How To Survive Unemployment & Keep Financially Fit

And whether those goals are short-, medium- or long-term goals, a personal budget plan will help you reach them. Use the steps below to help you create your first student budget plan.

Ask yourself the following questions to help determine your current income and savings status:

• How much do you have in a savings account or other bank account that is readily available for your use?
• Do you have any savings bonds that you can cash?
• How much money do you anticipate saving from high school graduation gifts or other sources this year?
• How much money after taxes do you anticipate saving from a summer job?
• How much money will your parents contribute to fund your living expenses?
• How much will you earn from work-study or another part-time job?

Once you’ve gathered your asset information together, you can determine your monthly budget. To do this, add all of your fixed assets together. Then take your monthly figures and multiply those by the number of months you anticipate earning them. When you add those figures together and then divide by the number of months in your school year you’ll get your monthly budget. Confused? Don’t be, an easy real-world example follows:

• Say you have $250 in a savings account and just received a total of $500 in graduation gifts. You anticipate making $750 after taxes per month for June, July and August. Multiply the $750 by 3 months and your total is $2,250. Your parents also promised they’d pay you $200 per month for the school year. So multiply $200 by the 10 months of your school year for a total of $2,000. To determine your monthly budget figure you would simply add all of those figures together ($250 + $500 + $2,250 + $2,000 = $5,000) and then divide that total by 10 months ($5,000/10 = $500 per month).

This hypothetical $500 will be your monthly budget during the school year. And that will become your fund for paying all of your expenses.

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Once you start thinking about all the little details, it’s really easy to see where your money goes. But it doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as it might feel at this moment. In fact, creating a college student budget can help you feel more stable and it’s easy to track your expenses in about a month.

The third step in creating a college student budget is to analyze your assets and expenditures to figure out how you can have it all, or how you will eliminate what’s not necessary.

After going through the process of creating a student budget plan or personal budget plan many people realize that they actually don’t have enough money to pay for all of their expenditures.

The bottom line is that you are in control of your financial health. A student budget will keep you on track and help you realize your goals. If you find your expenses are more than your budget can handle, a student loan or a credit card can help you make up the difference.

Federal workers like them across the U.S. will be out of work and without a paycheck if the looming government shutdown isn’t averted. Some say they will make the best of it, using the spare time to get a few things done. Others are far more fearful of how they’ll provide for their families.

The partial shutdown, which could start at midnight Friday, leaves workers with many questions – some serious, others more mundane: How long, if at all, will they be away from their jobs? Who will be deemed “essential” and be told to come to work? Should I cancel the kids’ daycare? Will I still be able to afford that pre-planned vacation?

About 800,000 federal government workers would be affected by a shutdown. Congress would have to decide if furloughed employees could recoup back pay if they have to stay home.

The ripple effects stretch far beyond the Washington metro area, where many federal employees work and live, to places like Chicago, where more than 100 people facing no paychecks protested outside a federal building with signs, “Don’t Punish the Public” and “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.”

National parks would close, and the IRS would not process paper tax returns. But the nation’s federal prisons would remain open and air traffic controllers would report to work, as would federal inspectors who enforce safety rules and other workers deemed essential.

In Arkansas, National Weather Service meteorologist Dan Koch said he worries about how a shutdown could affect his family, including his two children. He said he’d still report to work for business as usual – but he wouldn’t get a paycheck until the shutdown ended. He’s putting more into savings to prepare, he said.

“I was actually saving up for a Caribbean cruise, but that money may actually be used to live on. It’s certainly more important to make sure we can get the bills paid and provide for our family,” he said.

Others saw opportunity.

John Haines, 64, has worked for the federal government more than 35 years. His duties as deputy director of the office of community renewal at the Department of Housing and Urban Development keep him busy all day long – leaving him little time to prepare for his transition to a new job in the private sector. He said he’s been meaning to update his resume for some time.

“I guarantee you if I’m not coming to work Monday morning that I’ll have more energy to do the kind of work that I should have done already” to prepare for the future, he said.

Haines wasn’t even sure if he could count on a three-day weekend. He was headed to a seminar this weekend in North Carolina and planned to visit a son there who serves in the National Guard, but he didn’t want to miss work Monday if his office was open.

“So I’m not doing any planning beyond the immediate future,” he said.

