Careful If You Relocate - State Budget Shortfalls Mean Higher State Taxes

41 states could go bankrupt by 2009-2010 - the table below shows which are the worst.

As state governments scramble to stay above water - cutting both unneeded and needed services - the local legislatures grapple with ways to increase revenue.

And you know what that means. More taxes for all of us.

No more wondering what I’ll be doing with that $600 federal tax rebate check.

What the federal government giveth, the state government taketh away.

I don’t quite understand why every bank and their grandmother’s bank is getting TARP funds - while the states are left holding the bag.

More than 10 states are considering major tax increases, reports the Wall Street Journal.  These include “Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin.  California and New York lawmakers already have agreed on multibillion-dollar tax increases that went into effect earlier this year.”

State taxes come in many forms beyond income tax.  Depending on where you live, and what your vices are, you could be nickled and dimed out quite a few dollars.  Here’s some of the taxes being considered for increases in various states.

Cost of living taxes

• Sales tax
• Fuel tax
• Property taxes
• Personal taxes, such as excise tax, and fees for registering your car or boat.
• Reductions of personal exemptions and standard deductions, medical/dental exemptions, and federal income tax deductions.

Target taxes

• Retirement taxes
• Military retirement taxes
• Estate Taxes

Vice taxes

• Cigarette tax
• Alcohol tax
• Gambling tax

What you can do

• Contact your local legislature.  Here’s how.
• Reduce or quit a vice.  Bummer.
• If you’re considering relocating either for job or retirement, you’ll want to take into account the tax burden you’ll be expected to handle at the new location.  Is it higher or lower than where you live now?  Here’s a list of per capita tax burdens by state:

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Out of Work? They’re Hiring at the Unemployment Office

Over 5 million Americans are now on unemployment:  more people than at any other time since 1967 - when records started being kept.

Here in Massachusetts, where unemployment jumped an entire percentage point - to 6.8% - last December, the phones at the Massachusetts Unemployment Center in Boston are literally ringing off the hook.

Kim, a single mother of 3, called 20-30 times per day for five days before getting a live person.  Her benefits didn’t start arriving for 4 weeks.  “It was extremely frustrating,” says Kim.  “Luckily, I had some savings to tide me over.  I don’t know how some families are getting by.”

To ease the claims bottleneck, the Massachusetts office is adding 60 new employees.   “This should ease the current claims crunch,” said a local official.”

They’re not alone.

In California, it’s the same situation.  According to the Orange County Register, unemployment offices across the state have the following openings as of February 26th:

• Los Angeles area: 140
• Orange County area: 30
• Bay Area: 60
• San Diego area: 20
• San Bernardino, Riverside, Redlands area: 36
• San Jose:  35
• Sacramento: 81

Individual states each run their own programs, but they must comply with federal guidelines.  To handle the increased number of claims, most offices are hiring more workers and extending business hours.

For more information on filing, check out this site at the United States Department of Labor.

For more information about the jobs, contact the individual offices.

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4 Tips for Climbing the Corporate Ladder

Becoming a corporate executive isn’t for everyone.  In edition to being intelligent ( or being the son of the CEO!), it requires total focus, dedication and drive.   Here’s 4 good tips for budding CEOs.

1)  Say ‘yes.’

Susy Welch recently published an article in Oprah entitled The price of saying ‘no’ at work.  She interviewed several successful woman, and repeatedly heard the same thing -  “saying ‘no’ has a consequence kickback.”

Top executives are expected to do what’s expected.

2)  Forget about balance.

At some point in your career, you’ll need to determine how important getting to the top is to you.  Higher level executives sacrifice lots of family and personal time.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric says “I hate the word balance.” He believes if you don’t make the personal sacrifices, someone else out there will.

3)  Develop a thick skin.

The higher you go, the less positions are available. The competition is fierce. You’ll be critiqued and scrutinized.

4)  Make friends at all corporate levels.

You need to sell yourself.  If you’re well liked, people will be more likely to take a chance on you.  They’ll rate you higher on seemingly “objective” criteria.  When push comes to shove, people will look out for their friends where possible.

