Filed under: College, Career, Recession
If you’re a truck driver, a teacher or a technician, then you are one hot catch in this sluggish job market. That’s according to the temp agency Manpower, which does an annual Talent Shortage Survey and found that 30% of employers worldwide are still struggling this year to find qualified job candidates, especially skilled tradespeople, sales representatives and technicians. (If you want to see the global results, go here and download “2009 Talent Shortage Results Report.”)
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Filed under: Banks, Tax, Bankruptcy
A lot of people are having a tough time paying their taxes these days, but that’s still not likely to generate much sympathy for the former Wachovia bank in Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania. After the branch — the rural town’s only bank — closed last month, an enterprising local reporter started digging through public records and discovered that the property was sold at auction the previous September after the bank blew off its tax bills for two years.
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Filed under: Retire, Career, Recession
I’m not a big fan of job fairs, mainly because they’re too general and most of the employers are looking for cheap, entry-level workers.
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Filed under: College, Career, Wealth, Recession
As if graduating into a sour job market, with record levels of education and credit card debt isn’t enough, the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports that members of the class of 2009 who do get a job will be cursed by low starting salaries for years to come.
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Filed under: Credit, Debt, Celebs & Money
American Express has sued Curt Cobain widow-turned-rocker-turned-actress Courtney Love for $352,059.67 in unpaid charges and fees on her Amex Gold, Centurion and Platinum Cards.
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Filed under: Bargains, Budgets, Home, Insurance, Real Estate, Saving, Recession, Buyer Beware
When times are tough, we all look for ways to better plan repairs and cut unexpected costs. If you own a home, you may be more tempted to purchase a home warranty to help avoid the financial surprise of an unexpected repair.
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Filed under: College
Imagine enrolling in college and taking on tens of thousands in dollars in debt to pay for it, planning to pay off the debt with a job as a teacher, participating in one of the numerous programs that offer loan forgiveness to people who work in low-paying, high-karma jobs for a few years. Then you graduate and find out that the program you were planning on no longer exists or, worse, you get a job and work hard and then get a letter saying that you won’t receive as much loan forgiveness as you had originally been led to believe.
That’s exactly the situation that student debtors across the country are finding themselves in as state budget cuts reduce funds available for paying off loans. The New York Times reports that “From Kentucky to Iowa to California, loan forgiveness programs are on the chopping block. Typically founded by their states to help students pay for college, the state agencies and nonprofit organizations that make student loans and sponsor these programs are getting less money from the federal government and are having difficulty raising money elsewhere as a result of the financial crisis.”
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Filed under: Debt, Home, Real Estate, Recession, Investing
Home prices have fallen 32.2% since peaking in the second quarter of 2006 and are at levels not seen since the end of 2002. Even in areas that never had the huge run up in real estate prices, like in Milwaukee where I live, assessed values are decreasing.
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Filed under: College, Kids and Money
Bummer, dude. Not only are people spending less on gifts for new college grads, but the gifts they’re buying are decidedly practical in nature — a true sign of these recessionary times.
According to PriceGrabber.com, 36% of Americans plan to give a graduation gift this year. Among these, a whopping 77% said they’ll be giving practical gifts like laptops or work clothes that will help the new grad land or settle in at their first job. The remainder plan to give gifts suitable for outside the cubicle: jewelry, video games, non-work clothes and the like. PriceGrabber’s research also said over half of graduation gift-givers will be spending less than in previous years.
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Filed under: Banks, Borrowing, Credit, Debt, Home, Real Estate, Ripoffs and Scams, Saving, Wealth, Recession, Bankruptcy
Many books will be written about the subprime fiasco, but I doubt any will match the verisimilitude of Busted, Edmund L. Andrews’ account of his own personal mortgage disaster. Andrews, an economics reporter for the New York Times, was covering the market meltdown as a journalist — even as the pressure of his own subprime home mortgage was tearing apart his personal finances and his marriage.
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