The new jobs report is bad news. Here's some advice to make it through a tough financial season.
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Chances are that the current U.S. economic crisis and the turmoil in the financial markets are messing with your life. According to the most recent figures from the Labor Department, there were 131,000 jobs lost in the United States in July alone. The unemployment rate remains at 9.5%. People are hurting.
Maybe you are right out of college and can't find a job. Seventy-three percent of today's graduating seniors will leave college with student loan debt, averaging about $23,000. The average outstanding balance on undergraduate credit cards is $2,169. Nearly half of students graduating this spring are expected to move back home, held back by the economy in establishing lives of financial independence.
Perhaps you were laid off from a job. The timing couldn't be worse with a new baby or a new mortgage.
Many twentysomethings listened to the conventional wisdom of diligently putting money into a 401(k), or IRA, or in stock investments outside of retirement accounts. But now you are beginning to wonder where these investments are going and when the declines will stop. They say it will all eventually work out, but seriously when is it going to stop?
All of the above is the "now" problem. Meanwhile, a larger "later" problem is brewing. The clock keeping tally of America's national debt has officially run out of digits to record the soaring figure. The U.S. National Debt Clock was installed in Manhattan in 1989 to highlight what was then a $2.7 trillion debt. But when the total crept over 10 trillion, owners of the clock realized they needed another digit--a fourteenth digit, to be exact. Who's going to inherit all that national debt? You!
Regardless of where you find yourself, you may be feeling the brunt of the economic crisis on all sides. You probably feel helpless and outraged--and that's true whether you have a job or not.
On a purely practical level, there are several things you can do to help dissipate the financial anxiety and struggle of the current economic crisis including:
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SOURCE: Relevant Magazine
Jim Palmer is the author of Divine Nobodies and Wide Open Spaces. You can find him at DivineNobodies.com, and on Facebook and Twitter.
