When an employer has no sympathy for a potential candidate’s time it leads to frustration on the candidate’s part. Employers have been canceling interviews at the last minute with out a reason or an apology. Some are just wasting the candidate’s time by not paying attention during the interview and this is troubling because (and I should know) a candidate spends a lot of time preparing for an interview; this includes looking up the company and reading into the company’s philosophy and mission.

When an employer doesn’t share the company’s timeline to hire with the candidate it is also quite frustrating. A hiring manager always knows when they need someone. They know the time frame that they will be hiring in and not telling a candidate is annoying to all candidates.

Not sharing what kind of salary they pay is also really annoying, especially when they expect a candidate to give what they think they should be paid. There really isn’t any reason as to why a manger wouldn’t share this information. They really should give you some kind of range for you to expect to be paid and this would clear up the entire awkward situation that comes about when its time to talk money.

Finally, this one is the one that gets under my skin, when employers fail to notify a candidate that they are no longer up for consideration for the position. This is rude and extremely common. Many times a candidate sits by the phone (or in my case, shies away from a week vacation) to wait to hear from an employer. A simple email could do if the employer is no longer interested in the candidate.

Here’s one just from my own opinion book: If you’re an employer don’t tell a candidate to expect an interview and then don’t answer emails or the phone when the candidate calls. And give them an interview if you say you will.

Unemployment has hit a nationwide average of just under 10% and it looks like a lot of places aren’t hiring, have implemented a hiring freeze, or are laying off a majority of its labor force. However, there are places all across the country where you can find work (usually) and you actually have a good chance of finding work in one of these cities.

1) Anchorage, Alaska. Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska, so much so that the population of the city is almost half of the total personal income for Alaska. The median age in the city is 33 and while the recession has hit the rest of the country pretty hard, in Anchorage the city marked it’s 20th year of job growth.

Twenty percent of the city’s jobs are in education, health services and government, all of which have increased the number of jobs for the past year. Big box retail stores are also starting to move into the city. Stores like Kohl’s and Best Buy have continued to open new stores in the city.

2) Arlington, Virginia. Arlington neighbors Washington D.C. and is home to the Pentagon as well as Arlington National Cemetery. The biggest employers in this city include the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and the State Department. When there is a lot of government jobs in an area, the national unemployment rate has a much smaller effect on what is going on in the local employment rate.

Arlington also has several large private employers such as US Airways, Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Marriott.

3) Columbus, Ohio. Columbus has a strong distribution industry as well as a strong transportation industry and this can likely be attributed to the city’s central location in not only the state, but as well as the country.

Columbus has a diverse economy for such a Mid-America kind of town. It boasts healthcare, manufacturing, technology, as well as hospitality services. The largest employers in the city include the biggest university in the state Ohio State, Nationwide Insurance, Bob Evans, JP Morgan Chase, and OhioHealth.

4) Houston, Texas. This Texas city, like much of the rest of the state, has come out fairly unscathed in this recession. Houston is one of the only cities in the country where people are actually finding work. Houses in Texas are affordable and jobs are plentiful. Thanks to the city’s large stake in the oil industry, this city has continued to fare well.

The stock market has seemed to start leveling off and is back to near-normal. Other investors have started to work their way back into the market after receiving heavy losses. So, is now the time for you, or any other timid investor to start putting their money back into the market?

I will say yes. However, I would say that the time to get into the market was months ago while the stocks were down. Many people lost a lot of money and then got scared and pulled their money out before they rode out the worst of the recession. For the most part, if they would have just held their stocks their losses would be minimized.

Right now, it is important to track the stocks and funds that you want to invest in. You have to look at the big picture rather than the previous 12 months. The problem is the recession has changed the game so much that you have to look at everything rather than just the short term.

For example, in commodities, most things have always fallen in price as the weather turns cold. However, if you look at the cost of something like copper, you can see that because the recession has improved in the 3rd quarter 2009, the prices have gone up a bit since the weather has changed. In normal times, the price falls because construction tapers off for the winter. Right now, though, more houses are being built than were at the beginning of the summer.

If you are still timid about trading, try paper trading for awhile and see how you do. Once, I had heard about Citi and the rules regarding mark-to-market trading changing and knew that the stock was going to go up. Chris and I paper traded the stock (actually we did an option trade) and would have made a killing had we actually put money into the stock. Doing something like that makes you a bit less paranoid about putting money in the market.

Things to consider before you put your money in the market are things like how much risk are you willing to accept. Obviously, the more risk you can take on, the bigger the payoff or the greater the loss. You also have to realize how much you can put into the market and how to diversify.

Everyone remembers before the recession how things were. There were people who would show how much money they could spend running rampant. Most of those people have been silenced by the recession as everyday average Americans have grown tired of extravagance.

So here are a few of the things that have gone almost extinct through the recession:

1. Unaccountability. People feel as though CEOs and high level executives have had a hand in the recession due to their lack of accountability. We never heard from them or made them accountable for actions they may have done. However, now, they end up being the most accountable and when a company does something wrong, the CEO is the first to blame and the first to go.

