The tagline of the website Edmit says a lot: Treat college like an investment.
Four years at Arizona State – tuition, room, board – will run over $110,000.
Four years at MIT will run over $300,000.
Big money is at stake and this is why so many students graduate with immense debt loads. The average approaches $40,000.
That’s a lot of dough and it’s a huge burden.
Enter Edmit, which aims to show a student and his/her family the *real* cost of a college and that’s a factor of this school, its financial resources, this student, and the family’s financial resources. A lot of variables come into play.
But the right college choice can produce a manageable debt load. Often the school with the best package for this student isn’t the one that seems obvious.
Seth Brecher, head of partnerships and customer success at Edmit, tells us how the program works.
He also tells about the special relationships Edmit forms with participating credit unions, and he says helping families plan their higher education expenses is a good way to strengthen relationships.
If the futurists are right, business meetings are about to change. The latest trend report from af&co is out and this trend watcher is so right on even the New York Times cites it as the source for insights into what we’ll be eating in 2020. And they are making predictions that speak to a transformation of what we eat and drink at meetings and conferences.
Personally I expect to see brawls at meeting I attend. Why?
According to the Times: “‘There is a sense that the rose-colored glasses are off,’ said Andrew Freeman, president of AF&Co., the San Francisco consulting firm that for 12 years has published a food and hospitality trend report. This year’s is titled ‘We’re Not in Kansas Anymore.’
“‘The world just feels different,’ Mr. Freeman said. ‘The labor market is tight, the political landscape is a mess. All of us are trying to navigate it.’”
The company in its press release on the report added: “The greatest challenge facing the industry is that the tried and true isn’t gaining traction in the same way and operators must find new ways to reach and engage with guests in a constantly changing world.”
Ready to eat and drink different?
According to af&co. There are many trends coming down the culinary highway – Laotian food rising, porridge has its day, and culinary mashups (Mexican-Korean for instance, already popular in Los Angeles) are rising –but two trends stand out as especially shaping our travels and what we do on the road.
Are you on board? And know we will all have to confront these trends in 2020 – two of the biggest trends in fact directly challenge the way I was taught to travel on business and that involved martinis (Manhattans were an acceptable substitution) and, always, steak for dinner (permissible to not even nibble the overdone veg served with the big hunk of beef – they are decor, aren’t they?).
Brace yourself for the first 2020 trend: veganism.
No real surprise. This has been percolating for a good half dozen years and now, apparently, it’s about to have its turn under the spotlights. Said af&co. “Vegan cuisine has entered the mainstream; just don’t call it that (it’s plant-based!). No longer an obscure subset of vegetarian, well-established restaurants and brands known for indulgent, craveable foods are entering the action. It isn’t just about animal welfare, but about what’s good for the environment and what’s good for us, without sacrificing flavor or presentation.”
Agree or disagree?
The second trend and another direct shot at my travel instructions when I first hit the road: going sober, ditching the booze. Explains af&co.: “SPIRIT OF THE YEAR: NO SPIRIT. We’re not just ‘sober curious,’ we’re getting serious about our non-alcoholic drinks! It’s important to offer enticing, highly curated beverage options for those who choose to avoid alcohol but still want to partake in the celebration. Restaurants and bars are upping their offerings with an inclusive bar program and we expect to see many more pre-bottled and canned spirit-free cocktails in the grocery aisles as well. Just don’t call them mocktails – we’re talking zero proof, N/A, spirit free, and non-alcoholic drinks.”
Meeting planners take note: cocktail receptions are so Mad Men (and that was set in the 1960s, wasn’t it?).
It’s no longer an academic question. My bet is that in 2020 people at an evening reception at a meeting will look at a martini swiller the same way they would look at the bloke who lights a cigar at the event.
And very probably those people will be as horrified by the fellow who slices into a bloody hunk of black and blue steak and chews with loud gusto.
Should I just put my rollaboard in storage and declare my unavailability for 2020 travel?
Well, no, because the strange irony is that nowadays I mainly eat a plant-based diet – not vegan but mainly veg and fruits and little meat. Vegan strikes me as too limiting but with a bite of cheese, maybe even the occasional dab of butter and the very occasional pasta Bolognese I am fine with what I eat. The era of thick steaks nightly on the road is over.
I am also okay with the switch to non alcohol drinks (and in fact am elbow deep into the 2020 Dry January movement and successfully completed Dry January last year too).
I cannot recall the last time I had a martini or a Manhattan.
Color me on trend.
What I am waiting to discover is how on trend the meeting and conference organizers I encounter in 2020 are. I am not optimistic – but that will make observing the scene all the more fascinating.
Will we have food fights at the breakfast buffet with angry attendees hurling pork sausage links at the organizers?
Will sober curious meeting-goers attack the bartenders at the next reception and demand mocktails?
