numbers the same way ever again after you get a good grip of it – I assure you. You’ll find yourself testing credit card numbers for fun!

Ignoring the obvious Amex logo on the card, right of the bat it’s clear the account number is that of an American Express number – denoted by the numerical prefix – “37″. Now let’s crunch the numbers through the Luhn Algorithm using the following displayed Amex credit card number: 3759-876543-21001. It doesn’t matter if the credit card number sequence has 15 numbers like the American Express or 16 numbers like Visa, MasterCard, or Discover, the Luhn validation check should be able to verify whether this card number is a mathematically authentic credit card number regardless. Follow the Luhn steps from #1 to #4 below, starting with the rightmost check digit.

In this case, the total calculated sum was 57, which is not divisible by 10 (the added up sum does not end with zero). Thus the number fails the Luhn Algorithm validation check. According to the Luhn test, this particular Amex credit card number is completely bogus and fake. The numbers were likely randomly slapped together. To make this particular set of numbers Luhn compliant and error free, all we would have to do is change the all important “check digit” number from 1 to a 4, which would result in a total sum of 60, thereby becoming Luhn compliant.

If you want to test this mathematical theory out in real life, I recommend pulling out your own credit cards and spending a few seconds to run a quick Luhn screening on them just for your own amusement and education. Pretty neat isn’t it? If you want another credit card number to test on, try using the credit card number that is displayed on the cartoon “VIZA Card” [sic] that Bart Simpson is holding up in the graphic at the top right of this article – the card is in the name of “Rod Flanders”, and the credit card number is: 8525-4941-2525-4158. Tip: Just by looking at the prefix numbers you probably should already be able to tell that the account number’s completely random and fake.

Use The Luhn Formula To Validate Existing Accounts But Don’t Attempt To Create and Use Fake Credit Card Numbers

Now with this new found knowledge, keep in mind you still won’t be able to randomly generate genuine workable credit card numbers. The Luhn theory only allows you to generate mathematically compliant credit card test numbers, not hack workable ones. Besides, without valid expiration dates, and valid CVV2, CVC2, or CID numbers (the special security codes printed on the back or front of credit cards as additional authentication measures), you still wouldn’t be able to legitimately use your self generated numbers to run credit transactions anyway.

Cracking and hacking the security codes found on credit cards is currently impossible. To calculate a workable 3 digit CVV2 security code, the algorithm requires a primary account number (PAN), the 4 digit expiration date, a special 3 digit service code, and a pair of DES keys. With such heavy encryption and billions to trillions of numerical possibilities, unless you have God-like mental processing power and a fleet of super computers at your disposal, you won’t be able to use brute force guessing attempts to crack the codes.

While it’s good to use this type of information to education yourself on the inner workings of credit cards and mathematical validation theory, it’s best to stay away from trying to further crack the secret of credit card codes to come up with free workable account numbers. Don’t use the Luhn Algorithm for anything else but personal entertainment and amusement.  Please don’t go around trying to generate a list of fake credit card numbers on your own and trying to buy stuff with them. I know some of you out there may be tempted to try, but you’ll just get yourself in trouble.

It’s not easy finding the right career path in life. Many of our own perceptions on what makes a good profession is shaped and sometimes even warped by the views of our family, friends, and perhaps most significantly, by the media’s relentless spin. There are many jobs out there that may look attractive and rewarding on TV, but reality often pours cold water over hyped up expectations.

It’s interesting to me how if you asked any little kid what they wanted to be when they grew up, almost all would respond with answers like doctor, lawyer, hip hop rapper, or even President of the United States. Unfortunately for those little kids, the great majority of them will never fulfill their childhood dreams or live up to the great but unrealistic expectations they envisioned due to their personal circumstances. People pick jobs and careers for many reasons, but their choices are often shaped by their own hyped views regarding what is hot and what is not, and frequently fraught with inaccuracies. Unfortunately, during the high school and college years, the media greatly reinforces the naive and misguided mystique that surrounds certain professions to the detriment of future entrants into the work force. Oftentimes the hype of certain careers tend to greatly exceed the lucrativeness and fulfillment potential of reality.

The job market and popular careers choices have changed greatly over the years and what was once perhaps lucrative no longer is. Here’s my list of what I believe are the top 5 most overrated careers and professions. I’m sure there are many people who are happy and content in the following careers and perhaps enjoy professional and personal success, but I think there are also many of those in the following fields that feel they have been misled down the primrose path to frustration and work dissatisfaction. These conclusions are based on my own personal views, and gleaned from views expressed in books, online articles, websites, blogs, and through my interactions with friends from all walks of life and professions. For more relevant input and insight, take a look at U.S. News and World Report’s own list of the most overrated careers. While their list is more comprehensive and generally applicable, mine is more focused on my own personal and unique experiences.