2. People flaunting their extravagance. The days of people owning things like Hummers, bling, and having their homes featured on shows like Cribs has come to an end (for now anyway). Even the once very public Paris Hilton has been fairly unseen recently. Hummer has been dropped from the GM lineup and people are cutting back wherever they can.

3. Outrageous Gas Prices. I’m sure this one will end up making a comeback eventually, but as of right now the average for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline is around $2.65. This is far from the record highs of $4.10 a gallon for the same grade of gasoline from last year. Many people welcome the difference due to lower income levels and higher unemployment.

4. Less junk mail. Before there was a credit crisis everyone was getting credit card offers, including children and cats. Now there aren’t as many credit card offers floating around and credit card companies are being a bit more careful about who they are sending pre-approved offers to.

5. Stores that sell stuff we don’t need. Stores like the Sharper Image have just simply disappeared in the last year because they sell stuff that people don’t need and typically can’t even create a need for.

Is it time for college students to be calling home?

When you’re going to college should you stay close to home or go away to a private school with ridiculous tuition, room and board?

Of course, I’m biased.

I am a product of public college education and think that I came out as well as another peer of mine who is Vanderbilt educated (even though I paid THOUSANDS less than she did overall).

Since the recession, many new students are opting to stay in their home states to attend college rather that go to other states to get their bachelor’s or master’s degrees.

Public universities are hurting for money. My business school’s professors are encouraged to not print syllabus among other necessary documents.

Over the past a small amount of years, the financial organization of public universities has changed radically. States no longer fund the accounts for the majority of a school’s budget. A school is lucky if the state supports 20% of a college’s overall budget. For example, William and Mary’s college for the 08-09 school year was only funded 18% by taxpayer dollars. In the 1970’s, taxpayers funded 43% of the school’s budget. “At this point, we’re a privately supported university that also gets some meaningful state aid,” says W. Taylor Reveley III, president of William & Mary.

To make up the divergence, public universities have got to rely on tuition and charges to pay for the majority of the budgetary requirements; because of this, many state schools work hard to be a magnet for out of state students, who will pay a premium, sometimes more than three times as much as residents, to attend.

“Given the way that states are cutting back on funds, to replace an in-state student with an out-of-state student, particularly if you can capture some of that revenue for your own purposes, is a good thing financially for schools,” says John Maguire, chairman and founder of Maguire Associates, a research-based consulting firm specializing in educational institutions.

So I suppose sometimes it comes down to whether you want to go in state or out of state and the cost you may incur.

If you live in Alabama, congratulations, you can go to Auburn. If you live in Mississippi you get to go to … Ole Miss.

The recession has been a huge part of the state of the economy for nearly two years now (according to when it officially began in December 2007). It has affected everyone in one way or another during that time. So, why not take something that was and continues to be awful and use it as a tool to teach your children about financial responsibility?

There are plenty of children that grow up with only a small idea of what the value of a dollar is. In the years leading up to the recession, many parents would indulge their children and even spoil them with some of the things they wanted without having to work to earn them.

When starting at an early age, children can be taught that when they do something good, they can earn things that they want; but how young should a parent start offering a child allowance? My sister and I did not start getting an allowance until we were 7 or 8. However, I believe that children can likely benefit from the system at a younger age.

Getting back to the issue of the “value of a dollar,” children need things such as clothes, school supplies, etc., but while those things are considered necessary, things such as expensive shoes and designer backpacks aren’t. As children get older, they can learn this lesson and, in some situations, may be able to earn the expensive shoes and backpacks by working for them.

Overindulging a child makes them a maladjusted adult in a lot of situations. A child that gets everything that he or she wants doesn’t help them as they get older. So, perhaps if a parent is a pushover now, the recession is helping him or her say no to their child as far as indulgences go. When one or both parents are out of work, things such as little trinkets which seemed harmless to get for the children before are now simply unaffordable.

Teaching kids about money when they’re young will definitely help them make better financial decisions as they get older.

Have you “cheaped out” during the recession?

Question:

Since the recession has started (or rather, since you have felt it in your own wallet) have you been purchasing items that are cheaper than what you normally purchase that may have the same use?

Answer:

In a short answer, yes. I have been buying makeup that isn’t as “name brand” as usual. While my friend has a collection of MAC that is growing, I am using NYX and other drugstore makeup brands. I am also extending the savings onto grocery products. I have been trying more and more “Great Value” products from Wal-Mart. They really aren’t that bad. Of course, I have said over and over that my favorite generic is the Kroger brands. The Kroger Spaghetti sauce is my favorite…it’s better than any of the national brands in my opinion and 50 cents cheaper on average.

Research by Communities and Local Government says that the population of England is going to increase from 50.8 million to 60.4 million by 2031. There is also a projected increase of one person households. It is expected to increase by 60.3%. In 2006, the number of one person households in England was 6.8 million, the 2031 projection is now 10.9 million.

