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Week of May 8
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Friday, May 12, 2006
Give Mom a Raise on Mother’s Day
As
you plan the perfect way to thank Mom for all she does this Sunday,
consider this: If paid at current market rates, stay-at-home mothers
would earn $134,121 per year and working moms would bring in an
extra $85,876 on top of their annual salaries. And forget about the
40-hour workweek. Both working moms and stay-at-home moms toil an
average of 90 hours per week.
These are just some of the findings of a Salary.com
survey. The company, which provides compensation services to
businesses as well as salary information to individuals, divided the
tasks moms perform into 10 job titles, including housekeeper,
janitor, teacher, CEO and psychologist, and came up with a
compensation package comparable to one that such a versatile multi-tasker
might earn in today’s job market. For a little fun, go to
www.mom.salary.com and check out the site’s Mom’s Salary
Wizard. There you can customize your mother’s job description,
taking into account such factors as number of kids and where she
lives, then create a printable “Mom Paycheck” to present her with on
Sunday.
Maybe next year the site will provide a “Mom Invoice.”
We owe our mothers so much more than the numbers above indicate.
Experts have long estimated that working women who take several
years off the job to raise their children end up forfeiting nearly a
million dollars a year in salaries and promotions over the course of
their career. Stay-at-home moms give up not only the salaries they
could be earning but also any matching 401(k) dollars, Social
Security vesting and health benefits. It’s a huge sacrifice—and one
that mothers in many other countries do not have to make. Many
countries in Europe offer mothers paid maternity leave and paid
child care, not to mention universal health care, making it easier
for them to handle the complicated juggling act of raising a family
and having a career.
If your mom has given up a salary to stay home and
perform the most important job there is—raising the next generation
of smart, caring, informed individuals—perhaps the best gift (after
a hug) might be opening a savings account or IRA for her.
CLICK HERE to find out how Dad can open a spousal IRA to
compensate for the savings Mom might have been stashing away in a
401(k). Moms-to-be might want to check out “Kids ‘R’ Costly: How to
Afford Them,” Chapter Four in “Making Bread: The Ultimate Financial
Guide for Women Who Need Dough,” available on
www.amazon.com.
The final word on Mother’s Day goes to the winner of
Nick at Nite’s “Funniest Mom in America” contest, 36-year-old Rubi
Nicholas: "The modern mother, more than anyone, needs to keep a
sense of humor," she said in an interview with The New York Times
recently. "There are things I had to let go of—clothes that match,
anything white, combed hair. So my kids are white, and they have
dreadlocks." Nicholas is a Pakistani Muslim married to a Greek
Orthodox husband. Easy for her to laugh. Her husband stays home with
the kids. (P.S.: Four of the five women listed on Fortune
magazine’s list of “The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business” several
years ago had stay-at-home spouses.)
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Thursday, May 11, 2006
Trips Ahoy!
Yahoo and Amazon want to make your summer-trip planning easier and
cheaper. Yahoo’s new FareChase feature promises to search the
Internet for lowest prices in any category you specify. Go to
http://travel.yahoo.com to try it out. Amazon, meanwhile, has
just launched a one-stop travel shop, where you can buy gear,
luggage, books, magazines, and cameras along with your vacation
packages. Amazon uses Yahoo’s FareChase competitor
www.SideStep.com to perform its Internet searches for
lowest-priced travel deals. CLICK
HERE to check out its travel store.
Finally,
as we lead up to
Mother’s Day this Sunday, here’s a contest tailor-made for daughters
and sons: Quick & Simple magazine (www.quickandsimple.com)
wants to know “what’s the most useful advice your mother ever gave
you?” Share that advice, and how it helped you, in 300 words or
less, and you’ll be entered to win a weekend-getaway trip for two
(naturally, you’ll invite Mom) to New York City, including a
three-hour dinner and dancing cruise. Total value for the weekend:
$2,180. Deadline for submissions: 11:59 P.M. (ET) on May 23. Visit
http://www.quickandsimple.com/contest44.vm for more information
and to enter.
Though we didn’t give away a trip, a few
years ago, we asked MAKING BREAD readers to share “the smart money
lessons” their mothers had taught them. Responses ranged from the
touching (“My mother taught me that I can do anything that I put my
mind to if I am well-prepared when the opportunity comes along, and
that trust and friendship make you the richest person in the
world.") to the comical (“All she ever said were these two things:
1. ‘Tell your father he owes me back child support,’ and 2. ‘Here's
$50 for your new life in New York. I expect this back’.”). Read all
the responses by going to “MAKING
BREAD Celebrates Mothers Who
Know Best.”
Then share the money lessons your mom taught you by e-mailing me at
gail@makingbreadmagazine.com. We’ll post them here.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Mom, Can I Borrow $5,000?
When my mother was alive, I looked to her
as my bank of first resort. I always knew I could rely on her to
bail me out if was strapped for cash, facing an emergency—or wanted
something I couldn’t really afford on my own. Turns out I wasn’t
alone. The Institute of Social Research, operating out of the
University of Michigan, last year released a study called “On the
Frontier of Adulthood.” It reveals that 34 percent of 18 to 34 year
olds in America rely on their parents for cash to supplement their
incomes.
According to the study, middle-income parents who earn less than
$72,600 a year may well end up spending $42,280 on their adult
children from the time they turn 18 to the time they turn 35 in cash
and other kinds of support—clothes, help with car payments, rent,
down payments on mortgages—the stuff of daily life. My friend Sharon
was just saying the other day that she isn’t nearly as well off as
her parents were—and she’s a lawyer married to an architect.
Salaries just haven’t kept up with inflation. Her mother, as mine
did, gladly offers help when she can.
