When It's Worth the Money

A few days ago, my dad called me complaining about King Soopers and how he didn't get his fuel savings. (He participates in their fuel program, where you earn discounts on gas depending on how much money you spend on groceries.) He'd spent time on the phone complaining to customer service, all over a price difference of about a dollar, total.

In my opinion, there are two times when it's not worth making a fuss over saving money:

1) When the savings aren't worth more than your time (which $1 in gas money definitely isn't), and

2) When it's too important to make a fuss over saving money.

A perfect example of the latter is my husband's diploma frame. He has spent many years plugging away at his degree while working full time, and it's a big deal to him because he came from a family where even finishing high school was rare. So yeah, when he graduates next spring, it will absolutely be worth spending the money on a nice university diploma frame.

Furthermore, he is planning to continue on with his education after he graduates with his bachelor's, and he is looking at graduate programs that aren't particularly cheap. But again, his education is so important to him that it is worth the extra money to make sure it's a good one.

What about you? How much do you value your education?

35 Different Options for Cisco Certification

A lot of people go through Cisco Certification Training. This is professional technology training that certifies you to use certain Cisco products in your career. If you're looking into Cisco Training then you'll rapidly discover that there are a lot of different options open to you for this type of education. In fact, there are 35 basic certification options that you'll be looking at when you consider getting certified in Cisco products.

Don't worry; it's not nearly as complicated as it sounds at first. The first thing that you'll need to know is that there are seven different paths that you can choose for certification. Those seven paths are:

1. Design.
2. Network Security.
3. Routing and Switching.
4. Service Provider.
5. Storage Network.
6. Voice Services.
7. Wireless.

Once you've determined which path you want to pursue, the rest of the decision making process is easy. That's because the other options that are available for certification are based on your level of training. You can start at the first level and work your way up to higher levels if you want to or if your job requires a higher level of certification. The five levels of certification are:

1. Entry Level.
2. Associate.
3. Professional.
4. Expert.
5. Specialist.

With seven paths to choose from and five levels available to you at each path you technically have thirty five different course options to select from. But, as you can see, you really just need to make two decisions: which path to take and how far to go with your certification in that path. See, it's actually really easy!