With an increase of 9.7 million people, there will have to be more room for them. The good news is that since 1938, the number of houses in the country has increased greatly; it has grown from 10.6 million homes in 1938 to 22.2 million as of March 2007. In 1938 people weren’t buying a lot of the homes; there were only 32% that were owner occupied, there are now 70% that are.

Over the past decade, there has been a huge increase in the number of homes built in the country to keep up with demand. It has been seeing an increase in homes between 121,000 and 207,000 every year since 1998. However, with the recent recession, that figure has dropped and between 2008 and 2009, there was only 108,000 built.

Another problem that has been happening in the recession is that the number of vacant houses has also increased. Between April 2007 and April 2008 the number of vacant private homes increased by 26,000.

It appears as though in England, that as the recession has gone on, more and more people are renting instead of buying homes. It may have more to do with the actual cost of ownership than the recession though. In 1990, the average price of a home was 63,000 pounds. It increased to 196,000 pounds just 19 years later. When people are losing their jobs left and right, they simply can’t afford such an expense every month. Not to mention, the true cost of ownership of a home is not only reflected in the monthly mortgage payment but also in the cost of repairs to the house. Things like replacing appliances and fixing plumbing is something that a homeowner has to worry about replacing or fixing on their own dime rather than expecting a landlord to fix these things.

With the number of people that England is expected to accommodate in the next 20 years, there will likely be even more rentals in the country; particularly with single person households. Also, I can expect that housing prices will not go down in the country thanks to the very limited amount of space in the more urban areas.

In the United States, the population is also expected to explode in the next 20 years and housing prices are expected to steadily, but not rapidly, increase over the time frame. Of course, there will be urban areas where bubbles will form and housing prices in those areas will be more expensive than other areas, but over all the national average will likely increase steadily.

Source

Even though the recession has hit all our wallets, most would agree that shopping is something that is on a list of enjoyable activities. Shopping for great buys definitely hits somewhere near the top of the list.

I believe that most people will look for bargains whenever and wherever they can. If I learned anything through working in a retail environment today it’s that people love to save money. They love it so much that they’ll get mean if something comes in between them and their ability to save a few dollars.

This is where the newest craze (maybe it isn’t so new?) of designer replicas and replacements have come to play. Once a designer has spent all their design dollars on something that becomes trendy, there will always be some kind of knock off that pops up with the same exact design. This is why you see so many purses out there with huge G’s on them (they’re trying to mimic the Coach ‘C’).

Premium jeans haven’t missed this craze. There was once a huge market for jeans that cost $200 a pair. Seven for all Mankind, Citizen, True Religion all were very expensive jeans. You have to remember that jeans were originally meant to be something that people would wear to rugged jobs, and now they’re on the cutting edge of fashion.

These premium lines is partially why stores like Plato’s Closet have become so popular. After all, those stores sell premium jeans at bargain basement prices.

However, brands like Ann Taylor Loft and the Gap are starting to come up with new types of jeans to combat some of the prices. For under $60 a pair, you can get what these brands are promising to be “premium” fit. By premium fit, they mean they lift your tush and make your legs look long.

The Gap is bragging about the new styles of jeans that it has calling them Premium denim and saying how great the fit is, but I’m not sure that I buy it considering that the Gap owns Old Navy and I have never tried on or purchased a pair of Old Navy jeans that looked amazing on me. Perhaps there are plenty of people out there who have, but I am not one of them.

I’ve found a better fit with Nine West and Calvin Klein jeans from Sam’s Club…seriously. And they only cost $15.

Do you think that the recession is coming to a close?

Question:

There are plenty of economic indicators pointing to a big “yes” but do YOU think the recession is coming to an end?

Answer:

I believe that it might be. Like the question poses, there are several economic indicators that are pointing to the recession ending, but there is a little doubt left. Of course after such a brief recession, there is some doubt whether or not the recession is coming to a close. However, most people are a bit more optimistic and are really looking forward to the recession ending.

With the Dow reaching above the 10,000 mark yesterday, there is a lot of stock market optimism going on. However, in July Enzio von Pfeil, the chief executive at EconomicClock.com said that there would be a crash this month in the stock market. He reiterated that yesterday saying that the crash doesn’t have to be a huge one that shakes the foundations of the financial system, but it will still happen.

He told CNBC, “There is going to be quite a bit of strong downward earnings revisions going forward, especially the outlook for 2010. And that is simply because the economic clock, of which we tell the economic time, suggests that the excess supply of goods is here to stay and you can’t keep on making profits if unemployment keeps rising.”

He said that the worst earnings would come from industries that are labor intense and others that are driven by consumer spending.

It always seems like everything that goes up has to go down, but there is no indication of how high that the market has to climb before it finds its top and it has to fall again. Most of the worst crashes that have happened usually happen around this time of the year. I don’t think that we’ll see a huge drop in the market like we did in the beginning part of this year, but I do think that the market won’t stay above 10,000 for long, but it will increase to this point again after the holidays.

