I'm not looking to sell my hair. I'm just trying to understand how this works. So, I understand you can sell your hair on thehairtrader.com. I understand that you should ask for cash only too. But, how do you receive the cash? If the person lives in another state, it's not really easy for you to meet and get the cash. Can you use PayPal?
Also, does precut hair sell better than hair that's cut after it's sold?
@Robin - Cashing out a policy based on a blanket idea that whole life is bad and term life is cheaper can be wasteful on a number of levels (please read the article for the reasons why). It pays to truly investigate your options. No two whole life policies are the same; read the fine print and consult an unbiased expert.
PS - I have no vested interest in promoting whole life, and in my 10 years in the financial planning industry, I only arranged for 2 whole life policies for clients, and it was because the clients specifically requested them (for their kids). As a general rule I vastly prefer Universal Life to Whole Life, and Term insurance over permanent insurance most of the time.
But I have also seen many clients who already had whole life policies, and would take huge tax hits and would lose money invested in the policy to cash it out. There are always options.
Something that needs to be considered is the gender-driven wage gap. It's all well and good to go with the philosophy of life being unfair, but when a man in my industry with the same educational and experience as I have makes 20K more than I do, I think that's crap.
That's not the best part, though. Guess what happens if you receive one of them there bad checks and try to cash it? Yep, you get charged a "returned check fee." So while the sucker on the other end is paying $38 in NSF charges for the single check, the recipient is paying another $38 for "returned check." And then--get this--many banks will submit the check two times in a row, DOUBLING all the fees. There's no reason in the world for a bank to submit the same check twice within one hour except to milk those fees. This happened to me a couple of times with a credit union account. The only reason we kept the account was to get a discount from our auto insurance for using automatic withdrawal. The problem is that statements are issued on the 5th of the month, and the overdraft came out on the 7th. A couple of times, that hypnotized me into thinking there was enough money in the account, and it got overdrawn, and we were charged two $25 overdraft fees. Grr! The last time it happened, I figured this out two days in advance, on the 5th, and I called my auto insurance. There was NOTHING they could do to stop the draft, they said. It was already "in the computer." I called the bank, and there was nothing THEY could do to stop it. The bank was in another town, and I could not drive two hours to make a deposit. My primary bank account comes with a limited number of free wire services, so I tried to wire money to the account. That didn't work, either, for some reason.
Anyway, this gets me very steamed up. That is the number one reason I no longer allow automatic withdrawals for any reason. You completely lose control over your own bank account. Another thing to think about is that when you allow automatic debit on a credit card, you can never cancel it on your end. You have to get the vendor to cancel it, and if there's a conflict, you have to go through a lengthy appeal with your credit card company. You can even cancel the credit card, and that debit will still go through.. I don't know if it works that way with bank debit cards, but it's creepy and I won't have anything to do with it. Someone wants my money, then I have to give it to them. Period.
I use a checking account that automatically opens a margin lending account if you overdraw. There's a reasonable interest rate on the margin account. No overdraft fees.
I agree with Greg because employers try to pay people as little as possible. During the dotcom bust a lot of people settled for lower salaries here in the valley, and then when times got better new hires were getting paid way more than them. the employers are able to get away with this due to secret salary information.
I really like the idea of making my own baby wipes, I will try this and see how it works. As far as diaper rash cream, though, I stay away from Petroleum Jelly. My second son got a really bad rash that got so bad it was blistering and bleeding. As it turned out, the rash had been worsened because he had an allergic reaction to the diaper rash cream we were using. I talked to a nurse that specialized in home remedies, she told me to use a mix of 8oz of water and 1 tsp of baking soda, spray it on him, let it dry, then use A&D Ointment as it not only blocks like petrolleum jelly but also promotes the skin to heal itself. I have never used anything else since!
Guest#66, if you never ask the employer then you will never know if they are flexible on vacation/pay. In one company I worked for I asked for more pay and they said no, so I asked for more stock options and also days off, and they gave that to me. So you should always negotiate somewhat no matter who is offering the job. If they say no, so what? If you are afraid of losing the offer you shouldn't be, because it takes time for companies to recruit people and they expect people to negotiate.
