When house sales were booming, I posted a few updates in July and August using the National Association of Realtors (NAR) data. Both July and August showed an increase in sales numbers. August was an upsetting month because the increase wasn’t as high as people expected.

After ignoring the real estate market for a few months, I  want to take a look at it and see how the market is doing. Are things getting better? Worse?

I try to offer job search and career outlook advice through my blog.Typically I try to be upbeat. However, I’ve been thinking a lot about the job market from an economists perspective, recently.

With a lot of recent buzz about executive compensation because of the bailouts, the fact that this issue came to the forefront is not surprising. What does surprise me, though, is the fact that the major shareholders of said companies didn’t (and probably still don’t) understand the risk they forced on these executives. Trying to curtail these “incentives” does nothing to stop them from forcing future executives from taking equally ridiculous risks. The devil is in the details, right?

With the recent financial turmoil, it is clear: Our country has a lot of credit junkies. This is not synonymous with people who may have a shopping addiction, which I’ve written about. You don’t have to crave Gucci in order to have a credit problem.

To some people, credit is a means to an end. They have a problem and they see an easy solution: credit. Others may not have a problem, but enjoy having access to extra cash (which explains why HELOC – Home Equity Line of Credit – loans became so popular).

There are different kinds of credit users. There is the person who refinances their home and uses the extra cash to pay off debt that charges a higher interest rate.

I recently wrote two articles about the top 15 college degrees by starting salary and the top 10 college degrees by demand. On the face, it seems that those two articles are reason enough to get a college degree. However, those two articles only apply to a minority of college degree holders.

If you find yourself getting a degree that is on one of those two lists, you are one step ahead of the game. But for everyone else, what are other major motivators behind getting a college education?

If you are anything like me, you wait until the last minute possible to buy your gifts. Five or ten years ago, that meant I would be at the mall with all of the other slackers on Christmas Eve. Parking was disastrous. Lines were atrocious. It was never pleasant.

But I’ve learned from those mistakes. With the advent of the internet came e-tailers. And some of them have grown to be formidable opponents to Brick & Mortar stores. My favorite is Amazon (what CAN’T you buy?!), although I also check out Newegg a lot, too.