Year: 2009

Categories
Personal Finance

ING Pre-TFSA Plus $25 Referral Bonus For New ING Account

ing-orange-carrots

Last year my wife and I took advantage of the ING Direct pre-TFSA deal where they paid extra interest on your pre-TFSA contribution which kind of made it like a TFSA.  This year, ING is doing it again – if you have money earmarked for your 2010 TFSA contribution room then you can put the money into their TFSA “kick start” account and they will pay extra interest to make up for any taxes on the interest.

Of course one big difference this year is that the TFSA high interest account interest rate is 1.05% unlike the 3% offered last year.  Needless to say, you aren’t going to save big bucks by taking advantage of this offer but in our case we save about $9 which is worthwhile since we were going to move this money into a TFSA anyway.  Being able to move the money now is the best perk of this deal.  ING will move the money into an actual TFSA on January 1, 2010.

Here is a refresher on the TFSA rules (Tax Free Savings Account).

We’re keeping our emergency fund in a TFSA

I used to be very anti-emergency fund but I’ve changed my mind on that subject.  Although I still agree in theory that using a line of credit for an emergency fund is a more efficient way to manage your money – having survived several rounds of job cuts in the past year I have embraced the idea of having plain old cash as an emergency fund.  Our EF is $20,000 which is about 5-6 months of expenses.

Earn $25 by setting up a new ING account

ING Direct has a promotion going on where you can use an existing customer Orange Key referral code and both you and the original customer will receive a bonus of $25.

To recieve the bonus you must do the following:

  • Set up new account on the ING Direct main page.
  • Enter the orange key code 33089336S1.  See pic below.
  • Fund the account with $100.

That’s it!

ingcode

Photo credit Nutmeg15

Categories
Business Ideas

The Too Slow Edition

When I start writing up a wacky business idea, one of the things I do is a quick search to see if someone has already done something similar.  I don’t spend hours on it, but I’ll look for 5 or 10 minutes.  In many ways it’s surprisingly rare to find someone is already doing what I’d thought of (I gues word spreads fast these days).

Presented, for your consideration, are three ideas that I had which turned out had already been thought up by other people when I went looking for them.

Electric Hookahs

Hookahs are pipes for smoking tobacco (a special variety called “shisha”) which involves filtering the smoke through water:  remember the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland?  It’s really bad for you (smoking a hookah for 1 hour is about the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes), but it’s also quite nice :-).  When you set up a hookah, you typically use charchol to heat the tobacco.  There’s a whole ritual to it, where you load a special bowl with the shisha, cover it with foil (with as small as possible holes placed it in), and put the burning coals on top of the foil.  By inhaling on the pipe, you pull air in, past the tabocco being burned by the coal, and into the pipe (through the water and into your lungs).

The idea for this is to remove the charcoal by adding a fine element that rests above the shisha and burns it in the same way the coal does (but without getting ash everywhere and having to deal with hot coals).  Some may argue that this isn’t proper, while others may say this is taking the hookah into the 20th century.

Either way, it’s been done.  I even found a student at my university who has designed one.

An Academic Proofreading Marketplace

English is the language of academic discourse.  In the past, French and Latin have been used, but now it’s English.  If you want to have your ideas noticed, the top venues (conferences and journals) operate in English.  Increasingly, strong universities will teach in English, even if it isn’t the native language of the country the school is located in.

This obviously puts non-native English speakers at a disadvantage.  I’ve read a number of papers (published and unpublished) where the ideas were hidden by the awkward choices of spelling and grammar.

There are student “proof reading” services, which either help students who aren’t native English speakers or do the homework for lazy students everywhere, but this idea is to focus on academics, and provide a writing service catering to professors.  They’d be connected with native speakers working in the same area as them (so they can accurately express the ideas).  I did this (face-to-face) when I was abroad for computer science professors and found there was a lot of interest in it.

It’s already being done in the way I envisioned (at places like this) .  I still think extensions on this idea are possible (like a site that places a premium on reliability and the pedigree of it’s proofreaders or a service that would send an in-person proof-reader to a foreign department on an on-going basis).

Zero Calorie Foods

It always seemed weird to me that there’s SO many choices for diet beverages, but no options for “diet food” (e.g. 0 calorie food).  I get that food has to be made out of SOMETHING, and typically this something has calories.  I’m not talking about so-called “negative calorie foods” (which are incorrectly believed to require more calories to digest than they possess) but instead something like diet soda, with ZERO calories.  It may not be the most appetizing idea, but imagine taking some diet drink, then thickening it with an inorganic agent like melamine (the ingredient that Chinese company added to the baby milk that killed a bunch of infants).  Except, you know, make sure whatever you use doesn’t kill people…

Even if the first version was basically zero-calorie Jello people would eat it.  Over time more appetizing versions could be developed.  There are people who would worry about the long term health consequences (just like some people worry about with diet drinks) and there are people who would refuse to eat something so unnatural (just as there are people who refuse to drink diet drinks), but I think there’d be a massive market that would be willing to give it a try.

A friend told me they saw “zero calorie jam” at the grocery store which intrigued me.  I went looking, but didn’t find it (in any grocery stores or on-line).  I’m assuming they saw “no sugar added” jam and misremembered.  Unfortunately (for me), even if there isn’t zero-calorie jam on our shelves  it already exists in Japan and some Kansas state researchers were working on it 7 years ago (so I’m sure if there’s any way to do it they’ve figured it out by now).

Categories
Opinion

Working With Canadians

Stuff White People Like is an amusing blog that mocks the cultural norms of the “educated elite”, a group that often denies having any such norms (yet, we clearly do).  Similarly, Canadians both deny having a culture (some Canadians, without a trace of humour, claim they don’t have an accent) and hold particularly trivial things up as examples of “Canadian culture” (hockey, poutine, Anne of Green Gables and other such nonsense).

I’m not trying to provide the definitive guide, but thought I’d try to draw a rough sketch of Canadians, and some of our typical values and behaviours.  The target audience for this being someone who has recently moved to Canada, is working with a Canadian organization, or is trying to make sense of a new Canadian ex-pat in their country or company.

Please feel free to argue with any of my assertions or add any more.  As a Canadian it can be difficult to step outside of myself, so some of my own issues may creep in here.

American

Canadians often define ourselves in terms of how we are different from Americans.  A famous beer commercial aired years ago which basically consisted of detailing minor ways that Canadians are different from Americans.  The irony of all this is our cultures are VERY similar.  If you take someone from Northern New York State or Minnesota they’re probably going to be more similar to a Canadian than to a Texan.  Anything you’re unsure about Canadians, just treat us like an American and you’re on pretty safe ground.

Politeness

Canadians are known for being polite.  Once while traveling in England my family had a good laugh when a tour guide characterized Canadians as “Americans with manners” (see first point).  The plus of this is that Canadians you’re interacting with SHOULD usually be polite to you.  The downside is that we can be touchy about behaviour we perceive as rude (joking around with or teasing a Canadians isn’t something to rush into).

Littering

When I worked down in San Francisco I was walking along the street with a Palestinian co-worker and I saw a man drop his fast-food cup in the gutter.  After I’d been ranting about it for 2 or 3 minutes my co-worker started chuckling.  “It’s really obnoxious to litter like that, eh?” I asked.  To which he responded “No, it’s just that a couple other Canadians I’ve worked with would flip out if they saw anyone littering too”.

I’m not sure if this is just a special case of politeness, but littering is a hot-button with a number of Canadians, so if you do it, don’t do it in front of us.  One of my friends’ father is about the calmest, nicest man you could possibly imagine and he almost got in a fist-fight when he saw a guy littering on the street.

Friendliness

I think many people are taken aback at how nice and friendly Canadians can be.  If you start at a new company or community, people will go out of their way to make you feel welcome and help you establish yourself.  I think it can be overwhelming for people at first (they think we’re after something), but I think it comes from seeing ourselves as nice, friendly people and trying to live up to that self-image.

Standoffishness

As much as we can be friendly, we don’t make friends quickly.  A number of my friends have commented that they came to Canada, someone was super friendly to them so they assume they’re buddies.  They ask the person out for a beer one night and the person blows them off (“no thanks, I’m going home to watch 24”).  One man tried his damnedest to get me to go see the new Star Trek movie with him and it freaked me out.  I ran into him at a university event and we had a nice chat I guess, then he REALLY wanted to be my friend.  Mutual friends told me they told him that you can’t come on strong like that with Canadians.  We tend to ease slowly into friendships.

One friend told me if someone in her home country was as nice to her as most Canadians are, it would mean they really want to be her friend, so she always finds it off-putting dealing with hyper-friendly Canadians who keep rebuking her friendship overtures.

Gluttony

Canadians like to eat.  It can be a bit nauseating to new arrivals how much energy we put into thinking about our next meal (and often the amount of food we put away).  We’re similar with Americans for this, so probably they wouldn’t be taken aback, but I think many new arrivals from other areas are (rightfully) grossed out by it.

It makes us pretty easy to please.  If you have a meeting with Canadians, put out a tray of snacks (cookies or something) and we’ll probably get pretty excited.

Diversity

This is another double edged sword.  The stereotype of a group of rednecks sitting around talking about “them” is pretty horrifying to most Canadians (and we do have an incredibly diverse population).  I think if someone were wandering around making sexist, homophobic or racist comments, they’d get called on it by other Canadians pretty regularly.  We like to think of ourselves as being a tolerant nation.

The other side of it is that often those attitudes are present, just concealed.  One friend-of-a-friend who worked in Asia was upset by the blantant racism she encountered (she’s black).  One time she had a job interview scheduled, told the person on the phone that she’s black, and the person then told her not to bother coming in.  In spite of this (and as painful as it was for her), she said she prefered it in some ways to Canada.  She said in Canada she never knew if race was a part of how people saw her or treated her (even people she’d known for years), and she at least liked that it was out in the open when she was in Asia.

So I’ll turn the post over to our readers at this point (Canadians and non-Canadians hopefully both have a perspective on this).  Any of these you agree with?  People who have moved to Canada, was it a big adjustment adapting to our norms?  Any big points I’ve missed that you’d add?

Categories
Personal Finance

Google Street View – Great For House Buyers

streetGoogle Street View went live today for Toronto, Vancouver, Hamilton, Kitchener, Waterloo, Windsor, Calgary, Canmore, Banff, Lake Louise, Montreal, Quebec city, Halifax.  Apparently Saint John NB, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg are next on the list.

If you were impressed by satellite images of your rooftop then you will be really blown away by this service.  I know I was – I spent at least half of my work day playing around with it.

What is Google Street View?

It’s an offshoot of Google Maps – you can select an address, then select “street view” and you will be able to see a picture of the front of your house.  You can rotate the view around and move up and down the street.  Faces, license plates have been blurred for privacy.

Are the pictures recent?

No, apparently last April (2009) Google had cars driving around with cameras that can take pictures of different angles.  They covered every street and every angle and then let the Google computers stitch it all together.

What good is it?

I think one of the best uses for this technology is for someone who wants to buy a house.  They can check out a prospective house for things like curb appeal (which might be out of date) and general location ie is there a wrecking yard next door?
Another use I can think of is if you are planning to visit an address then you can check out what it looks like first.  This would be great for a storefront on a busy street where the numbers aren’t always that visible.
Here are some uses that Google has come up with http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/using-street-view.html#personal

How do you use it?

  • Go to the Google homepage.
  • Click on “maps”
  • Type in an address or intersection
  • Click on the red ballon which shows the exact location of the address.
Click on the red balloon to get started.
Click on the red balloon to get started.

In the popup – click on “Street view” which is just under the picture.

Click on "Street view" under the picture.
Click on "Street view" under the picture.

Another way to get things started is to drag the little orange person at the top of the zoom bar onto the spot you want to see.

You should be looking at the address requested or in some cases it will be nearby.

Rotate the view

In the upper left hand corner there is a circle with a hand plus 4 direction symbols.  If you click on the up and down symbols the view angle will go up and down.  If you click on the left or right symbol then the view will rotate the same way.  This allows you to point in the desired direction or even do a 360.

Click on the left or right symbol to rotate the point of view.
Click on the left or right symbol to rotate the point of view.

