Do it anyway by: mother teresa

1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
   Love them anyway.
   
2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
   Do good anyway.
   
3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
   Succeed anyway.
   
4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
   Do good anyway.
   
5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
   Be honest and frank anyway.
   
6. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
   Think big anyway.
   
7. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
   Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
   
8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
   Build anyway.
   
9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
   Help people anyway.
   
10. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
    Give the world the best you have anyway.

10 Best States for Retirement

What are the best states for retirees? The popular answer seems to be anywhere along the Sun Belt, where retiring Americans have flocked for generations in search of sunshine, swimming pools and year-round golf.

Yet, if you consider other factors that are important for seniors, you'd find that some of the best spots are actually located farther north. Bankrate pored through a slew of key factors, including access to medical care, cost of living, local crime rates, state and local taxes -- as well as climate.

Here, in ascending order, is Bankrate's list of the 10 unexpectedly best states for retirement.

No. 10: North Dakota


Yes, it's frigid there. The 30-year average annual temperature in North Dakota is around 41 degrees, making it the coldest state in the continental U.S.

If you can handle the cold, North Dakota could be an excellent place to settle down. Consider its access to hospital care. There are five beds available for every 1,000 people in the state, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That's tied for second-best in the country.

North Dakota also has the second-lowest crime rate in the nation, and the state and local tax burden, which takes into account income, sales, property and other taxes, is at a relatively mild 8.9 percent of income.

No. 9: Nebraska


The Cornhusker State ranks at No. 9 on Bankrate's list for several reasons.

Nebraska residents have excellent access to hospital beds, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and FBI statistics show that its crime rate is slightly lower than average. Its cost of living also is one of the lowest in the country, according to the Council for Community and Economic Research, which tracks the cost of groceries, housing, utilities, transportation and health care in most major U.S. cities.

The state and local tax burden is near the national average at 9.7 percent, according to the Tax Foundation. And its 30-year average temperature is about 49.2 degrees, which is colder than the national average.

No. 8: Alabama


Home of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, Alabama boasts a trio of benefits that retirees may find alluring. It has some of the lowest local and state taxes in the nation. Its cost of living also is relatively low, especially for a Gulf Coast state. And its temperatures are among the warmest in the U.S.: Its average annual temperature of 63 degrees compares favorably to the national average, which is more than 10 degrees lower.

However, Alabama has relatively high crime rates, with 4,026 property and violent crimes per 100,000 people (compared to the national average of 3,253). And access to medical care isn't as good as the national average.

No. 7: West Virginia

Retire in the heart of Appalachian coal country? Absolutely. West Virginia ranks No. 7 on Bankrate's list of great retirement states for three main reasons: It has a lower-than-average cost of living, boasts a lower-than-average crime rate, and residents also have better access to hospital beds than the national average.

And then there are the intangibles: The mountain ridges that ripple across the state are home to countless trout streams and hiking trails. Its vistas look like something sketched by Thomas Kinkade. And temperatures are right in the middle range for U.S. states. Last year, temperatures in Charleston, W.V., ranged between a low of 12 and a high of 103 degrees Fahrenheit, and the 30-year state average is about 52 degrees.

No. 6: Virginia


Virginia isn't just for lovers. It's for seniors looking for an all-around good place to settle down.

The Old Dominion is better than average in most categories that Bankrate considered, including cost of living, warmer temperatures and access to physicians.With only 2,446 property and violent crimes per 100,000 people, Virginia has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

Throw all of that in with Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, Colonial Williamsburg, the Blue Ridge Parkway and other gems, and you have one of the best states in the U.S. for retirees.

No. 5: Mississippi


Mississippi is the fourth Appalachian state (including Alabama, Virginia and West Virginia) to make the list so far, and we're only halfway through the ranking. Sensing a trend here?

The Magnolia State is not just one of the warmest in the U.S., it also has relatively low state and local taxes and a lower-than-average cost of living.

Those factors make Mississippi an accommodating place for retirees, even though its crime rate is a little higher than average. It also has only 178 doctors per 100,000 people -- one of the lowest physician-to-resident ratios in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

No. 4: Kentucky


One of the strongest benefits that Kentucky offers retirees is an extremely low cost of living. The Council for Community and Economic Research, or CCER, which collects data on the relative costs of groceries, housing, utilities, transportation and health care in communities across the U.S., found that retirees in Kentucky are paying less than many of their counterparts across the country.

Bankrate, which analyzed CCER's data, found that Kentucky boasts the fifth-lowest cost of living in the nation.

The Bluegrass State also has warmer-than-average temperatures and a crime rate that's slightly lower than average.

No. 3: South Dakota


And the third-best state for retirement is ... South Dakota? That's right. The Mount Rushmore State may not be on many retirement wish lists, but it should be. What it lacks in warmth, it makes up for in a variety of ways.

South Dakota has the lowest crime rate in the nation. The Tax Foundation also says South Dakota residents have an estimated state and local tax burden of 7.6 percent, which is lower than every other state except Alaska. Its temperatures are on the chilly side, with a 30-year average of 46 degrees -- about the same as New York and Colorado.

No. 2: Louisiana


Besides jazz and beignets, Louisiana offers retirees an excellent combination of low taxes (the Tax Foundation ranks it as the fourth lowest in the nation) and balmy weather. Louisiana has a 30-year average temperature -- that includes both winter lows and summer highs -- of 66.7 degrees. That's higher than every other state except Hawaii and Florida.

It also has better-than-average access to medical care and a relatively low cost of living.One major knock on Louisiana, however, is a crime rate that's among the highest in the nation. The FBI says there are 4,244 property and violent crimes per 100,000 people in Louisiana.

No. 1: Tennessee


That's right, Tennessee hits our No.1 spot. Its cost of living is the second lowest in the country, just behind Oklahoma, according to data collected from the Council for Community and Economic Research. And the Tax Foundation puts Tennessee's state and local tax burden as the third lowest in the nation.

Tennessee also ranked among the best in the country for access to medical care, and its weather is warmer than average.

All of those factors make Tennessee an excellent place for retirees, especially those on a tight budget and fixed income. There is still one main drawback, however. Tennessee's crime rate is among the worst in the U.S.

5 Ways to Get Great Retirement Benefits

One of the best ways to improve your retirement finances is to get your employer to chip in via a pension or 401(k). But not all employers are willing to do this. Only 65 percent of private-sector workers are offered retirement benefits by their employer, according to a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis of March 2012 National Compensation Survey data. However, some specific types of jobs and employers are more likely than others to provide retirement benefits. Here's how to boost your chances of getting a retirement plan from your employer:

Become a professional or manager. Your career choice plays a big role in the quality of benefits you will get through your job. Management and professional workers are the most likely of any industry to get retirement benefits at work (79 percent). "Some research suggests that in order to entice quality employees in the management, professional and related occupations, employers must offer medical and retirement benefits at higher rates than in other occupations," according to the BLS report. In contrast, only 40 percent of service industry workers have access to retirement benefits, the lowest of any field.
Pick a high income field. High income workers in the top quarter of the earnings distribution (85 percent) are more than twice as likely to be offered a 401(k) or pension at their job as people with incomes in the bottom quarter (38 percent). But even being in the top half of the earnings distribution makes you at least 10 percentage points more likely than the typical worker to have a retirement plan at work.


Work full time. Full-time workers are nearly twice as likely as part-time workers to have access to retirement benefits. The majority of full-time workers (74 percent) in the private sector are offered a retirement plan at work, but only 38 percent of part-time employees are eligible to participate.
Join a union. A union card just might be your ticket to a retirement plan because unions negotiate for better retirement benefits on behalf of their members. "Union workers generally have higher rates of access to benefits than their nonunion counterparts," BLS found. "Although union workers make up a relatively small proportion of workers in the private sector - about 7.2 percent in 2011, according to data from the Current Population Survey - through collective bargaining they generally are able to negotiate higher wages and benefits for the workers they represent." Almost all union members (92 percent) have retirement benefits, compared to 62 percent of nonunion employees.


Work for a large company. Large employers are often better able to offer retirement benefits due to economies of scale. "The larger the establishment, the more likely that establishment is to offer their employees medical and retirement benefits," BLS found. "Economies of scale appear to play an important role in the provision of these benefits, allowing larger businesses to offer medical and retirement benefits at substantially higher rates than smaller businesses." Some 86 percent of companies with 500 or more workers offer a retirement plan, and so do 79 percent of firms with between 100 and 499 workers. But less than half (46 percent) of employers with 49 or fewer workers are able to provide a retirement plan for them.

How the Rich Play the Market

F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn't entirely right. The very rich are different from you and me—but not by much.

A new study offers a comprehensive look at the portfolios and investment decisions of several hundred of the wealthiest families in the U.S. Every investor, rich or otherwise, can learn from how these people make the most of their advantages—and from how they mess up.

These households, with an average net worth of roughly $90 million, invest intelligently, for the most part, spreading their bets widely, seldom trading and keeping their investing taxes to a minimum.

[More from WSJ.com: Can You Beat the Market?]

But the superrich also commit rookie mistakes. Their approach to diversification might not always be ideal. They chase investment fads like dogs chasing parked cars. They freeze with fear just when bravery is most likely to be rewarded. Maybe the "smart money" isn't so different from the middle-class "dumb money" that Wall Street likes to mock.

Three economists—Enrichetta Ravina of Columbia Business School, Luis Viceira of Harvard Business School and Ingo Walter of New York University's Stern School of Business—analyzed the holdings and trades of more than 260 ultrawealthy families between 2000 and 2009. The data came from an unnamed private company that consolidates account information for the wealthy.

What have these rich investors gotten right?

First, they made the most of their "comparative advantages," or their unique strengths: They have access to privileged investments and can afford to tie up lots of money for a long time. The ultrawealthy keep about 20% of their assets in hedge funds and various forms of private equity, much of it in "angel investments," or fledgling companies to which they supply both capital and management advice in exchange for potentially higher returns.

And the wealthiest "don't turn over their portfolios too much," says Ms. Ravina, who led the study. They rarely trade, although they are more willing than regular investors to realize losses for tax purposes.

[More from WSJ.com: Lifelines for Investors on Their Own]

Perhaps that's because, with an average of six advisers apiece, they always have someone else to blame for the loss, making them less reluctant to admit a mistake.

The rich don't do everything right, however.

In early 2001, these wealthy families had a paltry 0.01% of their total wealth in the complex instruments known as mortgage-backed securities. But the rich "were chasing returns, and mortgage-backed securities seemed to be successful at the time, so they got into them," says Ms. Ravina.

By spring 2007, mortgage-backed securities accounted for more than 2.3% of the families' total wealth. Some of these trendy investments turned out to be risky. The Barclays CMBS 7+ index, a measure of one segment of that market, lost 36% in 2008.

"It's dangerous to follow fashion if you can't reverse in time when the fashion changes," says Ms. Ravina. By early 2009, the wealthy families had only 0.6% left in these securities.

The typical portfolio in the study contains nearly 120 individual stocks, plus two dozen mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and the like. Ms. Ravina believes that by holding so many positions, the wealthy get the flexibility to realize gains and losses, thereby minimizing tax bills.

But it's also possible that by owning so many securities, the rich incur excess cost—and fritter away some of the information advantage they could obtain through their social and business networks.

They might be better off putting most of their money into an index fund that holds all the companies in a broad market average and the rest into a handful of companies they know well.

The rich do rebalance, trimming from assets that have risen and adding to those that have fallen. But they aren't consistent enough.

[More from WSJ.com: 'Lessons I Wish Mom Had Taught Me']

The wealthy "are good at rebalancing when it is easy, but they didn't do it when it was hard," says Ms. Ravina. "They are human, like all of us. During the financial crisis, most of them were just paralyzed."

The total stock portfolio held by the rich families fell from $8 billion in mid-2008 to $3 billion in March 2009—considerably worse than the 36% decline in the overall stock market over the same period.

Had they sold some bonds and other assets to buy stocks as the market fell, the families would have been richer by a total of more than $500 million by March 2009, estimates Ms. Ravina.

You, too, should think about what your comparative advantage is as an investor. Most individuals aren't likely to have an edge in trying to beat Wall Street at its own game of fast trading and constant measurement of returns relative to a market index.

You're better off doing what Wall Street can't: cultivating patience, trading as seldom as possible, focusing only on those rare companies where you might know something everyone else doesn't and, finally, rebalancing when it is hardest.

Right now, that might mean trimming stocks a bit just as other people are most tempted to add to them.

The Long Shadow of Bad Credit in a Job Search

THE first couple of times Alfred J. Carpenter was turned down for a job, he didn’t know what to think.

He been laid off early in the recession and then had the bad fortune of tearing tendons in his knee just when he didn’t have health insurance. The job market was terrible and he had been out of work for more than a year. But the managers at the first two shoe stores to which he applied in the summer of 2010 seemed to be taken by his résumé. He had sold shoes for six years at Salvatore Ferragamo on Fifth Avenue and later at J. M. Weston, where a pair of men’s dress shoes can cost $2,000. The manager at one shop was already discussing salary. The other, he said, invited him to fill out the paperwork normally done on the first day on a job.