We will see and I bet it will get interesting on the road this year as meeting realities lag behind attendee demands.
Meet Gideon Taub, CEO of Pinkaloo, a company focused on modernizing charitable giving for the 99% – that means us – and now it also is helping credit unions find a way to claim a central place in guiding members to more effective giving.
With Pinkaloo, a use can set up a budget for giving, access tools to help find organizations of particular interest, get gifts sorted for tax purposes, and – this is huge – do research without falling victim to the insecurity of some charity websites.
It’s win-win-win, for the member, the credit union, the charities.
Pinkaloo is about bringing efficiencies to something that for many of us has been haphazard.
Note: Pinkaloo does not require core access.
Also note: credit unions may find that Pinkaloo helps them know much better what their members want to support and this may help steer credit union charitable giving in a much more precise direction. Just sayin’.
How many of your members do most of their banking via a mobile app?
How many should?
Milestones to remember before answering:
iPhone introduced June 2007
SMS banking via phone debuted in Europe 1999
Mobile banking smartphone apps take off in 2010
We are 20 years into the banking by mobile revolution and 10 years into the banking by smart app revolution so tell me this: why do roughly half of us not use a mobile banking app, according to a 2018 Harland Clarke report.
It was on a recent trip through Sky Harbor in Phoenix that I recognized how much I have come to like American Express’ Centurion Lounge. Its absence, due to a delayed opening at Sky Harbor, drove the point home.
I had nowhere to go.
Priority Pass had bupkis in Phoenix. It had lost access to The Club (it had also hosted BA passengers during certain hours), which was a pleasant enough if thoroughly non descript club. Usually quiet however and that’s a plus.
On this recent flight I was flying Southwest and it doesn’t operate its own lounges.
I was tempted to go to the under construction Centurion Lounge and just look at the thing but, on second thought, that seemed creepy.
So I bought a bland torta at an airport eatery and sat in the din of Southwest’s boarding gates – a process that still, understandably, confuses occasion SWA pax – and I meditated on how long it would be for Centurion to open at PHX.
The good news: AMEX, acknowledging it missed its November opening date, now says the Centurion will open at PHX in December. It hasn’t by mid month, I see no firm date announced, so I am not holding my breath. But I am not flying again this year and I remain confident that the Centurion will open at PHX in January.
Hallelujah!
People tell me the airline lounges are much improved – I hear that often now. My own visits to airline operated clubs this year have found same-old, uninspired lounges. But one was a United Club in Terminal 2 at PHX and that whole terminal is slated for demolition. Folks there are ghosts going through the motions and how can you blame them?
Nonetheless, there’s rather wide agreement that US based carriers have never gone full out to create lounges that compete at a global level and while I will use free carrier lounge passes when I have them, I am not buying them.
And although I can access Delta lounges when flying Delta – via an Amex Platinum card – I just don’t fly Delta enough to have a comment. But bet that if the Centurion delay persists I will rethink that. Delta appears to have made an effort to produce a decent lounge in Phoenix and my next PHX flight may well be on Delta.
It all depends on the Centurion Lounge at PHX.
Sure, I know Amex has cut back on Centurion access. Used to be often I stopped in the Las Vegas Centurion after landing there and now no can do. Access is limited to cardholders with a departing flight within three hours.
But such limitations had to come. The Centurion lounges were at risk of being destroyed by their own popularity and maybe they still are. Here’s a recent report: “On a recent trip, I entered the American Express Centurion Lounge at San Francisco International at about 3:00PM. There was a line to enter the lounge and most guests seemed to be traveling alone. I waited about five minutes to enter, only to find there was not a single seat available. Not a single seat anywhere in the lounge! I waited 10 minutes!”
I’ve heard similar from fellow travelers but so far haven’t personally experienced severe overcrowding in a Centurion Lounge. Crowding – you bet. But not so thick it made me want to flee out into the terminal.
Then, too, Amex knows it has crowding issues and it also knows that the Centurion Lounge is a prime cardholder perk (especially as Priority Pass seems ever less useful, at least on my domestic travels). Are they working on fixes? You bet. That’s no guarantee there will be fixes but there is hope.
And the parade of opening Centurion Lounges grows – in 2020 look for JFK, LAX, LHR, Denver and Charlotte. That brings the total to 15.
Will I join the “why bother with clubs” crowd that seems to be growing in number? On a recent trip through SFO I didn’t bother hunting for a club – yeah, there’s a Centurion but in a distant terminal from the one I was routed through – mainly because I cut down on my time at the airport.
But I don’t see that becoming my norm. Not just yet. And so I am counting down to the opening of the PHX Centurion. I just hope it meets my expectations.
“We are facing a global talent shortage,” said Tommy Marshall, executive director of the new Georgia Fintech Academy, by way of an an answer to the question: why was your organization formed.
