New York Times - For all the hand-wringing about the weaknesses of health care, one aspect of it has remained strong: its ability to provide jobs. In fact, health care employment has increased during the recession, while employment as a whole has declined, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Within the private sector, more than 11 percent of the American work force is engaged in health care work, compared with just 3 percent before 1960, the bureau says.
Regardless of how health care reform shakes out, the industry jobs picture is likely to remain robust, given the aging population and technological advances in medicine.
High school and college students take note: the positions expected to post some of the largest increases include registered nurses; personal and home care aides; home health aides; nursing aides, orderlies and attendants; medical assistants; licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses; pharmacy technicians; and physicians and surgeons.
Jane Donaldson spent £200,000 doing up her bungalow but like many vendors can’t find a buyer
by David Smith - Times Online
Competition is a good thing, so the break-up of Britain’s rescued banks, announced last week, should be a positive move for the housing market. Although nothing is imminent, the disposals approved by the European commission will increase choice. Lloyds TSB-HBOS has a mortgage-market share of about 30%, so the split should be beneficial, and has been lauded by Which? and other consumer groups.
Marrying the proposed break-up with the Financial Services Authority’s regulatory reforms, it seems clear that the mortgage market of the future will look different. Competition is not all one way — in the past couple of years, smaller building societies have been absorbed by bigger competitors — but there is the prospect of new players.
The key issue remains: will there be enough mortgage capacity to support reasonable activity in the housing market? The big picture on approvals for house purchase is that they are still rising. The Bank of England’s latest monthly figure (for September) was 56,215: up by 68% on the same time last year, and more than double the November 2008 low.
That has been enough to support the rising house prices of recent months, perhaps surprisingly. Halifax reported a 1.2% increase in October, a fourth consecutive monthly rise. Prices are up by 2.9% since the end of 2008 and by 7.1% from the April 2009 low. Yet approvals remains well below pre-crisis norms. In all bar one month from January to June 2007, they were more than double the latest figure.
The drop in mortgage activity — despite the recent recovery — is even more striking when you look at all approvals, including remortgages. At just under 110,000 a month, it is barely more than a third of pre-crisis levels.
So this is not merely a question of competition in the mortgage market; there is the important issue of how much lenders can lend. Nobody expects a return to the levels of the first half of 2007, but a proper recovery in the housing market requires considerably more lending than now. And it is not clear we are going to get it.
* Average price falls of 6.6% are likely in the property market next year, as the backlog of pent-up demand that has brought recent growth is gradually eroded, while supply increases and economic growth remain weak. In its market forecast last week, Savills estate agency said that a gradual return to house-price growth is expected once the economy starts to recover and unemployment falls — with a probable 2.7% rise in average prices in 2011, steadily growing to 5.5% in 2015.
Save Big on Credit by Getting Loans for Less: The 'Do's' of Raising Your Credit Score
By ELISABETH LEAMY
ABC News Consumer Correspondent
This week I'd like to continue our conversation about how to Save Big (not small) -- something we could all stand to do right now. This week's topic: how to raise your credit score to Save Big on credit.
As I've been telling you in the past few columns, I recently wrote a book called "Save Big," but it doesn't come out until January, and I feel like people need the information right now because of the crummy economy. So I'm sharing my favorite tips and tricks in this space each week in an effort to help and to get a conversation going in which you also share big savings ideas with me.
I maintain that the best places to find Big Savings are among our top five costs: houses, cars, credit, groceries and health care. Sandwiched right in the middle is credit, a puzzling one. Most people don't think of credit as an expense, and I'm trying to change that. We purchase credit just like we purchase houses and cars. The price of credit is the interest. For example, the interest owed on a $200,000 mortgage at 7 percent is $279,160 over the life of the 30-year loan. The credit costs even more than the house!
There are two ways to Save Big on credit: by using less of it or getting it for less. Today let's tackle the latter. The higher your credit score, the lower the interest rate you will be charged for loans. A lower interest rate can save you tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the loan.
Let me blow you away with some examples: 620 is the lowest score you can have and still get a mortgage. If you raised that score to 720, right now you would qualify for a mortgage at 5.093 percent interest instead of 6.46 percent interest. Here's how much that saves you each year on a $300,000 mortgage:
FICO Score … Cost of Loan
620 .................. $22,656/year
720 .................. $19,536/year
BIG SAVINGS = $3,120/year
The $3,120 savings a year is nice, but get this. If you kept the loan for 30 years, your total savings would be $93,600. Now let's look at a car loan. In this case, raising your score from 620 to 720 lowers your interest rate from 12.780 percent to 6.348 percent. Amazing. If it's a three-year auto loan for $25,000, here's your savings:
FICO Score … Cost of Loan
620 ..................$30,240/three years
720 .................. $27,504/three years
BIG SAVINGS = $2,736/three years
That's $2,736 that you can put toward your next car! OK, now that I've got you motivated, you'll want to know what steps you can take to raise your credit score. There are a bunch of do's and don'ts. This week I'll tackle the do's, next week the don'ts. Some are slow, steady steps. Others are faster, flashier moves.
