1 in 4 N.J. adults 18-31 live at home

According to the US census Bureau, at least 1 in 4 N.J. adults, ages 18-31 live at home and 42% are 24 or older. Experts call it an "epidemic" of millennials leaching off their parents, but does a bad economy and student loan debt crisis justify the situation?

A new survey from Coldwell Banker says parents in the Northeast region are more lenient on this than anywhere else in the US on children moving back home.

But, according to the survey, more than two in three Americans believe that too many adults living at home with their parents are avoiding responsibility, and 65 percent believe too many young adults who move back home after college are overstaying their welcome.

Dr. Susan Newman, a Jersey-based social psychologist and author of the book “Under One Roof”, she says it’s almost expected for kids in N.J. to move back into their suburban homes after college. Read more >>

Debt holds many Boomers back

With the average Baby Boomer a half-million dollars short on retirement savings, the prospects for actually retiring look slim. So what do we do about it?

Baby Boomers, forget about retirement. We'll be working for the rest of our lives. OK, that may be an exaggeration, but not by much.

We have not saved enough money. And worse, many of us will still be up to our eyeballs in debt when we do retire. We're just one medical emergency away from bankruptcy.

According to Boomers and Retirement, a new survey by TD Ameritrade, the average Baby Boomer is about a half-million dollars short on retirement savings.

And 74% of Boomers in the survey say they will have to rely heavily on Social Security in retirement. (The average Social Security check, by the way, is $1,230 a month.) Read more >>

Younger Americans Have More Credit-Card Debt Problems: Study

American credit card holders in their late 20s and early 30s have more debt than older consumers, repay it more slowly and risk dying in debt if they don't curb their spending habits, a new study showed on Monday.

Researchers that people born between 1980 and 1984 have on average $5,689 more debt than their parents had at the same stage of their lives, and $8,156 more than their grandparents.

"If what we found continues to hold true, we may have more elderly people with substantial financial problems in the future," said Lucia Dunn, a co-author of the study and a professor of economics at Ohio State University.

"Our projections are that the typical credit card holder among younger Americans who keep a balance will die still owning money on their cards," she added in a statement.

Dunn, and Sarah Jiany, of Capital One Financial in McLean, Virginia and a co-author of the study, analyzed two large monthly surveys which included data on borrowing and repayment, enabling them to estimate when Americans will be able to repay their credit cards. Read more >>

Florida man fights to keep vegetable garden in front yard

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An Orlando man is fighting city officials to keep his vegetable garden in his front yard. You have to step over radishes, wax beans and kale to get to Jason Helvingston's front door in College Park.

However, his 25 x 25 foot micro-irrigated vegetable garden is against city code, and the city of Orlando has asked Helvingston to dig it up by Wednesday.

"I said, 'You'll take my house before you take my vegetable garden,'" he said.  "There's nothing wrong here, there's nothing poisonous here.  This is a sustainable plot of land."

City code requires ground covers to be planted in a way that gives off a finished appearance so neighborhood lawns are clean, and inviting -- keeping property values up.

Helvingston has decided not to listen to the city.  Instead, he's trying to petition the code to allow for veggie gardens in the front yard.

He's gathered more than 200 signatures, including one from his neighbor, Shelly Snow. "(I'm) definitely not bothered by it.  As a matter of fact, we love it," she said. Helvingston hopes the city will reconsider the code when he meets with a code board in December.

"This is another example of the government telling us what we can do with our own property -- that should never happen," he said.

Source 

Consumer Confidence Crashes to 9 Month Low

With inflation expectations soaring and jobs plentiful relative to hard-to-get falling slightly, Consumer Confidence plunged its most in 10 months to a level not seen since November of last year. It seems that despite all the hopes and prayers priced into US equity market valuations, the US Consumer remains unimpressed, unhappy, and unemployed. Of course, the 'good is bad, bad is better' market has interpreted this as a clear QE-on flag (for this millisecond anyway). Read more >>

Gallup Polling Paints Much Bleaker Economic Outlook Picture Than UMichigan

Even as the increasingly more unreliable UMichigan consumer confidence index surged more than expected in June, to the highest reading in two years, in yet another doctored attempt to stimulate consumers to buy assorted trinkets they don't need and max out their credit cards, a comparable, and traditionally much more comprehensive Gallup polls, paints a vastly different picture. As the chart below demonstrates, the spread between those who see the economy as getting better (32%) and worse (63%) has hit 31, and is threatening to break out the highest reading recorded in the past year. It is no surprise that with nobody trading at all, US stocks are back to their old trickey of spiking ever higher on no volume and on increasingly worse news out of Europe, and not to mention on an atrocious NFP and retail saels report for May, both of which are now promptly forgotten. More...

Meredith Whitney: "Government Out of Bullets"

CNBC.com
The government is running out of ways to help the economy as the US faces major issues regarding credit and employment ahead, banking analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC.

"I think they're out of bullets," Whitney said in an interview during which she reinforced remarks she made last month indicating she is strongly pessimistic about the prospects for recovery.

Primary among her concerns is the lack of credit access for consumers who she said are "getting kicked out of the financial system." She said that will be the prevailing trend in 2010.

Despite being able to borrow at near-zero percent interest, banks are not taking that money and putting it back into the marketplace. The Federal Reserve said Monday that consumer lending dropped 1.7 percent on an annualized basis in October, the ninth straight monthly decline.

With consumer spending making up about 70 percent of gross domestic product, the inability of even credit-worthy consumers being able to be able to borrow could put a severe crimp in future growth.

"What's so frustrating is you have an administration that is arguing such a populist (ideology) and not appreciating all the unintended consequences that the consumer and small businesses have far less credit," Whitney said.

"You're going to get a situation where you revert from a consumer standpoint," she added, "where those that had bank accounts for the first time, credit cards for the first time, homes for the first time get kicked out of the system and then fall prey to real predatory lenders."

The problems taken together also will pose difficulties for investors.

"I have 100 percent conviction that the consumer is not getting any better and there's not more liquidity," Whitney said. "So if everything touching the consumer is going to be represented in the S&P, then the S&P is going to be under pressure."

The solution, she said, is for the government to take proactive steps that will give consumers more money to spend.

"I don't think you can cut taxes enough to stimulate demand," Whitney said. "For a 2010 prediction, which is so disturbing on so many levels to have so many Americans be kicked out of the financial system and the consequences both political and economic of that, it's a real issue. You can't get around it. This has never happened before in this country."

Bailouts, stimulus packages, debt piled upon debt, where will it all end?

How did we get into a situation where there has never been more material wealth & productivity and yet everyone is in debt to bankers? And now, all of a sudden, the bankers have no money and we the taxpayers, have to rescue them by going even further into debt! Money as Debt II Explores the baffling, fraudulent and destructive arithmetic of the money system that holds us hostage to a forever growing DEBT...and how we might evolve beyond it into a new era.

Man Shuns Recession - Lives in Cave

Christopher Ketcham; Photograph by Mark Heithoff

DANIEL SUELO LIVES IN A CAVE. UNLIKE THE average American—wallowing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office—he isn't worried about the economic crisis. That's because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit.

His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He's either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo. Suelo's blog, which he maintains free at the Moab Public Library, suggests that he's both. "When I lived with money, I was always lacking," he writes. "Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present." More...