It’s an ambitious undertaking. The idea is to pull together resources from 26 Georgia public universities – including Georgia Tech, Georgia State, and Georgia Southern – and to offer students the opportunity to earn a degree focused on fintech.
Right now, the emphasis is on a bachelors degree program but there are plans for an advanced degree as well as professional development courses.
Understand this: Georgia has gotten a jump on other states. Nowhere else is there such a sweeping program that draws upon a wide range of institutions, all joining together to produce grads with degrees that will help them get good, well paying, interesting work.
Marshall of course is looking for companies that want to hire grads – FIS is already a primary program sponsor – and he specifically saus in this podcast that he wants to hear from credit unions. If you have needs for fintech grads and you are in Georgia, shout it out because this might become an answered prayer.
In the program, Marshall tells exactly why Georgia started the Academy, how he got his job, and why this all just may be very important to economic development in Georgia.
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Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto
Meet Casy Boggs of ReputationUS, where the business is in fact reputation management and a primary emphasis is work with credit unions.
You think you have a great reputation? Don’t guess. Know. Get a reputation audit done and be prepared to be surprised by the results.
Particularly interesting is how a hack impacts a credit union’s reputation, a topic Boggs has studied in depth.
Among his findings: 48% of us are very unlikely to remain a member if their data has been hacked and then used to set up a bogus credit card account.
Good news, per the survey, is the vast majority of us hold credit unions in high reputational esteem.
But don’t take it for granted.
Boggs says in this podcast that too many institutions are unprepared to deal with events that involve a reputational hit – they lack a plan and a plan can smooth the path to recovery.
Bad stuff happens. Are you prepared?
Find out what’s involved in this podcast. Listen here.
Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available.
Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto
Inflight wi-fi does not work. Don’t believe me. Believe Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta, who in a stunning September interview at the Economic Club of Washington derisively referred to GoGo as “No Go” and elaborated that when usage of inflight wi-fi goes above 10% of the passengers, the “performance starts to erode.”
The interview snippet is here, under two minutes and a must listen if you are a regular inflight wi-fi user.
Bastian added that the system inadequacy is why the carrier charges for wi-fi (which he indicated should be free: “I’m a firm believer that we need to make Wi-Fi free across all of our service and we are working towards that,” he said). If it were free now, however, everybody would use it and it would crash, said Bastian.
This is the bit I love. Therefore, carrier logic is charge for it, fewer of us will use it, and, yeah, the performance is middling, but at least it doesn’t crash.
Got that?
By that logic carriers should charge for the poor coffee they serve – maybe it would be a little better if fewer of us ordered it? Nah. That makes no sense.
But neither really does this argument that constraining usage with a fee for a poor wi-fi product results in a somewhat better product.
And it may not even be secure. In 2016 a USA Today reporter wrote about an inflight wi-fi hack he experienced. In 2017, SmarterTravel published a piece hedlined, Why You Should Never Use Inflight Wi-Fi. The core argument is that all public wi-fi systems have vulnerabilities (hotels and airports definitely included) and wily hackers will figure out ways to penetrate inflight systems.
Bad performance, possible insecurities do not add up to an enticing offering.
We all agree on this. The 2019 J.D. Power airline survey concurs. “The one area where both traditional and low-cost carriers can still improve, however, is in in-flight services. It continues to be the lowest-ranked factor in the study, as many airlines still struggle with in-flight entertainment, connectivity, in-seat power and food service,” said Michael Taylor, Travel Intelligence Lead at J.D. Power.
Mind you, Delta nickels and dimes us for No Go. Rates start at $16, special pre-flight pricing, for 24 hours of service in North America. Global access is $28.
Most carriers charge about the same. Here’s a round-up of pricing on many carriers.
And yet the service is seriously flawed.
Even though it has been around for a generation.
Inflight wi-fi dates to 2000 – that means the 20th anniversary is next year and it still sucks.
In recent months I have been flying more than I had been, mainly short trips (the longest has been Phoenix to Chicago, round trip), and I have not used the inflight w-fi once. Before boarding I make sure I have downloaded several Kindle books and so I turn the plane into a mobile reading room. It’s more enlightening than doing email, which had been my inflight ritual, but it also has proven less exasperating than wrestling with inflight wi-fi inadequacies.
Experts tell us that airlines are making steady improvements in inflight wi-fi, that on some carriers it’s not as awful as we say. Probably that’s true, just as we have seen steady improvements in cellular coverage and signal quality over the past 20 years, there may have been real improvements on a few carriers.
But I am simply not broadly optimistic about inflight wi-fi. Not near-term. Carriers, supposedly, will invest north of $100 billion in inflight wi-fi upgrades by 2035 and this has many giddy with the possibilities – but that is 16 years from now and I do not see making predictions about technology that distant to be a smart move. Maybe it will be much better in 2035, more likely it will be entirely different, but what good will that do me on my next flight this month?
