Moving From Holiday Spending to New Year's Resolutions
Except for the massive piles of snow glistening in the sun throughout the eastern U.S., this holiday's sparkle is beginning to fade away.
Like buyers remorse after closing on a house, many of us are getting a sinking feeling that we've spent too much money over the past two months. We're afraid to open our credit card statements or review our budget.
2010 was a good year for most of our stock portfolios and retirement accounts if we had them, but we're still not back to 2007 levels. U.S. companies are reporting higher profits, but many of us are still unemployed or struggling to make all of our financial ends meet.
So how can we resolve our budgets and goals in 2011?
It's not going to be easy.
An article in Yahoo Finance by Pallavi Gogoi, "Where are the jobs?" points out that because the economy is more global than ever, a larger portion of international companies are focused on where the demand is - overseas. Growing markets in China, Brazil and India with increasing appetites for goods and services are motivating U.S.-based companies to build or invest in new plants within those countries.
For example, in the last few months Caterpillar has made major investments in three new plants in China. Likewise, DuPont, who used to sell most of its products in the U.S., now sells more than two-thirds overseas and has recently built a plant in India.
That's good news if you're invested in the stock of these companies but not so good if you're looking for a job.
In a previous article, I wrote about how the U.S. labor force is falling behind in creating an educated workforce that can compete with graduates from other countries.
Continued on the next page
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