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While every situation is different, there are only a few types of retirement for those of us in the working class. Before I get to the retirement concept, here’s what I mean by “working class.” The working class includes those who need to survive by trading their time and effort for an income. They could be management level workers or not, they could be small business owners. They could be educators or administrators. They could have an office in a commercial building, they could sit most of their day in a cubicle, or they could work from home. The working class is a broad category, and it includes the working poor as well as the upper-middle class with investments they hope will sustain them in their future.

If we just take “retirement” to be defined as the point at which someone either stops working because they need to or want to, or the point at which someone no longer needs to work to pay for their expenses for what they assume will be the rest of their lives, there are only several categories of retirement.

The working retirement. The working retirement defies a traditional definition of retirement, stopping work, but it’s still commonly considered retirement. It may include downsizing from a career to just a job, or it may signify a late career change. In one situation, a working-class individual, perhaps someone living paycheck-to-paycheck in an office job, is asked to retire at a certain age of seniority. Perhaps his employer even offers an incentive for retiring.

Either the retiree hasn’t built up enough wealth to live comfortably his remaining years — a difficult task for a member of the working class — or he has but yet still has trouble managing expenses in retirement. For any reason, the retiree needs to supplement his government benefits or meager savings with additional cash flow. That cash flow must come from trading time and effort for income, that is, working. Without sufficient financial planning throughout his life, whether a result under-earning or over-spending or both, he must remain in the working class.

Those who love their jobs and can continue working until they are no longer physically able, due to death or disability, and never retire. A future with no retirement in sight could be the new reality for many within today’s generation of young workers. The situation might exist due to necessity — a working retirement is no retirement at all — or due to the idea of letting your career follow your passion. If you love what you do, perhaps “working” is not working at all, it’s just living.

But sometimes even people who love what they do want the flexibility to stop working at some point.

The reliant retirement. It’s fallen out of favor in modern American culture, at least for now, but sometimes the elderly who can no longer work to support themselves and who aren’t prepared to be financially independent in their retirement, can move in with their children. Family support has been a cornerstone of many societies, but with the acceleration of wealth in the twentieth century, the typical retirement life marketed so strongly and successfully involves separation from grown children, perhaps living in a community for seniors or at destination away from the cities, and a life of leisure.

Now, those who can’t afford to live that life and must rely on their children may feel like they have failed, but family support has been how societies historically deal with those in the working class who can no longer work.

In a reliant retirement, today’s retiree may also rely on assistance from the government. Social Security and Medicare exist to help maintain the solvency and health of a class of citizens that continues to grow as elderly health and longevity continue to improve. In decades past, a reliant retirement would find its funding source from pension plans and employee-sponsored benefits, but these have all but disappeared in favor of 401(k) plan where individuals bear the responsibility of sound investing.

In this category, retirees are most vulnerable to financial products that prey on financial insecurities. The promise of an up-front payment lures people to trade in their future pension checks. Reverse mortgages allow seniors to trade in the value of their home for an additional income stream. These conversions can be costly, and seniors tend to be particularly susceptible to clever marketing and high-pressure sales pitches.

The draw-down retirement. This, also known as the spend-down retirement, is a category that would satisfy most retirees. It takes work to get to this point, and for those who don’t start planning for retirement until late in their career, it might be the best possible outcome. The draw-down retirement is the state at which a worker or former worker can almost transcend socioeconomic classes. She has saved money through her lifetime, paid off debt and properly managed investments. She’s willing to cut back expenses when necessary.

Now, with her nest egg, she can afford retirement — perhaps not everything she dreamed of, but at least living enjoyably — by reducing the size of her assets each month. With $500,000 in the bank, more than many of today’s retirees, living off $40,000 each year might provide income for twelve years, more if the $500,000 is in investments which end up doing well, less if the nest egg is conservatively invested (such as in a savings account) or if the market crashes during retirement.

The result is the end of her life with declining assets, no assets, or worse, debt. She has no financial legacy, but for many, that’s not that much of a problem.

