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7 Reasons Super Bowl Monday is THE Day to Start a Diet

By Kevin M

OK sports fans, The Big Game is over; it’s time to get down to real life. That means OUR lives, and not the ones of the stars on the field. Got a few pounds to lose? There’s no better day than today to get to it. Why?

I can think of seven reasons:

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Tax Benefits of Homeownership – Three Reasons Its Over-rated

By Kevin M

One of the most compelling reasons for owning a home is the heavily touted tax benefit owing to deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes. Real estate agents will play this benefit for all it’s worth in extolling the idea of homeownership for all.

However for three reasons, this benefit is not what it used to be: a generous standard deduction, low mortgage rates and low marginal tax rates.

The tax benefit of homeownership became an entrenched concept back in the 1970s and early 1980s and at that time it had overwhelming merit. Mortgage rates were in double digits most of the time, marginal tax rates ran as high as 70% and standard deductions were down in the low thousands. Owning a home made major sense even for moderate income earners and was an article of faith in the higher income brackets.

None of that is true today, yet the tax savings pitch remains. Standard deductions can exceed $11,000, interest rates are down around 5% and marginal tax rates cap out at 38% (but are substantially lower for the vast majority of households). Yet the notion of major tax savings remains almost unchallenged.

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Jobs and Careers That Aren’t Coming Back

By Kevin M

Recently on OutOfYourRut I’ve been writing a series of posts centered on employment alternatives–self-employment, side businesses and soft employment (part-time, temporary or contract work). The purpose in discussing these alternatives is based on my belief that the weak employment environment we now find ourselves in may not be temporary, and longterm changes need to be implemented in order for us to survive in a job market that may look very different from what we’ve know for most of our lives.

( Photo by Phil Campbell )

Though connecting employment weakness to the recent recession is the standard line, doing so fails to give proper recognition to longer term trends which have had an even greater effect on the job market than we assume. Globalization, advances in technology and rising healthcare costs have marginalized much of the labor force in countries such as the United States. While technology has been eliminating jobs at home, wage arbitrage has been taking place globally, in a competition that high wage/high benefit labor bases, such as that of the U.S., are at a competative disadvantage versus low cost/unbenefited work forces in third world countries. We can protest that it’s unfair competition all we want, but it’s also the reality of our time.

Though the evidence is all around us, I stumbled upon a recent article that addresses the longer term job outlook more directly.

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Starting a Side Business – Why Now is the Time

Kevin M

Unstable employment may be here to stay. 10% of the work force is now unemployed, and millions more are under-employed, working at temporary or part-time jobs. By some indicators the economy is showing signs of recovery, but globalization, advances in technology and rising healthcare costs have been gradually cutting away at employment long before onset of the Great Recession.

In Multiple Income Streams to replace One Man-One Job?, we discussed different options to deal with the increasing unreliability of permanent, full-time, fully benefited jobs. Starting a side business is at the center of that discussion.

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Multiple Income Streams to replace One Man-One Job?

By Kevin M

You may be employed at the moment; in fact you may even be well-employed. But look at many others around you and what do you see? With millions unemployed, millions more under-employed, and hundreds of thousands of jobs being outsourced to lower wage countries, what does the future of employment hold? Is it possible that the sun is setting on the traditional one man/one job model of employment and income?

Before dismissing the possibility, consider that only 40 years ago tens of millions of workers were employed in largely high paying, mostly unionized factory jobs. Just over 100 years ago the majority of Americans were employed in agriculture. Where are all of those jobs now? And if one man/one job is going the way of the factory job, what are our options?

Developing multiple income streams may become a necessary reaction to an environment where the unemployed often return to the work force in lower paying jobs.

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What TV REALLY Costs Us

By Kevin M

We’re not going to talk today about the best deals on widescreen TVs or the most cost effective cable packages. Instead, I want to focus on what I’m certain are the far larger affects of TV on our finances in the form of time, opportunity cost, and influence.

Time. According to Adweek adults in America average 309.1 minutes watching TV each day. That works out to be more than five hours per day! If we spend eight hours each day sleeping, another eight working, plus five hours watching TV, that eats up 21 of our 24 hours, leaving just three hours each day for virtually everything else we have going on!

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Buying vs Renting a Home – Its Not All About Money

And other questions you should ask before buying a home!

By Kevin M

Many articles have been written on the buy-verses-rent question, but most of the analysis tends to center on the dollars and cents side of the question. We read about tax advantages, investment potential, home buyer tax credits, income ratios—all important considerations, but all essentially monetary in nature.

Rather than crunching numbers, I’d like to consider the question from a mostly non-monetary angle, and discuss factors which are of at least equal importance in making the decision to buy or rent a home. Most have to do with lifestyles, attitudes and future prospects.

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Secret Life of the American Teenager – Exactly What is the Message?

By Kevin M

I’m a bit, shall we say, long-in-the-tooth to be watching a teen-oriented program, but since my wife and I have teenage kids, we often watch what they watch. At a minimum, we want to know what kind of entertainment they’re taking in.

About 18 months ago, ABC Family rolled out the teen series, The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Centering on the storyline of a 15 year old high school student becoming pregnant as a result of a one time affair with a 16 year old boy, the original plot looked to have a solid message, one that we felt our kids needed to see—our daughter especially.

The show seemed to have all the potential to deliver a powerful message on the consequences of teen sex and the need for responsibility. Perfect–IF it had stayed on message! But just as the Brady Bunch mostly ignored its original plot of the trials of a blended family, morphing instead into the perfect family with hardly a mention of its blended status past the third or fourth episode, so Secret Life moved past the initial struggles of a pregnant teen, and into the realm of a runaway teen soap opera well before the end of its first season.

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Radical Self Reliance in the New Economy

By Kevin M

What if the economy isn’t turning the corner? What if the “Great Recession” isn’t a recession at all, but the early stage of a longer term economic devolution?

I consider this as more than a reasonable possibility. As much as we might cling to the notion of “business as usual”, the history books tell us that long term cycles are periodically broken by the onset of a new eras. The fall of the Roman Empire was one such turn; the onset of the Industrial Revolution was another. Closer to our own time and place were the Civil War and the Great Depression. All of these events changed not only the rules of the game, but also the way the majority of people lived. And they were hardly isolated incidents.

I’m reading Survival+, Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation, where author and website host Charles Hugh Smith spells out the “Great Transformation” that we may well have entered already. The evidence to support his claim isn’t hard to find.

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7 Reasons Super Bowl Monday is THE Day to Start a Diet

Tax Benefits of Homeownership – Three Reasons Its Over-rated

Jobs and Careers That Aren’t Coming Back

Starting a Side Business – Why Now is the Time

Multiple Income Streams to replace One Man-One Job?

What TV REALLY Costs Us

Buying vs Renting a Home – Its Not All About Money

Secret Life of the American Teenager – Exactly What is the Message?

Radical Self Reliance in the New Economy

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