Amongst the three major social networks:

- 76% used Facebook

- 53% used Twitter

- 48% used LinkedIn

The breakdown may seem a bit surprising at first. Intuitively you may think that LinkedIn would be used the most, but Facebook has a much higher adoption rate and is likely to show a bit more of what you’re really about (LinkedIn essentially serves as an online resume with network connections).

Recruiters and hiring managers are looking for dirt on you! 69% of survey respondents have rejected candidates based on what they found in your profile. Reasons cited include inappropriate photos or comments, lying about your qualifications, drinking/drug comments, negative comments about your previous employers, and confidential information shared.

Why are Recruiters Using Social Media Profiles?

This may come as a shock to you that employers are using your “authentic” musings against you, but it shouldn’t! Employee loyalty is fairly non-existent these days:

• For ages 23-27, 75% of workers were with their employer for less than 2 years, and 88% less than 5 years.
• For ages 28-32, 68% of workers were with their employer for less than 2 years, and 84% less than 5 years.

At the same time, the average cost of replacing an employing can be staggering – easily over 6 figures in many high-skill professions.

Is it any wonder that hiring managers are doing a little bit of digging online on the information that YOU put out there for them to see to help ensure that you would be a good fit for them?

How Can you Manage your Online Reputation?

You don’t want to fall victim to photos you posted from your drunken stupor that senior year of college or for some hate filled rant on Justin Bieber. Before you apply for any job, it would be wise to do a little bit of online reputation management.

Here are a few of the very least things you should be doing to protect your reputation on each network:

LinkedIn:

Click the drop-down on your name and ‘settings’ to go through each of the profile privacy controls. Turn off your activity broadcasts. Select ‘only you’ to see your connections (otherwise recruiters may reach out to your connections to ask about you). Finally, clean up your profile itself, and make sure it matches what is on your resume.

Twitter:

Click the drop-down on your name and ‘settings’ and under ‘account’, click ‘protect my tweets’. This won’t protect you from what others are saying to or about you, unfortunately, so you have to be EXTREMELY careful about the activity trail that you leave on Twitter. Next, click on ‘profile’ and make sure you don’t have any incriminating statements about yourself.

Facebook:

There is a lot of work to be done here and Facebook changes their privacy settings often. Click the arrow drop-down in the top right and then ‘privacy settings’. Start by changing your default privacy setting to ‘friends’ if it is set to ‘public’.

Next, go to ‘how you connect’ and start by changing who can look you up to ‘friends’. THIS IS KEY. Then change ‘who can post on your wall’ and ‘who can see wall posts on your profile’ to ‘Only me’.

Not done yet. Go to ‘how tags work’ and turn on manual tag review. Then change your maximum visibility to ‘friends’.

Next, go to ‘apps, games, and websites’ and click on ‘public search’. De-select others from being able to find you in search engines.

Now go to ‘limit the audience for past posts’ and limit past posts from being seen by others. VERY IMPORTANT.

You should be done. To be extra safe, go back and delete any posts or photos that may be used against you.

Google Plus:

The best way to protect yourself on Google+ is to make yourself invisible in searches for you. Go to ‘about’, click on ‘profile discovery’ and de-select. There doesn’t seem to be a one-size fits all fix to being able to limit who can see what about you in Google+. Therefore, be very careful about what you post and with photos added.

Online Reputation Discussion:

• To your knowledge, has a social media profile ever prevented you from getting hired?
• If you’re on the hiring side, how have you secretly used social media profiles for screening candidates?
• Have you protected your social profiles?
• What tips do you have for others on how to protect your online reputation?

Related Posts:

• Using Speed Interning to Get Hired
• Extreme Job Hunting Strategies
• Best Interview Tips from an Interviewer

Social Media Profiles May be Preventing you From Getting Hired is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

November is open enrollment season (a.k.a. “annual enrollment” or simply “open season”) – an important time of the year for employees to review their benefit elections.

Open enrollment usually rolls around just once a year because it involves a ton of administrative work on behalf of employers to orchestrate. Employers like to have everything situated by the start of the new year, so open enrollment usually occurs within the October through December period. My employer’s open enrollment period is the first two weeks of November.

There are exceptions – if you start with an employer at another time of the year or you have a life changing “qualifying event” like a marriage, divorce, death in the family, or birth of a child.

The urge to simply stick with the benefits you’ve had will be tempting, but it is extremely important to carefully review your employee benefits as they usually change every year. It will be to your… BENEFIT.

1. Review your Health Insurance Plans

First and foremost, always review your employer’s health insurance options every year. In a given year your employer could add or drop a new health insurance option or prices could go up or down for some of the options.

For example, my employer launched a new HDHP (high deductible health plan) that is paired with an HSA contribution that is pretty significant. It offered lower premiums and if I don’t use all of the HSA contributions, it rolls over and I can take it with me if I were to leave my job. For someone who is young and in good health and has no kids, it seemed like the perfect fit.

There are other considerations than price, of course. Model out the cost in a best and worst case scenario for each plan before making your decision.

If you have a separate dental and vision plan, review these as well.

2. Review your Voluntary Group Insurance Options

Many employers offer their employees some sort of life and disability insurance coverage (i.e. 2X annual salary). On top of that, some will offer employees an option to voluntarily buy additional insurance coverage.