The Five Most Overrated Careers, Jobs, and Professions In My Opinion:

1) Attorney – Don’t get me started about lawyers, law school, and the legal profession. I don’t have too many good things to say about the whole business of becoming a lawyer and the realities of working as one. I’m an attorney myself, but I’m currently trying to get out of the profession completely and enter the work from home online business for myself. I find the whole legal career path to be an unforgiving and personally unfulfilling line of work.

Unfortunately for new legal field entrants, they don’t usually realize the market for lawyers is extremely saturated until it is too late, and are already in too deep. Currently, there are already too many lawyers everywhere and even more on the way. These days it is very, very, very easy to become an attorney. Saddled with poor grades or terrible LSAT standardized test scores? No problem. There are more than 4 whopping tiers of law schools that continue to expand in size every year. There’s a guaranteed spot on the student roster for every wannabe or lackluster student who wants to play the lawyer card. These days, anyone can apply to law school to become a lawyer because there are no strict educational prerequisites involved. As an insider, I can assure you – there is absolutely nothing special about lawyers and the skills and training they allegedly possess – they are a dime a dozen. Unless you graduated from a top ten ranking law school or entered a difficult legal niche field such as tax or patent law, you better get used to a meager and unrewarding professional life. My advice is to stay away from law school and to do anything else but that.

Like many who decided to enter law school, I originally applied out of mere default and lack of educational options at the time. After all, I wasn’t much of a math or science person, and studying business seemed to be too general and broad of a choice at the time. Why not attend law school and become a high priced lawyer and make millions of dollars a year by taking on high profile and exciting celebrity cases, I thought? Why not invest myself into a career that will allow me to not only become rich, but utilize my skills to help uphold justice and assist people who need legal representation? After all, lawyers spend their days honorably debating before judges in prestigious court room settings before trial juries and television crews right? Wrong!

The legal profession is the most grossly distorted career choice in the history of careers. Thanks to the overzealous and over-hyped glory and glitz of Hollywood media productions, most of the public’s view of the legal profession is framed and distorted by entertainment inspired sources such as TV shows of past and present like Ally McBeal, JAG, The Practice, and Law and Order, and popular court room drama filled movies like A Few Good Men. The truth and reality is that the vast majority of lawyers rarely ever see the inside of a court room, working as paper pushing transactional attorneys instead. The ones that do apply their craft in the court room, known as litigation work, still spend the vast bulk of their time and efforts stuffed in their offices before a computer screen, typing away and performing grueling and monotonous research and writing. The work is tedious, stressful, time consuming, and frequently unrewarding.

In the working arena, lawyers often have to deal with the frustrating aspects of working with ungrateful and belligerent clients who refuse to pay or ignore the advice and suggestions of their own counsel. For small law firm attorneys, the average salary almost always falls well short of media inspired dramatization. Most of my friends who graduated from top 50 law schools ended up with massive student loans of more than $100,000 and winded up in mere $50,000 a year lawyer jobs for many years. For those who find themselves working at higher paying big firm positions, the hours are insanely taxing and terribly destructive for those trying to balance a family and social life as well. Being forced to work 80-100 or more hours a week as a big firm associate is not unusual as many are pressed into strict billable hour requirements. The need to pay off massive student loans often force many new attorney recruits into lifelong professional servitude, whereby they are compelled to sacrifice their lives, their health, and their own happiness for an unattainable dream of work and play balance in the legal profession. For every Johnny Cochran, Mark Geragos, or Gloria Allred personalities on cable TV, there are thousands of struggling attorneys out there saddled with massive student loans, wondering why they chose to enter such a saturated and unhappy field to begin with. My advice – go be a dentist or something. There’s a lot of money in that racket and the barriers to entry are much higher, making the health care field a much more prestigious and balanced choice.

2) Real Estate Agent – Thanks to the array of house flipping shows on television that suddenly sprouted in the last few years, everyone and their uncle now thinks they can and should become a real estate agent. During the last few years, I’ve seen nearly all of my friends in some fashion or another try to dabble in the real estate market and try their luck in helping others buy and sell homes. Many went on to take the easy breezy real estate exam and obtain their real estate license.

