Please contact me at ericasmith568(at)gmail.com soon. Moreover, I will place your link in one of my finance sites.

regards,
Erica Smith

Have you tried (actually investing) with the site? I got a good rate with them that I could not find anywhere else. I actually invested with a bank from NC and was quite happy with their response.

The Bankdeals site you mention has good deals all right, but I found most of them to be localized and specific to users of a certain location.

I totally appreciate your viewpoint.

However, you need to understand that the reason that the US became a superpower today is due to it’s open policies. In other words, it encouraged US corporations to go across the world and seek out new markets and conquer them. As a result, when you feel thirsty in India, you drink a Coke and when you want to go somewhere, you ride in your Chevy Aveo.

Unfortunately, you need to keep in mind that with this globalization comes the side-effect of cheaper labor available on the other side of the world as well. So, if the American IT worker wants to really become competitive, he/she needs to think global as well. Did America shed tears when the Indian Thums Up brand was killed by Coke?

Coming back to the H1B, I just want to point out that the visa is indeed misused in a lot of cases to move jobs offshore and displace Americans. This could be viewed as wrong – however, you must agree that stopping the H1B would mean throttling innovation in the US and encouraging US companies to move to offshore for good. What jobs would American kids have then?

While I think that Sen. Grassley and Sanders want to weed out such cases, I have mixed feelings about the move. The ban on 65000 H1B visas will not serve to suddenly create millions of jobs in the US market and bring it out of recession. Measures such as these make politicians popular and tarnish the US’ image as the land of opportunity.

Which is why I tried to suggest some measures that allow the creme-de-la-creme of the world to come to the US, but a side measure to ensure that they remain here and contribute instead of taking knowledge back home.

The H1B program was only supposed to be a stop gap to allow employers to fill positions where no local talent could be found. That argument has become farcical as positional requirements now show needs for applicants speaking unknown dialects or having skill sets that are unique to a targeted individual where the actual job makes no utilization whatsoever of these ‘unique’ skills.

The program was ill conceived from the get go. Now it’s main purpose appears to be a training ground for offshoring.

We are saving a little bit more than 50% of our income, on one salary and after mortgage to our inexpensive 2-story house. I started writing our specific steps in more detail, but could never finish the post.

Here are some of them (they are NOT for everybody – lifestyles differ)
- Switch from “regular” diet to Pesketarianism (vegeterarian + eggs+ milk +rarely seafood). Provides us with all the nutrition we need at the lowest cost;

- Forget TV watching (even the free local stations)
Provides us with more time to take care of our kids, cooking from scratch, Internet research, etc.
No influence from TV ads to skew our buying habits.
Less stress from bad news (we still hear enough of these on the radio, Internet and collegues and friends)
We take DVDs and books from the local library instead, booking them online. WA State has a great library system. King County has the best one, Snohomish County has a very good one as well.

- No Movie Theater visits, other than when free;
During the summer many cinemas have free screenings for families, so we started taking advantage of these. We bring our own snacks (roasted nuts and seeds, bananas, filtered water) but we still have to pay for gas, though :/

- Dining out? …Are you sure?

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