• Pay down debt: If you have any extra cash on hand and you can put it toward your credit card debt, your score will rise as soon as the payment is reported to the big three credit bureaus. It is the fastest single step you can take.
• Pay on time: You must do whatever it takes to pay your bills on time. If you're a busy person, I recommend setting up an automatic payment so that you are sure never to pay late. If you've paid late in the past, the good news is that your most recent payment history carries more weight than past mistakes, so beginning to pay on time every time now will raise your score.
• Ask creditors to delete single sins: If your overall payment history with a company is good and you made one glaring mistake, you may be able to get the bank or credit card company to delete it. Just call up the company and ask.
• Keep ratios low: Credit scoring statistical models place a lot of weight on the ratio of how much debt you carry to how much credit you have been approved for. To improve your score, charge up no more than 30 percent of your available limit. (10 percent is even better.) If you carry balances, try to reduce them down to 30 percent.
• Move your money around: Since it's best to charge only up to 30 percent of your balance, one way to game the system a little is to move debt from one card to another. If you have one card that is near the limit and another that has little or no balance, move the debt from the former to the latter. This is no substitute for healthy payment practices, but it can give you an encouraging momentary boost.
• Request a higher limit: Another way to change your ratio of debt to credit is to tweak the credit number. You can do this by contacting your credit card companies and requesting a higher limit. In this down economy this step isn't as easy as it used to be, but the effort is worth the 15 minutes you'll spend on the phone.
• Apply for a secured credit card: If you are young with a "thin" credit file, one way to fatten it up is to sign up for a secured credit card. You put down a deposit, say $500, and in exchange, you get a credit card with a $500 limit. The activity on that card is reported to the credit bureaus, so if you handle it responsibly, you will improve your score.
• Become an authorized user: Another way to establish or improve credit is to be added as an authorized user to another person's (responsibly managed) account. Many parents do this for their kids. Even though the authorized user is not responsible for paying the bill, the account -- and all its history -- will show up on their credit report.
Here's my favorite part about raising and then maintaining your credit score: It's free! All you have to do is use your current credit responsibly and you will save thousands on your future credit. You will Save Big.
New rules proposed by the Financial Services Authority threaten to exclude even more aspiring owners
Paula Hawkins
Conditions for buyers in need of a home loan have rarely been bleaker — but new rules on mortgages threaten to exclude even more aspiring owners.
TimesOnline-Regulations proposed by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) this week, as part of a mortage review, aim to strengthen the market. They include stricter affordability tests for borrowers, an end to self-certification loans and a ban on “toxic combination” loans, such as a mortgage offering a high loan-to-income ratio to someone with a poor credit record. But industry brokers say the plans could make borrowing more expensive for all and almost impossible for a significant minority.
“The FSA says the plans are ‘designed to tackle the problems identified while maintaining a vibrant and sustainable market’. But this mortgage market is not vibrant by any standards,” Melanie Bien, director of the mortgage broker Savills Private Finance, said. “Not only that, but regulation costs, and this cost will be passed on to the consumer in the form of more expensive mortgages.”
Of particular concern is the decision to ban self-certification loans. Ray Boulger, of Charcol, another broker, said: “The full-frontal attack on self-cert mortgages seems based on a major misunderstanding by the FSA.”
Boulger said that the FSA was treating all “income non-verified loans” as self-certification deals when only a small proportion of these are; most are simply fast-tracked. “This is the process where on a mainstream mortgage, the lender exercises their right not to ask for paper proofs because they determine that the mortgage is low-risk.”
However, the proposals will not be implemented for some time — and may not be introduced at all. “This is a discussion document,” Boulger said. “If the responses to it are sufficiently robust, then the FSA will have to take another look at the issues. I think most brokers and lenders will say that the FSA has gone too far.” Interested parties have until the end of January to respond to the proposals. For many, the process of getting a mortgage will remain the same, although you may have to give a more detailed breakdown of your financial situation on an application, so the process could take longer. The FSA has said that lenders need to “calculate the free disposable income a consumer has to pay for the mortgage” — this could include not just income after tax, but all debt repayments, utility bills, the cost of eating out, alcohol and cigarettes. Lenders would also be encouraged to “stress test” an applicant’s ability to pay, by assessing how the borrower would cope if interest rates were to rise.
“To check this accurately would be very difficult and very intrusive,” Boulger said. It would also be bureaucratic and expensive and this would likely raise the cost of borrowing. However, it would not be without precedent — similar affordability tests are already used by lenders in France.