No one wants to see a recession continue. No one wants to see people unemployed. These labor intensive jobs are so tight for money right now, that they have fired all the people that they can manage to get away with and still have a functioning factory.

Consumers still aren’t spending money like they did a couple of years ago.

These earnings reports will come out, but will they really be enough to send the market into another downward spiral?

Source

Washington D.C. and the surrounding areas in Maryland and Virginia saw something in September that not many places across the country have seen; an increase in home prices. Unfortunately, while the prices increased, the median sale price did fall a bit.

Sales were up almost 19% in September in the area from just a year ago; with the median sale price declining almost 5% to $371,568.

Houses in D.C. are also selling for most of what the owner is asking. The average sale price in the area was 92% of the asking price.

Seeing any area, particularly a large metro area gaining in sales of homes is a pretty good (and not outrageous) sign that the economy is doing a bit better than it was a year ago. Then again, a year ago, credit had completely frozen as the subprime crisis really took off.

As banks have begun to lend again, more homes have started to sell. As the homes start to sell, prices will gradually begin to rise again. The rise will be in areas where there are jobs and every list that I’ve read says the jobs are in Washington D.C. due to the amount of government jobs as well as all of the large companies that are headquartered there.

When I was in Maryland over the summer, it didn’t seem like the recession had hit there as bad as it looked in other parts of the country I have seen in the last year. For example, while Chris and I were in St. Louis in August, restaurants were basically empty at dinner time. It’s not like we were going to obscure places either. The only restaurant I noticed was busy the entire time we were there was a Cheesecake Factory in one of the larger malls in the area. In Maryland, everything was always busy it seemed. Shopping centers were full of cars usually and there weren’t a lot of empty businesses making it look like a ghost town.

Source

Las Vegas has been hit hard by the recession. However, this isn’t the case around the world. In the Chinese region of Macau, gambling revenue is up and there are two companies that are really wanting to cash in on the hot commodity that seems a world away from recession-battered Las Vegas.

Wynn Resorts (WYNN) and Las Vegas Sands are both planning initial public offerings of their subsidiaries in Macau. If you would believe it, only a third of the revenues for both companies come from Las Vegas, the other revenues come from these subsidiaries in Macau.

This IPO news came out not too long ago and since then more people have been seen at the casinos. It has been so popular that the Chinese government has limited how often a citizen can travel to Macau to gamble.

Gambling in Macau isn’t too different than gambling in the United States. You can participate in poker tournaments, sports betting, roulette, and all the other games that you could possibly think of that draw people into the domestic casinos.

I believe that most of you already know how I feel about casinos. I would rather spend my money doing something that I actually enjoyed, but to each their own. I know plenty of people who really enjoy spending time at a casino.

As far as the IPO is concerned, these companies are generating jobs abroad for countries that really need a boost to their economy as well. That’s alright I suppose because obviously the gambling industry isn’t doing so well in the United States right now.

Memphis isn’t exactly known for its economic prosperity. It is, if anything, a distribution city. After spending most of my life living near the Bluff City, I can tell you that there is so much blight in that city that it can be difficult for some businesses to take off there even with the amount of wealth generated in the outlying areas.

After a short hunt on BizBuySell.com, I saw that the median asking price for a new business is just about $180,000. That’s a thirty percent drop from the previous quarter.

Why have the businesses decided to lower their asking prices? Well, it likely has something to do with the businesses having almost half of the cash flow that they did in the same period last year. The median cash flow dropped from $117,343 to $60,000. Revenues were also down from $384,000 a year ago to $368,400 for this year.

There are other cities that are having similar issues. Typically, the cost of businesses falls in line with the economic conditions of its neighboring city or town and the real estate market. Real estate values in Memphis have fallen (but to be honest, they haven’t fallen that much in some parts of the city because they weren’t very high to begin with).

Detroit is one of the cities that I have personally noticed taking a major hit in this recession. I read online a few weeks ago that the median home price in the Detroit area was somewhere near $12,000. The only reason that the home prices are so low is because the city is in disrepair and the auto companies that have held the city up for so long started to crumble to pieces this year (and they have been falling apart for some time now).

As far as the businesses in Memphis are concerned, on the BizBuySell website, the types of businesses that are listed include everything from restaurants to cleaning services.

Source

There are millions out of work right now and there are fewer and fewer jobs available for those who are looking or work. Data that was released by the government on Friday showed that the recession is worse than it has been since the beginning of the recession right now.

It’s only expected to get worse because companies are still not hiring and most have no plans on creating jobs to start hiring.

It is so difficult to be unemployed right now because there are about 6.3 people applying for every one job opening. In comparison, when the recession officially began in 2007, there were only 1.7 workers competing for every one job opening in the united States.

Since the beginning of the decade, the largest amount of people who were competing for one job opening was in July 2003, when 2.8 people were looking for every one job opening.

From the beginning of the recession, employers have cut over 7 million jobs. Even though there are fewer and fewer job cuts with each job and unemployment report, there aren’t any jobs being created. Job creation is essential for the health of the economy.