The independent retirement. This is financial nirvana, Enlightenment, the Holy Grail, heaven on Earth. Independent retirement is what everyone in the working class wants, but few will achieve. Financial independence is the only key for class transcendence: the true American dream. While financially independent persons don’t need to work to afford to live the life they want, many do, and are able to pursue the type of work that most satisfies them.

But even those who work during their financial independence may wish to stop at some point. And they can, because their financial independence means they don’t need to draw down their assets in order to live the life they want. They live off their interest and dividends from investments. For the working class, this is achievable when assets, invested in a good mix of stocks and bonds — relatively safe but by no means invincible to market forces — reach a level of twenty times what’s needed to cover expenses each year.

Someone who starts retirement by withdrawing the “safe withdrawal rate” of 4 percent of assets the first year and adjusts the amount of that withdrawal every year during retirement qualifies for “independent retirement” at the minimum level. This independence doesn’t always look like fancy living; with $1 million invested, that safe withdrawal provides only $40,000 in income at first. A retired family can live off $40,000, but it may not be the high-class retirement featured in the Florida or Arizona brochures. It may not be the the image of retirement depicted in investment managers’ television commercials. It may involve living in a low-cost area and finding activities that are inexpensive.

Independent retirement can be achieved at any time. It’s not limited to those who have worked for thirty or more years. “Early” independent retirement is possible, but you’ll find that most who promote this idea are often not financially independent. They may have scrimped and saved throughout the first ten years of their working lives, but you’ll find there are aspects of their lives they may not discuss much that belie their concept of early retirement:

  • He claims to have retired early, but he is still depending on income from some type of work. He may call it “passive income,” but there are very few routes to income that are truly passive.
  • He may have stopped working, but his spouse or another family member is contributing to the household income with a job. That’s a reliant retirement. It’s surely better than working yourself, but I bet your wife is bitter she’s continuing to work while you’re going around telling everyone you’re independently wealthy.
  • Some just use the term “early retirement” to mean a change in careers, usually from a job that is not personally fulfilling to one that is. The word “retirement” can have a variety of meanings or senses, so it helps to clarify.

For many in the working class, this final type of retirement, independent retirement, is the ultimate financial goal. It is the only option that offers the freedom to explore without fear of financial obstacles. Will you be able to reach this level of retirement in your lifetime? Perhaps, but if not, you can still survive and find happiness.

Photo: Flickr

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A friend of mine once lamented publicly: “When did the standard restaurant tip change from 15 percent to 20?” Sure, I remember paying typically 15 percent for a tip when I first started dining out with my friends. That was when I gained my first sense of independence from my parents twenty years ago, as a teenager in high school. At some point within these intervening years, I recognized that social convention called for a 20 percent tip. I didn’t complain; if you can’t afford to participate in the social expectations for dining out like tipping exceptionally, you can’t afford to dine out.

Perhaps some time in the past, a long, long time ago, the purpose of tipping was “to insure prompt service,” but that’s not the case today in the United States. (Actually, the word “tip” or “tips” was not coined as an acronym; someone retrofitted the oft-cited phrase to the word after the word had been in use, and it caught on like a pre-internet meme.) I’m not complaining, just pointing out how providing a small bonus on top of a published price is customary and expected for a number of services.

According to an informal survey conducted by Tom Frank, one of the founders of P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, 40 percent of restaurant-goers see tipping as an obligation and tip the same amount, 15 to 20 percent, regardless of their servers’ performance.

In other words, the waiters who don’t attend to your water glass and who don’t return your under-cooked meat generally earn the same tips that others do meet their patrons’ expectations.

In an article on Kiplinger, Frank suggests customers should reserve their best tips for when they receive the best service. The assumption here seems to be that by using tips as reward, ineffective waiters will determine what they need to do in order to warrant the best tips. Can you train your waiters with a monetary reward, like you might train a puppy with a treat?

I don’t think so. There are several problems with this theory.