Move location

You can actually move the location of your point of view by clicking on the road or any other object like another house.  If you click on the road then a white circle will appear – double click and your point of view will now be where the circle was.  If you double click on something other than the road – such as a house then your point of view will be right in front of that object.

Move the white circle around - double click to move to that spot.
Move the white circle around - double click to move to that spot.

There is also a shape below the navigation circle with a plus/minus symbols – they will zoom in or zoom out.
There is a small screen on the lower right with a little person – you can drag that person to other locations shown on that screen.

Show someone else

If you get a view you want to share with someone else then in the upper right hand corner you can click on “print” or “send” or “link”.  “Print” should be self-explanatory, “Send” means an email is generated with the link to your view.  “Link” just shows you the link to the view and you can do whatever you want with it.

Other ideas?

Can anyone think of other ideas for this neat technology?

Categories
Personal Finance

How To Finish Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation Projects

Most house or condo owners have experience with doing some sort of do-it-yourself projects fixing up their homes.  Maybe this year you wanted to take advantage of the renovation tax credit.  Whether you were painting a room, redoing a bathroom or fixing up your deck, you probably noticed that some (or all) projects are hard to do and especially hard to finish.
I think one of the big problems diyers have is lack of experience so they don’t know how much work and time is involved in the task they are planning to do.  I know that I get frustrated when something is taking a lot longer than I had thought.  If it takes me 80 hours to build a deck then I’m ok with that but if I think it’s only going to take me 40 hours then I will be getting pretty annoyed by about hour 50 when it’s nowhere near completed.
Once you have painted a room or two then you probably get the idea that your estimate should include things like:

  • trip to store to buy paint/supplies and wait while it is being shaken
  • moving furniture
  • removing painting/hangings
  • repairing drywall
  • priming
  • painting
  • 2nd trip to store to buy something
  • painting again (2nd coat)
  • rehanging stuff
  • put back furniture

Whereas your original estimate involved the following task:

  • buy paint
  • 1 coat of paint
  • done

The problem is that a lot of DIYers will do a particular project once and then never do it again.  Or they don’t do it again for many years and forget a lot of the details (and pain).  An example is a new deck.  If you decide to build a new deck for your house – it’s unlikely you will do another one unless you move to a new house so you just don’t have the experience to be able to estimate the time needed to finish the project which can lead to frustration.

Lack of fitness

Another stumbling block to finishing a project is fitness and stamina for physical labour.  Let’s face it – a lot of us spend our work hours sitting in front a computer, in meetings or some situation where we aren’t doing physical labour.  Even if you do exercise outside of work then it’s likely to be a specific type of exercise and for a limited time.  Many weekend warriors try to budget a lot of time for a project on their days off – typically on the weekend.  The problem is that although you might be able to budget 10 hours on Saturday and 10 hours on Sunday for a tiling project – your body will have other ideas.  I remember when I was getting my first house ready for sale I created a “time budget” where I would work 7.5 hours on Saturday, 7.5 hours on Sunday and 4 hours on two evenings during the week.  It didn’t take me long to realize that in fact I wasn’t putting in those hours.  Saturday morning I would put in a good 3 hours before lunch which was quite productive.  After lunch however it was a struggle to get going again and I often would only get another hour or maybe even 2 hours of good work accomplished that day.  Instead of doing 7.5 hours I would usually only do about 4.5 hours.  By adjusting my expectations and work schedule I was able to plan better.  I would only plan to work in the morning and then just do a bit in the afternoon.  Then I would just doing something completely different ie tv & beer.

To all those frustrated workers I have the following suggestion:

Get some help

Having friends give you a hand or hiring cheap labour is a great way to make a project more palatable.  Yes, it might cost more but it’s likely still cheaper than hiring a contractor to do the job and you will still get the satisfaction of doing the job yourself (sort of).  You will feel much better about a project that you finished with a bit of help than a project that you didn’t finish all on your own. 🙂

This is a lot easier to do for some projects than others.  As well, some people have good networks of friends/relatives who have time to help on projects whereas others will have to pay $$ to get some labour.

One thing to keep in mind with cheap labour vs friends is that you can get the cheap labour to spend all of their time doing grunt work whereas your friends might want to share the dirty jobs and expect you to do some too.