In Salt Lake City, home to about 12,300 federal employees, Leslie Steffs was applying for new hospital positions. The 55-year-old single mother, an administrative assistant assigned to the downtown Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building, said she was concerned about making mortgage payments.

“Some people say we’ll just have to tough it out, but I have a family to support. This is no joke,” Steffs said.

That was echoed by Justin Castro, a park service worker at the Oklahoma City Bombing National Memorial.

“Not having a check means not paying rent and not paying bills that need to be paid,” he said.

A sheriff on the eastern end of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is encouraging people to visit. Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith said he’ll provide emergency services and law enforcement to visitors in the park area within his county in the event of a shutdown.

He said merchants in nearby Estes Park would be hurt by a lack of visitors and shouldn’t be pawns in the budget showdown.

However, Patrick O’Driscoll, a spokesman at the National Park Service’s regional office in suburban Denver, said Smith’s department has no jurisdiction and the park will be closed if there’s a shutdown.

Limitations would not just affect the states. Aaron Tarver, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, said U.S. citizens will still have consular services if needed, but passports would be limited to emergencies. In the Philippines, the U.S. Embassy in Manila would only provide limited and emergency services if a shutdown happened, spokeswoman Rebecca Thompson said.

In Chicago, one of the demonstrators was Julie Sidlo, an Environmental Protection Agency accountant who endured the last government shutdown in the 1990s. This time, she doesn’t know how her job would be affected but is preparing for the worst, she said.

“I’ve sent an email to my mortgage company asking if I can delay payment for the next month, and gotten no response. I don’t know if I can file for unemployment,” Sidlo said, adding that she’s set money aside for several weeks. “I’ve decided not to make any purchases I don’t need to. I don’t go to restaurants.”

The government continued lurching toward a shutdown even as Congress continued negotiations to avert it and leaders expressed hope they could get a deal done. House Republicans advanced a stopgap measure Thursday that would keep the government running for another week, cut $12 billion in domestic spending and fund the Pentagon for the rest of the year. But President Barack Obama threatened to veto the bill even before it passed, and Senate Democrats showed no willingness to allow a vote on it. Both sides failed to reach agreement in middle-of-the-night talks.

Haines, who joined HUD in 1979 and before that worked for the Department of Transportation, said attrition at his workplace had pushed him to more rigorous hours. Though retirement-eligible, he’s now considering private sector jobs in economic development and said the threat of a shutdown laid bare what he said was a depressing change in the way the public values government workers.

“The advantage of being a federal employee is, supposedly, job stability. You sacrifice your total pay for whatever the job satisfaction and a high degree of job security,” Haines said. “That’s the tradeoff, supposedly – and, supposedly, good benefits.”

On Thursday, though, he wasn’t so sure of that.

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MADISON — An email exchange released Tuesday by Gov. Scott Walker shows concessions his office is willing to give on some aspects of the proposal, raising hope that a solution to the three week stand-off in Wisconsin may not be far off.

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CNN reports:

The e-mails showed ideas and counteroffers made by the Republican governor’s aides and two Democrats as they sought some resolution that would allow Democrats to come back to the state. Under the compromise, state workers would still pay more for health insurance and pension plans, saving the state nearly $330 million in two years.

Mr. Walker has previously said he would not budge on collective bargaining rights, but he has faced increasing pressure as protests in Madison reached as large as 80,000 people.

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Republicans applauded the president politely and tempered their post-speech criticism on a night where civility reigned, more than two weeks after the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six, left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., wounded and stunned lawmakers.

“I assure you, we want to work with the president to cut federal spending,” Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan said in the official Republican response moments after Obama spoke.

But the chairman of the House Budget Committee pivoted quickly and said that in the past two years Obama had presided over a huge run-up in spending on domestic programs. Democrats then “made matters even worse” with a health care law stuffed with taxes, penalties, mandates and fees that are stifling job creation, he said.

“We hold to a couple of simple convictions: Endless borrowing is not a strategy; spending cuts have to come first,” he said, the latest indication that conservatives in Congress intend to seek deeper cuts in spending and more far-reaching changes in benefit programs than Obama or Democrats will accept.

“We face a crushing burden of debt,” Ryan said in a speech from the committee room where Republicans will soon begin writing a plan to cut spending and reduce deficits. “The debt will soon eclipse our entire economy and grow to catastrophic levels in the years ahead.”

While Republican leaders sought to put Ryan out front, their plan was complicated by the decision of Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, a tea party favorite, to deliver a speech of her own.

