I’m starting a new post series called “Things Twitter helped me discover” to highlight all of the great sites and other things that I find out about on twitter.

The first is Smarty Pig. Smarty Pig is a savings account with social aspects. This all started when I asked twitter if there was a way for me to save for specific goals and let other people also donate money towards those goals. Sure there were things like ChipIn, but that was only to show progress in collecting money, I wanted to also show my own savings progress. So someone suggested I check out Smarty Pig.

When you create a Smarty Pig account, you are actually opening a real FDIC insured savings account that has a 2.01% APY. Then within that account, you set up specific savings goals. That can be a family vacation, college savings for your children, or maybe just something you want to splurge on.

You set up these savings goals and choose how often you want to contribute to that goal, and how much. This was perfect for me because it allowed me to take out an amount from my check each week to save for rent, and then at the end of the month, I had my rent money without even thinking about it.

Next you can choose if you want to make the goal public or private. Certain goals like my rent, I kept private. But for other things, like my trip to SXSW, I can keep it public so that my friends and family can help me save too.

Once you reach your savings goal you have a few options. You can have the money deposited back into your checking account, Smarty Pig can send you a debt card with your savings, or you can choose to receive up to a 12% cash boost on your savings by placing it on a retail card like Amazon.com, Best Buy, Travelocity or Macy’s. You can even spilt your savings among the three, to find the best option for you.

You can add widgets for your facebook or blog so that all of your friends can help you save. I put one in my blog footer.

But I know I have to write it.

Over the past 4 months I have been living in Philadelphia, and working for Comcast Interactive Media. I worked on a project producing a series of tutorial videos. It was a very different job for me. There was a lot of managing. Managing people, managing expectations, managing outside agencies… it was a very big project. But my contract is ending on Jan. 15th so it’s on to hopefully better things.

So I had to make a decision, stay in Philly and look for another job, or move back to NYC? After talking with my family and close friends I have decided to do something that I didn’t want to do, but I know I have to do. Go back to school.

When I first started blogging there were 2 things that I worked very hard to keep under wraps.

#1 – that I was still in school

#2 – how young I was

I don’t really remember why I decided to do that, but from my point of view at the time, they were both negative things. I had a number of friends my age who were still in school and also in the social media/ blogging podcasting space, but for some reason whenever they were mentioned, they were always “student bloggers” and in my head that sounded like it was something less than everyone else. I didn’t think that they deserved less credit because they were young, or still in school. I also feel like the “student blogger” was being put in a box. It became a specific category that I didn’t want to be a part of. The age thing I always wanted to keep under wraps because I wanted my work to speak for itself.

I have very strong opinions about higher education. I don’t like it, I didn’t think I needed it, and I think the whole system in general is broken. I’ve written a little about education before. Once I had finished 4 years of school, I was done. I didn’t graduate, I just couldn’t take it anymore, I didn’t see the point. But while I still feel this way somewhat, I have decided to go back to school and finish my degree in Media Studies.

I can only hope that this doesn’t set me back career wise.

So…now that I got that off my chest, I’m moving back to NYC and I’m looking for a job. Not an internship people, I might be going back to school, but I don’t think that takes away from my level of experience. Ideally I would like to find some work in community management, social media consulting (I know I hate that term, but there is not other way to put it) Something that doesn’t require me to be in an office all of the time (since I will have classes, etc)

If you hear of anything, please let me know.

I wanted to thank all of my friends and mentors for being so great and supportive to me with this decision.

A great video from the Economist. It focuses on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology.