According to economists responding to the latest National Association of Business Economics survey, which managed to find some bright spots concerning next year’s economic outlook, housing starts are expected to increase 10% in 2012.
Economists surveyed expect housing starts to reach 600,000 units in 2011, just slightly above the 2010 total.
The nation’s gross domestic product is expected to grow at a modest 2.5% in the final quarter of this year and by 2.4% in 2012, according to the survey.
Respondents expect the odds of a recession to be low, but said consumer spending will remain muted at about 2.1% growth in 2012, well below the historic norm of 2.8%.
Unemployment is expected to decline only marginally, with accommodative monetary policy remaining. Monthly job gains are expected to rise steadily over the forecast horizon, from an average of 100,000 during the fourth quarter of 2011 to 130,000 by the end of next year. The jobless rate will decline from 9.1% to 8.7% in 2012.
Some of the nation’s best financial bloggers came together recently and offered up some of their favorite money-saving tips…
What are some ways you can add to these tips to help our readers save some of their hard-earned income? We’d love to hear from you. Use the comment link below to offer your tips.
Baby boomers looking to move during their retirement are searching for cheaper, smaller homes with easy access to medical care.
According to a recent poll carried out by The Associated Press in conjunction with LifeGoesStrong.com, 1000 adults born between the years 1946 and 1964 were questioned, and the survey showed that those who earned over $100,000 per annum were the likeliest to search for a new retirement home. Of the most important considerations when searching for a new home, 40% cited that the home should be smaller, while 39% required a property near to a hospital or a medical clinic.
About 10% of baby boomers mentioned they would like to relocate to a new city that offered more in the way of retirement services. Meanwhile, only 8% said they were looking for a larger property to live out their retirement years in.
The majority of baby boomers said they do not plan on moving after retirement however, citing the fall in house prices as one of the main reasons why. Many also said their retirement savings plans and personal investments had lost value in recent years, and so they thought staying put was a more financially sensible idea.
Perhaps the most telling statistic, certainly as far as the state of the economy goes right now, is that only 9% of baby boomers thought they would be comfortable financially during their retirement years.
In coping with economic challenges over the past few years, many of us have combined households with other family members or individuals. These “doubled-up” households are defined as those that include at least one “additional” adult – in other words, a person 18 or older who is not enrolled in school and is not the householder, spouse or cohabiting partner of the householder.
The Census Bureau reported recently that the number and share of doubled-up households and adults sharing households across the country increased over the course of the recession, which began in December 2007 and ended (according to some) in June 2009. In spring 2007, there were 19.7 million doubled-up households, amounting to 17.0 percent of all households. Four years later, in spring 2011, the number of such households had climbed to 21.8 million, or 18.3 percent.
All in all, 61.7 million adults, or 27.7 percent, were doubled-up in 2007, rising to 69.2 million, or 30.0 percent, in 2011.
Young adults were especially hard-hit, with 5.9 million people ages 25 to 34 living in their parents’ household in 2011, up from 4.7 million before the recession. That left 14.2 percent of young adults living in their parents’ households in March 2011, up more than two percentage points over the period.
These young adults who lived with their parents had an official poverty rate of only 8.4 percent, since the income of their entire family is compared with the poverty threshold. If their poverty status were determined by their own income, 45.3 percent would have had income falling below the poverty threshold for a single person under age 65.
Each year, the Census Bureau asks people in roughly 78,000 households about their income in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to our Current Population Survey. If you are one of them, remember that your answer is very important and kept in strict confidence. This information helps our nation address the many problems of poverty and find solutions.
To learn more about poverty at the local level, you can consult results from the American Community Survey, which has statistics from counties, cities and smaller areas.
If your bank is changing names, raising fees, or you’re just no longer happy with their service, maybe it’s time to shop around…
Have you switched banks lately, or thinking about doing so? Share your reasons with us, we’d love to hear about your banking experiences.