I strongly believe that secret salaries benefit employers, and that if employees were smarter, they would all share their salaries with each other.
I was always willing to share my salary with my coworkers, and was always surprised when they were so uncomfortable sharing theirs. To this day, not one of my coworkers who know what I made has ever shared their salary. They just smile, nod their head, and follow a different train of thought hoping that I won't ask them point-blank what they're making. Maybe it was easier for me to share because I knew I was at the low end of the totem pole, and maybe I'd be acting differently if I was one of the bigger earners at the company.
I believe employers like secret salaries because they have a lot more leverage. In the world of secret salaries, when your boss is negotiating with you for your raise, they only need to give you enough to make you relatively happy. Note that that is totally different from giving you a "fair" salary compared to everyone else.
However, I'm not sure a totally transparent salary structure is the way to go either. If all salaries at a company were known, then the employer would just adjust the budget down for all salaries, and employees would be making less across the board.
So, I'm in favor of transparent salaries between coworkers, but without letting management know that you all know each other's salaries.
I don't have any direct relationships with credit card companies. Once in a while, they advertise across several blogs. At any rate, when I write about card companies, I take the middle ground.
I've actually also written about how much card companies can be exploitative. I've written several articles that point out the many problems with credit cards due to their misuse. But I also see the good they can do when they are used in the appropriate manner.
In this piece, I chose to write about the positive side of credit cards, just to discuss my personal experience with them, perhaps in response to the negativity a lot of people have on the subject. There is life after debt, and perspectives change depending on which side of debt you are situated.
It was a good run. For over three years, the number of unemployed in Germany had been dropping. But statistics for December show that the trend has come to an end as the economic crisis hits the labor market.
For years, Germany had seen its unemployment rate drop steadily, all the way down to a November total of less than 3 million. That downward trend, though, has now officially come to an end. According to a report released on Wednesday by the Federal Labor Agency, which tracks German unemployment statistics, the number of jobless rose by 114,000 in December, bringing the total to 3.102 million or 7.4 percent.
Annjo, you seem very knowledgeable about Germany’s unemployment rate. Also what is the average German salary in US dollars, and how much does the average German pay for health insurance? You may already that the European countries calculate unemployment differently than in the US. Last summer my families spent three weeks in Germany visiting family, and were impressed over the low levels of poverty.
BTW/my husband owns a HVAC company that employee 12 people so we do have a good understanding of employee compensation. The biggest problem for employers is healthcare.
Xin Lu, are you suggesting that I can get a job from Wal-Mart or CVS and negotiate vacation time?
I advocate the use of services to find out what salary you should be making. My experience with salaries is that you will always be underpaid relative to what you can be making elsewhere, but its your employer's job to hide this from you. If there is a small difference between your current salary and the potential salary at another firm you are likely to stay because of your familiarity with the firm, your role, people, etc... When the salary difference is great, that's when you will jump ship. Just my thoughts.....
I'm kind of surprised that people would want to know this stuff. Especially Penelope's post. Can you imagine if you made less than someone who is your "peer" and has your exact same title?
And if you went into your boss' office and said "Why don't I make what X is making?" And your boss said, "Because we value her more than you. Sorry, but we want to be open."
Umm, that wouldn't fly. People would leave left and right and office drama would be sky high.
I just don't see how having salary data out in the open could work in the real world. Find out what others make in your industry to get an idea. But in your office? Not a good idea.
If your co-worker get high paid compare to you. What does this mean?
He / she is better then you?
Luck?
He / she manage to win boss heart?
Nor matter what it is; I always believe work hard and work smart are important. Therefore, you should not waste your time and effort to figure out your co-worker pay.
Unemployment is not welfare. It is an insurance system. Workers do not directly fund unemployment. SO poor people are not paying for the unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits are paid for by employer insurance. The insurance rate is directly impacted by the businesses unemployment rates.
