This is unconfirmed but in the last few hours, two employees at TIAA-CREF have written to Consumerism Commentary to share the knowledge that workers in the the Charlotte, North Carolina office are being laid off by management at this very moment. The layoffs began on Monday and will reportedly affect 10% of the workforce.

There have been no media reports yet and no official word from the company. TIAA-CREF has been plagued with customer service problems for the last several years and changes in executive management during that time period has not solved the problems.

Many people, including public school teachers, have no choice but to invest with TIAA-CREF inside 401(k) and 403(b) plans.

Update: More employees are coming forward with stories of layoffs this week, but there has still been no official announcement from the company.

Mellody Hobson, the president of Ariel Investments, recently shared her favorite piece of advice to Money Magazine.

When I was 22, a friend who is very successful explained to me that no one ever got rich through earned income. “Look at all the great wealthy families,” he said. “From Carnegie to Rockefeller, it was never how much they made at work that made them wealthy – it was their investments.”

And that made me shift from thinking about a paycheck to thinking about building equity and long-term wealth. And it has helped me a lot. Instead of a raise, I ask for more stock.

This may be good advice for a senior level executive at a large corporation. Those who make the compensation decisions may have the authority to grant stock. The concept suggested by Mellody’s advice may also be helpful for those working at a small company at the onset. Then again, perhaps there is no cash available and the promise of stock is all that can be offered.

I have the feeling that most people are like me, however. They work at a large company and don’t have the option of bargaining for alternative compensation. My boss, for example, would not have the ability to simply grant me stock. I suppose that the vice president of my division could put a request through our human resources department, but in the end, it would still come from the same budget. So practically, I see no difference for the company between offering stock or cash as a raise other the simplicity of cash. I cannot see my large financial corporation seeing a stock grant as a preferable alternative to a typical raise.

Another issue I have with accepting company stock in lieu of cash is related to diversification and risk. An employee is deeply vested in the success of the company and the company’s desire to keep you. Look no further than Enron to see what happened to employees who relied too much on their own company. While the senior management at Enron lied to its employees about the company’s health, many employees suffered more during the company’s collapse. They suffered because they relied on the company for much more than just their income. In addition to salary, the employees most affected held too much company stock, particularly in 401(k)s. Enron actively encouraged its employees to buy company stock outside of retirement, as well. If your company’s stock started nosediving with imminent failure and the management decided to freeze stock so you could not sell it, how would your finances be affected?

So would you take Mellody’s advice? I think she’s right about shifting from an income-from-paycheck mentality to income-from-investments mentality, but is company stock the best path? Would you ask for more company stock in lieu of a raise?

The smartest advice I ever got, Money Magazine

Many Consumerism Commentary readers don’t know this: I was a band geek. In high school, I played clarinet in wind ensemble and marching band. This continued into college, where I decided to major in music education. In college, I performed in a variety of ensembles on a variety of instruments ranging from trumpet to percussion and from crumhorn to gamelan.

Despite the wide range of possibility, I stuck with clarinet for my four fall seasons marching with our highly successful college marching band. Regardless, the professor and director of the marching band spoke to us once about careers and life choices. She considers herself extremely lucky. She has a career (as a professor of music education, professor of music performance, and director of the marching band and one of several symphonic bands) doing what she loves doing. Not many people would be lucky enough to be able to be paid for spending their days with the activity about which they are passionate.

So when I read this advice from Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, the words sounded familiar.

My father was an artist who loved what he did. He’d sit at his board 12 hours a day. I once said to him, “Gee, Dad, all the other fathers have time after they come home to play ball or sit around. At the end of the day, you’re working.”

He put his brush down and said, “Those fathers are doctors, lawyers and bankers. When they come home, all they want to do is their hobby. My work and my hobby are the same. Find work in something you love and it won’t feel like work.” I listened to him. And I have been fortunate enough to work at something that I love.

To find what you love doing, you have to have an opportunity to discover your talents. I was given the opportunity at an early age to have exposure to music, for example. I also had access to personal computers and the internet as I was growing up in the 1980s, unlike many other children my age. I participated in more activities, like little league baseball and karate, and this variety helped me to figure out what I could be passionate about.