So, people with jobs are feeling a bit more safe when it comes to their jobs. Job security can be priceless, but for those that were laid off or have found themselves unemployed, it is still quite difficult to find work.

It is, of course, more difficult to find work in some areas than others. Jobs are being created in some areas of the country, but there are other parts of the country that barely have any jobs available and are losing them much faster than they’re making them. The more industrial a town is, particularly in this recession, the more that town or county hurts it seems.

Hopefully, the job market will get a bit better sometime soon.

Source

In Louisville, Kentucky things are not good when it comes to employment figures. Times are tough everywhere, but it looks like there are thousands of people who are having a hard time keeping the lights on in their homes.

A General Electric factory has just created 90 jobs in the area, while 90 jobs isn’t exactly a huge number, it is a great deal to those without work. The factory jobs, building washing machines, pay about $27,000 a year and GE is generous with benefits.

For the first three days that the job was listed, GE received a whopping 10,000 applications for the 90 jobs that were open.

Over the recession, this particular plant hasn’t laid off any of its unionized workers even though the union and the company did have to come to a decision to cut wages a bit. The same job paid $19 four years ago.

The unemployment rate for the county the Appliance Park is in is 10.6% and there are nearly 40,000 unemployed.

These kinds of jobs can be hard to come by and that’s why I think that the openings got so much attention and so many people applied. A job with good benefits as well as “ok” pay for someone with little education and experience in the field means that the applicant may be able to pay the mortgage for the month.

Factory jobs are often the hardest to come by in a recession because many factories start slowing down production in a recession because spending has slowed down greatly. When factories slow down or cut way back on production, then the owners and managers have to decide who to let go and when to do it.

In GE’s case, at this Appliance Park, no one had to be let go even if they did take a pay cut. That’s not the case at all appliance facilities. In Oxford, MS, a Whirlpool Plant closed its doors a year or so ago and left thousands jobless. In a small town in Mississippi, that is a huge blow to the local economy as well as the surrounding areas where many of the people who worked at the plant lived. I am not sure what those people had to do to make ends meet after the plant closed, but I know that they had to try to find work somewhere else and in Mississippi, that kind of work isn’t easy to come by.

Source

Earlier this week there were reports coming out that Arab oil sheiks, the Russians, and the Chinese were all conspiring to stop using the United States dollar to set the value of a barrel of oil. Of course, if this were to really happen it would really hurt the value of a dollar across the globe.

Remember last week when I talked about what happens when someone give a false story to the press? That’s what is going on this week and it’s causing a serious decline in the value of a dollar and a serious increase in the cost of gold.

Even though someone as high up as the Saudi central bank head and U.S. officials have tried to bunk the rumors, the dollar has definitely taken a hit this week.

The website drudgereport.com quickly amplified the impact of the story with a headline atop the site: ARAB STATES LAUNCH SECRET MOVES WITH CHINA, RUSSIA, FRANCE TO STOP USING DOLLAR FOR OIL TRADING …

“You read that story, and you do two things: You sell the hell out of dollars and you buy gold,” said Les Alperstein, president of the financial research firm Washington Analysis. “The story has a lot of credibility, with some caveats.”

So, the fall of the dollar could be the key as to why the price of gold is now at record highs. At $1,050 a try ounce, investors are selling the dollar and buying gold just as Les Alperstein said.

No one knows who exactly leaked the fake information to the press. Many are thinking it had something to do with gold traders. Of course, your suspicions typically turn to the source who stands to make the most from the information, however false it may be.

Prior to the recession, the value of the dollar would not be as damaged by an article such as this one. However, with how poor our economy is doing and also how watered down the value of our dollar has become, it is quite the hit to the value of the greenback.

Robert Fisk wrote the original article and he listed very vague sources in his article. No one has been able to locate the exact sources and even people and administration from the banks he claimed gave him the information in the article have said that the story is completely false.

So, who’s got their hand in Robert Fisk’s pocket?

Source

Where have you found work in the recession?

Question:

Sure, this question really only pertains to those who have been laid off or have had to try to find work since unemployment started to skyrocket, but if you have found work, where did you find it?

Answer:

I found work at a department store, but thanks to some creative talking on the part of the manager, it really turned out to be a job that wasn’t even remotely for me (in the interview I told her that I wanted to work in corporate marketing, I really wanted to work in brand marketing, and she said that in a year or so that I would be able to be promoted. Well, when I was finally out working on the floor, I started talking to another employee who graduated with a marketing degree in 2007 from the same college I went to and she was making $1 less an hour and had been working in the store for almost 2 years).

Other than that, I’ve been working full time on this website and some marketing work for it. I have been trying to learn about internet marketing, which is completely and totally different than marketing we learned about in school. From what I’ve read about internet marketing, it’s all about skirting the rules as opposed to “college” marketing which is about product research and quality marketing and mind share. It’s just so different.

Sometimes we all have to make the decision as to what is more important: Our time or our money. A lot of times these two don’t exactly go hand-in-hand. As a matter of fact, the examples I will give will only talk about choosing one or the other.