This can be done for non-reno projects as well.  For example I’ve hired students to help with waste disposal and cleaning.  Maybe you need to go through your basement/garage and organize things.  Having someone to help (and do the bad parts of the project) can really increase your morale and get the project finished.

This takes a bit of organization.  You have to have some sort of plan in order to use the labour effectively.  If you hire 1 or 2 workers and they spend most of their time with nothing to do then you are wasting your money.  Hiring help works better for larger jobs where there is enough physical labour to keep someone busy most of the time.

Another benefit of hiring help is that it will keep you on track – left to your own devices you might get bored/tired after a couple of hours and take a break that lasts for several years.  Having someone there will help you stay on task.

Some jobs which are good candidates for hiring help.

  • most landscaping projects.
  • new lawn
  • major garden reno
  • deck
  • patio stones
  • fencing
  • drywall
  • painting
  • kitchen cabinets

All these projects could benefit with extra hands.  They are large enough projects with a major labour component.  Tasks where a lot of strength is needed might also be a lot easier with more help.

Projects where you might not get as much benefit would be smaller projects that you can handle yourself.  Ie painting one room only.  More skilled projects like plumbing, electrical, tiling probably won’t benefit as much with extra hands around.

What do you think?  Would you ever hire some cheap labour to help move gravel and patio stones around for you while you do the fun parts of a new patio?

Categories
Opinion

Grey

When I was growing up, the 80’s cartoons each had standard issue goods guys and bad guys.  Autobots battled Decepticons, G.I. Joes battled Cobra, and He-Man battled Skeletor.  I think I outgrew cartoons (at least this style of animation) when the villains’ consistent focus on “evilness” began to ring false.  The most extreme case of this would be Beastly on Care Bears who would cackle “I’m *SO* bad!”  In real life “villain” is often a matter of perspective, and no one thinks of themselves as evil.  We’re all the “good guy” in our own story (even when we play the villain in someone else’s).

I’m not entirely sure why we feel this is a good way to structure conflicts when we present them to children.  Clearly it becomes an easy framework to convey values to children.  If we feel generosity is a valuable trait, then we assign it to the Care Bears (and show No Heart being stingy) and it is clearly conveyed to them which is the better trait.  I think it can lead to a variety of problems with viewing the world as black and white as adults, however I’m not sure that early socialization is really to blame (Xenophobia seems to come quite naturally to the human race and I suspect “black and white” thinking derives quite naturally from an “us and them” world view).

This kind of thinking creeps into personal finance in two ways.  First, there is a tendency to break people into two groups:  those providing good information and those providing bad information.  I wrote a pretty scathing review of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kiyosaki, so people might be inclined to think I disagree with everything he writes.  I find some of his material incorrect, some of it poorly presented, and some of it worthwhile.  Trying to sort these out isn’t worth the benefit, so I recommend steering clear of his books.  He suggests joining MLM as a way to learn how to sell, which isn’t AWFUL advice (I think it might be the only worthwhile reason to get involved with “network marketing”).  Conversely, I like most of what John Reed has to say about real estate, investing and life.  One big idea that he pushes in a number of books and articles is the “unlimited downside” of toxic contamination as a risk in real estate investing.  I agree that it’s a concern (and agree with him that it does give you an unlimited downside) however I disagree with his conclusion that it means you should avoid buy & hold real estate strategies.

This sort of thing can creep in to blogging.  Long term readers will have a mental image of Mike and myself, and I can pretty much guarantee we don’t match it in real life (Guiness416 and Preet have both met us after reading the blog, please feel free to comment).  One reader was briefly very enthusiastic about the blog (she wrote me an e-mail comparing some of what I’d written to Shakespeare and the Dalai Lama).  Later she discovered I invest in tobacco stock and told me off.  I’m not as good *OR* as bad as she thinks I am.  A while back OperaBob took exception to a comment about the DRiP Investing Resource Center.  It seemed to me what he couldn’t wrap his head around is that I said good things and bad things about the community he’s a part of.   His community isn’t all good (or all bad):  nothing is.