I’ve changed a bit since college. Music and arts education is still very important to me, but I’ve moved away from that as my vocation. I certainly do not love my day job now. I do my best, or close to it, and I am interested in furthering my career, but I am more interested in working with the internet at this point in my life. I’m not sure that I love the internet, to use Kamen’s terminology. When I’m writing, it doesn’t feel like I’m working, but I wouldn’t say that this is my talent or passion. It does feel like work, however, when I am not feeling inspired and cannot come up with ideas.

I have so many interests that it’s difficult for me to hone in on just one that can define my vocation in such a way that it will be everything for me.

If you have some idea of an activity that you absolutely love, something for which you have a talent, and nothing else you could see yourself doing, and if you can find a way to make a living doing this activity, then you have an opportunity to be one of the lucky few. I think this may not be possible for many people. Either they haven’t had the opportunities to discover their passion and talent or, like me, they could see many different paths.

Do you have a passion? Does it coincide with your job? Could you make a living with your passion?

The smartest advice I ever got, CNN Money

If anyone should be giving advice about how to become a successful entrepreneur, it would probably not be me. While I am earning money on my own outside of my day job, it’s not consistent or reliable. Part of the reason for this is that I never intended on becoming a business owner of this form. I’ve had a strong interest in computers since I was young and in web design and programming since 1994. While I decided I could see myself designing websites on the side, I never thought that writing would be the driver for the online business. Even when starting Consumerism Commentary five years ago, I didn’t start it with the intent of earning money.

I wouldn’t call my approach a “mistake” for me, but this approach is not the best for creating a successful business from scratch. Some of the best advice would be the opposite of my original thought process. Have clear goals, solicit social and financial support, be an expert in your field, research the market for your service or product, seek advice or mentoring from other similar, successful entrepreneurs, and don’t quit your day job.

The last piece of advice has been one that I have followed. At the end of last year, I decided that I would determine by the end of June 2008 whether I would be in a strong enough position to quit my moderately-supportive day job at a financial services company and give working for myself a try full-time. I decided not to quit.

There are strong arguments for maintaining a relatively secure job while laying the groundwork for your own business. With a stable income, you can fund your endeavors. With benefits from your day job, you don’t have to worry about making enough money from your side work to support you if you encounter medical emergencies.

On the other hand, there are some reasons why you can’t be a successful entrepreneur if all you can devote to the business is your spare time. The more aggressive your goals, the more risk you must be willing to take.

Abandon your day job. If “wild success” is an integral part of your goals, keeping a day job is a distraction. Yes, this means giving up your income. For driven individuals, this is strong motivation to develop the business to a point where it can support you as quickly as possible or to aggressively seek financial backing.

If I were to quit my day job, where I earn less in terms of gross pay than I earn from side projects in total, I would be able to focus on building my business with all of my effort rather than my “spare” effort at night and on weekends. Perhaps I’m not a risk taker, but I’m going to need a stronger sign of viability than what I’ve experienced so far. This is a risk a budding entrepreneur must take.

Don’t expect to have more time with your family. One of the main reasons people say they would like to become an “entrepreneur” is that it would allow them to spend more time with family. That may be fine if your intent is to sell products made by someone else on eBay but if you are trying to build a unique business that provides an original product or service or if you are trying to be the best at what you do, you will have less time for friends and family than you had when all you had to worry about was your day job.

All the other typical entrepreneurial advice still applies. It’ll take dedication and a detailed plan for a would-be entrepreneur to become successful. But that success requires sacrifices and risks. It’s easy to sell the idea that you can become rich “in your spare time” or in the “comfort of your own home” like the infomercials promise. A real entrepreneur, someone at the top of their niche, has no “spare time” and very little “comfort,” particularly when they are still building their business.

This article is part of the July MoneyBlogNetwork writing project. Here are more articles from around the web about entrepreneurship.