Unfortunately the ease and simplicity of entering the real estate field is one of the key causes of the real estate profession’s current decline (that, and the real estate housing bubble). Because it’s so easy to become a certified real estate agent, the barriers to entry are very low. As a result, real estate agents are everywhere and there is not enough real estate business to go around. Especially in this real estate downturn, agents are finding themselves faced with dwindling business opportunities and diminishing commission fees. Furthermore, with the growth of online housing listing sites like Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate, and the surging popularity of do it yourself resources, the importance of having a real estate agent will continue to decline and gradually phase out. With the growth of online real estate blogs and finance sites, it’s getting much easier for ordinary people to buy and sell their own house or property without the assistance of a professional real estate agent.

3) Chef – Here’s another overrated career field that has fallen prey to the reckless glamorization committed by television media. Thanks to foreign import culinary shows like Iron Chef, American cooking related programs on the Food Network like Rachel Ray, and the popularity of reality competition shows like Bravo channel’s America’s Top Chef, every aspiring amateur chef out there thinks he or she can strike it big as a future professional chef to the rich and famous.

I used to date this girl who was a pharmacy student. She had a passion for food and was on the verge of dumping her pharmacy school studies to pursue her lofty dream of becoming a famous television cooking personality or working as a future top chef at a five star restaurant somewhere. Fortunately for her, she discovered early on how little entry level chefs really made and abandoned her unrealistic pursuits for a more stable career as a pharmacist. The reality is that most chefs are mere assembly line cooks, churning out the same concoctions over and over, chopping and dicing away in a hot and sweaty kitchen in the back of some restaurant for hours and hours. Frequently, the work hours extend into the weekends and late evenings, depriving them of much of their extracurricular quality of life.

4) Full Time Blogger Or Online Entrepreneur – This is one hits close to home for me, but I have mixed feelings on those that choose to blog as a full time profession. While I personally receive a decent amount of passive income from my finance blog and do pretty well for myself through my efforts to make money online blogging, the vast majority of bloggers out there will probably never fulfill their full time blogging income aspirations. While it’s good to pursue one’s dream of working from home and never having to put on that suit and tie and “work for the man” any longer, the reality is that blogging full time is difficult, time consuming and requires substantial discipline, especially in the early stages when online advertisement and affiliate income motivation are hard to come by. The lack of commentary participation and the lack of traffic and feedback by readers can quickly cause the average aspiring blogger to lose hope early on. It takes a certain focused and dedicated individual to successfully develop his or her web based pipe dream into a full fledged online Internet marketing empire.

The path to future passive income riches definitely crosses through the Internet and through search engines like Google, but the path is fraught with competition and lonely times. It is possible to make some decent side income on the web, but the vast majority will never reach the online income needed to sustain a full time blogging position. That’s just reality. For the masses who think it’s easy to slap up a simple make money online Wordpress blog and generate millions of hits instantly, resulting in substantial Google Adsense revenue, they are wrong. It easy to start out as a part time blogger as the barriers to entry are very low, but it’s hard to make a true full time living out of it.

5) Teacher – Working as a teacher is one of the noblest and most honorable jobs out there, but in terms of financial and perhaps even personal rewards, it is sorely lacking. Like stay at home moms, teachers are grossly underpaid for their efforts and the invaluable influence and steerage they have on the next generation of children and students. The thought of being allowed to take entire summers off as a teacher may be tempting, but the reality is that most teachers work during the off season as well – performing summer school work, tutoring, or volunteering their time for education related endeavors. For those that wind up teaching toddlers or grade school students, working as a teacher is akin to working as a full time babysitter. Not only do you have to teach the students something productive, but you also have to deal with their crazy behaviors, emotional outbursts, rebellious attitudes, and sometimes even violent propensities.

I have quite a few female friends who work as junior high and public high school teachers and they frequently seem worn out and utterly exhausted due to their jobs. While most enjoy their work somewhat, many are frustrated at the bureaucracy and the governmental policies that hinder their ability to truly make a difference in the lives of students as a whole. Many of my female teacher friends frequently gripe and complain about the inefficient aftermath of the No Child Left Behind Act and how the governmental policy has forced many of them to waste their time and limited efforts and resources on so-called “hopeless students”. These teachers want to make a difference and help promising students grow to their full potentials, but many of them find their hands hopelessly bound by standardized guideline requirements and expectations. Instead of being able to help gifted and talented students grow to the best of their abilities by giving them the educational attention they need to advance, much of the No Child Left Behind Act efforts are spent trying to discipline and reform issue prone students who refuse to learn at the same speed and pace as classmates in the same age group. Clearly, it’s a broken policy that demands major reform.