Depending upon your personal career objectives, getting ahead in business can require tremendous sacrifice to your personal life.  Does anyone have any stories about sacrifices they’ve had to make?

photo credit: PicApp

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9 Best Ways to Get Laid Off

When it comes to layoffs, it’s not about seniority anymore.  Are you staying below the radar? Here’s some suggestions on what NOT to do.

1.  Call your mother regularly during work.  Did I forget to mention that she lives in China - and you’re using the company phone?

2.  Go golfing on the company expense account.

3.  Brag about your seniority.

4.  Ask for more personal time.

5.  Don’t use deodorant.

6.  Schedule your haircuts during work hours.

7.  Supply your child’s class with company pens and notebooks.

8.  Sell company stationary at the local flea market.

9.  Have your supervisor overhear you making fun of his hairpiece.

Photo Credits:  PicApp

Finding a Job - Career Information & Sites

Finding a new job in this economy can be like pushing a rope.

So how do you put yourself at the top of the search pack?

You need to ask yourself these questions

Are you willing to re-locate?

• If you’re young and adventurous, re-locating is fine, but if you have children in school, you might not want to make it an option.

Are you willing to change careers?

• This is an ideal opportunity to explore changing careers.  Are any of your hobbies or interests marketable?

Can you afford to take a cut in pay?

• Changing careers often means an inital pay cut.

Could you go back to school?

• An additional technical, undergraduate, or graduate degree could help land you that next job.

Utilize your resources

Friends and former colleagues, college friends, neighbors, family members, etc.

• Hands down, the best way to find a job is through someone you know - and who knows you.  Hiring manager’s are faced with the daunting task of choosing a prospective employee after spending only a few hours of interview time with them - and when they are on their best behavior!  It’s a huge foot in the door if former colleagues currently working at your target company can vouch for you.

The Internet.

• Job search sites - Monster.com,  Best Jobs, USA,  CareerBuilder.com
• Career information sites - Glassdoor.com,  America’s Career Infonet
  
• Resume assistance sites - Best 10 Resume Writers,  BuildaResume,
• Social networking sites - LinkedIn, Business Week Article-”Social Networking: Closer Than You Think.”

Be Persistant

• The squeaky wheel gets the job.
• Follow-up all interviews with a thank you letter.
• Until you you hear you haven’t got it, call/e-mail on a weekly basis.

Stay Positive

• Use the time to your advantage - exercise, read, start a hobby, clean the garage.
• Do more of the chores around the house.  This not only eases the burden on your spouse, it helps you to still feel like you’re contributing to the household.
• Pick up side jobs - like starting a blog or delivering newspapers.
• Volunteer - at the local school, food pantry, your church, etc.

Would any have any suggestions to add?  I’d love hearing from you.

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LinkedIn: A Powerful Professional Networking Tool

Need to kick start your career?  Recently laid off?

Finding a job is no picnic.

And we all know that resumes don’t find jobs, people do.

LinkedIn networks people.   Staying in contact with old colleagues and friends enhances your chances of finding that perfect job or perfect employee.

Because you never know.

Thinking of Going Back to Graduate School? Make Sure There’s a Payoff

NPR recently reported that the cost of attending graduate school can often outweigh the benefits.

If you’re already working, but considering graduate school - either full time or part time - there are a number of factors to evaluate before taking the plunge:

What is your motivation?

If your motivation is financial, determine if the pay-off is there by:

evaluating your target job market over the next 5-10 years.

• Is it increasing?
• What is the pay scale? Will you make more money when you graduate?
• Where are the jobs located?

discussing with your current employer any potential job opportunites. Do they include a pay increase

If your motivation is to study what you love, Lucky you!

Not everyone finds something that draws them. In this case, the sacrifice is absolutely worth it, but you still want to be smart about your decisions.

• Do you need to attend a prestigious school? You pay a lot for a big name.
• Will your current employer pick up the tab?
• Is your major one that allows you to teach undergraduates as part of your education? For example, science graduate students almost always can get some financial support for teaching science labs.
• Would you consider an ROTC program? These programs commit you to five years of military service upon completion, but will pay for everything while you are in school.
• Will you go full time or part time? What will the impact be on your current lifestyle? Are these sacrifices you are able to make until you graduate?
• Are you eligible for any scholarships? There are many opportunities out there for scholarship money. Doing your homework could pay off.