What makes a tip a reward? In order to train someone using rewards, the reward must be recognized as such. If you leave a 20 percent tip to thank your waiter for performance, but many other customers also leave tips around the same amount, why would the waiter perceive this as a reward? He doesn’t know you normally tip 15 percent unless you’re a regular customer.

What exactly is the reward for? For a reward-based behavior modification system to be effective, the reward must come immediately after the behavior you wish to imprint. The last thing a waiter does before you tip is generally delivering the check. And many waiters seem to know that this is their chance to modify your behavior. Studies show that customers tip more when presented with a check with a hand-written “Thank you!” or a hand-drawn smiley face (the latter only if the waitress is female).

Because the tip is separated in time from the specific behavior, you can’t use a good tip to reinforce that positive behavior. The waiter doesn’t know what it was that inspired you to leave what you thought was a generous contribution.

Who really gets the tip? Although in the customer’s mind, a tip is reinforcement for the waiter’s behavior, in many restaurants the waiters pool their tips and must share their earnings with busing staff. The waiter may appreciate your extra five percentage points, but if that bonus gets spread among a group of people, he doesn’t benefit much from the reward. At the other end of the spectrum, under-tipping could punish more than just your own server.

The communal nature of tips in establishments managed with this method decreases the incentive for performing well unless the entire staff agrees to perform well.

Here is my tipping and restaurant behavior philosophy. I rarely receive what I perceive to be poor service, but I’m not saying I’m always a perfect customer.

  • I enter with a positive attitude. Being happy, inviting, friendly, and courteous are infectious. It starts a relationship, even one that will last no longer than two hours, on the right foot.
  • I know someone who used to treat waiters and waitresses as if they were house servants, using a tone of voice that subtly communicated that she was of a higher social standing than the lowly restaurant workers. It was a behavioral trait she inherited from her parents, but when she changed her behavior, she found that she received better service and her friends were no longer embarrassed to dine out with her. I always treat waiters with the respect I’d want in their position.
  • I admit I get frustrated sometimes, but I deal with it without taking my frustrations out on anyone else. For example, I generally choose to drink water rather than soda, and a lot of it. If my glass is empty for an extended period of time, I’m looking around. Usually, I see the server is busy with other tables so I leave him alone. I take a deep breath and relax.
  • If I want to leave feedback, I speak to the waiter. I don’t assume that he or she will know what I’m thinking based on the size of my tip. Now, I don’t like when people tell me how to do my job, so I assume that the same goes for anyone else. So any feedback I give is positive.
  • There’s only one way to make a statement with a tip, and that’s to leave one large enough to be recognized as a real bonus. Think 30 to 50 percent.
  • I didn’t realize this was “wrong” until I started seeing restaurant checks with suggested tips listed below the amount of the bill, but I always calculate my tip on the total price, not the pre-tax subtotal. And if I’ve received an item gratis from the waiter, I add the price of the item back in before calculating the tip.

I don’t believe my tips, or anyone’s for that matter, have a direct impact on the behavior of waiters and waitresses. Perhaps some waiters will give some thought to what they’re doing if they consistently receive lower tips than everyone else they work with, but if tips are pooled, the only incentive to perform better would come from peer pressure. Tipping within social norms is customary, therefore necessary for anyone wishing to dine out. Under-tipping at restaurants hurts customers more than anything else, so I agree with Tom Frank’s statement regarding that. If you’re looking for good service, be a good customer.

How do you tip at restaurants? Do you try to influence your waiters or waitresses with your tip?

Photo: Flickr

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Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, is looking to improve her company’s performance. In a memo from the company’s human resources department to all employees, Mayer made her intentions clear. In order to build a more cohesive company of employees, all work from home arrangements are canceled.

The confidential memo was made public by Kara Swisher at AllThingsD. The letter called for all employees who normally work outside of Yahoo premises to show up at the office. Even those who might need to wait at home for the cable guy on rare occasions were suggested to reconsider their absence from the office.