The extension of unemployment benefits in the Obama stimulus package IS welfare, it is not being paid for through either state unemployment taxes or federal FUTA taxes; it is being "paid" for through general taxes and deficit spending. Regular unemployment insurance is indirectly paid for by employees, since it is part of the employer's labor cost which would otherwise have been paid to the employee.
I don't have a credit card, and will never have one ever again. Why? Cuz, I lost control? No, it's because debt = risk. I never had an issue in the past with CCs other than waking up one day saying, "Huh! Why don't I just not stop spending for a month and simply get ahead of my spending and not pay a balance off ever again?" Keep playing the game long enough and one day, if life throws you a curve-ball, there you are, with a balance that you can't afford.
It's just simpler to pay for stuff, you know, with money. I don't have a balance to pay off each month. I don't need a balance. The only real reason to have a balance at all is because you don't have the cash. Cash back? Points? I get points because I am forced to use my company's CC for work. Are those points incentive for me to get a CC if I didn't work for them? Nope. Credit card arbitrage? Maybe a fun hobby, but it is a bit like playing with fire... and a lot of twiddly work for little gain.
Tracking your spending? Use a debit card. Works just as well.
Yes there are a small minority of people that don't bother trying to find a job if they have unemployment insurance. That hardly means we should abandon the system or that its broken.
What is the optimal duration and amount for unemployment? If you increase unemployment then people will take longer to find jobs. Thats not just lazyiness or people taking vacations, its a lot of people making logical choices to try to continue to find suitable work at their skill level rather than settle for underemployment or drastic life changes.
Unemployment maximums differ in every state. $475 is a high benefit and most states don't hit that level. To get the maximum benefit in general you have to have higher wages. So nobody is getting unemployment above the wages they used to get. TO settle for a job making less than unemployment is to settle for a job making much less than your previous job. Most of us don't *want* to take a large pay cut after unemployment. That is a last resort. The worse the economy is then the harder it is to find a job at any level.
Unemployment is not welfare. It is an insurance system. Workers do not directly fund unemployment. SO poor people are not paying for the unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits are paid for by employer insurance. The insurance rate is directly impacted by the businesses unemployment rates. If a business rarely lays off people their premiums will stay lower. If a company has high layoff rates then their workers compensation fees go up.
Not having a cushion of money to leave or a good enough credit score to get a decent credit card with a bank, I have opted out of using a traditional checking account. I've gotten my pay on a prepaid debit card through my employer for the last few years. I use a money order to pay rent and everything else is easily paid online. Transactions update to the web site much faster than they ever posted to my old bank, so I always know exactly how much money I have.
Once in a great while, I get the dreaded decline at a cash register, but it sure beats the alternative. The card issuer makes money by charging retailers for credit card transactions and for fees on cash withdrawal from an ATM. I don't pay the first and avoid the second by getting cash back at retailers. But who uses cash anymore anyway, right?
I've never been hired for a job in which I wasn't specifically instructed NEVER to inquire what others were making. It's a tool that employers use to make sure that they can pay the least amount possible for talent.
I've frequently been shocked to find out that much less qualified people doing the same job as me are getting paid higher. Because I always go ahead and ask, anyway.
The effect of longer UI benefits on unemployment duration has been studied to death. Although you are correct that UI benefits are typically extended during periods of higher unemployment, there is plenty of economic evidence that, irrespective of that, longer benefits CAUSE (not just correlate with) longer unemployment.