It is definitely worth looking at the group insurance rates to see if they are more competitive than what you can get on the open market.

If you do opt for additional coverage, the cost of the coverage is deducted from your paycheck.

3. Update your Beneficiaries

Ideally you will have updated your beneficiaries during a qualifying event. If you haven’t, however, open enrollment is a great reminder to do so.

4. Review your Withholding Tax Exemptions

Most employers allow you to update your withholding tax allowances, or exemptions, at any point in time. Who’s good at remembering to do that? Not me. Open enrollment offers an opportunity to update your exemptions.

If you have or will come across a big change in income during the year, it’s wise to review your number of exemptions to see if it makes sense to contribute more or less taxes throughout the year. You don’t want to get hit with a huge tax penalty or get too big of a refund come tax time.

5. Change your Retirement Savings Contributions

Another year will hopefully bring higher income, and as a result, potential for you to raise your retirement savings contributions. The IRS just announced that the 2012 401K maximum contribution has increased to $17,000 for individuals, presenting an opportunity to increase your contributions if you were already maxing out.

The 2012 maximum IRA contributions will stay the same, but income limits have increased due to inflation.

6. Elect your Annual FSA, HSA, or MSA Contributions

During open enrollment, you can elect what kind of contributions you would like to add to your FSA, HSA, or MSA for the year. These contributions will then be deducted from your paycheck.

If you’re making first-time contributions, review the big FSA, HSA, and MSA changes made last year (no more over-the-counter).

Also, keep in mind that FSA’s contributions do not typically roll over from one year to the next, so make sure to use it or lose it! Eye-glasses/contacts are a big expense that should be covered. Check out my post how how to buy glasses online if you have never done it and would like recommendations of where to do it. Flu shots are also covered.

Open Enrollment Discussion:

What changes did you make this open enrollment season. Why?

6 Open Enrollment Season Must-Do’s is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

Have some self-respect! You can be creative and stand out from the crowd without whoring yourself out.

One idea that I caught wind of the other day that I really liked and did not reek of desperation was “speed interning”.

What is Speed Interning?

Speed interning rapid succession of internships with as many employers as possible – kind of like speed dating, but with less of the after-guilt (I would imagine).

Maeghan Smulders, a recent grad in Calgary, tried speed interning at 10 employers who gave her a job offer upon graduation. She actually received 29 job offers (not sure how she pulled off this feat) before interning and used that as an opportunity to give her favorites a test run with a series of short (as short as a week) internships during the summer.

Whether you get 29 job offers or just two, this is a great way to give your potential employer (and other future employers) a test run to see what the culture is like and shadow those who are doing a similar job to the one you have been offered.

This strategy really got my creative juices flowing. I think it could serve an alternate, but equally effective purpose.

Using Speed Interning to Get Job Offers

Why not use speed interning as a differentiator to get job offers?

As I highlighted the other day in my best interview tips post, as an interviewer, employers want to know that you are adaptable and that you push yourself. Additionally, I often find that it is really difficult to separate yourself in a pool of competitive applicants. What better way to do that than through a series of rapid internships? Particularly for entry level positions, that person is going to stand out in a crowd of grads with zero, one, or ambitiously two relevant internship experiences.

Most employers would LOVE the no-risk opportunity to give you a try without bringing you on board as an official employee. It is very expensive to do the paperwork, set up with benefits, train you, and give you an income only to find out in 3 or 6 months that it’s not a good fit.

If you get in the door, they have a chance to get to know you and they feel vested in your endeavor. You’re more than a few steps ahead of the competition at that point.

Keys to this Strategy Working

I think there are a few things that are key to making this work:

1. Fore-go Compensation: You must be willing to do it for free – and I’d encourage you to proactively volunteer that with a statement like, “I know that this may be a little unconventional so I would like to assume the responsibility by being willing to fore-go compensation for the internship.”
2. Set Expectations: You must stipulate what you hope you and they can both get out of the experience. If you just go in for a week, sit at a desk, and run a few copies, you will not get much from the experience and it might actually hurt your chances of getting an offer. Set yourself up for success.
3. Follow-Through: At the end of the internship, present what you have learned from the experience and your next steps, whether they be outlining your internship timeline and next steps, or whether you are convinced you’d like to work for them and why.

Other Positives from this Strategy:

Another thing I like about this is that if the employer really likes you and knows that you’re not desperate and have other options, it is very likely that it could lead to a higher salary offer from them than what you would otherwise be offered because you could go elsewhere – giving you the leverage.

This strategy also gives you an opportunity to see who you would be working with and if it will be a good culture fit for you. This is VERY important! You can’t really figure this out in an interview or two – as everyone is putting on their best face. It’s much harder for everyone to put on their best face for you for a week or two. They will eventually have to let down their guard.

Speed Interning Discussion:

• Do you think this strategy could work? Why or why not?
• Do you have other ideas that could increase your likelihood of getting a job offer? Please share!

Related Posts:

• Winning Job Interviews Review
• How to Write a Winning Resume that Stands Out
• 5 Part-Time Jobs with Health Insurance & Benefits

Speed Interning: Unconventionally Brilliant! is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

It’s been an eye opening experience, to say the least. I would approach interviews in a completely different way than I would have previously. And I have 10 tips I want to offer to help you knock it out of the park in your next interview.