“Who does that if they’re not planning on hiring you?” Mr. Carpenter asked.
Yet neither job materialized. One manager, he said, “basically hung up on me.”
A friend at Bergdorf Goodman, the high-end clothier, secured him an interview for an opening in the shoe department. But when Mr. Carpenter confided to his friend that his finances were a mess, “he tells me, ‘Oh, you’ve got bad credit? They’ll never hire you.’ ” Sure enough, a week or two later, Mr. Carpenter said, he received a notice from Bergdorf informing him that while running a credit check, the store found information that played a role in its hiring decision. It was a so-called adverse action letter that by law a business conducting a credit report is supposed to send to an applicant.
Mr. Carpenter kept applying for jobs and kept checking off the box granting his would-be employer permission to look into his past. And he kept being turned down. There was the recession and there may have been dozens of applicants for each of these jobs. But while Bergdorf was the only company to follow up a job rejection with an adverse action letter, Mr. Carpenter became convinced that his credit report was a curse.
“No one lets me explain, ‘Hey, I had this freak injury when I didn’t have health insurance,’ ” he said. “It’s black and white: ‘You have these bad marks on your record, you don’t get hired.’ ” Down to his last $200, he applied for and was granted food stamps and federal housing assistance.
“There’s no reason,” he said, “a strong, able guy like me should have to go on welfare.”
PEOPLE tend to think of banks and other lenders as the main users of credit reports. But over the last several decades, credit reporting bureaus have been selling their services to a much wider range of buyers.
“Credit reports are really seeping into the soil,” said Sarah Ludwig, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, a New York-based nonprofit. “It’s taken an outsized role in employment, housing and insurance.”
For those seeking a job, it can lead to what Chi Chi Wu, a staff lawyer at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston, calls “a bizarre, Kafkaesque experience.”
“Someone loses their job,” Ms. Wu said, “so they can’t pay their bills — and now they can’t get a job because they couldn’t pay their bills because they lost a job? It’s this Catch-22 that makes no sense.” It can also be a kind of backdoor job discrimination, Ms. Wu contends, given the numerous studies that demonstrate that those black, Latino or simply poor are more likely to have lower credit scores than those who are white and have means.
Experian, one of the big three credit reporting bureaus, states in its marketing materials, “Credit information provides insight into an applicant’s integrity and responsibility toward his or her financial obligations.”
But to Ms. Wu and others, a credit report says more about a person’s economic circumstances than his or her moral character. “Some people can go to daddy and say, ‘I can’t pay my bills, will you bail me out?’ ” Ms. Wu said. “And others can’t.”
Nearly half — 47 percent — of employers use credit checks when making a hiring decision, according to a 2012 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. Most businesses use credit checks only to screen for certain positions, but one in eight, the survey found, does a credit check before every hire. “We’ve heard from dozens of people over the past several years who say they’re being denied jobs specifically because of a credit check,” Ms. Ludwig said. The people contacting her group, she said, are “mostly lower-wage workers,” especially those applying to big retail chains.
“Prohibiting the use of credit checks in employment is now our number one campaign,” Ms. Ludwig said. “Because it’s discriminatory. And because the last thing we need in a recession is another barrier to employment.”
Lawmakers in some jurisdictions have proved sympathetic to those arguments. Nine states have adopted legislation that curbs the use of credit reports to judge prospective hires — seven of them since the start of 2010. Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat from Tennessee, has sponsored federal legislation that would restrict their use. The New York Legislature and the New York City Council are considering strict new laws that would greatly limit an employer’s ability to do credit screening.
Advocates and lawmakers are already seeing the impact of their efforts. The Society for Human Resource Management started polling members about use of credit reports as a pre-employment tool in 2004. Over the years, the numbers were consistent: six in 10 businesses indicated that they used them. But in its most recent survey in 2012, that number fell to just below five in 10. That decline no doubt is the result, in part, of new state prohibitions and the attention the issue has received in the last few years, said Kate Kennedy, a spokeswoman for the society. But she also notes that her association has been educating its members in the importance of looking at “how relevant a credit check is for a particular position.”
That is bad news for the big three credit reporting bureaus: Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. But how bad is anyone’s guess. None of the three reveal what portion of overall revenue is derived from employment-related credit checks. Even if they did, the number would only offer a partial picture, said Terry W. Clemans, executive director of the National Consumer Reporting Association, an industry trade group based in Roselle, Ill. “There are several hundred companies out there that specialize in employment screenings,” he said.
Mr. Clemans saw the rapid increase of employment screening through the 1990s and into the 2000s, and considers the rising concern about its use in the last few years “hysteria.” “Credit is one data point that businesses are using to get an overall feel,” Mr. Clemans said. “Does this consumer have a lifestyle that fits the job? Is this someone who I can trust?” It is not the only factor.
“People are assuming because they checked that box agreeing to a consumer report and they were late in paying their Visa bills, that’s why they didn’t get a job,” Mr. Clemans said. It’s easier to blame the credit bureaus, in other words, than to accept that you weren’t the best possible candidate.
STEVEN BURMAN is the founder and president of Credit Advocates, a nonprofit in New York that helps consumers who have credit problems. In the past, people who were rejected for bad credit for a job in financial services might show up for help, but by and large his clients were trying to secure a home loan.
“What’s changed over the last four or five years is now I’m hearing from all these people who are concerned about finding work,” he said. And instead of stockbrokers, Mr. Burman is seeing “regular people looking for blue-collar low-wage jobs” such as security guard or retail clerk.
The problem is most pronounced among women he counsels at a homeless shelter in the Bronx. Those clients are almost all out-of-work single mothers. “They all want to do the right thing,” he said. “But they have terrible credit and none of them can get jobs because of it. It’s a vicious cycle.”
Despite his sympathy for his clients, Mr. Burman told me that he never makes a full-time hire at Credit Advocates without first pulling that person’s credit report. An employee dealing with bill collectors could be a distracted worker, he said. And how financial problems are explained could offer insights into an applicant’s character: Does he take responsibility for debts, or does she blame problems on someone or something else?
“I see it as the start of a dialogue,” he said.
Besides, a credit check is relatively inexpensive. A basic employment screening package can cost $19 to $50 per applicant. “If you have five people and can’t make up your mind, why not pull credit reports?” Mr. Burman asked.