Economists have studied the average amount of time people spend looking for work at various stages during their unemployment, and there is absolutely no question that people who receive UI benefits on average spend less time looking than those who do not, and that on average they intensify their efforts considerably as the end of their UI benefits approaches, more than tripling their daily time spent in job-seeking efforts. I hope you will agree and not require "studies" to prove the obvious point that people are more likely to find work if they spend more time looking for it. As for the studies that show the relationship, if you are actually interested, start with these:
--David Card and Phillip B. Levine, "Extended Benefits and the Duration of UI Spells: Evidence from the New Jersey Extended Benefit Program," Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 78 (1-2) (October 2000), pp. 107-138;
--Lawrence Katz and Bruce Meyer, "The Impact of the Potential Duration of Unemployment Benefits on the Duration of Unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1990), pp. 45-72;
--Stepan Jurajda, "Estimating the Effect of Unemployment Insurance Compensation on the Labor Market Histories of Displaced Workers," Journal of Econometrics, Vol. 108, No. 2 (2002), pp. 227-252;
--John T. Addison and Pedro Portugal, "How Does the Unemployment Insurance System Shape the Time Profile of Jobless Duration?" Economics Letters, Vol. 85, No. 2 (November 2004), pp. 229-234;
--Alan B. Krueger and Bruce D. Meyer, "Labor Supply Effects of Social Insurance," in A. J. Auerbach and M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, First Edition, Vol. 4 (2002), pp. 2327-2392; and
--Rafael Lalive, Jan Van Ours, and Josef Zweimüller, "How Changes in Financial Incentives Affect the Duration of Unemployment," Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 73, No. 4 (October 2006), pp. 1009-1038.
You could also look at the average duration of unemployment in OECD countries with more generous welfare/unemployment benefits, and I believe you will consistently find that the more generous the benefits, the longer the average unemployment duration, regardless of whether the country's economy is in recession or in growth mode.
People respond to incentives. This is elementary. Maybe all the unemployed people you know really do urgently want to get a job, and maybe they really are out looking 40 hours a week, but that only means that you travel in an unusual circle; the AVERAGE worker does not respond that way. The AVERAGE unemployed worker on UI benefits (at least historically) spends about 20 minutes a day looking for work in the earlier period of UI benefits, and about 70 minutes a day in the last few weeks before UI benefits run out.
Again, given human nature, the causation here is so obvious it is hard to understand why anyone would bother to argue about it. It is only one of several factors that need to be considered when deciding whether extending benefits is a good idea, but it does need to be considered and not ignored.
The generous employment benefit structure of many European countries (along with other government policies like mandated job tenure) has led to chronically higher unemployment rates than ours, longer duration of unemployment, lower growth rates, lower average net wages after taxes, and higher proportions of discouraged workers.
They may also have contributed to the dearth of children in some European countries and declining native populations, since "job security" also means you are locked into your job and risk much more by giving it up to stay home for a few years with young children, an option much more available to American families and much appreciated by many. In Germany, for instance, only 13.7% of the population is under 15 years old, and that group is disproportionately born to recent immigrants; in the U.S., it's 20.2%.
Germany, Sweden and other countries have been trying to reform their labor laws for several years now, tightening up benefits in order to increase productivity and lower unemployment rates, with limited success. It's ironic that we seem doomed to repeat their failed experiment, even as they are struggling to recover from it.
I agree that you shouldn't get upset or obsess about someone else in the office making more than you do. But finding out how your own salary stacks up to your peers is useful data. If you have no idea at all how much your peers make compared to you then you have less advantage in salary negotiations. If everyone makes more than you then you've got a good argument for a raise. If you make more than everyone else then fighting for raises might be harder. Without knowing what your peers make you're flying blind and at a disadvantage.
If you can get anonymous data on salary levels from a website that would be preferable. But you can't always get that info from websites for many employers. So comparing with your coworkers may be the only way.
Investigate term life insurance. If the premiums are less than whole life insurance (which they probably are), buy the term life insurance. Cash out the whole life insurance. Invest it in something that actually makes money (rather than the negative return that whole life guarantees). Don't touch it. By the time your term life insurance expires, that money alone will go a long way toward self insuring you.
Whole life insurance is a rip off, unless you already have it and you can't get any other type (medical problems, etc.)
Hi,
I'm not looking to sell my hair. I'm just trying to understand how this works. So, I understand you can sell your hair on thehairtrader.com. I understand that you should ask for cash only too. But, how do you receive the cash? If the person lives in another state, it's not really easy for you to meet and get the cash. Can you use PayPal?
Also, does precut hair sell better than hair that's cut after it's sold?
Thanks!