Saving money has gotten extremely important to those who have lost their jobs or who have suffered through a reduction in income since the beginning of the recession. One of the best examples I can give as to a trade off between time and money is supper time in most households.

Cooking supper at home will typically save you money in opposition to going out to eat, however going and picking something up will always be more of a time saver. Say you’re on your way home from work and you call your local [insert restaurant name here] and pick it up; you’re going to spend more money than if you would have cooked all the food at home, but you now just get to pick up the food and take it home to your hungry, waiting family. After they finish eating, the garbage gets recycled or thrown away and there isn’t any mess to clean up (or if there is, it is usually minimal if your kids didn’t get into a huge food fight or something during dinner time).

Time and money also come into play when you’re thinking about things such as thrifty shopping. Many shoppers who are out there shopping to save money will visit many different stores and spend a lot of time clipping coupons just to save money. Time conscious shoppers are more willing to shop at the same store for everything, or just venture to a couple of grocery stores.

For anyone the answer will likely be different. Some will feel as though their time is more valuable than the savings they will get from shopping at different stores and spending time clipping coupons while others will feel as though their money is more valuable than the time they spend doing all the things that save them money.

As for me, I find myself in the middle (as I imagine most would). I won’t go out of my way to save $1 on groceries, but I will shop at different stores if it means I can use my favorite coupons. I also try not to go out to eat too often, not for the cost but simply for the nutritional value or lack there of. I really enjoy saving money, but I also value my time.

What do you do? Are you a time saver or a money saver? Or do you fall somewhere in the middle?

On September 15th Ben Bernanke said that the recession is basically over in a statement that rang so loudly, the stock market shot up like a weed after a rainstorm. Well, it was just over half a percentage point for the Dow today, but up is up, right (I really just wanted to use an illustrative language today and that was what came to mind also)?

So, on top of Bernanke’s statement about the recession being over, there was also new data to come out that said consumer sales were up. Sales rose in the past month the most they had risen over a single month in three years.

All of this news put together made for a pretty good day on Wall Street, but the statement about the recession being over was what made headlines that day. So, do I feel like the recession is over or that it may as well be over?

I think we may have seen the bottom. All indicators are pointing to the fact that we have bottomed out. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is well above the lowest point of the year and the overall stock market is doing well. Job losses have slowed down (although unemployment continues to increase). Consumer spending is starting to climb back up, homes are beginning to pick up in sales (and in return the amount of existing homes on the market is finally beginning to decline), and new construction has started once again on projects all across the country. Even auto sales have been kind of stirred after the Cash for Clunkers program.

But before we can all pack up our briefcases and drive to TGI Friday’s for Happy Hour, we have to remember something, it’s not over until it’s over and there are plenty of people out there who don’t have jobs and can’t pay their mortgages. I hate to be a buzzkill for those who felt like celebrating when Bernanke said the recession was basically over, but there are so many things still going on not only in the U.S. but all around the world that show the global recession is not over and that it will be a long road to go down before we actually see the end (and by the end, I mean economic growth like we were seeing prior to the beginning of the recession).

For the sixth month in a row, foreclosures in the United States topped the 300,000 mark. Last month a total of 358,471 homes were put into foreclosure by either getting a default notice or by being put on the auction block. The figure is up 18% from August 2008, but it is actually down half a percent from July 2009.

This number totals to 1 in about 350 homes getting a foreclosure notice of some kind.

Morris A. Davis, an assistant real-estate professor at the Wisconsin School of Business had this to say about the foreclosure rate, “The foreclosure numbers are largely unemployment related. As long as 15 million Americans are unemployed, record foreclosures will continue.”

Out of all 50 states, Nevada has been hit the worst. With one in every 62 households in the state getting a foreclosure notice of some kind, Nevada had 17,902 foreclosure notices issued in August. That figure is up 8% from July; contrast that against the half a percent decrease for the country overall and you’ll see that Nevada is hurting.

Following Nevada for the worst foreclosure rates in August was Florida.  In Florida, one in every 140 homes received a notice. In California it was one in every 144.

In the second quarter 2009, one in 25 homes were in foreclosure according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That is just over 4% of the homes in the United States.

It is easy to tell when a city or state has been particularly hit hard by the recession, falling home prices, unemployment, and foreclosures; all of which are  tied together right now. If you look at the average home price in California and how far the prices have fallen since the beginning of the recession, it is easy to see why most of the homes would end up in foreclosure.

Another problem is the fact that when you take falling home prices and put it together with increasing unemployment. That is a recipe for foreclosure.

Source

When you first start out investing or even in life, you don’t always make the best choices. After all, you usually have to make mistakes to learn from them. However, not learning before hand when it comes to your financials could prove to be costly and damaging to your long term wealth.