The millions of Americans who saw their credit damaged during the financial crisis in 2008, however, might find Mr. Burman’s rationale unfair.
Gustavo Panesso, a man in his 50s who lives in Queens, was driving to his orientation to be a sales associate at the J. Crew store in Rockefeller Center in August 2010, he said, when his cellphone rang. “It was the man who was supposed to be my supervisor,” Mr. Panesso said. “He tells me, ‘Gustavo, I regret to say that we’re going to have to cancel your orientation because there was a problem with your credit report.’ ”
In Mr. Panesso’s case, the trouble was related to a pair of credit cards he had co-signed for his sister; she had lost her job a few years earlier and the cards were in default. He tried explaining the situation to his would-be bosses, and even hired a lawyer, “but they told me unless I cleared up this discrepancy, we can’t hire you.”
Moreover, credit reports are often inaccurate. In February, the Federal Trade Commission released a report indicating that one in four consumers was likely to find at least one mistake in his or her credit report.
Mr. Panesso was rejected for jobs at several more big national retail chains. But J. Crew, he said, was the only business to send him an adverse action letter. Did that mean the others rejected his application for other reasons? It’s impossible to know for sure.
Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at the liberal-leaning policy group Demos, and the author of “Discredited: How Employment Credit Checks Keep Qualified Workers Out of a Job,” a report released in March, says that the law requiring an adverse action letter is rarely enforced. “We found that many employers don’t” send them, Ms. Traub said.
Mr. Panesso now picks up odd jobs when he can find them. “Quite frankly,” he said, “I gave up.”
ALFRED CARPENTER, the shoe salesman, can relate. Now a fit man in his 50s, he lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where he grew up. After graduating with a two-year associate’s degree from Kingsborough Community College, he worked his way up in the shoe business, landing at Ferragamo. In a good year, he said, he would earn $60,000 to $70,000.
In his mid-30s, he quit Ferragamo to study acting. But after two years of trying to catch his big break, he ran out of money and, in 1999, he returned to selling shoes. In 2007 he took a job at Paul & Shark, a store specializing in yachting clothes. In August 2007, four months after he started, Mr. Carpenter was laid off. Not appreciating the size of the economic cataclysm that was about to rock the globe, he decided to take several months off before looking for another job.
“I figured with my résumé, I’d get another job easy,” he said. He also decided he wasn’t going to waste money buying health insurance. “I’m a healthy guy,” he said. “And it was too expensive.”
One day, playing in his regular Saturday morning roller hockey game, he ripped the tendons in one knee. The medical bills — the ambulance, the surgery, rehabilitation — piled up. “Every time I’d open my mailbox,” Mr. Carpenter said, “there’d be another six or seven bills.” A clerk in the hospital’s billing department suggested that he could wipe out his nearly $50,000 in medical costs by filing for bankruptcy.
Sitting at a metal table in his kitchen, he held up the final bankruptcy notice. “This is the cause of all my problems,” he declared. “Without this, I could’ve worked anywhere in the city. I would have had a hundred jobs.”
Mr. Carpenter would try talking to the employers who turned him down. “Was it the bankruptcy?” he would ask. But he never got a satisfying answer, just hemming and hawing. “I could hear it in their voice,” Mr. Carpenter said. After a while, he tried pre-emptively bringing up the bankruptcy in interviews, but that only led to more awkwardness.
Luckily, Mr. Carpenter said, he still lived in the rent-controlled apartment in which he grew up. The monthly rent was $600 and he was able to split the cost with a roommate once things turned bad. The federal assistance amounted to $400 or so a month. But even then he feared ending up homeless, worried that he would never find another job.
“I tell the woman my story during intake,” Mr. Carpenter said about his visit to apply for food stamps and other aid. “And she goes, ‘We hear that story all the time, about the credit.’ She said, ‘Yeah, we know, if you’ve got bad credit, you’re not getting a job.’ ”
SOME jobs require a credit check by law. Depending on the state, that includes positions as teachers, police officers, firefighters and day care operators, said Ms. Kennedy at the human resource society.
Most of the state laws curbing the use of credit reports as an employment screen carve out exceptions for people applying for supervisory positions or executive positions inside a financial institution. Mr. Cohen’s House bill creates exemptions for those seeking a national security clearance.
But what about everyone else?
Companies that use credit reports as an employment screen seem generally reluctant to talk about how or why they use them. Bergdorf Goodman declined to comment, as did several other retailers who rejected Mr. Carpenter for a position. A J. Crew representative said that the company stopped reviewing credit reports in 2012.
“Employers are looking for a sense of responsibility,” said Richard Mellor, a vice president at the National Retail Federation. “They want to see that an individual pays their bills on time and takes responsibility for what they buy.”
The Web site of a pre-employment screening company, Info Cubic, says, “A credit report can be an important indicator of financial responsibility for employees with fiduciary or cash handling responsibilities, access to expensive equipment, other people’s property, or otherwise placed in a position of financial trust.”
Experian’s pitch is more ominous: “Every time you hire a new employee you put a lot on the line,” says a company brochure. “The wrong decision could jeopardize your firm’s assets, reputation, or security.”
Consumer advocates say that there is little evidence for the industry’s claims of a connection between a credit report and an employee’s trustworthiness. One study published in 2008 in the International Journal of Selection and Assessment suggested a correlation between a person’s financial history and workplace theft. But a 2011 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found no link between a person’s credit score and what it called “deviant” behavior like workplace theft. (It did, however, find a correlation between a low credit score and an agreeable personality.)
Critics also have the testimony of the TransUnion official who told the Oregon Legislature in 2010, “We don’t have any research to show any statistical correlation between what’s in somebody’s credit report and their job performance or their likelihood to commit fraud.”
“As a researcher, I’d like to think that if about half of all employers are doing this, they must have some real evidence that it’s valuable,” said Ms. Traub of Demos. “But in this case that evidence is really lacking.”
MR. CARPENTER finally landed a job at the end of 2011. He caught a break after he confided his troubles to a friend in the shoe business. The friend, too, had credit problems but had found work at a Manhattan shoe store. Mr. Carpenter secured a job there and, last fall, he moved to another store where the pay was better. “I’m happy,” he said, but he also feels shellshocked.
“I have this accident and mess up my credit,” Mr. Carpenter said, “and now I’m the guy people don’t see as trustworthy.”

