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Unemployed: Likely, You'll Run Out of Money (and help isn't on the way)

Losing a job is very different now. America is no stranger to extreme economic downturns, mergers and acquisitions, the introduction of new technologies and reductions of corporate layers. Who among us hasn't lost a good job because of those developments.  One major shift, though, is this: Instead of the angst about maintaining your lifestyle during the search and with what you find, it's the probability of running out money. Almost 70% of the jobless drain their savings, with 44% missing regular payments such as rent. BusinessInsider  features those who are heading toward that brutal reality.  Essentially they're chasing after comparable jobs and not finding them. That's a key error of judgment, pushing them into being without income. Severance and unemployment end. Retirement funds get drained.  They can no longer assume they can pursue a linear path in earning a living. They're operating against the current headwinds of a low hiring rate, whole sectors such ...
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BoomerVille: Nothing to See Here

  Dow Futures 48,763.00 Change + 8.00   0.02%  
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BoomerVille - Catching Up to Ourselves

  Nice try. The Wall Street Journal starts out its article on us Boomers with this: "The first of the youth-obsessed baby boomers turn 80 this year, including President Trump, and they want to shake up old age." That all-knowing tone from a respected legacy publication is supposed to trigger readers nodding their heads in agreement: Ah, that's what the Boomers are about. But, it isn't. Actually our generation is increasingly diverse in what we are about. Given so many changes, ranging from AI to a sustained roller-coaster investment scene, I, for one, am struggling to catch up to who I'm becoming. Pieces of that don't include, at least not for now, wanting to "shake up old age."  Primarily I'm focused on balancing not outliving my money with the peril of being too frugal and missing opportunities such as traveling abroad for enjoying life. Several years ago I phased out being an influencer. With the exception of protecting Social Security and Med...
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Apple Shutting Down Towson Store: Unionization Or Retail Conditions?

The emerging big story about recent college graduates isn't their unemployment or underemployment. It's their push-back through unionizing. That's being called the "new labor movement."  As Noam Sheiber depicts it in "Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College Working Class" this development has all the passion, determination and sacrifice of the 1930s auto workers campaigns to establish a fair contract between management and labor. Yes, allegedly labor activists are losing jobs because of their organizing. Featured in "Mutiny" is the history of Apple retail. That brick and mortar concept started off with a great deal for young workers. Training, a sense of purpose and pride in the brand characterized the work experience. But much of that eroded. In response was the campaign at the Towson Mall location in Maryland for representation by a union. Yahoo Finance reports: "Workers at the Towson location voted to join the International Assoc...
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BoomerVille: Maybe This Will Lift By Monday Morning

  Dow Futures 47,662.00 Change - 467.00   0.97%  
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Mythos and More: Now That the End Could Be in a Few Years

In the Spring edition of Vanity Fair , Joe Hagen nails it in his article on AI. He reports: "Nobody really knows how to build guardrails that work." So, here we are with breaking news that business and government leaders are meeting to discuss the implications of Anthropic's Mythos. They know that no one knows. As Anthropic itself describes Mythos, which hasn't been released (with exceptions): " ... is capable of identifying and then exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in every major operating system and every major web browser when directed by a user to do so." The user could be a madman. Or an alleged non-truthteller like OpenAI's Sam Altman, as positioned and packaged in The New Yorker.   Therefore, the end could be near. Some estimates are within a few years. Sure, Anthropic can hold back its Mythos. But others, putting profit ahead of safety, could develop their own version. A bad actor user could hack into the systems which could destroy life on...
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BoomerVille: 2027 Social Security COLA Could Bring Some Financial Comfort

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  As we age, income from work tends to go down. So, even those of us Boomers who are still out there in the labor market or operating our own businesses are beyond our peak earnings years. We do depend on Social Security to get us through.  So, it helps de-escalate our rising financial angst in these inflationary times to hear estimates about where our Social Security COLA could be for 2027. CNBC  reports: "The cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, could be 3.2% in 2027 due to sharply rising gasoline prices ..." Of course, some of that could be reduced if the monthly Medicare deduction increases yet again. Amid all the gloom talk we Boomers still get it that we may be the last lucky gen in America. Despite severe recessions and stock market crashes we had the best of economic times, along with cheap higher education and degrees which were marketable. My first house outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania cost about $30K. It was a two-family so I rented out half.  Currently ma...
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