Here are a few mistakes that are often made:

1) Procrastination. College is over, and now it’s time to get out there are really make something of yourself…tomorrow. I know this one well. In college, when you procrastinate you may not lose out on anything at all, I often put papers off until the last minute and still did well because I wrote the best papers under pressure. However, when it comes to your finances, again, you can’t procrastinate or you will damage your long term financial goals. Here are some of the consequences:

Fail to start investing soon and you’ll miss out on years of compound interest.
Don’t keep a budget and you could sacrifice control of your spending.
Buy now with the intent to pay off later and you’ll dig a debt hole that’s tough to climb out of.
Pay your bills late and you could damage your credit score.
Put off saving money in a rainy day fund and you could be caught unprepared in a personal
emergency.

2) Not diversifying your portfolio. When people start out, they don’t always know how to diversify out risk from their portfolio. While you can’t completely hedge yourself against something like the current recession, you can help your portfolio out a little. Investing in a wide array of save investments can lead to steady returns. While you may not get the “super returns” that some stocks give, some mutual funds simply track the market and you may earn a fairly steady rate every year.

3) Over paying taxes. A Roth IRA grows tax-free and a 401 (k) is money taken out of your employment check before taxes. Both are ways to avoid and save money on taxes.

The idea of saving on your taxes may seem a tad obscure, but it really can pay off big. Say a 25-year-old contributes $5,000 each year for 40 years to an investment account, making an average annual return of 8%. If she used a taxable account, she’d have more than one-fourth less money than if she’d gone with the Roth. (Use this calculator to see how far your savings can take you. Enter “0″ in the tax-rate boxes to simulate the tax-exempt status of a Roth IRA.)

4) Going into debt is another big problem and mistake. Eventually, with the right investment moves and job, you will be able to have a fancy car and a big house full of “stuff” but right now, you don’t want to start out your life in debt. Any money you put toward interest is money that you won’t have later and you’re basically just throwing it out the window.

Source

Another good thing that has come out of the current economy is divorce is down 40%. However, the problems that cause marriages to fail are still there, however, they are now too afraid to divorce their partner due to the current state of the economy. The phenomenon is being called “sleeping with the enemy” by the New York Daily News.

Some though, are being pulled closer together by the recession. From the Source article:

When my and my partner’s real estate investments plummeted, we coped by not talking about it — or to each other. It wasn’t long before we were living like Ernie and Bert. Forget the wing-nuts who claim that gay marriage is causing the recession. The recession nearly caused my gay divorce.

The fact is, the fault lines in my marriage were already there-the economy was just the quake that nearly brought the house down. But like victims of some natural disaster, the crisis has brought us closer together. Being underemployed has given us the time we needed to repair the damage, talking a lot about US and OUR RELATIONSHIP.

The economy could potentially be bringing couples closer together as they try to actually work through their problems rather than just giving up and quitting. It is nice to see the rate of divorce slowing down a bit. I remember in High School when someone would come in and talk to the class about not rushing into marriage because 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce. I’m unsure what those numbers are anymore, but I’m sure that they have decreased somewhat since the recession started.

Source

The new data from the United States Department of Labor was released recently and the outlook for recovery in the job market is a bit depressing. The data suggests it will take many years for the labor market to fully recover to the level it was before the recession. This is even if the economy is turning around.

Unemployment rose to 9.7% in August which equates to 14.9 million people who are out of work and are currently looking for a job. The unemployment rate of 9.7% is the total population, when you divide that number into populations such as teenagers the number can vary greatly. The unemployment rate for teenagers is around 26%.

What is going wrong with the system right now is that to keep up with population increase and other natural increases, 125,000 jobs have to be created every month to keep up. Currently, we’re still losing jobs every month. Even though we’re losing jobs at a much slower rate than earlier this year, we’re still not gaining any ground.

Here are some figures from MSNBC and the Department of Labor about the current economy and unemployment:

2014: The year Moody’s Economy.com predicts the unemployment rate will finally dip toward 5 percent, considered to be the “normal” level.

7.4 million: The number of jobs lost since the recession started.

24.9 weeks: The average duration that unemployed workers are out of a job, the highest level since the Department of Labor started tracking the figure in 1948.

4.98 million: The number of people unemployed longer than 27 weeks, also the highest level since World War II, although the growth in the size of the labor market over time contributes to that.

9 million: The number of workers forced to take part-time jobs who would rather work more hours.

25.5 percent: The unemployment rate among teenagers, the highest level on record since 1948, breaking the previous high of 24.1 set in 1982.

10.1 percent: The unemployment rate for men over age 20.

7.6 percent: The unemployment rate for women over age 20.

8.9 percent: The unemployment rate for white workers over 16 years old, short of the record 9.7 percent from 1982.

15.1 percent: The unemployment rate for black workers over 16 years old, far short of the record 21.2 percent from 1983.

13 percent: The unemployment rate for Latino workers over 16 years old, short of the record 15.7 hit in 1982.

1.4 million: The number of construction jobs lost since December 2007 as the housing crisis intensified.

65,000: The number of construction jobs lost in August, mostly in nonresidential and heavy construction.

537,000: The number of financial sector jobs lost since the recession began, including 28,000 shed in August.