• 5 Tips for Starting a Small Business (Get Rich Slowly)
• Are You Thinking of Quitting the Nine to Five? (Mighty Bargain Hunter)
• My Best Advice for New Entrepreneurs (Free Money Finance)
• Advice for Entrepreneurs (Five Cent Nickel)
• My Best Thoughts for the New Entrepreneur (No Credit Needed)
• How to Encourage Your Budding Entrepreneur (All Financial Matters)
• Create a Business Plan by Answering 4 Simple Questions (Wise Bread)
• Basic Business Advice From an Accidental Entrepreneur (The Digerati Life)
• Of Exit Strategies and Small Businesses (Blunt Money)
• My Advice for New Entrepreneurs (No Debt Plan)
• So You Think You Can Sell Banana Peelers? (Personal Finance Analyst)
• 6 Key Tips for Starting a Part-Time Business (Think Your Way to Wealth)

I’ve noticed a few public employers, like Howard County, Maryland, the Hobart, Indiana Police Department, the State of Oklahoma, and the Winston-Salem Housing Authority, are implementing or discussing the idea of moving to a four-day work week.

The most popular options seem to be replacing five eight-hour days with four ten-hour days and replacing ten eight-hour days with eight nine-hour days and one eight-hour day.

By shutting down non-essential services for one day every week or one day every two weeks, employees can save money on transportation, taking into account the rising cost of gasoline. This seems to be the biggest driver of these discussions and changes. The organizations that implement these changes also stand to reduce energy costs.

There are a number of additional benefits as well. Less time commuting means less pollution. A variety of commutation hours, or more flexibility in business hours, could reduce congestion. Less driving could decrease the frequency of road repairs. And of course, less time in vehicles lowers the demand for gasoline and the country’s reliance on oil, foreign or otherwise.

More time away from the office allows us to spend more time with family. But if a work week consisting of 40 hours is still the standard regardless of the number of days, employees will be spending longer days in the office. That could cause some problems with child care, whether the employee leaves the house earlier, returns later, or both.

Speaking for myself, when I work four-day weeks, I seem less stressed and fatigued by the end of the week. That might increase my productivity. But when I do so, I’m usually working only eight or so hours a day (usually a bit more), not ten, and taking a “vacation day.”

So far, it doesn’t appear that employer are trying to pay their employees 20% less for working four days each week rather than five. Might employers look to reducing salaries, even if the total number of hours worked is the same?

What are your thoughts on a four-day work week?

There is a certain allure to the idea of “passive income.” After all, who wouldn’t want a continuous stream of income without having to trade your time or effort for it? But true passive income is quite elusive. True passive income can be defined, and is defined by the Internal Revenue Service, as “cash flow generated by activities in which the tax payer does not materially participate.” But outside of portfolio income, cash flow generated solely by appreciation of an asset like a stock (and liquidation of the earnings), there are few examples of true passive income.

Even Wikipedia gets it wrong.

Real estate: the classic example is false. Rent on a habitable property is generally called “passive income,” but it’s not. If you want to have tenants and consistently earn income from the property, it must be maintained. At the simplest level, as a landlord, you must interview prospective tenants, arrange background checks, respond to maintenance issues, keep the property attractive and in working condition, process rent payments, draw lease agreements, and maintain connections with plumbers, electricians, painters, and real estate agents (or do that work yourself). Even if you outsource management to an outside firm, you must develop the contract and oversee the management.

The more work you’re doing, and being a landlord is a lot of work, the less passive your income is. Outsourcing more of the work results in less income overall.

You won’t hear about this in the motivational books and seminars, but the only way to ensure high cash flow from real estate is by owning and renting out a lot of properties, and outsourcing the management of all of them. Incredibly high volume would hopefully make up for the thin margins due to outsourcing the management. But building this real estate empire takes the kind of time and effort that those with “passive income” written on their forehead with indelible ink may not understand or accept.

The allure of AdSense. Time and time again I hear from people who are excited and motivated to start a blog with the intent of throwing up some advertising to earn passive income, expecting almost immediate returns. Unless you plan on scraping other websites and stealing their content—and if you do, I hope those who provide the income will discover this tactic and stop providing the income to you—this concept is miles away from the idea of “passive income.” While there are always exceptions, for the most part you can’t just throw up a website, add advertising, and expect passive income to roll in.