Learn how these homeowners saved big bucks on their high mortgage costs.

Are you looking for ways to cut your mortgage costs?

Though the economy is improving, money is still tight for many homeowners, and mortgage costs can be a big expense for many families. In fact, from the third quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2012, American consumers spent anywhere from 32 to 38 percent of their income on housing, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's "Consumer Expenditures Survey".
Given the hefty bite that housing takes from family income, it is no wonder homeowners want to cut their mortgage costs. So we talked to several individuals who did just that. Though their situations and refinancing techniques varied, all of our homeowners were able to get a lower interest rate and save money on their mortgage.
Want to learn how these homeowners cut their high mortgage costs? Keep reading to find out.

Savings Strategy: Switching to a Shorter-Term Loan

Name: Chris Reining 
Location: Madison, Wis.

How would you like to pay refinancing costs and increase your monthly mortgage payment to save money? Sounds crazy, right?
The truth is that doing just that may actually help cut your mortgage costs in the long run. That is exactly what Chris, the thirty-something Madison, Wis. founder of the personal finance blog, MrEverydayDollar.com, discovered when he refinanced his own mortgage.
The original amount that Chris took out for his mortgage was $180,000, with a 30-year term and an interest rate of 5.63 percent. When he went to refinance, he took out the new loan for $160,000, and switched to a 15-year loan with an interest rate of 3.25 percent.
Though his refinancing costs were approximately $1,000, when he calculated how much he'd save by going to a lower rate, Chris found it was worth it. In fact, within seven months, he was able to recoup the costs of refinancing.
And even though his monthly payment increased, the significantly lower interest rate on the 15-year loan didn’t cause his monthly payment didn't change by much.
"While I pay a little more per month now, about $100, the benefit is that my mortgage will be paid off in close to half the time," Chris explains.
But the savings didn't stop there. "Over the next five years, refinancing will both save me $13,429 and reduce my loan balance by $46,000," Chris says.
"I'd recommend - with mortgage rates at historic lows, to take the time and effort to talk to a loan officer about refinancing your mortgage," Chris says. "We might never see rates this low again in our lifetime."

Savings Strategy: Switching Lenders for a Lower Interest Rate

Name: Tracy Bagatelle-Black
Location: Los Angeles, Calif.

