Years ago I worked with a man in his early 20s  who drank nightly, and not just a little.  Every morning, when he managed to actually show up to work, he was so hung over that he could barely function.  He had continually bloodshot eyes, when you could see them, and he reminded me of […]

“They are taking on debt that they can’t repay. A drop in savings and rise in delinquencies means you can’t support the (overall) spending,” said Stephen Gallagher, economist at Societe Generale.  Any dramatic increase in prices, such as gas or the results of higher tariffs could result in “a rather dramatic scaling back of consumption.” […]

Charlotte was born in 2012, a healthy, happy girl with responsible parents who immediately found a pediatrician to ensure that Charlotte would continue to be healthy and happy.  When her  proud new parents went to their new pediatrician’s office, they dutifully filled out paperwork including Charlotte’s newly issued Social Security Number.  That was their big […]

The cellophane from the newly minted bachelor’s degree diploma was barely in the recycling bin when his career was permanently crippled.   Joe graduated at the wrong time, 2008.  The Great Recession ran from 2007 to 2009 and put Joe and his fellow graduates in a career hole that they might never escape from.   They […]

Credit Karma calls them “Credit Fumbles.”  In fact they liked the term so much they trademarked it.  They define it as “phenomenon where young adults, new to credit and many without financial education, make largely avoidable financial mistakes.”  They hired a survey company find out just how prevalent Credit Fumbles are.  They discovered that of […]

“They actually show up for work on time, and they aren’t texting all day,” writes Kerry Hannon in her book Getting the Job You Want After 50 for Dummies.  A change in attitude is taking place as the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank in a January 2018 report found that “all of the increase in […]

Assorted facts: Those people who have credit card debt owe an average of $15,654. About 58 percent of them (about six in 10)have enough savings to pay off the debt, About 21 percent (about one out of every five) say they don’t have enough savings to pay off credit card debt. Total credit card debt […]

“The Technician’s usual experience is one of frustration and annoyance at being interrupted in the course of what needs to be done to try something new that probably doesn’t need to be done at all.” –Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited   You didn’t sign up for this.  When you bought rental property it was to […]

Two credit scoring systems are most used by those who check credit for lending, renting and hiring.  The old “standby” is FICO.  That’s what people think of when they ask what someone’s score is.  It ranges from 300 (never pays anybody) to 850 (just-about-perfect).  Then there’s VantageScore.  They use the same numbers as FICO.  The […]

By Robert L. Cain   Pew Research and the US Census Bureau say “more U.S. households are headed by renters than at any point since 1965.”  In addition, vacancy rates in many parts of the country are almost non-existent, with under 4 percent in many cities on the West Coast. That information, when combined with […]