@Robin - Cashing out a policy based on a blanket idea that whole life is bad and term life is cheaper can be wasteful on a number of levels (please read the article for the reasons why). It pays to truly investigate your options. No two whole life policies are the same; read the fine print and consult an unbiased expert.
PS - I have no vested interest in promoting whole life, and in my 10 years in the financial planning industry, I only arranged for 2 whole life policies for clients, and it was because the clients specifically requested them (for their kids). As a general rule I vastly prefer Universal Life to Whole Life, and Term insurance over permanent insurance most of the time.
But I have also seen many clients who already had whole life policies, and would take huge tax hits and would lose money invested in the policy to cash it out. There are always options.
Something that needs to be considered is the gender-driven wage gap. It's all well and good to go with the philosophy of life being unfair, but when a man in my industry with the same educational and experience as I have makes 20K more than I do, I think that's crap.
That's not the best part, though. Guess what happens if you receive one of them there bad checks and try to cash it? Yep, you get charged a "returned check fee." So while the sucker on the other end is paying $38 in NSF charges for the single check, the recipient is paying another $38 for "returned check." And then--get this--many banks will submit the check two times in a row, DOUBLING all the fees. There's no reason in the world for a bank to submit the same check twice within one hour except to milk those fees. This happened to me a couple of times with a credit union account. The only reason we kept the account was to get a discount from our auto insurance for using automatic withdrawal. The problem is that statements are issued on the 5th of the month, and the overdraft came out on the 7th. A couple of times, that hypnotized me into thinking there was enough money in the account, and it got overdrawn, and we were charged two $25 overdraft fees. Grr! The last time it happened, I figured this out two days in advance, on the 5th, and I called my auto insurance. There was NOTHING they could do to stop the draft, they said. It was already "in the computer." I called the bank, and there was nothing THEY could do to stop it. The bank was in another town, and I could not drive two hours to make a deposit. My primary bank account comes with a limited number of free wire services, so I tried to wire money to the account. That didn't work, either, for some reason.
Anyway, this gets me very steamed up. That is the number one reason I no longer allow automatic withdrawals for any reason. You completely lose control over your own bank account. Another thing to think about is that when you allow automatic debit on a credit card, you can never cancel it on your end. You have to get the vendor to cancel it, and if there's a conflict, you have to go through a lengthy appeal with your credit card company. You can even cancel the credit card, and that debit will still go through.. I don't know if it works that way with bank debit cards, but it's creepy and I won't have anything to do with it. Someone wants my money, then I have to give it to them. Period.
I use a checking account that automatically opens a margin lending account if you overdraw. There's a reasonable interest rate on the margin account. No overdraft fees.
Catherine Shaffer
Wise Bread Contributor
I wrote a post about this a while ago: http://baglady.dreamhosters.com/2008/05/08/the-pros-and-cons-of-public-s...
I agree with Greg because employers try to pay people as little as possible. During the dotcom bust a lot of people settled for lower salaries here in the valley, and then when times got better new hires were getting paid way more than them. the employers are able to get away with this due to secret salary information.
I don't know about everyone else, but I think the two main points are these:
Once you figure out those numbers and can make a convincing case to your boss that you deserve that number, you've done all you can do.
Forget about what other people in your company are making...you can't control that.
The Writer's Coin | Follow me on Twitter
I really like the idea of making my own baby wipes, I will try this and see how it works. As far as diaper rash cream, though, I stay away from Petroleum Jelly. My second son got a really bad rash that got so bad it was blistering and bleeding. As it turned out, the rash had been worsened because he had an allergic reaction to the diaper rash cream we were using. I talked to a nurse that specialized in home remedies, she told me to use a mix of 8oz of water and 1 tsp of baking soda, spray it on him, let it dry, then use A&D Ointment as it not only blocks like petrolleum jelly but also promotes the skin to heal itself. I have never used anything else since!
Guest#66, if you never ask the employer then you will never know if they are flexible on vacation/pay. In one company I worked for I asked for more pay and they said no, so I asked for more stock options and also days off, and they gave that to me. So you should always negotiate somewhat no matter who is offering the job. If they say no, so what? If you are afraid of losing the offer you shouldn't be, because it takes time for companies to recruit people and they expect people to negotiate.
