Free Financial Bootcamp

Since 2009, LearnVest has been providing sharp and seriously useful money advice for women. Now, the site has launched a series of email bootcamps to get readers ramped up financially. The investing unit costs $7.99, but the Cut Your Costs and Personal Finance Basics …

Recession Briefing: Some Construction Unemployment at 30 Percent

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

No industry has taken it more on the chin than construction. Nationally, unemployment fell to 9.7% in January, but in construction it jumped to 24.7% from 18.7% in October. In many regions, union officials report 30% of their members are unemployed or “riding the bench.” (Time)

For the first time in recorded history, women outnumber men on the nation’s payrolls. This benchmark is bittersweet, as it comes largely at men’s expense — because men have been losing their jobs faster than women. (New York Times)

More prosperous American shoppers seem to be defying continuing high unemployment levels and economic uncertainty to renew their spending on luxuries such as jewelery, fashion and cosmetics. (Financial Times)…

Recession Briefing: White House Drops 5.1% in Value

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

Last year, real estate site Zillow estimated the White House was worth $308 million, based on the home’s physical attributes (132 rooms! 55,000 square feet!), historical value and housing performance in the local Washington, DC market. One recession year later, estimates put White House at a bit less: $292.5 million, a drop of $15.6 million, or 5.1 percent from last January. (Zillow Blog)

The recession hit this year’s college freshmen hard, affecting how they chose a school as well as their ability to pay for it, according to an annual nationwide survey released Thursday. Over all, students were more likely than previous freshmen to have a parent who was unemployed and less likely to have found a job that might help pay for college. (New York Times)

The lobbying industry demonstrated its resilience last year in the face of the recession and is fully expected to smash previous spending records. On Wednesday, lobbyists filed their fourth-quarter reports, offering the first glimpse at their spending totals for the year. (Huffington Post)…

Recession Lexicon: Femterprise

n./ Female-run business. Also, fempreneur.

Much has been made of the fact that women fared somewhat better in the recession than men (resulting in a mancession), particularly when it came to layoffs. But new data shows that the coming decade will also see a steady increase in the number of businesses started by women….

Love in the Time of Layoff: The Appeal of Employment

Raj had me almost at hello, but he didn’t seem to realize it. As so often happens, the same was true in the reverse, as well—but we two somewhat wary people didn’t realize it on our first meeting. We had sat in the park after a friend suggested we meet (we could “be good contacts for one another”) and shared stories from our lives. We parted with no further plans.

As weeks passed, I wondered if there was a way to meet up with Raj again. I planned to invite him to a party I would throw. And then, out of nowhere, an email: “Call me urgently.” Two minutes later, we were on the phone. He was charming and funny—and he had a proposal, a potentially very lucrative project that would come from one of his clients. My thrill at hearing from Raj was a bit deflated by the absence of romance in it, but I was also very happy and relieved to have work fall into my lap, as I needed it very badly.

It’s always tricky to mix up work and romance, but in this downturn, I couldn’t ignore the very real tug of the rent, loans, bills piling up. So if I couldn’t have Raj as my boyfriend, at least there was something else I might get out of this encounter: some much needed peace of mind…

Love in the Time of Layoff: A Security of Her Own

I’ve always harbored an entrepreneurial impulse. With Marco still freelancing a few months post-layoff, and with dreams of starting that family underway, I’m starting to plan. And plan big. The nester in me craves a far steadier financial environment in which to raise our imaginary kids. Sure, I wish financial stability would just drop in my lap, but that dream is about as realistic as the stork.

I’m starting to realize that, given our respective industries, if financial stability is going to happen any time soon, it might be up to me.
The entrepreneurial itch and I go way back. While still in graduate school in the late 1990s, I took a leave of absence and followed the siren call of the tech boom. I put dissertation writing on hold and went to work as a content strategist for a start up in Silicon Alley. While the start up tanked, it was a good effort. I learned much. I like to think of that period as this English major’s MBA.

Love in the Time of Layoff: Her Expendable Career

Those who read this column know that I’ve been writing very personally about how the downturn has affected my relationship. In all honesty, I’m starting to fear that by focusing on what’s happening inside relationships, we may be losing sight of larger contexts—what could and should be happening in the structures that govern our lives.

Whoever invented the notion that a wife who earns less than her husband has a career that is, by definition, “expendable”? The ubiquity of this sentence—“she has an expendable career”—was brought home to me once again when I read Diane Clehane’s “Recession Marriage Wars” in yesterday’s Daily Beast…