It may be difficult for homeowners to consider leaving their current mortgage lender, especially if you've had the mortgage for a long time.
However, refinancing to cut mortgage costs may mean leaving your current lender - whether by choice or necessity. This was the case for Tracy, a 40-something Los Angeles area public relations consultant.
"I refinanced my mortgage last year because I had to for a divorce," she explains. When her existing lender wouldn't remove her ex-husband from the loan, and didn't provide an explanation as to why they wouldn't, she called Merrill Lynch, who holds her investments. "I am so glad that I did because I wound up saving a ton of money," she says. In addition, they had no problem qualifying her for a mortgage on her own - without her ex-husband.
In Tracy's case, she shaved almost 1 percent off her current interest rate, lowering her long-term mortgage interest costs significantly by going from a rate of 5.125 on a 30-year fixed-rate loan to 4.19 percent on a 15-year fixed loan.
It gets even better. Despite going to a shorter-term mortgage, her monthly payments are actually less now than they were with the 30-year mortgage.
"I'm saving $90 per month," she says. "Plus I cut my repayment time in half. I was on a 30-year loan, but now I'm on a 15-year loan."

Savings Strategy: Using HARP to Refinance an Underwater Mortgage

Names: John and Carol
Location: Oakland, Calif.

Is your current mortgage owned or guaranteed by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, or insured through the FHA?
For Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae mortgages, as long as your payments are up-to-date and the value of your mortgage is more than 80 percent of the current value of your home, you may qualify to refinance to a lower rate under the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), says the program's official website.
John and Carol, an Oakland, California couple in their forties, were recently able to take advantage of this program. John works in construction and Carol works for a large telecommunications company, and they've lived in the same three-bedroom home for over 20 years. The original loan they took out on their home was for $260,000.
Joe Parsons, owner/manager of PFS Funding, a small mortgage banker in Dublin, California, has worked with John and Carol for over 15 years.
"Because of the decline in real estate values, [John and Carol's] loan balance is quite a lot higher than the value of their home," says Parsons. "They had resigned themselves to their high rate of 6.875 percent and the payment of nearly $1,800."
Luckily, John and Carol qualified under the HARP program to cut their mortgage costs significantly. Their new loan, which was for $266,000, was approved with minimal paperwork, and their rate dropped nearly three full percentage points to 4.125 percent. Their monthly payment dropped from $1,800 per month to $1,536 - a savings of over $300 per month, says Parsons.
"Under the latest iteration of HARP, John and Carol were able to refinance without regard to the appraised value of their home - in fact, an appraisal was not necessary at all."

Savings Strategy: Using an FHA program to get a Better Interest Rate

Names: Mike and Christine
Location: San Francisco, Calif.

While HARP helps many underwater homeowners, it isn't the only government program homeowners can take advantage of. Homeowners with up-to-date Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insured mortgages may also qualify to refinance to a lower rate through what's called a Streamline Refinance. This is what Mike and Christine, a San Francisco couple in their 30s did, and they saved big bucks in the process.
Mike and Christine bought their new home about four years ago with a loan amount of $688,000, using an FHA loan and a 3.5 percent down payment, says Parsons. At the time they got an interest rate of 5.75 percent, and their monthly payments including taxes, insurance, and mortgage insurance, was $5,485 per month.
"Mortgage insurance at that time was .55 percent," Parsons says, "and it has risen since then."
Mike, who works in mid-management for a high-tech company, and Christine, who is a new mother, qualified for an FHA streamline refinance under a recently-enacted program so their mortgage insurance premium would remain at the low rate they had initially, Parsons explains.
"Their new loan was at 3.75 percent. Because of the large drop in the [interest] rate, together with the size of the loan ($684,500), their payment dropped dramatically - from $5,485 to $4,380. That was a drop of over $1,000 per month."

Juice Frauds: What's Really in Your Juice

There's nothing quite like a glass of juice first thing in the morning to kick-start your day. And with so many delicious flavor combinations these days - both to make and to buy - there's no shortage of delicious juices to enjoy. But unless you have lots of time to spare, tons money to spend on costly juicers, and the means to buy lots of fruits and veggies, you may not always find the time to fresh-squeeze your juice every time you want it.

What's in Your Drink? 11 Misleading Beverage Labels

So we know it's tempting to pick up a bottle of juice in the supermarket aisle and call it a day. But the closer you look at the ingredients, the more alarmed you might be. Not every juice is as natural and pure as you might think - what we found, when examining ingredient labels and investigating claims, are some seriously stale ingredients.

8 'Healthy' Drinks That Are Terrible for You

As with any drink or food you might buy, it never hurts to take a close look at the ingredient label before buying. But what should you look for? There are some key words that can tip you off that your juice might not be as great as you think. There are even drawbacks to the supposedly 100 percent fruit juice label; for one, that 100 percent fruit juice can pack a whole lot more sugar and calories in one serving that the fruit its supposedly made from.