This seems to be a step backwards. We are in an employment recession, in which workers are continually told to just be thankful they have their jobs and to accept any abuse their employers present by uttering, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”

Despite this economic condition where the balance of power is weighted heavily towards employers, companies have been trending towards offering more flexible working arrangements. The arguments in favor of flex-time and working from home are reasonably strong:

  • Flexibility is a benefit that employees want, and when employers provide it, boosts morale. Better morale, in turn, inspires workers to enjoy their jobs, and happier employees make better employees.
  • Workers often report fewer distractions and more time spent working when they are in an environment outside of the office. That leads to higher productivity, and higher productivity is good for the company.

Why does the CEO of Yahoo want to move backwards, taking away one of the beneficial features of working for a twenty-first century technology company, where most job functions can be completed well regardless of location? She states her reasons in the memo:

  • Working side-by-side spurs communication and collaboration.
  • Impromptu discussions and meetings foster better decisions and insights.
  • “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.”

I will argue with the last point, but otherwise, Mayer has identified the benefits of physical presence. There is no denying that something has been amiss with Yahoo. As a company, it is losing its relevance in a tech world dominated by Google, Apple, and Microsoft. It may not be fair to take away benefits that employees appreciate, particularly when many undoubtedly accepted the Yahoo job offer with the expectation that these benefits would continue be available. And there is probably validity to that thought that this is a way to trim down the fat: employees who love Yahoo will stay and put up with the change, while employees who may not have been as dedicated to their job will leave.

I’ve seen this attitude at companies before. Voluntary attrition always backfires. By making conditions worse for employees in an effort to let a portion of the workforce go without explicitly firing people, Yahoo stands to lose its best employees, not its worst. It’s simple: the best employees have more options open to them, despite the high unemployment rate. The best employees have worked hard to increase their personal human capital — their employability, their desirability, their potential value to others. These folks can do better than Yahoo. They can find a job relatively quickly, one offering the benefits no longer available at the waning tech behemoth.

Nevertheless, a company during its growing period needs people who are going to be 100 percent dedicated to the tasks at hand. No one ever became a superstar without sacrificing something from their personal life, and Mayer is looking for a company of superstars. Excellence requires personal sacrifice, and that means less time for family and less time for friends. Mayer seems to be hunting excellence, and anyone not prepared to make those required sacrifices is not welcome to the team. This often unfairly targets moms, who disproportionately take care of home-focused responsibilities, and are looking for that work/life balance so often lauded by human resource departments.

It’s no wonder that people are calling Yahoo’s move a step in the wrong direction for gender equality in the workplace.

Marissa Mayer is familiar with making personal sacrifices. She skipped her own maternity leave to continue to work. Her attitude has done well for her; she is the CEO of Yahoo.

Not every developer at Yahoo has designs for being an executive at a major company. In fact, most of the developers I know aren’t interested in management at all, and they’re quite happy to quietly code from whatever location they happen to be at the moment, meet with each other over the phone and through online video conferencing, and put it more hours than expected because they aren’t wasting time by commuting, wasting energy with small-talk among co-workers already wasting time in the office, and wasting attention through constant distractions. They’re happy to stretch out in their own space rather than being confined to a tiny cubicle.

The CEO of Yahoo wants a leaner company. Without saying so explicitly in the memo, she wants Yahoo to operate like a start-up, where employees put the mission of the company above all else, including their personal lives. She wants to breed work superstars. Judging from the reaction, this is a drastic change from Yahoo’s current corporate culture, and it could be just the thing to shake it up.

My suggestion is for Yahoo to make coming to the office an enjoyable experience. If people like to be there, they won’t think so much about how they miss working from the couch in their living room or being available for family at all hours. Eventually, Yahoo will reverse this possibility. In order to make Yahoo a relevant company again, something like this could be the shake-up the company needs.

There are better ways to make this change, though. Canceling an expected privilege of working for a technology company with a memo from human resources is not going to be well-received, and it will likely have the opposite effect on employee morale. The goal is for employees to make sacrifices for the sake of building a better company, but Yahoo needs to represent something worth sacrificing for first, and that comes from great leadership. It appears that Yahoo is not there yet.