Newly in charge of the House, Republicans already have made an early down payment on their commitment to cut costs, voting to pare spending on their own office and committee accounts by 5 percent. On Tuesday, hours before Obama spoke, they went on record in favor of reducing most domestic programs to levels in place when Obama took office, and 17 Democrats joined them.

Even larger cuts are expected as winter turns to spring, but another relatively small change was on the House agenda for the day after Obama’s speech.

It would eliminate the program of federal matching funds that helps finance presidential campaigns, and supporters said savings would total $520 million over a decade.

The White House opposes the bill, saying the system should be improved, not eliminated.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Wednesday that the GOP can work with Obama on programs to stimulate the economy and create jobs, but that significant spending cuts are needed immediately. “We need to force the budget down,” he said on CBS’s “The Early Show.”

For his part, Obama was following up his speech with a trip to Wisconsin to tout the economy’s recovery from the recession so far, and, as he turns to his re-election bid, campaign for the steps he outlined in the speech.

Obama walked down the center aisle of a packed House chamber in far stronger political shape than could have been anticipated three months ago.

Joblessness remains at 9.4 percent, but the economy is growing, and polls place his approval rating above 50 percent, higher than it has been in almost a year. One recent survey recorded a double-digit increase in recent months among independent voters, who deserted the Democrats and swung behind Republicans last fall.

In a speech that ran more than an hour, the president coupled his call for a five-year freeze on domestic programs with a request to increase spending on selected areas such as high-speed rail and clean energy.

He said he was open to changing the health care law, but told Republican critics he wouldn’t agree to their demands to repeal it.

He drew applause from GOP deficit hawks in his audience when he said he would veto legislation containing pet projects known as earmarks. But then he challenged lawmakers to make public any meetings they have with lobbyists, a step he said the White House has already taken.

He said Social Security’s finances must be strengthened “without slashing benefits for future generations, and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.” That was a message to Ryan and other Republicans who want to let younger workers create private retirement accounts as an alternative to the current system of government benefits.

Republicans were unanimous on one point – that Obama’s calls for spending cuts weren’t strong enough. The party’s leader in the Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said overall the president had “changed the tone and the rhetoric” from his first two years in office. But, he said, “freezing government spending for five years at the increased levels of the last two years is really not enough.”

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who backed numerous tea party-backed challengers in last fall’s elections, was dismissive. “When the President says ‘investment’ he means bigger federal government and higher taxes. Americans sent a clear message in the 2010 elections. They no longer wish to ‘invest’ in President Obama’s big-spending plans.”

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement: “A partial freeze is inadequate at a time when we’re borrowing 41 cents of every dollar we spend, and the administration is begging for another increase in the debt limit. Rather than lock in the job-crushing spending binge of the last two years, we are working to carry out our pledge to cut spending to pre-’stimulus,’ pre-bailout levels and impose real spending caps.”

And Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who chairs the Republican Study Committee, said Obama’s proposed freeze was “nothing less than recklessly driving toward a brick wall at 80 miles per hour, then putting on the cruise control and calling it ‘responsibility.”‘

Bachmann said her speech was not meant to compete with Ryan’s remarks, but some Republican officials privately expressed anger at her decision. Originally, her remarks were to go to tea party supporters, but that changed when CNN decided to carry them live.

“Last November you went to the polls and voted out big-spending politicians and you put in their place men and women with a commitment to follow the Constitution and cut the size of government,” she said. “I believe that we are in the early days of a history-making turn.”

Bachmann narrowly avoided a gaffe of constitutional proportions in her speech.

Excerpts released in advance called on Obama to “commit himself to signing” a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget.

The Constitution gives the president no role in amendments, which go directly to the states for ratification after Congress approves them.

Her full remarks, released a few hours after the excerpts, dropped the reference to a signing and merely urged Obama to support the amendment.

Malcolm X once said that the one man you should be most afraid of is a man who is willing to die for what he believes.

When it comes to tackling the enormous deficits that are affecting our cities, counties, states and this country, we need politicians who are willing to lose their jobs at the ballot box in order to emphasize what he or she believes is right.

Case in point: Mayor Dana Redd of Camden, N.J. Camden is routinely ranked as one of the most dangerous cities in America. Yet due to a $26 million budget shortfall, Redd made it clear that unless city workers, especially police and firefighters, accepted a pay freeze and paid more for their health care, she would have to slash jobs.