Before I give my advice and observations, note that I work at a desk job for a Fortune 500 company – for a frame of reference. I do think that most of these tips will work for any job field, but the importance of each will vary. If it sounds relevant, use it. If it doesn’t, don’t. With that, here are my 10 best interview tips, given my experience:

1. Your Personality is FAR More Important than your Resume

Your resume might get you through the recruiters, but once you get to the interview stage, it takes a back seat to how you actually bond with each individual interviewer. Don’t bring a fake extroverted persona to an interview if it is not your personality – it will be apparent. Be genuine. That’s what an interviewer wants to see – the real you.

The thing is, if the real you is not good enough to get the job, then maybe that job wasn’t a good fit for you to start with. If you have to fake your way into a job, odds are you won’t be in that job for long. Do yourself and the company a service by being genuine.

Highlight experiences that show the real you – whether it highlights a positive trait or a big mistake that you learned from.

The thing is, half an hour is never enough time to get to know someone. What you want to be able to do is leave the interviewer feeling like they know YOU better than the other candidates. Us interviewers are all human – we want to bond with, connect, and like those we are interviewing because we want to have that same feeling if we were to start working with you.

2. The Detail in your Answers is Secondary to how you Answer

It’s impossible for an interviewer to recall every detail of how you answered a question, particularly when they’ve interviewed a number of different candidates. What is more important is that you:

• make a strong effort to answer the question vs. throwing in the towel or being too short and blunt.
• ask intelligent questions if you are not sure exactly what the interviewer would like to know.
• take time and jot down notes, particularly when asked a cognitive question. Talk the interviewer through your thoughts (unless they are about you wanting to pee your pants). I have asked really tough cognitive questions that require math, and after giving the answer a number of people will ask me “was I close?” or “did I get it right?”, to which my reply is always “there is no right or wrong answer” and theirs is “really? Oh….”.
• be confident in your answer. No second guessing, no filler words. Just answer without rambling – there is seldom times a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer.

3. You Are Genuinely Enthusiastic About the Job – but Not Desperate

You’ve got to want the job. If you don’t, you’re not interviewing for the right job. It’s easy to spot fake enthusiasm.

One word of caution: don’t drool over the job and rain praise on the company itself. You don’t want to make it sound like you don’t deserve the job or would feel very lucky to get it. Desperation is never a defining characteristic that you want tied to you. For example:

• bad enthusiasm: “Thank you so much for giving me the chance to interview. Company XYZ is obviously well respected and I’d really love the opportunity to work here.”
• good enthusiasm: “I really like that this job would give me the opportunity to…”

4. Ask Smart Questions that Aren’t Scripted

Whether it’s during the interview or at the end, ask smart questions. NEVER ask about salary/benefits. The trick here is that your answers are not scripted. If they are, you you have missed a great opportunity to show off your personality and bond with the interviewer.

“What do you like/dislike the most about this job?” is amateur-league and 75% of interviewees ask it. Come up with something a little more interesting and unique than that. And if you can make it specific to the interviewer, you get bonus points for trying to connect. For example, “if you left your job tomorrow, what is the one experience at company XYZ that you will have the fondest memory of?”. Now that’s a great question!

5. Show your Adaptability

In today’s corporate world, there is perhaps no other characteristic that is more desired by employers than adaptability. Change is a constant in today’s fast paced economy. For example, I’d much rather see someone who went from one role to another role in 4 years at the same company vs. someone who was in the same role the entire time. That shows me you are adaptable to change and want to learn new things. If you’ve shifted roles, highlight it and explain why if it’s to your advantage.

6. Highlight Relevant Personal Extra-Curriculars

Even if it didn’t make the resume cut, bring up personal non-work activities that make you stand out. For example, one interviewee told me that he does open mic night at a local comedy club to push himself to become a better public speaker and to explore his creative side. Boom! Winner! That one little sentence tells me that this guy:

a. understands where he can improve on his skills

b. is not afraid of a scary challenge

c. is probably a better public speaker than most

d. will be able to crack a good joke or two!

Little defining moments like that in an interview stick with the interviewee. If you volunteer with a non-profit, by all means, bring it up! If you’ve created some sort of side business or web venture, bring it up! Interviewees want to know that you are more than a soul-less corporate minion. They want to know you are human!

7. Push Yourself

This advice is more relevant for interviews down the road. Experience is King, when competition is fierce. A new college grad who had a breadth of different challenging internships each summer is always going to win out over a grad with zero internships or internships with the same employer each year – all else being equal.

Challenge yourself to take on new experiences with your current employer. This is closely tied to adaptability, but slightly different in that it tells me you have a breadth of knowledge and experience and aren’t afraid to take on a new challenge.

8. The Interviewer is Not Out to Get You – Remember That!

There may be exceptions to this rule – big egos on a power trip – but personally speaking, I am not out to get you. I walk into every interview wanting the person to knock it out of the park. That makes my job easy. I don’t like to see someone fail at an interview and I REALLY don’t like to walk out of an interview with a feeling of indifference. I am sure many interviewers feel the same way. Take that little bit of optimism and confidence into your next interview.