“Thankfully, the proposals did not include caps on loan-to-value,” Bien said. There are no caps on loan-to-income or debt-to-income either. But it is unlikely that high loan-to-value loans will become plentiful — or much cheaper — for some time.
The self-employed, particularly those who have only recently gone solo, face a much more difficult mortgage market. If self-certification loans are banned, you would need to come up with two years of accounts or two years of self-assessment forms to prove your income. If you do not have these, you will not be able to get a loan. “A sizeable majority of borrowers would be at serious risk of being denied a mortgage,” Boulger said. It would also mean that those who have a mortgage on a self-certification basis might find it difficult to remortgage without the proper accounts.
There is some good news for borrowers: banks and building societies will no longer be allowed to levy arrears charges if a borrower is already repaying their debts.
IT professionals can do a lot to avoid layoffs, but they could be unwittingly doing even more to make themselves a target for downsizing.
By Denise Dubie
September 08, 2009 — Network World —
IT professionals can do a lot to avoid layoffs, but they may be unwittingly doing even more to make themselves a target for downsizing.
How to make yourself layoff-proof
“No one can get too comfortable in their position right now. If you get complacent and have no intentions of improving upon yourself, you will lose your job to that person – and there is always at least one – who is constantly looking for ways to better himself and add more value to the business,” says Colt Mercer, a network engineer at Citigroup in Dallas and a Network World Google Subnet blogger.
Here IT professionals and career experts point out five ways high-tech workers could earn themselves a spot in the unemployment ranks.
1. Be invisible
Now is not the time to go unnoticed.
“It’s not the time to shrivel and try to be invisible to management. Many people tend to default to hide-and-retreat mode when layoffs come up, but that could call more attention to you and make it appear you aren’t contributing enough to be kept around,” says Adam Lawrence, vice president of service delivery at talent and outsourcing service provider Yoh.
Even those working hard could unknowingly be at risk due to their in-office time. Some IT workers who operate from a home office might need to make a few extra trips into work to remind managers, in person, of all that they do.
“Being visible during downtime is a big deal. If you are always remote and people at the office don’t see you as part of the team, that could cause problems,” says Bryan Sullins, principal tech trainer at New Horizons in Hartford, Conn., and a Network World blogger covering Microsoft certifications and training. “Often it can be a case of out of sight, out of mind, and remote workers could unwittingly become a target to be cut.”
2. Let skills stagnate
There may be no training dollars, but that doesn’t mean managers won’t be considering IT pros’ lack of updated skills when making layoff decisions. Regardless of the current economic trouble, high-workers should always be looking for ways to advance their knowledge.
“IT staffers that don’t maintain their certifications and stay trained show poor strategic thinking and will very quickly find themselves behind the curve,” says Chris Silva, senior analyst at Forrester Research. ‘Turning a blind eye to new technology and thinking it can wait will wear thin in a down economy. Managers don’t want staff that add to the ‘can’t do’ list in times like these.”
And the employee who uses the excuse about lack of dollars won’t make points when it comes to cutting staff.
“A pet peeve of mine is people asking companies for more than they are willing to give,” says Rich Milgram, CEO of Beyond.com, an online job board. “There has to be some level of mutual understanding about what contributions can feasibly be made on both the employer and employee’s side. There are low- and no-cost training options if the employee is willing to make the effort.”
3. Snoop in systems
It goes without saying that IT workers shouldn’t abuse their access to company confidential systems, but industry watchers warn that if layoffs are going to happen, those high-tech pros with questionable practices will be the first to go.
“It is really easy for an IT person to see what others are doing and to look at confidential data, without being caught,” says Beth Carvin, CEO of Nobscot Corp., a maker of employee retention and other HR-related software based on Kailua, Hawaii. “But if you are suspected of some shady stuff, that would be reason enough to bring your name to the top of the layoff list.”
And even if the practices aren’t breaking corporate policies, IT professionals need to be on their best behavior. Try to avoid abusing a flexible schedule with long lunches and don’t use your high-tech position as a reason to spend too much time on the Internet for non-work-related activities.
“If you are the person viewed as someone just logging their hours to collect a paycheck and don’t plan to contribute more than the minimum, management will see that and you will become vulnerable,” says John Reed, district president with Robert Half Technology.
4. Make demands
Pay cuts, hiring freezes, layoffs – none of these factors suggest it’s an appropriate time to ask for a raise. Yet experts say some will use their ongoing service to a company during a recession as a reason to demand more money and other benefits.
“Now is not the time to ask for a raise; now is not the time to complain about needing more time off,” Sullins says. “In these cases, the squeaky wheel will get the shaft.”
While it may seem to IT pros they are going above and beyond and deserve compensation for their efforts, those in the position to fire staff might not want to hear it.