If you want to really earn money online, you have to work. You must create lots of content, relevant content, and you must continue doing so. This is highly active income, not passive.

Like the real estate empire, you could simply register hundreds of domain names—there are programs that will do this for you, for a fee—and throw up one page on each full of advertisements. With incredible volume, you’ll make more from your thin profit margins. But what benefit does an empire of hundreds of websites devoid of content provide to the internet at large? It just creates more junk websites that are nuisances to anyone who is attempting to properly perform research on the internet.

This seems like a strange message coming from me. I’m earning a multiple of my day job’s salary by working with the web in my “spare time.” But this work is so far from what anyone could consider “passive income” that I’m almost insulted when I hear that. My strongest efforts wax and wane with the moon, and so does the resulting income. Consumerism Commentary won’t “run itself” and continue generating income for long.

In general, I have an option: either be a positive force, adding to the wealth of information online, even if the information is more interesting to me than to anyone else, or don’t do it at all.

When I read about the truth about earning money from real estate, like in The Complete Real-Estate Investing Guidebook by David Crook, rather than ambiguous, motivational bull (I won’t mention any specific authors, but you know who you are), I see that real estate management is not truly passive income, and success won’t come for most people who try, particularly those after a quick buck. I know from experience that the same holds true for earning money online.

Simply: If you want to earn income, you have to work for it; that is, income is active. The IRS may call certain things “passive income,” but the term itself is a lie.

Things are a little different from an investor’s point of view, and I’ll tackle that approach soon.

Yes, irreplaceableness appears to be a legitimate word. Even if it weren’t, there’s a good chance you could infer its meaning without doubt. It wouldn’t matter if the word actually appears in a dictionary. Now that that’s out of the way…

My former boss was laid off last week. It had only been a matter of time. Some time after I left that department to work in my current location, her department was moved to another building to take advantage of efficiencies with another group that performed similar services for the company. The truth is that there was a lot of redundancy in this function around the entire company, and once the departments were combined, it made sense to streamline the management.

I feel horrible that someone I’ve known for many years has lost her job. The reason I left, however, was because she wasn’t a very good manager and I was not learning anything from her other than what not to do.

My current boss, K., gave me the news of the “rightsizing” of my former boss late last week. K. mentioned that this was a perfect example of how one must make one’s self irreplaceable. At first I agreed. Irreplaceableness means that one has job security. When times are tight for a company, and they must decide who to let go, they will start with anyone whose job is redundant, anyone who performs poorly, and anyone whose functions can be assumed somewhere else.

Some time after our initial conversation, I couldn’t get the idea of irreplaceableness out of my mind. Something didn’t sit right with me. I began thinking, and that can be dangerous. I contemplated how one must create the belief that one is irreplaceable.

To become irreplaceable one must drive against forces that help a team work efficiently and smoothly together. In my department, we cross-train as much as possible, so people are free to take vacations at almost any time. We work on enhancing our procedural documentation and process flowcharts so that at any time someone with moderate knowledge and training can step in and muddle through some of the more complex tasks (and so we can ensure the proper controls and quality reviews are in place). If someone were to disappear off the face of the planet, it might take some time, but the group would recover.

Here is one way I reduce my irreplaceableness for the benefit of the group. My skills with Microsoft Excel are above average in comparison to most of my coworkers. I was happy to present a few classes on some of the software’s more useful functions. These classes allowed my coworkers to rely on me less, reducing my irreplaceableness, yet this approach still seems like the right thing to do for my own worth.

To be irreplaceable in this environment would require keeping secrets about how I get my work done. Even if I’m quite good at my job, an expert with great personality and attitude, if I work as a team player I will always be replaceable. So will everyone I work with.

Recently, my company’s CEO, the head of this large corporation for the past couple of decades or so (and I realize I’m being ambiguous) decided to retire. His decision actually came several years ago, but it was more recently that he made specific plans and set an exit date. He was a well-admired and recognized CEO throughout our industry and led this company through some rough times (before I was an employee) and oversaw significant growth (after I became an employee, not that this fact is relevant). He succeeded with goals where previous CEOs of this company perhaps failed.