Photo: Flickr

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I don’t have the statistics pertaining to this, but I have a strong impression that many people dream about starting their own business, and many who do have this particular daydream are inspired to consider what this life would be like because they don’t like their boss. Or maybe they don’t like working for someone else in general.

All the late-night infomercials and spammy or scammy websites promising riches with tantalizing come-ons like “Work from home!” and “Be your own boss!” certainly point to the idea that there’s an innate desire to storm out of the boss’s office, slamming the door on the way out, with a huge grin on one’s face as one sticks it to The Man. Commercials like this appear on late night for an obvious reason: insomniacs and others staying up late at night are tired and more susceptible to misguided, illogical, or poorly reasoned suggestions.

I can’t criticize either the entrepreneurial spirit nor the process of meeting with one’s boss and handing her a craftily worded letter of resignation. I left my corporate job to work for myself.

Although I’ve known for a long time that I don’t mindlessly bend to authoritative figures, particularly those whose awarding of authority is based on something I consider unworthy, this wasn’t my particular driver for forming a business. I came upon my business by accident, spending almost all of my waking free time in a manner most would consider a waste of that time. It wasn’t a business at first; I wasn’t trying to make money. It just worked out that way, and I was able to fit that into my worldview wherein I don’t particularly care for working for others.

This in itself is the wrong reason to become an entrepreneur. But what does it mean when someone says he doesn’t like working for other people? It has to be a combination of the following:

  • The lack of autonomy.
  • Having responsibility without authority.
  • Being part of a system that is not a meritocracy.
  • Superiors who don’t have either the knowledge their position should entail or the people skills required in management.
  • The lack of advancement opportunities.
  • The lack of compensation growth opportunities other than incremental.
  • A certain level of anti-social tendencies.
  • The disdain for adhering to someone else’s schedule.

Perhaps this clip from the Coen brothers’ film The Hudsucker Proxy, wherein a green hire at the bottom of the ladder of a nebulous corporation receives his orientation in the mail room, epitomizes why working for a corporation can be anathema to so many people who have a mind tuned towards independent thinking and humane treatment of other people. Be sure to watch the entire excerpt.

There’s bad news for those whose sole reason for starting a business comes from the attitudes towards working described above. None of these attitudes would be beneficial to anyone, whether working for another individual or working for oneself, and if you disdain these types of situations in a corporate situation, working for yourself isn’t going to be that much better from a psychological standpoint — but maybe you’ll have more of the benefits for yourself, outweighing the potential annoyances.

An entrepreneur has more bosses than any other type of worker.

You can call yourself President, Chief Executive Officer, Owner, or Grand Poobah. Titles like these give the impression you answer to nobody else. The buck stops here, with you. They may well be accurate titles, too — well, except for the meaningless “Grand Poobah.” Those titles work best when you have other people working for you; without someone to order around, there’s really no point in having any title anyway. They imply you’re the boss, not to be trifled with, and they tell the world that you make the rules.

You don’t. If you want to own your own business, whether you hire people to help you or not, you have many bosses you’ll need to answer to. Your entire job will be based around making someone happy, or else your business won’t last long, and your days as an entrepreneur will be numbered.

Your new bosses could include your customers, your clients, your Board of Directors, market conditions, your shareholders, your private investors, and government regulators. They might not be telling you what time you need to open your email in the morning, but you’ll need to listen to their feedback and understand their needs in order to have a successful business. In many cases, the combinations of new bosses will be more demanding that have higher expectations than your former corporate boss in the corner office or the larger cubicle ever was.

If your new venture creates products and services — and what business doesn’t, in some form — you need to listen to your customers. In fact, doing so might alter the mission.

Personal finance start-up Budgetable started as a way to help customers create and stick to spending plans, but after determining that their customers were more interested in finding coupons and saving money through spending rather than actually saving — or determining that this is the more profitable route — they changes their focus towards finding the latest deals. I don’t know if this is a great example of listening to one’s customers, as it seems more like the customers they initially had weren’t profitable and turned towards those who are, but if you believe the press releases, they needed to listen to their customers.

