Renting vs. Owning a Home

It's Log!

Home ownership in the US is at an all time high, due to low interest mortgages.  However, it doesn't always make sense to buy a home.  If you think you might move, if you don't want to be handy or hire people to be handy on your behalf, if your credit sucks to the point where you'd be charged a big rate, if the market seems to be staying down, if you don't have a down payment, if buying will be more expensive than renting - these are all good reasons not to buy a house.

Renting doesn't build up any equity for you, but in the beginning of a mortgage you are paying mostly interest anyway.  It takes half the length of a mortgage to pay off one quarter of the principal balance, if you are just paying the minimum payment.

If you rent, then you might get a landlord who doesn't fix things.  On the other hand, if you buy a house, you will have to fix things yourself.  Either way you end up fixing things.

Here is a handy calculator to figure out which would be cheaper, buying or renting:
http://realestate.yahoo.com/calculators/rent_vs_own.html 
 

Beware Business Credit Card Offers

Here, spender spender...

I got this off of the creditinfocenter.com website
http://www.creditinfocenter.com/wordpress/2010/09/15/beware-of-business-credit-cards-not-covered-by-card-act/

Credit card companies are sending out business credit card offers to people, some of whom don't even own a business, or who are retired.  This is a ploy designed to get around the new CARD Act, because business credit cards are not subject to it.  If you are offered a business credit card, think hard before accepting, because it's a license for them to abuse you.

Elections a Recession Proof Industry

Homo Politicus

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hnAErbAO-i6DyfACJBongpxZWCwgD9I35CP80

This article says election spending is through the roof this year.  Perhaps the place to look for work would be to try to work on the staff of a politician running for office.  This is somewhat because of the new rule saying that corporations and unions can spend freely on campaigns now, but corporations are still being kind of low-key about it because they don't want bad publicity from obvious, overt politicking.
  

Doomsayer Gerald Celente Predicts "Greatest Depression"

Get and preserve food now!

http://www.trendsresearch.com/journal.html
Gerald Celente, a predictor of trends, thinks that we are done with the fake little "recovery" that the US Gov't has propped us up for a while in, and now we are ready to slide into the "greatest Depression".

http://www.trendsresearch.com/journal.html
here is his website.  On it he predicts that survivalism will become more popular, that there will be an anti-immigration movement, that inventors will invent "technology for the poor" that is affordable, that people will become more interested in DIY, and that "elegance" will become the new fashion (as a sort of pick-me-up to escape from the depression).