9. Eye Contact & Smile Throughout

These things are a pre-requisite for me. If you can’t look me in the eye when you talk or smile periodically at appropriate moments, I’m not going to walk out of the interview feeling too positive about you. I want to feel comfortable with you, and in order to feel that, you have to be comfortable with me.

10. Stand Up and Handshake at the Start & End of the Interview

When I enter the room, I want to see eye contact and a warm smile, and I also want you to get up out of your seat and a firm handshake. I want the same thing at the end of the interview too. That may sound old-school, or like tired advice, but it’s very important. It’s a sign of warmth and respect and if you can’t do it with me, how can I expect you would do it with a key client or my boss?

Good luck – and let me know how it goes!

If you are also an interviewer, which of these tips do you agree with and do you have additional advice to share?

Related Posts:

• Winning Job Interviews Review
• How to Write a Winning Resume that Stands Out
• 5 Part-Time Jobs with Health Insurance & Benefits

The 10 Best Interview Tips (from a Real Interviewer) is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

The Lost Decade+

Since 2000, right about the same time the internet started playing a strong role in a global economy, the S&P 500 index has actually declined 20%. That means, if you “invested” all of your money in the S&P 500 12 years ago and pulled it out today, you’d have 20% less than what you started with, excluding any dividends and inflation. Correlation doesn’t always mean causation. But, isn’t it peculiar that we’d see a net loss of market wealth at a time when the Internet made a global economy possible?

The “lost decade” of investing is close to becoming the “the lost 12 years” and counting and globalization is to blame.

That’s not all. Outside of health, education, and government, the U.S. lost over 3 million jobs in the decade that started in 1999, despite our population increasing by 10% in the same time period.

Globalization’s Impact on our Jobs

Some may argue that there was a globalized economy before the rise of the Internet. That is partly true. However, globalization was only available to the largest of the large multinational corporations who had the resources to take advantage of it – large industrial manufacturers, large scale commodity (food, energy, mineral) importers/exporters, and the largest clothing manufacturers.

Today, a 19 year-old living in his mom’s basement can set up an e-commerce store and sell cheap goods from a Chinese manufacturer that pays its workers $1.50 an hour, whom he found through a global marketplace like alibaba.com. Any individual or corporation can find a cheaper alternative if they look long and hard enough online. This simply wasn’t possible for most until the last decade. Between 2001 and 2010, the U.S. lost 2.8 million jobs due to its trade deficit with China alone, 1.9 million in manufacturing.

The Internet put globalization into turbo mode.

Can you blame a company as big as Apple, AT&T or Comcast (call centers), Nike, or GM for taking advantage of cheap labor and materials to drive up profit margins, particularly when all of their competitors are already doing it? Can you blame www.live-in-moms-basement-lampshades.com for re-selling lampshades made in China that cost them one-fifth the price similar lampshades made in the U.S. would cost them? Particularly when all of their competitors are already doing it and every consumer has become skilled at finding the lowest priced alternative online? Loyalty to the American worker means nothing to Wall Street or to Joe Startup who is looking to make the best living for himself.

The Race to the Bottom

Corporations exist to make increasingly higher profits and they’ve succeeded. But it hasn’t been from adding more employees or paying higher wages.

If work can be done cheaper elsewhere, it will be. With a world population nearing 7 billion and growing quickly, there will always be a few hundred million, or billion people willing to race to the bottom and the American worker will lose 9 times out of 10.

In the process of globalizing everything we sell or buy we have made many of our jobs obsolete. These jobs simply aren’t coming back. The factory worker, call center rep., shoemaker, tailor, and farmer are all dying a slow death in the U.S.

To say “we need to start making things again” totally misses the reality of the marketplace.

The jobs that will remain will either be:

1. location dependent/high wage/high expertise: doctors & other medical, electricians, lawyers, on-site engineers, professor, executives, etc.
2. location dependent/low wage/low expertise: grass cutters, restaurant workers, retail workers, etc.
3. location dependent/medium wage/low expertise/union jobs: construction, public blue collar, public white collar, transportation industry.  Note: there is a corporate/political war against unions to drive wages lower with these jobs. This class may not be around in 20 years.
4. location independent or dependent/high expertise entrepreneurial: self-employed writer, photographer, restaurant owner, etc.

Employer-based, location independent jobs, regardless of expertise, will be close to 100% outsourced.

Surviving & Thriving in the New Economy

I started off this post with the premise that the Internet has “destroyed” the American economy. In reality, it has destroyed the old American economy. The old economy had a heavy reliance on manufacturing and a unionized middle class to drive it. As these middle class jobs have been outsourced to the global economy, unemployment has risen and the average American’s spending power has decreased.

We are in a transition period that may last decades. A successful new growth economy may eventually emerge, but things will never be the same. This does not have to be a sad story. You can respond. America can respond.

How can you respond? You can choose one of the four alternatives above. Only two seem acceptable to me. The first is the employer based location dependent/high wage/high expertise jobs. You need a lot of education, expertise through experience, or both to land one of these jobs and be successful with it.

The other is the entrepreneurial route. 70% of Americans want to be self employed. Is it at all a surprise with the war against unions and the race to the bottom by corporations that people want to take matters into their own hands? If you can create something unique or provide a high value service to others, you can succeed.