I strongly believe that secret salaries benefit employers, and that if employees were smarter, they would all share their salaries with each other.
I was always willing to share my salary with my coworkers, and was always surprised when they were so uncomfortable sharing theirs. To this day, not one of my coworkers who know what I made has ever shared their salary. They just smile, nod their head, and follow a different train of thought hoping that I won't ask them point-blank what they're making. Maybe it was easier for me to share because I knew I was at the low end of the totem pole, and maybe I'd be acting differently if I was one of the bigger earners at the company.
I believe employers like secret salaries because they have a lot more leverage. In the world of secret salaries, when your boss is negotiating with you for your raise, they only need to give you enough to make you relatively happy. Note that that is totally different from giving you a "fair" salary compared to everyone else.
However, I'm not sure a totally transparent salary structure is the way to go either. If all salaries at a company were known, then the employer would just adjust the budget down for all salaries, and employees would be making less across the board.
So, I'm in favor of transparent salaries between coworkers, but without letting management know that you all know each other's salaries.
This is response to Wimsey's comment.
I don't have any direct relationships with credit card companies. Once in a while, they advertise across several blogs. At any rate, when I write about card companies, I take the middle ground.
I've actually also written about how much card companies can be exploitative. I've written several articles that point out the many problems with credit cards due to their misuse. But I also see the good they can do when they are used in the appropriate manner.
In this piece, I chose to write about the positive side of credit cards, just to discuss my personal experience with them, perhaps in response to the negativity a lot of people have on the subject. There is life after debt, and perspectives change depending on which side of debt you are situated.
SVB @ The Digerati Life
It was a good run. For over three years, the number of unemployed in Germany had been dropping. But statistics for December show that the trend has come to an end as the economic crisis hits the labor market.
For years, Germany had seen its unemployment rate drop steadily, all the way down to a November total of less than 3 million. That downward trend, though, has now officially come to an end. According to a report released on Wednesday by the Federal Labor Agency, which tracks German unemployment statistics, the number of jobless rose by 114,000 in December, bringing the total to 3.102 million or 7.4 percent.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,599969,00.html
Annjo, you seem very knowledgeable about Germany’s unemployment rate. Also what is the average German salary in US dollars, and how much does the average German pay for health insurance? You may already that the European countries calculate unemployment differently than in the US. Last summer my families spent three weeks in Germany visiting family, and were impressed over the low levels of poverty.
BTW/my husband owns a HVAC company that employee 12 people so we do have a good understanding of employee compensation. The biggest problem for employers is healthcare.
Xin Lu, are you suggesting that I can get a job from Wal-Mart or CVS and negotiate vacation time?
I advocate the use of services to find out what salary you should be making. My experience with salaries is that you will always be underpaid relative to what you can be making elsewhere, but its your employer's job to hide this from you. If there is a small difference between your current salary and the potential salary at another firm you are likely to stay because of your familiarity with the firm, your role, people, etc... When the salary difference is great, that's when you will jump ship. Just my thoughts.....
I'm kind of surprised that people would want to know this stuff. Especially Penelope's post. Can you imagine if you made less than someone who is your "peer" and has your exact same title?
And if you went into your boss' office and said "Why don't I make what X is making?" And your boss said, "Because we value her more than you. Sorry, but we want to be open."
Umm, that wouldn't fly. People would leave left and right and office drama would be sky high.
I just don't see how having salary data out in the open could work in the real world. Find out what others make in your industry to get an idea. But in your office? Not a good idea.
The Writer's Coin | Follow me on Twitter
If your co-worker get high paid compare to you. What does this mean?
He / she is better then you?
Luck?
He / she manage to win boss heart?
Nor matter what it is; I always believe work hard and work smart are important. Therefore, you should not waste your time and effort to figure out your co-worker pay.
Unemployment is not welfare. It is an insurance system. Workers do not directly fund unemployment. SO poor people are not paying for the unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits are paid for by employer insurance. The insurance rate is directly impacted by the businesses unemployment rates.