Knowing full well that the last thing Camden residents could stomach would be fewer cops on the streets, the unions said no to the mayor’s request, essentially daring her to make the threatened cuts.

She dropped the ax, and it wasn’t pretty. Nearly half of the police force was fired, and one-sixth of all city workers — 335 in all — got pink slips. The workers were understandably angry about the firings, but Redd made it clear that the city had to have a balanced budget, and unless concessions were made, she had to do what she had to do.

Yes, her actions were drastic, but it is also a reality that municipalities are facing. Property values have plummeted; meaning those depending on property taxes must do so with less revenue. And with folks pinching pennies due to the economy, raising taxes is considered political suicide. Couple that with state governments facing their own deficits, and cities and counties can’t look for a bailout; they are on their own and must do more with less and make the necessary cuts.

These moves have nothing to do with being liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. This is all about living within your means — something every family has to contend with these days.

Surely, Redd knows that her actions could result in anger at the ballot box, but she’s on the money. And frankly, it’s time that voters — yes, voters — get serious about the nation’s financial problem and accept their role in this debacle.

When I hosted a morning show on WVON in Chicago, callers would often say they wanted this and that.

When I asked how it would be paid for, none would have an answer. When asked if they wanted taxes raised, they said no. Well, what about cuts? Nope. It is as if folks think there is a rainbow in the sky with a pot of gold at the end, which no one else has tapped into.

This is the message that Gov. Jerry Brown is trying to preach in California. Universities are angry about the massive cuts he’s proposed, but he’s making it clear that everyone has to share the burden of fixing the state’s $25 billion budget deficit.

In New York, former Gov. David Paterson kept sounding the alarm, but state officials from both parties, and all of the liberal and conservative interest groups, ignored him. Andrew Cuomo is now sitting in the governor’s mansion, and he’s threatening to shut the state down unless they face the music.

The only way this nation will get its fiscal house in order, local or national, is if we have politicians give us the news, regardless of how the pain is administered. Nationally, Democrats can’t be protective of Social Security and Medicaid, and Republicans can’t hold onto every defense dollar.

This week, the Republican Study Committee in Congress offered a thick packet of cuts totaling $2.5 trillion. Missing from it? Anything dealing with defense. On my One Cable Network TV show, “Washington Watch,” Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), chairman of the committee, said that everything should be on the table.

Frankly, their proposal should be thrown right in the trash. It’s clear that our elected officials are afraid of ticking off the particular needs of voters, so they kick the can down the road, hoping someone else takes on the tough stuff. That means voters must be strong enough to back up the hard choices that our elected officials must make.

Look, we all want parks, roads, care for the needy, protection by police and fire, potholes fixed in a timely manner, fresh flowers along our roads and highways, and all of our entitlements, but as a nation, we simply can’t afford it.

Instead of folks slamming Mayor Dana Redd for taking draconian measures, she should be celebrated. At least, she had the guts to do what so many others were afraid to actually do: lead.

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning CNN analyst and the author of the book “The First: President Barack Obama’s Road to the White House as originally reported by Roland S. Martin.” Please visit his website at www.RolandSMartin.com. To find out more about Roland S. Martin and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

This could mean that city officials will be faced with the tough decision whether to repurpose or outright abandon certain sections of the city, as the population has dwindled by half since 1950. Here’s the WSJ:

“Until now, the mayor [Dave Bing] and his staff have spoken mostly in generalities about the problem, stressing the need for community input and pledging to a skeptical public that no resident would be forced to move.

But the approach discussed by city officials could have that effect. Mr. Bing’s staff wants to concentrate Detroit’s remaining population–expected to be less than 900,000 after this year’s Census count–and limited local, state and federal dollars in the most viable swaths of the city, while other sectors could go without such services as garbage pickup, police patrols, road repair and street lights.”

Read entire article at HuffingtonPost.com

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1) Create A Holiday Shopping Budget And Stick With It. No need to try to keep up with the Joneses’. First look at your overall budget to determine what you can and are willing to spend this holiday season. Remember that time is tough for many people, so it’s okay to not spend a lot of money this year. Be realistic. Next, sit down with your family and make a list of everyone you are going to buy gift for. Next to their name, write an amount you are going to spend on them.