If you like working for others, choose the first. If you don’t, choose the second. Any other alternative will leave you vulnerable and without a real career to speak of.

No matter how you move forward in the new economy that has been created by the Internet, the irony is that you’ll need to embrace the Internet every step of the way in order to succeed. With it, there is no reason things can’t be better than before.

Related Posts:

• Get Paid to do what you Love
• 4 Keys to Job Security
• The U.S. is the Most Overworked Nation in the World
• 5 Ways to Recession Proof Yourself

How the Internet has Destroyed the American Economy is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

Why is it to your benefit to know which part-time jobs have benefits?

Shit happens. Jobs get downsized, you may choose to retire early but don’t want to foot the bill for health care, or you may decide to go back to school.

Industries that Offer Good Part-Time Benefits

To make some broad generalizations, the following industries tend to offer pretty good part-time benefit programs:

• health care
• blue collar (usually unionized)
• army/military
• state/federal/municipal governments
• retail (non food-service)

I’m going to highlight a few national employers to consider. Note that not all health insurance or retirement plans are created equal. Just because you may be eligible for ‘medical insurance’, does not mean you will have a free ride. All of these employers will have slightly different plans that will require varying premium coverage by you. It pays to research extensively beforehand.

That being said, some of the benefits offered by these employers are quite generous and fairly surprising.

Starbucks

Starbucks benefits usually get mentioned in any part-time benefit discussion. And for good reason. Benefits include:

• Medical, dental, and vision plan for you and your dependents.
• A 401K match of 100% on the first 3% or 6% (varies by year).
• Life Insurance.
• Vacation, Holiday, and sick time.
• A pound of coffee per week!
• Discounted stock.

In order to be eligible, you must maintain at least 240 hours per calendar quarter (or about 20 hours per week). Kudos to Starbucks for offering such a great benefits package for part-timers!

Trader Joe’s

Part-time “Crew Members” are eligible for medical, dental and vision coverage after meeting the eligibility requirements. Most Crew Members qualify after a couple of months, according to Trader Joe’s career page.

However, one should be aware that ‘part-time’ can be up to 40 hours per week. I still haven’t seen a sad Trader Joe employee.

Trader Joe’s employees are also paid very well. According to employee surveys at Glassdoor, crew member wages at Trader Joe’s can be up to $19/hour! And CNN reported,

“assistant store managers — can make in the low six figures, and full-time crew members can start in the $40,000 to $60,000 range. But on top of the pay, Trader Joe’s annually contributes 15.4% of employees’ gross income to tax-deferred retirement accounts.”

Wow!

REI

Want to spend a lot of time hiking and biking and less working? With REI, you can. Less than 20 hours will get you a 60% subsidy towards medical insurance for you and your family, which is virtually unheard of. Over 20 hours will earn you a more comprehensive plan.

REI benefits also include:

• 50% off gear (a big one for me).
• Vacation, PTO, and 8 paid holidays.
• A retirement contribution of 5% of earnings and up to an additional 10% depending upon company profitability. Employees are not required to contribute their own pay in order to receive the REI contribution.

Hmm… note to self. Live near an REI in retirement.

Fedex/DHL/UPS

The shipping carriers don’t readily supply full details of their benefits on their website or the qualifications to receive them, but their reputation is well earned.

All three offer medical, dental, vision, and 401K.

UPS, in particular, also offers vacation, stock purchase incentives, and a defined benefit pension.

The great part? They offer this to all employees, not just full-timers.

Note with FedEx that their ground shippers are considered independent contractors and don’t receive company benefits.

Lowe’s

Lowe’s benefits are the same for part-timers as they are full full-timers and you are eligible immediately. Those benefits include:

• health insurance, vision, and dental
• vacation
• 6 paid holidays
• discounted stock
• 401K match up to 6%

You can get some great benefits all while beefing up on useful Bob Vila superpowers. Win-win.

Just wear some good shoes, you’ll be standing on concrete all day long.

Part-Time Jobs with Benefits Discussion:

• What other part-time jobs have great health insurance and other benefits? Share the details!
• Have you stayed on part-time with one of these employers because the benefits were so great?

Related Posts:

• How to Reach Health Insurance Nirvana
• What is an HSA?
• What is a HDHP?

5 Part-Time Jobs with Health Insurance & Benefits is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

Definition of Retirement: sit around the home, read the paper, play some golf, drive around town in a Cadillac, catch the early bird special at the local diner, watch some TV, go to bed, and do it all over the next day. Mix in an occasional RV or European vacation to take some photos and all was right in the world.

Retirees had a simple financial formula for achieving that dream:

1. Hit age 65.
2. Stop Working.
3. Collect your pension check, replacing the majority of your annual income before retirement.
4. Collect your Social Security benefits to fill in the rest.
5. Rely on your retiree health benefits from your employer.
6. Collect your medicare benefits to fill in the rest.

Those days are all but over. Why?