829,000: The number of retail jobs lost since the recession started and consumers pulled back spending, including 10,000 lost in August.

544,000: The net increase in health care jobs since the recession began, with 28,000 being added in August.

2.6 percent: The rise in average hourly earnings over the last year, with a boost of 6 cents in August bringing the average to $18.65.

0.8 percent: The smaller increase in overall weekly earnings over the last year, which was held back by workers getting fewer hours.

Source

When it comes to making purchases, cash is (and will always be) king. Reader’s Digest just put out an article saying that bartering (exchanging goods for other goods or services) is trying to make a comeback. They go through a lengthy story about how a man works for an ad agency and was able to go to Monterey in the spring for $350 thanks to all the bartering he can do.

Here are two examples that the magazine gave:

Trejo did $2,000 worth of advertising work for a trendy local restaurant. “It’s not my favorite place,” he says. “But it’s popular.” So rather than dine like a king, he hired a housepainter for his living room and kitchen and paid him in restaurant credits. The painter turned around and got his car serviced using those same restaurant credits to “pay” the garage. Weeks later, some of that free dining was still circulating around the local barter crowd.

Heidi Pliam, a lawyer in Minneapolis, has seen more people looking to exchange goods and services— rather than money—for her counsel. “People need legal services and don’t have the money,” she says. She recently arranged a trade with a small printing company that was being sued. She donated 14 hours of legal services and received a printing credit of $2,500. With that, she made up promotional banners for her business.

Sure, Craigslist has certain sections devoted to bartering, which makes it one of the best places you can go to fulfill your desire to trade something you don’t want for something you do without spending any money, but even the amount of traffic that goes through the bartering sections of the site is nothing when compared to the traffic ebay sees; where people trade goods for actual money.

I believe that in the recession, people are looking for ways to save money here and there, but I haven’t seen a lot of bartering going on. I haven’t even seen a lot of haggling either.

Stores that are hurting right now, like jewelry stores should be more willing to haggle on prices, but as Chris has recently seen, that’s not always the case, even when it comes to jewelry that is grossly overpriced.

Source

Is a four day work week ideal to you?

Question:

Some employers are opting for a four day work week to help with the loss of profits from the recession and they are choosing to go this route instead of firing some of their staff.

How do you feel about a four day work week and would you be willing to try it out even if the recession wasn’t hurting business?

Answer:

I think we’re all programmed to want to work as little as possible but be paid the same. When it comes down to it, I would rather have the salary for that extra day than have the day off.

However, I may be in the minority because according to an article from Time Magazine, 17,000 workers in Utah have been trying out the four day work week and have really grown to like it.

The discount retailer Dollar General is planning its initial public offering in an attempt to raise up to $750 million in a preliminary filing. However, it is unclear how the proceeds will be spent. What many investors do know is that a large portion of the money will be used to pay down the company’s debt.

There will also be a $200 million dividend paid to the existing shareholders.

Dollar General has been doing particularly well in the current recession due to the fact that many consumers have been looking for a way to save money and make their dollars stretch a bit further. Dollar General isn’t like actual dollar stores like the Dollar Tree. Dollar General sells name brand goods like Clorox, Herbal Essence, and Huggies. The stores feature prices that are sometimes cheaper and the stores are small so that shopping is quicker and more manageable to shop in.

Sales have grown 13% in the last quarter for the discount retailer. The growth means that Dollar General has become one of the big guys in the retail game. Wal-Mart sales have declined 1.2% in the most recent quarter and even CostCo’s sales were down 8%.

Unfortunately for Dollar General, the debt the company owes is something that keeps investors at bay. The company’s debt stood at $4.1 billion as of May 1st. The company’s lease obligations aren’t even factored into the total debt. Of the 8,577 stores that the company runs, most of them are leased.

The amount of debt and lease obligations could be something that holds back some investors from putting their money into the company, regardless of the amount of profits and sales the company has realized in the past year.

Where are you putting your money?

Question:

Recession! That’s a word that people are really turning a deaf ear to. However, there are a few things that we all still need to remember and do while the market is still down and the economy is nursing it wounds.

Money is the biggest issue. It’s something everyone wants, so where are you putting your money these days?

Answer:

Right now, analysts are warning against putting your money in the stock market, they’re warning against putting your money in real estate, it doesn’t seem like your money is safe anywhere. However, if you put your money in a mutual fund that tracks the market on a whole, perhaps you may just beat inflation for the time being. This may have to do for some of us who don’t have the time to micromanage our portfolios and watch every move the market makes.

Over the years, financial commercials have changed with the times. Watch the video above to see how the ads have changed in the past twenty years.

It looks like some companies really thought they had this recession, but it turns out that they didn’t know what to expect. I actually really enjoyed this.

People are angry at Ben Bernanke and I can understand why. This is the same guy who has led us on a crazy ride and given us all a tough lesson on how to not manage an economy over the past few years.

If you want to see all the things that Bernanke has said over the past few years, then watch the video above. It’s rather insightful into how he thought and what he thought about our economy leading up to the recession.