Customers provide feedback in many ways — sometimes it’s as simple as refusing to buy the product, but a good entrepreneur can perform the research and adjust to the needs of their customers. This is best done by firmly believing that the customer, while perhaps not always right, is always the boss. Sometimes you have to convince the boss he’s wrong, and that can be a daunting task, but if you don’t listen to your customers as if they were making the rules, you won’t have your business for long.

If you create your business as a consulting firm or as an organization that provides some kind of service to other businesses, you have clients. The clients are your customers, and the same rules apply. It’s just a question of terminology.

Depending on how your business is organized, as an entrepreneur, consider yourself employed by your Board of Directors, investors, or shareholders. If you do not meet the expectations in your role as C.E.O., they will kick you out and replace you with someone who does listen to their demands. They may not care whether you work regular hours, but if you don’t like working regular hours and your stakeholders are doing their jobs, their expectations of you will be high enough that you’ll need to manage your time well.

Every successful entrepreneur I’ve known has put more time in than one might consider required. Those who put in extra effort and time in a corporate job answering to someone else are more likely to have the work ethic required to excel as a business owner. “Nine to five” as a concept for getting work done doesn’t exist when you own your own business. It may just be a question of motivation. You may hate being asked to work overtime when you don’t see the benefits (other than overtime pay), but working for yourself, you may be more willing to put in extra time. But in my experience, the best attitudes for successful business ownership carry over into other aspects of life, like working for other people.

It takes a special passion to be successful starting a business. You have to be ready to make a commitment and ready to prioritize the needs of that business. The needs of the business relate directly to the needs of the new bosses, the customers, clients, and investors, as mentioned herein. The same traits that prevent a person from overachieving while working for some other company might cause problems when that same person decides to become an entrepreneur. Many of the same skills that allow a worker to impress others in a corporate setting will translate well to owning a business.

It’s a myth that people who can’t function well in corporate settings due to the lack of desire to work for others have what it takes to be successful entrepreneurs. There are exceptions, of course; I know a good number of bloggers, for example, who were able to quit their day jobs, but in the grand scheme, that is very rare. Starting your own business won’t necessarily help you excel if you are unsuccessful in a corporate setting.

Photo: Flickr

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Credit Card Checkout Fees Are Here

by Luke Landes
Credit Card Surchage

I’m currently in California, visiting my mother, who as I mentioned in a previous article is in the hospital. While articles this week will likely be slow on Consumerism Commentary, one thing I won’t have to deal with while visiting family is the relaxed regulation on merchants who accept credit cards. Starting this week, retailers ... Continue reading this article…

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A New #Cut4Bieber: Justin Bieber’s Prepaid Debit Card

by Luke Landes
Justin Bieber

There’s apparently a celebrity of some sort called Justin Bieber. I don’t know much about him, but I might have heard a song of his one time. He might have been a baby only a few years ago, but today he’s following in the footsteps of some of my favorite gurus, in a love-to-hate sense, ... Continue reading this article…

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Plan for the Payroll Tax Cut Expiring in 2013

by Luke Landes
Tax rates

Missing from discussions about the so-called fiscal cliff is the option to continue the payroll tax cut. To boost the economy, President Obama and Congress introduced a stimulus bill in 2010 that reduced the payroll tax, money collected at the time of each paycheck from employers and employees (workers with W2 forms). The employee’s share ... Continue reading this article…

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Your Credit Score Affects Your Love Life

by Luke Landes
2801870408_5baf81461e_b[1]

A few years ago, credit scores were taboo. The idea that a credit score could be used for more than just determining qualification for a loan was at best unfair and at worst discriminatory. Employers in some circumstances can use credit scores or credit reports to determine whether to offer jobs to applicants. If you ... Continue reading this article…

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Aftermath of Sandy: Check Your Insurance Coverage Before the Storm

by Luke Landes
Hurricane Sandy

I hope all Consumerism Commentary readers affected by Hurricane slash Extra-Tropical Storm slash Low-Pressure System Sandy are alive and safe and have avoided damage. I lost power for sixteen to eighteen hours, and although I live near a canal, flood waters didn’t reach me. Many of my local friends are still without power, and my ... Continue reading this article…