“Right now, employees should be nodding their heads a lot, not being surly or pushing back on responsibility,” says Sean Ebner, regional managing director for IT staffing and recruiting firm Technisource
5. Spew negativity
Employers now more than ever want positive attitudes on staff, and those spewing negativity will be weeded out.
“The truth is that everybody from a technical standpoint is replaceable. I notice more than anything the negativity an employee displays. Negativity is contagious, and once an employee goes that route, it is nearly impossible to turn them back,” says Michael Kirven, principal and co-founder of IT resourcing firm Bluewolf.
Smartmoney-Several months ago, asking your manager for a raise may have gotten you an incredulous stare. But with the worst of the economic downturn seemingly behind us, today you may have a better chance.
Since the recession began in December 2007, 6.7 million workers have lost their jobs, according to the Department of Labor. Some economists project the unemployment rate, which stood at 9.4% in July, will reach double digits by 2010. But signs that the recession is over have started to spring up this summer, including good news on the housing front and a marked rebound of the stock market.
Still, the economy will take a while to heal completely, and those looking for work may find little improvement in the job market, especially if the country enters a period of “jobless recovery,” a trend typical of past recessions in which the labor market lags behind other measures of economic growth.
But if you’ve held onto your job through the recession, now may be the time to ask your manager for a promotion — assuming, of course, that you can prove you deserve one.
“Companies are so thinly staffed right now that any surge in their business puts pressure on them,” says John Challenger, the chief executive officer of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “They need to keep their key people and that gives you more bargaining room than you had before.”
Here are eight tips that will help you prepare for that conversation.
Have realistic expectations
Even if business is picking up, a 10% raise may not be a possibility in this year’s budget. In 2009, employers budgeted for the lowest base-salary increases in 33 years: 1.8%, down from 3.7% in each of the previous two years, according to a recent study by benefits consultant Hewitt Associates. “An employee thinking about a raise needs to be aware that there’s less money available,” says Ken Abosch, the compensation practice leader at Hewitt. “High performers are first in line. Companies are going to work harder to take care of who they think are their outstanding employees.”
Time it right
“You do want to go see your boss after you’ve done something that really made an impact,” Challenger says. A good time to have the talk is after you’ve finished a project or results have come in that make your value to the organization clear. At many companies, management meets to make promotion decisions once or twice a year: Talk with your manager ahead of those meetings.
Know what to ask for
A promotion is different from a raise, and in today’s environment you may have better success asking for the former. Companies are still too mindful of the bottom line and convincing your manager to pay you more for the work you’ve been doing all along is difficult, Challenger says. “But when you get promoted to a higher-level job, more pay will in most cases come with that extra responsibility.” If you’ve been given additional responsibilities in the course of company downsizings, for example – and have demonstrated that you can handle them successfully – be sure your manager is aware of your accomplishments.
Showcase your value
Your boss probably doesn’t keep a list of your accomplishments – so prepare one to share with him or her before you have the conversation. “You need to convince your boss that you are truly adding value to the situation,” says Lori Dernavich, an employee performance advisor based in Hoboken, N.J. “If you can, tie a dollar amount to it.”
Keep the personal out of it
Your boss doesn’t want to hear that you need to make more money because your spouse lost his or her job or that you’re falling behind on your mortgage payments. “Chances are, your boss is having a hard time, too, in this recession,” Dernavich says.
Prep for the 'no'
Even if you’re convinced you deserve a raise, assume that you’ll hear ‘No,’ says Tory Johnson, the CEO and founder of Women for Hire, a New York-based employment company. In that case, ask when you can revisit the question: in three or six months, for example, or after a certain milestone has been achieved (such as landing a certain number of new clients). Ask for specific recommendations on what you can do to get your manager to approve your request and follow up on your conversation with an email thanking your manager for his time and confirming the details you discussed. “Then mark your calendar to follow up and get busy on making it happen,” Johnson says.
Negotiate
Turned down? Negotiate other benefits, Challenger says: more time off, a better title, work place flexibility. Or ask for a performance-tied bonus. Companies spend almost twice as much on so-called variable pay today as they did 15 years ago, according to Hewitt Associates. “The real upside pay opportunity is coming through bonus arrangements,” Abosch says.
Step up your game
Even if you’re denied a promotion, now is the best time to earn one in the future. “As organizations go through layoffs, that creates opportunities for people to step up and get additional responsibilities,” says Ed Rataj, the managing director of compensation at CBIZ Human Capital Services (CBZ: 7.19*, -0.09, -1.23%) in St. Louis. If you’ve been asked to work longer hours or perform additional duties, don’t complain that they’re not in your job description. Instead, take the opportunity to showcase your value to the company and earn that promotion for when you ask again down the road.