How will you pay for it?

Graduate school costs have increased 60% in the last decade, 240% in the last 20 years, states the Wall Street Journal. If you’re borrowing the cash, even with an education loan, you could be paying back that money over the next twenty years. Will your increase in salary compensate for this additional payment? Does that matter to you?

Has anyone gone back to graduate school after working a few years? What has been your experience?

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The Power of Persuasion: Eight Strategies for Getting Exactly What You Want

Whether you’re a salesman, a supervisor, a computer programmer, or a stay at home mom, the art of persuasion can be a key element to your success at work, and, indeed, in many aspects of your life.

“Persuasion is a key element of all human interaction, from politics to marketing to everyday dealings with friends, family and colleagues. “Persuasion is a basic form of social interaction,” says Eric Knowles, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. “It is the way we build consensus and a common purpose.”

The New Scientist recently compiled a comprehensive collection of scientific studies designed to determine the best persuasive techniques for getting exactly what you want. These were the top eight.

1) Be a Mimic.

Good salesmen have always known it, but recently a number of studies have shown conclusively that subtly mimicking someone’s mannerisms - such as head and arm movements, and posture - can be a very persuasive technique.

Just don’t get caught! It’s also infuriating to the receiver, should they figure out what you’re doing.

“The crucial factors are: be subtle, leave a delay and, whatever you do, if you think there’s even the slightest chance you’ve been rumbled, stop.”

2) Practice framing.

A favorite technique of spin doctors, “framing is about leading people to think about an issue or opinion in a way that is advantageous to you,” explains George Bizer of Union College in Schenectady, New York. “For example, opponents of inheritance taxes prefer to frame them as ‘death taxes’.”

Negative images have a more powerful influence than positive ones. If you want someone to vote for McCain, show Obama in a negative light. That’s why, as much as politicians deny they want to do negative campaigning

3) Sometimes less is more.

Contrary to what you would think, studies suggest that if you want someone to agree with you, ask them to think of no more than three good reasons why they also support your idea. But don’t ask them to think up more than that.

Studies show that the easier it is for people to come up with ideas supporting you, the more positive they will feel about it. And it is easier to think up three ideas rather than ten ideas.
So, instead of saying, “give me all the reasons you can think of,”say “give me one good reason you can think of that this idea will work.

4) Wear them down.

People will give in more easily when they are tired, hungry, or mentally exhausted, and you’ll have a better chance of getting what you want.

Conversely, don’t go buying a new car on an empty stomach, or after a long week of work, when you’re exhausted.

5) Use the best communication medium for the situation.

It was found that during same-sex interactions, women tend to be more easily influenced during face-to-face communication than by e-mail.

For men who have previously met in person to debate the point, it is the opposite. Men who have never met will negotiate about the same whether by e-mail or face-to-face.

Researchers theorize that this is because, in general, women tend to be more communal, while men are more competitive and independent. If they have met once for negotiations, they will be even more competitive at their next face-to-face .
Studies have not yet been done on opposite-sex interactions.

6) Style over substance.

Often, unconsciously, people listen to tone and body language more than actual words.

So, at its best,acting confident and comfortable about your subject can win you supporters, regardless of what you say.

At its worst, this is the con man’s game. During college many years ago, I had a part time job at a self service gas station. One customer had me so confused that, by the time he left the station, not only hadhe gotten a free tank of gas, I had given him an extra eight dollars in change!

7) Use Anger.

Different types of emotion, such as fear or guilt, are often used as tools of persuasion. But these don’t always work, because people start to feel manipulated, and they become tired of being judged.

But anger is different. It’s empowering. The emotion is focused on someone or something else instead of internally. A good example of this is with groups, such as GreenPeace or The Human Rights Campaign. The leaders of these groups use anger as a way to unite people for a good cause.

Dealing with resistance.

If someone feels like they’re being manipulated or pushed in a certain direction, they’ll increase their resistance to being pursuaded. Often they’ll become even more entrenched in their old beliefs. Also, ” if people resist good arguments presented by an expert, they conclude their own arguments must be even stronger.”