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Go to College for Free

by Luke Landes
West Point Academy cadet

Welcome new readers. Be sure to subscribe to Consumerism Commentary via RSS. New readers should start here. I enjoyed my experience as an undergraduate at a “state-assisted, privately governed” university. As I did not live in that university’s state prior to attending, my tuition fees were higher than many of my classmates’ fees. To attend ... Continue reading this article…

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Why I Don’t Make Your Financial Decisions For You

by Luke Landes
Sheep

Some feedback over the nine years of writing about money on Consumerism Commentary indicates that there are some readers — not necessarily daily readers and fans of a website, but those who are searching online about some finance-related topic and are at best passing by any particular website — are looking for quick answers. People ... Continue reading this article…

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5 Tips for Dealing With the Job Shift Away From the Middle Class

by Luke Landes
Battersea

The middle class fared the worst in terms of job losses throughout the recession. The National Employment Law Project has consolidated findings from its studies and found that while there has been some economic recovery in the employment sector following the recession, the recovery changed the nature of the job market. Jobs with a mid-tier ... Continue reading this article…

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You Can’t Take It With You

by Luke Landes
Beach

According to a recent study by the National Bureau for Economic Research, 46.1 percent of retirees die with a net worth of less than $10,000. There are two ways to achieve this outcome. The first is for those with a comfortable level of wealth in retirement. Wealth does an individual no good after he or ... Continue reading this article…

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Should Congress Eliminate the Capital Gains Income Tax?

by Luke Landes
Paul Ryan

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has selected a running mate, Paul Ryan, who has proposed eliminating the income tax on capital gains. The Vice President of the United States doesn’t have the authority to change the tax law, of course, so there’s no reason to think this idea or the rest of Ryan’s fiscal plan will ... Continue reading this article…

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Earning a Living With Rental Properties: Should You Be a Landlord?

by Luke Landes
For Rent

If you have the option, owning assets that produce income is a better financial strategy than owning assets that generate expenses. If you own a house or apartment for your own residence, for example, you need to pay for maintenance, repairs, taxes, mortgage interest, landscaping, utilities, or a homeowner association fee that covers some of ... Continue reading this article…

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Should Rich Families Leave Their Wealth to Their Children?

by Luke Landes
Cash

One of the great promises of the United States of America is economic mobility. In the Land of Opportunity, in theory, you can design your life’s economic fate. Immigrants from Europe looked forward to leaving economic and religious oppression in their past, as they came to the land that is or would become the United ... Continue reading this article…

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The Importance, or Lack Thereof, of Making Money

by Luke Landes
Cash in hand

In my article earlier today about the recession era bail-out programs, I touched on the idea that sometimes, there are methods to judge a decision outside of its immediate profitability. The bail-outs may have provided a return on investment for taxpayers or they might not have. The idea that the programs could earn money was ... Continue reading this article…

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One Million Dollars Isn’t What It Used to Be

by Luke Landes
Scrooge McDuck

There was a time the word “millionaire” carried cachet. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word was first used in French in the early eighteenth century and in English nearly a century later. Regardless of your station in French society in 1719, you would recognize a net worth of one million livres being notable. ... Continue reading this article…

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The Latte Factor: Your Spending Reflects Your Priorities

by Luke Landes
Latte Factor Coffee

The concept of the Latte Factor is one of the most divisive issues in personal finance. Money gurus get so worked up over whether the Latte Factor is a valuable lesson in money management that one might think the issue were as important as war, the national debt, or capital punishment. Most of the time, ... Continue reading this article…

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More Women Than Men Value Career Success

by Luke Landes
Career woman

A new survey by the Pew Research Center shows women have surpassed men in placing value on career advancement. Among 18 to 34-year-olds, 66 percent of women consider being successful in a high-paying career or job is one of the most important things or very important, compared to 59 percent of men. In 1997, 56 ... Continue reading this article…

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