1. Pensions are dead – our generation won’t get them, and if you are lucky enough to get one, good luck keeping most of it.
2. Most individual investors fail miserably at investing. With 401K’s, any hopes we have of retiring are dependent on a.) you becoming a good, patient investor, b.) the market performing well (just look at the last decade’s miniscule returns if you aren’t scared yet).
3. Social security benefits will not deliver what they have in the past (Social Security has historically replaced 40% of income). That is, if one of our political parties does not successfully push through the privatization of Social Security first, which would result in an impact similar to shifting pensions to 401K’s – that is, placing more burden on individual investors to get it right.
4. Retiree health benefits are about as rare as pensions will be for our generation – almost non-existent.
5. For better or worse, medicare as it stands is under attack by Republicans. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, Ryan’s medicare altering proposal would shift more and more burden to individual retirees as it encourages a move to individuals buying health insurance through the private sector and is tied to general inflation vs. medical inflation. Whether Ryan’s plan passes or not, the U.S. has a budget problem that is going to encourage shifting more and more burden to retirees over the years. We can’t escape that.

Traditional Retirement is Dead

Scary stuff. If you don’t start hoarding a significant amount of your income (50%+), average double digit returns, and stay in impeccable health… retirement, in the traditional sense, is all but dead to you.

The system itself was designed when we were primarily a blue collar society and our bodies could not take working much beyond age 65. As we have shifted more and more towards and information based economy, perhaps we simply don’t need the 65 and quit formula. We may not have a choice.

You simply won’t have have the same entitlement programs to fall back on and private sector employers won’t foot your bill either. For better or worse, IT’S ALL ON YOU.

I’m not taking a political stance here. I’m trying to warn you that you will really have to look out for yourself starting yesterday and get a little bit lucky if you want to have a traditional retirement in today’s political and economic climate.

Is that such a bad thing?

The New Retirement

Perhaps my views will change as I age. I just can’t imagine a life centered around doing nothing.

It sounds like preparing for death.

When I’m 65, 70, and beyond, I want to live it up!

I can’t imagine NOT working in some capacity. Sure, at the age of 70, I don’t want to be slaving away in a factory line somewhere or on a computer (I almost said ‘pushing paper’) for 40 hours a week, but I do want to pursue creative interests, do meaningful work, and engage with others.

And if I have to take a part-time job to grab partial health insurance, so be it.

I think this will be the norm for our generation. And it might not be all that bad.

Shifting Our Mindset About Retirement

Retirement is all about situation and mindset.

I view it as a gradual or potentially even sudden move from following monetary pursuits to following personal objectives.

In other words, achieving enough financial freedom to do what you want in life.

There may be some peaks and valleys along the way that force you to seek a meaningless job part-time that offers health insurance or force you to take a full-time job in order to replace lost retirement savings.

Maybe retirement for you is becoming debt free and quitting your corporate 9-to-5 at age 40, working part-time at a Starbucks for health insurance, and gaining the bulk of your income from passion-related multiple income streams.

Does that sound so bad?

The New Retirement Formula

Your mileage may vary, but I think the new retirement will look something like this:

1. Become debt free.
2. Pursue interests that result in income.
3. Supplement health insurance through income or part-time work with health benefits.
4. Enjoy the nice added benefit of Social Security, Medicare, or other entitlements, but certainly don’t count on them.

Notice the lack of retirement age or ‘stop working’ from the equation.

What Steps Can you Take to Prepare for the New Retirement?

Maybe I’m wrong, but I just don’t see our society moving to a heavier benefit entitlement system and our current system isn’t even sufficient for our generation to realize a traditional retirement. As a result, the traditional retirement is dead. In order to be prepared for and embrace that:

1. Stop worrying, it only causes inaction and a victim mentality. Start acting.
2. Attack debt with a vengeance. The sooner you can become debt free, the sooner you will be able to achieve the new retirement.
3. We’ve lived like many of our parents who have a cushy pension and who will get full Social Security payouts. We need to stop that. Keep your living expenses low. Consider downgrading or selling your vehicles and buying a tiny home instead of a larger one.
4. Save like you never have before, particularly outside of your retirement accounts. Still put significant funds into your retirement accounts, but realize that those accounts are designed for the traditional retirement model. If you withdraw early, you will be penalized. The new retirement will require you to have a larger savings base outside of retirement accounts that you can withdraw from when needed.
5. Start figuring out what your marketable hobbies and creative interests are and start pursuing them. Whether you achieve the new retirement or not, you should consider this.
6. Become multi-skilled so that you can be flexible and recession proof.

Whether you believe that traditional retirement is dead or not, these actions will only improve your financial standing and freedom to pursue your interests in life.

Traditional & New Retirement Discussion:

• Which retirement – old or new – sounds more appealing to you?
• Do you believe that the traditional retirement system is dead?
• What is your new retirement vision?
• How are you planning on preparing for the new retirement?

Traditional Retirement is DEAD! Now What? is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

15 readers shared their stories in the comments and I really enjoyed hearing what others were doing. I am sure you will too, so I decided to provide some highlights and boil down each story into a ‘strategy-type’.

Hopefully it gets your creative juices flowing, as it did mine.

The “Best of Both Worlds” Strategy:

Rita quit her corporate job, but maintained much of the same clientelle on her own. Her income was roughly the same on much less hours. Rita didn’t mention this, but this is also a great way to diversify employers (instead of having one employer, she has a number of clients, distributing her risk of getting ‘laid off’).

With all of her new found free time, she started up a dog grooming and walking business because she loves dogs.

More freedom, time, passion, and diversification. What’s not to love about that?