The extension of unemployment benefits in the Obama stimulus package IS welfare, it is not being paid for through either state unemployment taxes or federal FUTA taxes; it is being "paid" for through general taxes and deficit spending. Regular unemployment insurance is indirectly paid for by employees, since it is part of the employer's labor cost which would otherwise have been paid to the employee.
Would be awesome.
Penelope Trunk had a great post about this:
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/07/11/how-to-figure-out-how-much-you-...
I don't have a credit card, and will never have one ever again. Why? Cuz, I lost control? No, it's because debt = risk. I never had an issue in the past with CCs other than waking up one day saying, "Huh! Why don't I just not stop spending for a month and simply get ahead of my spending and not pay a balance off ever again?" Keep playing the game long enough and one day, if life throws you a curve-ball, there you are, with a balance that you can't afford.
It's just simpler to pay for stuff, you know, with money. I don't have a balance to pay off each month. I don't need a balance. The only real reason to have a balance at all is because you don't have the cash. Cash back? Points? I get points because I am forced to use my company's CC for work. Are those points incentive for me to get a CC if I didn't work for them? Nope. Credit card arbitrage? Maybe a fun hobby, but it is a bit like playing with fire... and a lot of twiddly work for little gain.
Tracking your spending? Use a debit card. Works just as well.
-t
Yes there are a small minority of people that don't bother trying to find a job if they have unemployment insurance. That hardly means we should abandon the system or that its broken.
What is the optimal duration and amount for unemployment? If you increase unemployment then people will take longer to find jobs. Thats not just lazyiness or people taking vacations, its a lot of people making logical choices to try to continue to find suitable work at their skill level rather than settle for underemployment or drastic life changes.
Unemployment maximums differ in every state. $475 is a high benefit and most states don't hit that level. To get the maximum benefit in general you have to have higher wages. So nobody is getting unemployment above the wages they used to get. TO settle for a job making less than unemployment is to settle for a job making much less than your previous job. Most of us don't *want* to take a large pay cut after unemployment. That is a last resort. The worse the economy is then the harder it is to find a job at any level.
Unemployment is not welfare. It is an insurance system. Workers do not directly fund unemployment. SO poor people are not paying for the unemployment benefits. Unemployment benefits are paid for by employer insurance. The insurance rate is directly impacted by the businesses unemployment rates. If a business rarely lays off people their premiums will stay lower. If a company has high layoff rates then their workers compensation fees go up.
Not having a cushion of money to leave or a good enough credit score to get a decent credit card with a bank, I have opted out of using a traditional checking account. I've gotten my pay on a prepaid debit card through my employer for the last few years. I use a money order to pay rent and everything else is easily paid online. Transactions update to the web site much faster than they ever posted to my old bank, so I always know exactly how much money I have.
Once in a great while, I get the dreaded decline at a cash register, but it sure beats the alternative. The card issuer makes money by charging retailers for credit card transactions and for fees on cash withdrawal from an ATM. I don't pay the first and avoid the second by getting cash back at retailers. But who uses cash anymore anyway, right?
As long as you keep a cool head about it, knowing your co-workers salaries can be a great starting point in negotiating for a raise!
I've never been hired for a job in which I wasn't specifically instructed NEVER to inquire what others were making. It's a tool that employers use to make sure that they can pay the least amount possible for talent.
I've frequently been shocked to find out that much less qualified people doing the same job as me are getting paid higher. Because I always go ahead and ask, anyway.
The effect of longer UI benefits on unemployment duration has been studied to death. Although you are correct that UI benefits are typically extended during periods of higher unemployment, there is plenty of economic evidence that, irrespective of that, longer benefits CAUSE (not just correlate with) longer unemployment.