Absolutely no good at all.
But I thank Mr Bastian for telling me I am right that inflight wi-fi indeed sucks. And when next I am asked why I don’t use it anymore, I’ll simply send a link to his comments, QED.
That’s the approach to financial education taken by John Lanza of the Money Mammals, where the focus is on financial education for children 11 and under.
A key: the education becomes a family project. That means credit unions – and credit unions can sign up with the Money Mammals to access its library of teaching materials and workbooks – will be attracting younger adults with small children.
The material also is branded with the credit union name.
And the financial education itself of course is a key credit union mission.
Lanza stresses that good as it is for kids to get financial education in school, it’s crucial that they also get it at home because they need some money to learn with. Call it allowance and know it can be small. But that money becomes a teaching tool.
Lanza said he presently is working with 15 credit unions and he wants more. Some are under $200 million, one is bigger than $3 billion. So the program will work in just about any size institution.
Give a listen and just maybe you will be persuaded to focus on financial ed and children, the Money Mammals way.
The big push is upon us: hoteliers now are loudly asking us, even offering bribes, to forego housekeeping services. The selling point: it’s good for the environment.
The subhed in a recent New York Times piece sets out the argument: “Besides a worker shortage, demand for ‘green’ practices and technology are shifting the ground under a job that has long been tough to fill.”
If this weren’t a family friendly venue I’d turn up my volume and go into a four letter word rant. There just is so much that makes this attack on housekeeping cringeworthy.
Pitting the environment against the hospitality workers at the bottom of the food chain is plain cruel. Regular readers know I flirt with flygskam, flight shaming. I believe we need to be conscious of how our choices impact the environment. But it’s just wrong to tell me I am harming the environment because I want my room cleaned and, no, I don’t need the sheets washed and probably don’t need fresh towels but I do like the trash emptied and the room straightened up. How’s any of that hurting the environment?
You know what does hurt: attempting to persuade me to join in denying employment to needy, vulnerable workers and we know they are needy and vulnerable because they are in jobs few want.
When a job is tough to fill, there really are only several possible causes. The working conditions are bad. The pay is bad. Hotel housekeeping scores high on both fronts. Sexual assaults, for instance, remain a problem. Housekeepers also have high rates of workplace injuries, per labor union Unite Here. It cites research in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine that says housekeepers have a 50% higher injury rate than other hotel employees. Why? Per the union, “In most hotels, a housekeeper must clean 15 or more rooms per day. To meet this quota, she often skips breaks and works off the clock. It also is increasingly common for her to have luxury beds with heavier mattresses and linens, triple-sheeting, duvets, and extra pillows than in years past. Other add-ons, like coffee pots, spa robes and floor-to-ceiling mirrors, can make a housekeeper’s job of cleaning a room even more difficult and time-consuming. “
As for the pay, the NY Times says the average hourly rate for housekeepers is $12.19. It also says that the majority of us do not tip – in fact two out of three don’t.
So now we know why there’s a shortage of applicants for housekeeping jobs.
Of course there also are whispers that historically many housekeepers had irregular paperwork but with the current federal crackdown on undocumented workers that practice is much less common. I cannot state this as fact but many will tell you it’s so.
And so now hoteliers want to keep up downward pressures on housekeeper pay by persuading us that we are doing good for the environment by turning off housekeeping – which of course also means that the more of us who do so the fewer housekeepers need to be employed.
Beware the hotelier with a bribe in hand. Trade pub Hotel News Now splashed out this hed on a recent story: “How hoteliers incentivize guests to skip housekeeping.”
Like what? Marriott’s “Make a Green Choice” awards guests 250 Bonvoy points for each day a guest skips housekeeping. Onemileatatime pegs the value of a Bonvoy point at about 0.7 cents, which puts the Marriott offer at about $1.75.
Many other large groups also offer loyalty points for passing on housekeeping.
Other hotels are offering f & b discounts or freebies, like a free coffee.
Not exactly persuasive bribes, are they?
And then there are the housekeepers, quoted in that NY Time story, who said that in many cases when a guest skips housekeeping services they may have to work harder to catch up with the deferred sanitation when the guest checks out. “When the rooms are very dirty, we use more water, more scrubbing, stronger chemicals,” a San Diego hotel housekeeper said. “It’s very hard because we have a lot of pressure to clean the rooms on time.”
Let’s be honest here. The gain for the environment when we skip housekeeping services is minimal.
Let’s rephrase the question with the environment out of the equation. Are you comfortable taking money out of a housekeeper’s slender pay packet and putting the money in a hotelier’s wallet?
That’s what it is about. And, no, I’m not down with that.