The “Truly Diversified” Strategy:

Ginger, although not employed, has developed a number of income streams with her husband, including:

1. Income from a rental
2. Husband’s job
3. Going back to school for future career
4. Behavioral research surveys at a local university (I didn’t even know this existed)
5. Blogging

I like it. Income from an employer, a side business (rental), income that can be earned in free time (surveys & blog), and planning for the future. Very well thought out and very diversified. Very inspiring, Ginger!

The “Concentrated Focus Diversification” Strategy

’20 and engaged’ diversified her income, while at the same time having a concentrated focus on web publishing. She has earned income through:

1. Website development and design
2. Affiliate income
3. Blogging for other websites

Sticking with what you know and getting very good at it while diversifying at the same time can work very well.

The “Part-Time Freedom” Strategy

Vanessa brought up a rather brilliant strategy that I had not thought of before. While she is getting her bachelor’s degree, she holds 3 different well paying part-time jobs:

1. At a Brinks-type company doing cash counting
2. As a contract paralegal (works her own hours, from home)
3. At her university filling printers with paper

Since they are all part-time she has flexibility with her schedule. She’s also building experience for her resume (essential these days for new grads). I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing her student debt will be significantly less than most, if existent at all. The key to making this strategy work is to find jobs where you set the schedule.

The “Traditional” Strategy

Probably the most common tried and true strategy out there, Amanda is adding multiple income streams to her full-time income as an engineer. She has also started tutoring high school students in math because she loves math and teaching. On top of that she is earning income through dividend stocks.

There’s a reason why this strategy works time and time again – you have the security of a full-time job while further boosting income through doing what you love and passively through investing.

What’s your Multiple Income Story?

Thanks to all of the readers who shared their great stories!

Are there any other multiple income strategies that you can think of or you are already executing that you can share?

Related Posts:

• 55 Hobbies you Can Get Paid for
• Start Retiring Now
• Recession Proof Yourself
• Turn a Layoff Into a Business Opportunity
• What is Stopping you from Being Self-Employed?

5 Different Multiple Income Stream Strategies Shared by Readers is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

There can’t be many better ways to find out which jobs are the most and least secure than to look at the unemployment rate of each profession over the past year.

That’s why I was so geeked to see the Wall Street Journal’s unemployment charts, which pulled in data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for each profession in 2010. I’m a bit of a data whore, if you haven’t noticed.

Job Security, Revisited

In my opinion, there are four pillars to job security:

• Locale: some jobs will never get outsourced because warm bodies are needed on site.
• Communication: if you are an ‘expert’ in your niche who can connect & drive business, you’re hard to let go.
• Scarce Skill Set: think doctors, lawyers, brain surgeons, rocket scientists. It’s hard to find these skills.
• Trends & Economic Forces: the U.S. has an aging population, health care professionals are in high demand. On the flip side, manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas because there is cheaper labor abroad.

Jobs with the Lowest Unemployment Rate

With the 4 pillars in mind, it was interesting to see a list of the top 20 professions in terms of the lowest unemployment rate in 2010 and how the pillars apply to each (employment rates for 2010 in parentheses):

1. Appraisers & Assessors of Real-Estate (0.4%): I couldn’t believe this at first. 0.4%? Completely counter-intuitive with as few people buying homes as there are. But when you think about it, when are appraisers needed? Not only when homes are being passed from one family to another, but when they are being passed from one family to a bank. Foreclosures! This is an example of where locale and economic trends are a huge driving force.

2. Therapists (0.4%): This is the first of  in the health care field. With all of the depressed people out there who are struggling financially, it’s no surprise that therapists are doing well.

3. Managers of Police & Detectives (0.4%): I’m a little surprised on this one with the cutbacks in police force that we’ve been reading about in the news.

4. Locomotive Engineers & Education (0.4%): These guys (or gals) definitely have the ‘locale’ pillar going for them, as well as economic trends, and a scarce skill set. Trains will probably be run by computers at some point, but until then, it will take people. With gas prices so high, the rail business has made a strong comeback.

5. Directors, Religious Activities & Education (0.8%): When the going gets tough, people get all spiritual. They have to, in order to keep their minds.

6. Dentists (0.8%): Definitely have locale and a scarce skill set going for them.

7. Speech-Language Pathologists (0.8%): Health-related field.

8. Detectives & Criminal Investigators (0.8%): Unemployment inversely proportional to the # of crimes committed?

9. Physicians & Surgeons (0.9%): Aging population trend, locale, and scarce skill set.

10. Occupational Therapists (1.0%): Occupational therapists treat those who are mentally, physically, developmentally, or emotionally disabled. I wonder if all of the vets coming back from their tours has anything to do with this? It would make sense.

11. Farmers & Ranchers (1.2%): Yes, there is the economic trend of rising food prices, which has helped make farming a profitable profession again. However, I think the low unemployment rate here is simply from the fact that if you are a farmer or rancher, you are self-employed and you own land. And as long as you are both, why would you be “unemployed”?

12. Pharmacists (1.2%): Like most medical professions, pharmacists have 3 of the 4 pillars going for them right now: locale, scarce skill set, and economic forces/trends.