2) Get a gift receipt. Gift exchanges do happen, so be prepared by providing a gift receipt. That will ensure that the recipient gets a proper store credit. Purchases made in November and December are often eligible for extended return or exchange privileges.

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3) Buy Online. Buying online is a great way to save money when you are shopping for presents.

4) Avoid priority shipping. The deadline for free holiday shipping from major retailers generally expires about a week before Christmas. Keep in mind that ordering one-day service can add $20 or more and does not typically guarantee delivery within 24 hours. The arrival date is calculated from the moment the package is shipped, so factor in two or three days of processing time (unless otherwise stated). Read the fine print before rushing a delivery.

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According to reports hundreds of Baltimore City employees over the past three years have earned overtime pay equal to more than half their annual salary, even as finances are an issue for the city. Among those paid the highest overtime are 36 police officers and a firefighter who took home more than the mayor last year. One officer earned $173,791 and another made just over $150,000. The mayor’s salary has risen from $125,000 to $151,700 in the last three years.

For more on this story, click here.

Via: Baltimore Sun

Baltimore fire and police unions filed suit against the city in federal court Thursday citing that they “knowingly underfunded” their pension plan over the past decade, ignoring the advice of financial experts hired by the city.

If officials do not make drastic changes to the pension system by July 1, the city will owe $65 million that it cannot afford to pay.

The proposed changes to the pension plan would violate the unions’ contracts.

Many police and firefighters have threatened to resign or retire if their benefits are greatly diminished. The city said they can only afford to pay $101 million of the $166 million they are obligated to pay.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama sent Congress a $3.83 trillion budget on Monday that would pour more money into the fight against high unemployment, boost taxes on the wealthy and freeze spending for a wide swath of government programs.

The deficit for this year would surge to a record-breaking $1.56 trillion, topping last year’s then unprecedented $1.41 trillion gap. The deficit would remain above $1 trillion in 2011 although the president proposed to institute a three-year budget freeze on a variety of programs outside of the military and homeland security as well as increasing taxes on energy producers and families making more than $250,000.

The budget proposal reflects the competing pressure on Obama ahead of the November congressional elections to cut the deficit while pulling the country out of a deep recession — a step that normally requires more rather than less government spending.

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Obama and the Democrats are trying to regain their political footing after the surprising loss of a Massachusetts Senate seat long held by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. That vote cost them their supermajority needed to pass major legislation and has given momentum to Republicans.

With his plans to overhaul health care now unlikely to move forward soon, Obama pledged in his State of the Union address last week to make job creation his top priority.

Following up on the pledge, Obama put forward a budget that included a $100 billion jobs measure that would provide tax breaks to encourage businesses to boost hiring as well as increased government spending on infrastructure and energy projects. He called for fast congressional action to speed relief to millions left unemployed in the worst recession since the 1930s.

After a protracted battle on health care dominated his first year in office and led to a string of Democratic election defeats, the administration hopes its new budget will convince Americans the president is focused on fixing the economy.

Republicans complained about Obama’s proposed tax increases and said the huge projected deficits showed he had failed to get government spending under control. But administration officials argued that Obama inherited a deficit that was already topping $1 trillion when he took office and given the severity of the downturn, the president had to spend billions of dollars stabilizing the financial system and jump-starting growth.

Obama’s job proposals would push government spending in 2010 to $3.72 trillion, up 5.7 percent from last year. Obama’s blueprint for the 2011 budget year, which begins Oct. 1, would increase spending further to $3.83 trillion, 3 percent higher than projected for this year.

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While Obama projects that deficits from 2011 to 2020 will add $8.5 trillion to the national debt, the administration said that figure would have been $1.2 trillion higher were it not for deficit cuts the administration is proposing, including elimination of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts for families making more than $250,000 annually, something Republicans have vowed to oppose.

Much of the spending surge over the past two years reflects the cost of the $787 billion economic stimulus measure that Congress passed in February 2009 to deal with the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The surge in the deficits reflects not only the increased spending but also a big drop in tax revenues, reflecting the 7.2 million people who have lost jobs since the recession began and weaker corporate tax receipts.

“Having steered the economy back from the brink of a depression, the administration is committed to moving the nation from a recession to recovery by sparking job creation to get millions of Americans back to work,” the administration said in a statement accompanying its budget.

The administration’s $100 billion proposed jobs measure would be lower than a $174 billion bill passed by the House in December but far higher than a measure that the Senate could take up as early as this week.