There was a recent article that said that the happiest year for most men is when they are 33. I'm turning 31 tomorrow and 33 seems two years too far away to think about. At this moment in life, I know two things:

1. It would really be hard to top my last year in college.
2. My happiness is about an 8 on a scale of 1-10.

Life has been pretty great the last couple of years. No real problems or issues have come up. I've completely gone out of debt (over 22k in credit card debt) and I married a wonderful wife who is not only super supportive, but complements me completely.

It's hard to ask for more, which also makes it hard to blog regularly. I have nothing to say anymore as people just don't like reading happy posts all the time. I'd be lying if I said I blogged for myself.

I think a lot of people don't realize that happiness can be obtained and most importantly, it's from having a healthy lifestyle. You wake up feeling better, both physically and mentally. I've since cut back on binging, whether it's drinking or eating. I try to sleep earlier and try to exercise as often as possible.

You know that feeling of built up stress? Yeah, I don't feel that. Just by eating better and exercising regularly, I am losing weight and feeling more clarity and focused as ever. Happiness starts from living healthy, mostly because of how you feel at any given point.

Maybe I'll be happier at 33, but that's only because I'll be a father by then. You only live once, which many people use as an excuse to go all out. I think of it as something really precious. You only have one chance--make the best of it.

There was an article in the WSJ yesterday titled, "Struggling on $350,000 a year" (javascript:mctmp(0);) referring to a guy who makes $350k and doesn't think he makes enough to live comfortably in NYC. While it's true that his salary may put him in the 1% category, he's nowhere near "rich" (in our opinion), but many would disagree.

It's not my place to criticize how he spends his money, but it's more about choices than actual $ value. My parents made a combined like $40k a year and were able to raise two "successful" children in NYC. They were able to purchase their own home and cars. Obviously, they couldn't send either me or my sister to a $32k/yr private school, but who knows if my parents would have if they could? I think my parents tried to make the most with their money and if they could afford to send their children to a top school so that they can have a better education, then why not?

While that's rational, articles like that really cause bigger disparities between the 1% and 99%. Personally, I don't really understand the OWS movement. Why did they protest banks when they should be protesting the politicians who are being lobbied by the banks? A lot of them talk about redistribution of wealth, but that's communism and when confronted, mention that they "only want what's fair."  But what's fair?  I think there are a ton of jobs out there and if you're not motivated to work, then you're never going to get anywhere.

The reality is that I'm positive an overwhelming majority of those in the 99% want to be part of that 1%, so it's redundant to protest against a group they aspire to be.  I'm sort of off a tangent on this, but the point I'm making is that everyone wants to make more and a lot of critics against the man in the article are just haters.  At the end of the day, we all want to make more money.  

What are your thoughts on the article?  Do you think $350k a year should be more than enough and he's just whining?

I've received about about 10 resumes this weekend from a bunch of people—whether it’s their own, or someone they know who might be interested in the job that was posted by another friend. While I didn’t really expect people right out of college to have great looking resumes, I was surprised by the look of these resumes from people who have at least 1-3 years worth of work experience. So I decided to post this as a reference for anyone who is looking to improve their resume.

I wouldn't call myself a pro at this, but after reviewing so many resumes in the past couple of years, there are many mistakes that are repeated.

In no particular order of importance-

A. Spelling/grammatical mistakes. As obvious as this may sound, you'd be surprised how many people submit their resume without proofreading.  As soon as you are drafting your resume, you should proofread your resume and then have at least two other people proofread it before you submit it for anything. If you assume that someone is hooking you up with a job, they are then assuming that whatever you provide them is the end product of your resume. If there are spelling and/or grammatical mistakes in there, they would automatically think that you are either careless or didn’t put in the effort. If your friend thinks that, what do you think HR or Hiring Manager would think?

B. Aesthetically pleasing. It’s important that before reading anything, your resume is formatted properly and that there’s not a disproportionate amount of white space (lots of white space on the left, but none on the right or lots of white space at the bottom, but not balanced from the top). I have seen many resumes where there are words on it, but it looks empty. I’ve seen resumes where the formats are not consistent and the spacing is weird. It cannot look like you spent 2 hours working on it. It’s a reflection of who you are as a candidate.

C. Education does not come first. If you have been out of school already and have at least 1 year worth of work experience, do not put Education above Work Experience. A resume should be looked at top to bottom. Your education plays second to your work experience. Emphasize that first.

D. Do not put your GPA unless it’s an A- (or above). If you think anything between a 3.0 and a 3.5 is considered a “high GPA,” just think about it in terms of letters. If you changed it to a letter grade, it would be something along the lines of a B+. Do you really want to say that you’re only a B+ student?

E. Bullet points should be responsibilities and impact. Virtually every resume I received has a long list of responsibilities. That’s not what a resume is, a list of things you do. First of all, there should be no more than 5-6 different things. If it's more than six, then choose the 5-6 most important things you do and put those on. You want to tell the person reading it, what exactly you do and what kind of impact do you have with that responsibility. Provide examples of those "achievements" you have.  The format should always be something along the lines of [a responsibility] + [impact or affect of your work].

F. Keep it one page. Rule of thumb is that if you don’t have about 10 years of work experience, you shouldn’t have two pages. Most people are interested in only your current jobs and what you do. I rarely get asked about my time right out of college. It’s just not that important. 

G. Tailor resume to fit job description. Read the job description carefully and see how you can incorporate your experiences to fit the need of the person hiring. For example, many of the resumes submitted did not demonstrate finance or accounting experience. If you do in fact have some, at least highlight/illustrate that in your resume. If someone has to search your resume to see how it applies to what they're looking for, it's going to raise some red flags.

H.  Use a decent email address.  As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, there is definitely email address bias.  There are people who look down on "hotmail" or "yahoo" email addresses.  But more importantly, try to use a professional email address like yourname@email.com.  "AznCutie@gmail.com" for example should NOT be used.

Anything else I missed?