Yet, even he was replaceable. The Board of Directors decided the new CEO would be someone from within the company, and quickly put a succession plan into place for a smooth transition from one CEO to the next.

If even the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company can be replaced, it almost seems arrogant to think that I, or any other employee of this large company, could be irreplaceable. Even striving for such a goal would be antithetical to cultivating good working relationships with colleagues.

Photo credit: hagerman

By the time I was in third grade, I knew the answer to the age-old question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The question is always formed this way, with these particular words. The object of this question is to determine not the philosophy of the individual, but the type of career that is most desirable. The presence of the word “be” in the question is worth noting. From an early age, children are trained through language to associate their career with their identity. Who you are is what you do and vice versa.

The very fact that the question is asked instills the importance of a job or career.

In Across the Universe, the character Max is eating Thanksgiving dinner in the late 1960s with his family in rural Massachusetts, at which point he announces his intention to drop out of his undergraduate studies at Princeton University.

His father asks him to get serious for once: “What are you going to do with your life?” He responds rebelliously, “Why is it always what will I do? Why isn’t the issue here who I am?” His uncle chimes in, “Because what you do defines who you are.” Max responds, “Who you are defines what you do,” and asks for confirmation from his new friend Jude from Liverpool. Jude replies with a different point of view: “Surely it’s not what you do, but the way that you do it.”

I loved being involved with music. I’ve known I’ve had musical talent and an enjoyment of the art since I was in kindergarten. In third grade, as I mentioned above, I knew what I wanted to be: a teacher. It should have come as no surprise to me when in high school I decided that my purpose (my being) was to become a music teacher. When I was studying in college to be a music educator, the piece of advice that stuck with me the most was uttered by a professor most likely while I was still a freshman: “If there’s any other career that would make you happy, choose that now. Continue down this path only if teaching music is the only thing that you can or want to do.”

This advice stuck with me for several reasons. First, music wasn’t my only talent or interest. I excelled in every subject at school (when I wasn’t bored). My interests ranged from computer programming to physics to languages to mathematics. I even liked history when I was learning on my own rather than within public school curriculum. The world was open to me, but I stuck with music.

Many years later, after some bad experiences, I left teaching and the arts. My current choice of a day job happened mostly by accident. I needed a job after leaving the arts, so I started as a temp in a financial company. I moved into accounting after that because the accounting department was nearby and they needed someone, and have switched jobs at the same company a few times since then. This job, which is unfortunately becoming a career, does not define who I am. It has nothing to do with the person I am, it’s only the result of a series of circumstances defined by others.

In the arts, I was a teacher and a leader. I earned the respect of my peers by being very good at what I did. I even taught others how to be leaders. I was a great motivator. Of course! Music is something that is exciting, invigorating, and essential for the soul. The arts are necessary for modern culture. In my current career choice, being a leader is a joke. It’s a world of middle-managers and meaningless tasks. Why should I get excited about any activity that is not directly changing the world for the better in a way that satisfies the ideals that are important to me? Sure, it’s important to someone that I make sure that one department of our company pays back another department of our company for whatever expense they happened to incur. But how is that changing the world, how is this meaningful or satisfying?

So I have Consumerism Commentary. That’s more fulfilling. I write, usually nonsense like this, and reach more people than I’ve reached in any other facet of my life. For someone who has been building communities and leading smaller groups of people for almost 20 years, that is definitely cool. But Consumerism Commentary is an accident like my current job, though it is a happy accident. I don’t believe I’m changing the world, but I’m happy if I help someone get to a piece of information faster, or on the rare occasion, make someone think about something, anything they’ve taken for granted. But I don’t even use my real name, so whatever I’m building with Consumerism Commentary doesn’t exist in the “real world.”

I don’t want to be defined by my role at my day job, and without sharing my real identity online, I can’t be defined by my blogging endeavors. If I were still teaching music or involved in the arts, I would agree that who you are defines what you do. But I’m not, at least not at the moment. So I’m resigned to agreeing with Jude for now.

Image credit: ^riza