13. Dental Hygienists (1.2%): Throw dentists and hygienists in with the medical professionals.

14. Clergy (1.4%): Pretty hard to lose your job when god is on your side  (or lose football games).

15. Veterinarians (1.4%): A bit surprising in that many families who have been foreclosed upon have given up their pets. Of course, many of those were lower income families who didn’t take their animals to the vet in the first place.

16. Lawyers (1.5%): There’s always going to be bullshit lawsuits out there. And how many lawyers are going to admit they are ‘unemployed’ in the first place?

17. Police & Sheriff’s Patrol Officers (1.7%): Third ‘criminal justice’ occupation to make the list.

18. Operations Research Analysts (2.0%): You think it’d be easy to fire someone who you don’t even know what the heck it is they due. Apparently not.

19. Judges, Magistrates, & Other Judicial Workers (2.0%): 4th criminal justice occupation to make the top 20 list. I need to look into this trend more, because it’s not very intuitive other than crime rates being up due to more people falling on hard economic times.

19. Physical Therapists (2.0%): Medical. Again.

20. Psychologists (2.1%): Medical. Yet Again.

21. Registered Nurses (2.1%): I had to add nurses, even though they were just outside of the top 20. Why? At 2.84 million, there are more than 2.5 X employed nurses out there than any other occupation on this list (lawyers came in second at 1.04 million). Why is that important? It’s one thing to have an unemployment rate of 2.0% when there are only 71,000 jobs out there (judicial workers), but it’s an entirely different thing when there is 2.8 million. That signals a true strong demand for that occupation. And this is one that is not going away anytime soon.

10 of the top 21 were in the medical field (11 if you factor in veterinarians). Four were in the criminal justice field (5 if you throw in lawyers). And 2 were in religious works. That’s a total of 18 out of 21 in medical, law enforcement, and religion.

Top 10 Jobs with the Highest Unemployment Rate

I’ll cover the top 10 jobs with the highest unemployment rates, but only a few comments need to be made, since 8 of the top 10 are in the construction/build trades, and are as follows:

1. Helpers, construction trades (36%)

3. structural & steel workers (28.4%)

4. roofers (27.1%), 5. millwrights (25.5%)

6. cement masons/concrete (25.3%)

7. brick/stone masons (25.1%)

8. construction laborers (25.0%)

9. drywall installers (23.9%).

When the economy shrinks, credit is hard to come by, and real-estate value is plummeting, it’s no surprise that people in these occupations are going to suffer greatly. It’s unfortunate, because they are some of the hardest working people in the world. But this recession is about as strong of a negative economic trend as you will come across.

The other two to make the top 10 with the highest unemployment rate were:

2. Telemarketers (34.8%): Telemarketers are usually below the college graduate level and don’t have highly valued skill sets. In other words, they are easy to fire when times get tough and rehire when they get better. At the same time, more and more are going overseas. Communication skills are important, but highly undervalued in the telemarketer field.

10. Interviewers (23.4%): Nobody was hiring! And because of that nobody was hiring interviewers.

Unemployment Rate by Job Discussion:

If you’re thinking of changing professions, trying to absorb some of these trends is a good place to start. The Wall Street Journal list is sortable by number of jobs, unemployment rate, and % increase or decrease from 2009 to 2010. Occupations with high unemployment rates now are going to take time to turnaround because the market is flooded with workers looking to get back in. But those with very low ones at the tail end of a recession might be a pretty safe bet. I wouldn’t jump to be a real estate appraiser though.

Was your job on the list?

Related Posts:

• 5 Part-Time Jobs with Health Insurance
• Corporate Profits at All Time High. Unemployment at 9%. What does this mean?
• 5 Ways to Recession Proof Yourself
• Unemployed? Many Hiring Employers won’t Even Give you a Look

Looking for a Secure Job? Start with these 20 Occupations with the Lowest Unemployment Rate is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.

I did a search for ‘quit my job’ and one for ‘retire early’ to compare the trends against each other (not that I’m thinking of either, of course).

Insights for search measures relative search demand for a given search query over time. And you can compare it to others.

Well, take a look at the two terms. You’ll find ‘retire early‘ in blue and ‘quit my job‘ in red. Both over the time period of 2004 to present.

Amazing!

‘Quit my job’ searches were once half of ‘retire early’ searches. Now they are four times as frequent. This is very surprising, particularly in this economy. It goes to show that just ‘having’ a job is not as satisfying as one might expect. Hardship does not equate to job loyalty.

According to the job placement firm, Manpower, a startling 84% of employees plan to look for a new position in 2011 (up from 60% last year). That seems ridiculously high, but it’s consistent with the Google insights. Employers, what are you doing?! Pick up your game and start focusing on retention and treating your people well!

On the other hand the demise of ‘retire early’ interest is not surprising at all. With the baby boomer’s retirement savings all but disappearing, it’s no surprise that fewer people are having the thought.

At what point did relative interest in the two queries intersect? Just before the great recession in 2008. Coincidence? Doubtful. Insightful? Absolutely!

Related Posts:

• Can Money Buy Happiness?
• 55 Marketable Hobbies you can Get Paid for
• Stop Dreaming and Start Retiring – Now!
• What would you do if Money were not an issue?

Retire vs. Quit: Fun with Google Insights for Search is copyrighted by 20somethingfinance.com without consent to republish.