Work From Home Couple

Illinois government has been a laughingstock since before Christmas. That’s when our sleazy governor with the bouffant hair do was arrested for, among other things, trying to sell the open Senate seat vacated by incoming president Barack Obama.

Everyone wants the governor to resign. But that isn’t going to happen. Blagojevich, who’s been an embarrassment ever since taking office two — yes, Illinois voters voted him back in! — terms ago, is maintaining his innocence, despite overwhelming evidence that indicates he was using his governorship to make him and his wife rich.

Showing his defiance, Blagojevich recently appointed longtime political hack Roland Burris to Obama’s former seat. This was a shrewd move on Blagojevich’s part: Burris is black. He immediately picked up support because of this. Critics are also a bit muted partly because Chicago has such a long history of racial unrest. There’s still, unfortunately, a big divide between blacks and whites in the city. Chicago remains perhaps the most segregated city in the country.

So the news today is that Burris will probably get his Senate seat. This is disgusting. Burris should first of all be ashamed of himself for even accepting a nomination from such a tainted official as Blagojevich. Burris knows exactly why Blagojevich appointed him. The governor is using Burris to stick it to everyone who wants to see him locked up as soon as possible.

The news is disappointing, too, because it shows that despite Obama’s election, the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois is nowhere near solving its racial problems. I guess it was naive to think otherwise.

Can you imagine if we all handled our household finances the way state governments handle their budgets? There wouldn’t be a person alive who wasn’t in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure.

I live in Illinois. We’re lucky enough to have been guided for the last several years by Gov. Rod Blagojevich. You might be familiar with the name. He’s just been arrested for several things, including trying to sell to the highest bidder the vacated Senate Seat left behind by president-elect Barack Obama.

That’s embarrassing enough. Now we get the news, as reported in this story in Crain’s Chicago Business, that Illinois is nearing financial disaster. Hooray.

I’ve never quite understood why state governments have been unable to run their kingdoms without running out of money all the time. My wife comes from Michigan, which is in even worse financial shape than is Illinois. Haven’t any of these people ever balanced a budget? Haven’t they ever had to figure out if they had enough money to go to the movies and dinner on a Saturday night? And if they decided that they didn’t, did they still go and put it all on their credit cards?

I know running a state government is incredibly complicated. But still … when the economy was thriving, when the housing market was booming, didn’t any of these idiot government officials think to save a bit for the inevitable slowdown?

Much of my writing income comes from the stories I write on residential real estate. When I started covering the home-selling business, the country was in the middle of a huge housing boom. It seemed that everyone was selling their homes and making tons of money while doing it.

That, of course, has all changed. Today, no one wants to put their homes on the market. Sale prices have dipped dramatically in most major markets across the United States. And, even worse, loads of people are now struggling to make their mortgage payments, and are now facing foreclosure.

I’ve run into a lot of people who have no sympathy for people in danger of losing their homes. They peg foreclosure victims as homeowners who were simply greedy, and who purchased too much home for their income. It’s true that some foreclosure victims do fall into this category. But the vast, vast majority of them are simply people who’ve run into tough luck: They may have lost their jobs. They may have suffered a serious injury or illness. They may have been talked into an unsound adjustable-rate mortgage loan by a lender who was supposed to be looking out for their best interests.

Unfortunately, stories like this one, which ran in a recent USA Today, and which I blogged about on one of my other sites, don’t help this situation any. The story talks about homeowners who are intentionally missing their mortgage payments so that they may qualify for federal housing assistance.

It is people like this, scam artists, who create the atmosphere of cynicism that causes people to regard all foreclosure victims as either greedy, lazy or dishonest.

Losing a home is a terrible tragedy. Even missing some mortgage payments is enough to cause homeowners serious stress, shame and angst. So remember, next time you grouse about the fact that “someone is getting something for nothing,” that most foreclosure victims are hard-working folks who’ve just gotten caught up in some bad luck.

I found an interesting work-at-home story yesterday on the Web site of WKYC in Cleveland. Seems the tough economy is forcing more stay-at-home moms to search for jobs that they can work from their homes. It’s all an effort to bring in even a little extra income.

You can read the story here. The first comment after the story, by the way, is quite clever. Someone wrote: “My life has been so much easier now that I opened that brothel at my house.”

But seriously folks, in today’s staggering economy, it’s true that every little bit of extra income can help, especially with the dreaded holidays approaching. So if a stay-at-home mom or dad can find a part-time job that still allows time to play and watch the kids, why not? We need more people working from home, not less.

The big challenge, of course, is to weed out the scammers or flakes before accepting a work-from-home job. With the popularity and ease of craigslist, it’s easier than ever for scammers to sucker people desperate for a little extra cash. Unfortunately, there’s no sure-fire way to determine who is a scammer and who isn’t. There are hints: Ads filled with typos are usually a good warning. If someone advertising a work-from-home job doesn’t actually say what the work is, that’s another one to avoid. Those that sound too good to be true — Make $7,000 a week working from home! — are usually scams. And those that you see popping up on craigslist over and over again usually are up to no good.

The main weapon anyone has in identifying a work-from-home scam is common sense. If something doesn’t seem right, trust your instincts and stay away. Otherwise, go for the work-from-home job. Today, we can all use the extra dollars.

People always ask me if I’m ever nervous that so much of my income comes from working as a home-based freelance writer. Wouldn’t I be more comfortable with a steady salary, one that I could count on from month to month?

Well, I would be more comfortable with a steady income that I could count on from month to month. Thing is, I don’t know too many office jobs that come with any guarantees these days. Companies go out of business every day. Companies lay off or fire employees every day, often even though the employees have done nothing wrong. The office world doesn’t offer much stability any more. That’s just a fact of the working world today.

Look at these numbers recently released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The national unemployment rate in October hit 6.5 percent, a 14-year high. Employers shed 240,000 jobs in the month. When you factor in discouraged workers, those who’ve given up trying to find new jobs, the rate jumps to 11.8 percent. Those are scary numbers.

So where’s the stability out there? At least when you work as a freelancer, you can count on yourself. I certainly wouldn’t count on an employer.

I couldn’t hold out any longer. This weekend, I had to take down my Obama campaign signs. Sure, I wanted to revel in Obama’s big win as long as possible. But we live in a part of the state that’s still largely Republican. I didn’t want to rub it in anyone’s face. (I did notice that the McCain/Palin signs in the neighborhood disappeared awfully quickly following the election.)

Working from home, I think my neighbors expect my house to be in better shape than it is. It certainly isn’t an eyesore, but we don’t have the top lawn on the block. I’d say, instead, that it would rank in the bottom third. Sometimes I can hear what my neighbors are thinking: He’s home all day and he still hasn’t cut the lawn? Or, why hasn’t he taken down those campaign signs yet?

Well, there’s a reason for this. Actually, there are two. The first is that I hate working on the house. Give me a drill and a hammer and I’d rather use them on my head than our home’s deck.

There’s a second reason, though. And it’s that I actually am as busy as anyone else who has a career.

I hope that as more people join the work-from-home ranks that this changes. I think it will. It’ll just take time. In the meantime, tackle those housework chores as best as you can. But don’t sweat it if the grass is a bit too high. You have real work to do.