Lunch money & taxes.

These two posts have been the biggest hits so far:

Guess How Much Money You're Blowing Each Year By Not Packing Your Lunch

and

Here's The Catch To Walmart's Free Tax Preparation Service

Lots of heat! Well, not really. Just relative to what I've written so far.

First week.

I survived the first week! I took this weekend to organize / plan ahead because I was just kind of thrown into everything and didn't have the chance to take a step back and figure it all out. From the beginning, it was just go, go, go.

Life is funny. When I was at CNNMoney for the week this summer to fact check Best Places To Live, I remember I loved being in the newsroom. It was exciting and so different from the magazine setting. But I also remember thinking I could never work there, would never want to. I could never work for a site where I had to turnaround stories constantly, much less stories about business and personal finance. Too stressful, not my thing. Ha, right? But once you have to do it, you just do, and it's always been that way for me. I always surprise myself.

It's a great place to work. The people are young but extremely motivated and smart. It astounds me how hard everyone works to keep the site alive. It's a beast and it needs to be fed every five minutes. It's a constant hustle. It's encouraging and overwhelming but also inspiring.

I still don't know that this is the environment for me in the longrun, but I do know that I'm going to absorb as much as I can while I'm there. And I'm looking forward to the way the discipline will shape me as a writer. Hope it makes me better, quicker, sharper.

First day.

OK. I can't think of any other way to describe my first day except to say that I felt like I was thrown into an ocean and unable to come up for air until the end.

Haha, I know that sounds absolutely awful. It wasn't that awful. But kind of hard. What I'm trying to say is, it will take me a few days (hopefully just) to adjust to the pace.  I don't want to speak too soon and I don't want to doubt myself so early in the game. But that's all I shall say! I have to adjust.

I wrote two pieces. (I think I'm expected to write at least four per day.) And they suck. But it was my first day so, I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get better.

Retail Workers Still Get The Short End Of The Benefits Stick [STUDY]

STUDY: Consumers Turn To Home Health Care, Generic Drugs To Cut Rising Health Care Costs