“While many adult children wouldn't dream of asking their parents
for handouts, others don't seem to be able to leave home,
metaphorically or literally. The conflict such family ‘business’
can create is the stuff of Shakespearean drama, an emotional brew of
love, guilt, obligation and rancor,” wrote awarding-winning author
Victoria Secunda in a piece published on this Web site a while ago.
Secunda goes on to offer tips for parents and adult children who are
navigating this slippery financial slope.
CLICK HERE
to read “Mom, Can I Borrow $5,000? When Your Grown Kids Ask for
Money . . . When to Say ‘Yes,’ How to Say ‘No’—and Why You Must
Consider Your Own Financial Future First,” normally reserved for
MAKING BREAD subscribers only.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Tuesday, May 9, 2006
New Spam Scam & Un-Truth in
Advertising
“Lovely spam,
wonderful spa-a-m, SPA-AM, SPA-AM, SPA-AM, SPA-A-A-AM!” I’m tempted
to chant these Monty Python lyrics through gritted teeth as I go
through my e-mail every morning. As annoying as they are, I
sometimes marvel at the twisted sense of humor spammers have,
evident in their e-mail addresses and subject lines. Some names are
so formal and old-fashioned, they could have been lifted from the
pages of a Charles Dickens or Jane Austen novel—and maybe were;
others sound like hookers and pimps at a porn convention. Then there
are the strings of computer-generated gibberish contained within the
body of these phony, virus-infected messages: “cheesecake easy
tremble fib” read one recent spam mail I received. Is this poetry?
Or the product of some madman’s dream? (I work on a Mac, which is
less susceptible to viruses than a PC, and have virus protection
software installed, so I can open these e-mails with a certain
amount of impunity.)
Here are four
dead giveaways that an e-mail isn’t legit.
1. The subject
line sounds like it was written by someone whose native language
does not even remotely resemble English. The syntax and spelling are
all wrong.
2. The subject
line dares you to open the e-mail (“Full of health? Then don’t
click!”) or chastises you (“I’m STILL waiting!”).
3.
The subject line expresses touching concern for you (“Are you ok?”)
but the sender’s e-mail address is not familiar to you.
4.
The subject line asks if you want to “enlarge your member”—and you
don’t have one.
Spammers have masqueraded as banks,
credit-card companies, and Internet providers to get people to click
on links and make their computers vulnerable to a virus attack. The
latest in that brand of perverse spam are e-mails claiming to have
been sent by one of the three credit bureaus, Equifax, Trans Union
and Experian. I’ve noticed these coming in for the past week. Have
you gotten any? What’s next? Will the White House be spoofed soon?
More Truth in
Advertising Department: Some TV shows, including The Apprentice
and Deal or No Deal, invite viewers to play along by text
messaging entries for a chance to “Get Rich with Trump” or pick a
“Lucky Case” and win $10,000 during each show. “There is a premium
messaging charge of 99 cent for each text entry,” we are told. Look
at your phone bill carefully, if you’re a player. Depending on where
you live, you may well find that an added tax brings the total
charge for each entry over $1. That’s fine, but why don’t they tell
it like it is?
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Monday, May 8, 2006
Do Blondes Have More Money?
When she moved
to New York after college, Mary Castellano “didn't realize that
along with rent, phone and utilities, I'd have this huge expense for
hair. … People check you out, and if you have black roots and your
hair is fried, it doesn't matter that you're carrying a Bottega
bag,” she explained. Castellano, who works for a PR agency and was
quoted in an April New York Times article called “Golden
Girls,” about “the high cost of being a New York Blonde,” was
spending $500 a month for highlights and touchups to maintain her
perfect platinum coif. We’re talking Caroline Bessette Kennedy,
Daryl Hannah blonde—the kind of “Bergdorf Blondes” that Plum Sykes
spoofed in her novel of the same name.
The high
cost of being blonde and beautiful these days in New York or
anywhere else makes me wonder whether staying brunette has become a
political statement, a symbolic act of defiance in a new kind of
class warfare. Call brunettes the loyal opposition in a
majority-controlled congress of blondes. I’ve got hair on my mind
today because a friend has been on the fence about spending money to
get her color touched up. So far she’s holding out. Her husband says
he likes the gray that’s coming in.
It’s not
just hair that’s a dead net-worth giveaway. Many anti-aging products
that keep wrinkles at bay are running $500 and up for a month’s
supply. Then there are the regular botox shots, collagen injections,
triple oxygen treatments and spa visits that impart that
unmistakable de-stressed glow the very wealthy consider de rigueur.
I was surfing the net this weekend looking for a miracle cream I’d
been tempted to try. Wisely, before hitting the “complete order”
button, I checked
www.makeupalley.com. The reviews
there convinced me that I could put my money to better use and saved
me a few wrinkles when the credit-card statement comes. Another site
that has terrifically specific, candid comments from those who have
tried cosmetic products and love or hate them is
www.skinstore.com.
Click on its “View ratings and comments” button before buying
anything you haven’t tried before.
But
getting back to the blonde versus brunette debate: Speaking as
someone with a foot in both camps—a brunette who adds blonde
highlights to her hair—I can understand those who swing both ways:
First, there was Renee Zellweger flirting with brunette tresses
before switching back to blonde. Then Ashlee Simpson deserted her
brunette sisters to go goldilocks. What about Plum Sykes (who is
herself a brunette and proud of it)? The heroine of her follow-up to
“Bergdorf Blondes, “The Debutante Divorcee,” has “hair the color of
espresso beans.” Maybe she couldn’t afford the salon after her
divorce.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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If you like the blog, you’ll love the book.
For more savvy
finance advice, buy
“Making Bread: The
Ultimate Financial Guide for Women Who Need Dough,”
by Gail Harlow and Elizabeth Lewin, available on
Amazon.com and at your local bookstore |
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