Economists have studied the average amount of time people spend looking for work at various stages during their unemployment, and there is absolutely no question that people who receive UI benefits on average spend less time looking than those who do not, and that on average they intensify their efforts considerably as the end of their UI benefits approaches, more than tripling their daily time spent in job-seeking efforts. I hope you will agree and not require "studies" to prove the obvious point that people are more likely to find work if they spend more time looking for it. As for the studies that show the relationship, if you are actually interested, start with these:
--David Card and Phillip B. Levine, "Extended Benefits and the Duration of UI Spells: Evidence from the New Jersey Extended Benefit Program," Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 78 (1-2) (October 2000), pp. 107-138;
--Lawrence Katz and Bruce Meyer, "The Impact of the Potential Duration of Unemployment Benefits on the Duration of Unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1990), pp. 45-72;
--Stepan Jurajda, "Estimating the Effect of Unemployment Insurance Compensation on the Labor Market Histories of Displaced Workers," Journal of Econometrics, Vol. 108, No. 2 (2002), pp. 227-252;
--John T. Addison and Pedro Portugal, "How Does the Unemployment Insurance System Shape the Time Profile of Jobless Duration?" Economics Letters, Vol. 85, No. 2 (November 2004), pp. 229-234;
--Alan B. Krueger and Bruce D. Meyer, "Labor Supply Effects of Social Insurance," in A. J. Auerbach and M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, First Edition, Vol. 4 (2002), pp. 2327-2392; and
--Rafael Lalive, Jan Van Ours, and Josef Zweimüller, "How Changes in Financial Incentives Affect the Duration of Unemployment," Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 73, No. 4 (October 2006), pp. 1009-1038.
You could also look at the average duration of unemployment in OECD countries with more generous welfare/unemployment benefits, and I believe you will consistently find that the more generous the benefits, the longer the average unemployment duration, regardless of whether the country's economy is in recession or in growth mode.
People respond to incentives. This is elementary. Maybe all the unemployed people you know really do urgently want to get a job, and maybe they really are out looking 40 hours a week, but that only means that you travel in an unusual circle; the AVERAGE worker does not respond that way. The AVERAGE unemployed worker on UI benefits (at least historically) spends about 20 minutes a day looking for work in the earlier period of UI benefits, and about 70 minutes a day in the last few weeks before UI benefits run out.
Again, given human nature, the causation here is so obvious it is hard to understand why anyone would bother to argue about it. It is only one of several factors that need to be considered when deciding whether extending benefits is a good idea, but it does need to be considered and not ignored.
The generous employment benefit structure of many European countries (along with other government policies like mandated job tenure) has led to chronically higher unemployment rates than ours, longer duration of unemployment, lower growth rates, lower average net wages after taxes, and higher proportions of discouraged workers.
They may also have contributed to the dearth of children in some European countries and declining native populations, since "job security" also means you are locked into your job and risk much more by giving it up to stay home for a few years with young children, an option much more available to American families and much appreciated by many. In Germany, for instance, only 13.7% of the population is under 15 years old, and that group is disproportionately born to recent immigrants; in the U.S., it's 20.2%.
Germany, Sweden and other countries have been trying to reform their labor laws for several years now, tightening up benefits in order to increase productivity and lower unemployment rates, with limited success. It's ironic that we seem doomed to repeat their failed experiment, even as they are struggling to recover from it.
I agree that you shouldn't get upset or obsess about someone else in the office making more than you do. But finding out how your own salary stacks up to your peers is useful data. If you have no idea at all how much your peers make compared to you then you have less advantage in salary negotiations. If everyone makes more than you then you've got a good argument for a raise. If you make more than everyone else then fighting for raises might be harder. Without knowing what your peers make you're flying blind and at a disadvantage.
If you can get anonymous data on salary levels from a website that would be preferable. But you can't always get that info from websites for many employers. So comparing with your coworkers may be the only way.
Investigate term life insurance. If the premiums are less than whole life insurance (which they probably are), buy the term life insurance. Cash out the whole life insurance. Invest it in something that actually makes money (rather than the negative return that whole life guarantees). Don't touch it. By the time your term life insurance expires, that money alone will go a long way toward self insuring you.
Whole life insurance is a rip off, unless you already have it and you can't get any other type (medical problems, etc.)