If you’ve been unfortunate enough to lose a professional job in the last few months, you might be amongst quite a large proportion of these people who think this interruption to their career might create a good opportunity to go back to school full time and get an MBA qualification. Apparently applications for MBA programs have had huge increases over the last few months.

All that means that if you’re applying for an MBA, you have to make sure your application is going to stand out a bit more than all the other people who are in the same situation as you. According to Annie Fisher at Fortune Magazine, your application (and interview, if you’re invited) needs to focus on the following:

• Your ethical values - give an example of your own ethical behavior in business, even if you were working for a business that might not have been entirely ethical
• Your extra-curricular activities - interests like coaching, volunteer work or adventure travel show you have positive attributes
• Your future focus - outline your career plan rather than dwelling on a job loss

She also mentions that, when there are more candidates than usual, it’s very important to follow instructions carefully and submit applications before the deadline - don’t give schools an excuse to discard your application from their large piles.

Creating a budget: does this sound like fun to you? Or would you rather spend your time doing something else? Nobody ever said that creating a budget is as fun as riding a roller coaster. But that being said, most people know that a budget is essential to their overall well being. Surely you believe that, right?

If you don’t want to go overboard, but know that a budget is important, stick to the basics. There is no rule saying that your budget has to be based on high tech software, and full of information you will never want or need. Instead, you can start a budget with a pen and a piece of paper. If you are feeling a bit more tech-savvy you can use a basic Excel spreadsheet to get started.

The basics of your budget should include: your income, expenses, and savings. If you are accurate with all three areas, no matter how many numbers you have, your budget will work out in the end. You may need to make adjustments from time to time, but that is something that everybody has to do.

When creating a budget the basics are what you should focus most of your time and effort on. Once you have the “bones” in place you can make changes as they come up. Who said that creating a budget was a long, boring process?

With the economy so bad, cutting expenses can help you get by for the time being. But how are you going to save money? One of the best and most used ways of doing so is shopping with coupons in hand. In other words, do your best to only buy items that you have a coupon for. This may not save you a lot on each individual purchase, but by the end of your trip to the store you will realize just how much money you have kept in your pocket.

Using coupons at the grocery store is a great way to test out this savings method. You can find plenty of coupons by scouring your local newspaper, or better yet printing them off the internet. Either way, you should consider using every coupon that you come across.

Of course, you should not stop at using coupons on groceries. Many other retailers, such as clothing, electronic, and hard stores also make coupons available to customers.

All in all, you can let coupons dictate where you shop as well as what you buy. This will allow you to save money, while also trying new stores and products that you may have never thought about using in the past.

If you shop with coupons you will save money; there is no two ways about it!