The Best and Worst Juices

Many dietitians and websites recommend eating your fruit, not drinking it; fruit juices won't have any of the fiber that a piece of fruit has because it's been stripped away during the processing. But that doesn't mean you should avoid juices altogether - you just have to know what to look for.

100 Percent Fruit Juice
The term "100 percent fruit juice" sounds innocent and wholesome, right? Sure - but you have to know what you're looking for. The good news is that 100 percent fruit juice is made purely from the juices of real fruits. And that means you're getting all the antioxidants and vitamins from fruit in one powerful punch. (One study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion even found that kids who drank more than 6 ounces of 100 percent juice had more nutritious diets than their peers.) But there are a few problems with 100 percent real fruit juice: you get way more sugar and calories, for starters. Your glass of 100 percent fruit juice has about twice the amount of calories as a piece of fruit; so, if you're drinking a glass of orange juice, you're getting the caloric equivalent of two to three oranges. And you're not getting the full amount of fiber from 100 percent fruit juice either, as it's stripped away when the juice is processed.

Juice 'Fillers'
You might think that your fruity combination juice is a mix of all your favorite juices - but you're more likely to find apple and grape juices in there. Apple and grape juices are seen as the "fillers" of most juices, because they're cheap to make. So that blueberry-pomegranate juice may contain 100 percent fruit juice of blueberries and pomegranates, but may also have apple and grape juice in it. Pomegranate juice was one of the top "food frauds " found in a recent hot button study of fake ingredients from the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention. As most versions are often diluted with grape and apple juice, pomegranate juice that's straight-up pomegranate is harder and harder to find. Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standard, told ABC News, "Pomegranate juice is a high-value ingredient and a high-priced ingredient, and adulteration appears to be widespread… It can be adulterated with other food juices… additional sugar, or just water and sugar." How to avoid that sticky problem? Stick to single-fruit juice (like 100 percent pomegranate fruit juice) and read the ingredients labels very carefully. The higher up the ingredient is on the list, the more you'll find of it - so if your juice has apple and grape way up at the top, you're getting a lot of those from your bottle.

Fake Fiber
Because juicing strips away the fiber from natural fruits, some juice makers add additional fiber back into their products. But some juice makers have been found in the past to add in synthetic fiber, making your wholesome juice not quite so natural. For example, one review of supermarket juices published by the nonprofit watchdog Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) found that Welch's 100 Percent Grape Juice with Fiber (which suggests that one serving can give you 10 percent of your daily needs in fiber) was made with maltodextrin, an additive that acts more like a starch-like carbohydrate. However, the study said, the label advertised that the fiber came from the whole grapes, and not an additive. One other juice maker that came under fire for fake fibers? Naked Juice. In 2011, a lawsuit was filed against the company for misleading language on the labeling that ignored the "added synthetic compounds," like "Fibersol-2 (a proprietary synthetic digestion-resistant fiber produced by Archer Daniels Midland and developed by a Japanese chemical company), fructooligosaccharides (a synthetic fiber and sweetener), and inulin (an artificial and invisible fiber added to foods to... increase fiber content without the typical fiber mouthfeel)." You can still find maltodextrin on the ingredient list for Blue Machine Naked Juice.

Artificial (and Natural) Colorings
This one is almost a no-brainer: certain juices will contain dyes in them. The one under the most fire is Red 40, a dye that was linked to childhood ADHD (the link was later disputed by the FDA); another one, Yellow 6, was found in several brands of orange juice in one study. The CSPI points out that these bright colors in juice can often mask what's really in your drink - so you might think you're drinking a berry juice that's really just bright red because of the dye. Of course, that doesn't mean natural colorings are that much better for you. Take the Starbucks debacle when it was found to be using cochineal coloring for its Strawberry Frappuccinos - beetles may be natural, but we don't want them in our juice. And as some point out, using additives like beet concentrate or carrot concentrate for color can cause big problems for those with food allergies, so it's best to read those ingredient labels carefully.

'Flavor Packs'
This last one has everyone talking: ethyl butyrate, one ingredient you might see on your juice ingredient label, is better known as the "flavor pack" that makes your juice so appetizing. Tropicana Juice is one such company to come under fire (and lawsuits) for using flavor packs in orange juice to give it a "distinctive" and consistent taste. As Food Renegade explains: "When the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of flavor-providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Flavor packs aren't listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature."Coca-Cola's Simply Orange juice is another such example of a product "made with an algorithm." The "Black Book" model, Bloomberg recently revealed, is how Coca-Cola can replicate the same taste of orange juice despite the variables of juice production - using "natural fragrances and flavors."