This can create a difficult situation. The best way to deal with this is to “take smaller steps to your final goal, when presenting your argument, so that you are more aligned with the person’s own beliefs.” Also boost the other person’s self esteem. When people feel good about themselves, they are more open to change.

Have any thoughts on this?

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The Psychology of Money: Low Self-Esteem is Like Driving Through Life With Your Hand-Brake On

So said Maxwell Maltz, author of the classic visualization book, Psycho-Cybernetics.

One proven technique for overcoming low self-esteem, and other defeatist thoughts that inhibit our success in life, like identification with failure, or poverty mentality, is a tool known as visualization.

The visualization techniques I’m about to describe were developed by a Jewish holocaust survivor and physician, Dr. Victor Frankl. Living in concentration camps during World War II, he watched his entire family perish. He credits these visualization tools to his own survival.

In the 1960s, the techniques were further refined by Maxwell Maltz. Maltz was a plastic surgeon specializing in corrective surgery for birth defects. He found that, after surgery, many of his patients still saw themselves negatively. Teaching these people visualization techniques became part of his practice.

These techniques laid the groundwork for self-improvement teachers such as Tony Robbins.

The object of visualization is to adapt old learned behaviors to behaviors better suited to the present.

For example, say your first experiences driving a car were in the summer. You get your license, and have become a very good driver. Now, it’s winter, and you suddenly find yourself driving in a snow storm on ice, and skidding into a tree. What happened? The breaking techniques that worked in the summer don’t work in slippery conditions. So you hit the tree. Now, you can keep hitting a tree every time it snows, or you can adjust your braking technique to better navigate the ice, by incorporating what you have learned. And, of course you do.

Unfortunately, not all behavioral changes are so simple. Many thought processes have become not just habitual, but totally entrenched in our minds through repetitive stimulation of specific neuronal synaptic paths.

To undo this learning, you need to combat these habitual patterns with equally powerful habitual thinking.

Since you can’t do this in real life, you imagine these new behaviors in your mind.

Through repetitively imagining what you want, you readjust your habitual thought patterns to better relate to the present.

You do this by:

• Creative Mental Picturing,
• Creatively experiencing success through your imagination, and
• Formation of new automatic reaction patterns.

I find the process relatively simple, and, once mastered, it can be practiced easily, while falling asleep, or even exercising.

Practice your visualizations in the morning and in the evening. Forget about them during the day. The changes, when they occur, should feel effortless, a newly incorporated part of you.

To describe how the techniques work, here’s an example:

Think of Tiger Woods. Tiger will play an entire golf course in his mind, hole by hole, before a tournament. He’ll imagine every shot in vivid detail, successfully moving through his virtual golf course a winner. Each evening, after play has completed, he’ll re-play his bad shots over successfully in his mind on his virtual golf course. He’ll adjust for all of his mistakes - how he’s positioned his feet, or turned his wrist - and also recreate as much detail in his visualization as possible - the color of the grass and sky, the texture of the handle of his club.

This technique has proven so powerful that it is part of many professional team regimens.

I have a library of self-help books that would knock your socks off. Some books stay, some books go, but Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho Cybernetics - is at the heart of it. It’s rated #34 in the Top 50 Classic Self Help Books.

We all want to be successful.

Your mind is the most powerful tool you have to create your success.

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Getting a Break on Your Student Loans

“The average college student graduates with $21,000 in debt,” says CNN in a recent article. That’s not exactly the best springboard to launch your life from. The good news is that there are a number of relief programs available that can ease the burden.

Loan Forgiveness- Working in public service jobs could buy you a loan reduction, or even a loan cancellation. The website Mapping Your Future provides tools to help you determine if you’re eligible for any of these programs. They can help you find out who holds your loan if you are unsure. There are also specific public service organizations that help their employees pay back their school loans.

Economic Hardship Deferments- if you’re struggling to make your payments, check out this hardship deferment calculator to see if you might qualify for a loan extension. This can ease some of the burden, but remember, you will be paying as much as twice the amount of interest by extending your payments over a longer period of time.

If you qualify for any of these programs, you can save thousands of loan dollars. I wish I had one of these for my mortgage!

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