Our infamous real estate agents posts have similarly been interpreted as us saying agents are bad, which we never said in the posts or comments (and, in fact, we repeatedly point out parts of the process where the agent is useful).  However, because we don’t  agree that agents are absolutely good in every way, some people interpret this as meaning we think they are all absolutely bad.

The second way this creeps into personal finance is people who want to view investments as “good” or “bad”.  In my recent post “Beginning Investment Strategies to Avoid” Mark Wolfinger left a comment disputing characterizing stock options as a zero sum game.  Mark’s comments were interesting (he certainly knows more about options than I do), and presented situations where stock options could be used effectively, however that wasn’t what I discussed in the article.  In that post I said that stock options were a) not for beginners and b) a zero-sum game.  This was taken as saying options are “bad”, which wasn’t at all what I wrote (or meant).

We sometimes get commenters who want to figure out which is the “right” investment strategy.  Cory recently commented on one of my posts that GICs have outperformed stocks over the last 10 years (I’m not 100% sure I even buy this, it’s probably ignoring dividend reinvestment, but let’s accept it at face value for the purpose of this post).  There’s another chestnut showing that you’d be better off buying beer, drinking them, then returning the cans for a refund instead of investing in the stock market.  These are true, for what they are, but they’re absolutely useless unless we have a time machine.  I don’t care whether GICs outperformed stocks over the last 10 years, I want to know if they will over the NEXT 10 years (and no one can know that).

There are people who have made fortunes with Multi-Level Marketting (probably by starting them), there are people who have lost big in passive investing.  Some have lost “safe” money when banks collapse, and others who have never lost a dime but have danced through one risky investment after another.  There are no absolutes (in investing or in life), and you’re wasting your time and money if you go looking for them.

Categories
Personal Finance

Support American Cancer Society – The Big Bundle

One of my blogger buddies – Lynnae from BeingFrugal.net highlighted a deal offered in support of the American Cancer Society.  After looking at the bundle I bought one for myself since there are several items in there that I was going to purchase anyway.  The total retail value of the bundle is $800 although it is extremely unlikely that anyone can use all of the items.

You can head over to her page to find out more details and sign up if you want.  Remember that she also has a promo code “BEINGFRUGAL3” which gives you another 30% off so the final package will cost you$20.95 US$.  Patrick from CashMoneyLife has also written about this so you can find his thought on the big bundle.

Some of the items aren’t all the useful to Canadians (ie restaurant.com) but check out the list to see what is of interest to you.

These are the items that I’m interested in:

  • Mozy Home Edition – 50% off 1 year.  I’ll be reviewing this service.  It is a computer backup service so that allows you to store your files somewhere other than your house (in case it burns down or computer gets wrecked).  1 year is $60 US$ so this is a $30 saving.  This coupon expires on Oct 28!
  • GoDaddy – 1 free domain –   This won’t be of interest for most readers but if you are a blogger of sorts then this might be worth around $10 or so.
  • Corel Photo Album – I’ve never used this but it is a photo editing program.  I do this sort of thing quite a bit with the blog.  Worth $40.
  • Evernote Premium – I’m planning to try out the free service – not sure if the premium service is worthwhile.  This service allows you to easily scan any documents you have and file them electronically for you.
  • Foxit PDF creator – Ok, this wasn’t exactly on my “need to buy” list but I can probably use this.  $30.

Here is a link to the entire list – feel free to explain to me what some of the other things are and if they might be useful… 🙂  Subscription to Zagat???

Keep in mind that some of the discounts have time limits so check the details to make sure you don’t miss out.  Also some of the discounts like gap.com are only eligible on purchases of $100 or more.

Categories
Money

New Jersey Unemployment Benefit Extension Information

The state of New Jersey has been hit quite hard by the current economic downtown and state unemployment levels have been rising.  The unemployment rate in NJ is now 9.7% (up from 9.3% prior to August) which is coincidentally the same as the national average.  New Jersey has lost 155,700 jobs since December 2007, when the jobless rate was 4.5 percent.

As a result of these  high unemployment rates New Jersey state has qualified for unemployment benefit extensions which were introduced as part of the 2009 stimulus package.

Unemployment benefits currently available in New Jersey

At the moment there are a total of 79 weeks of unemployment available:

  • Initial unemployment benefits (UB – 26 weeks) – These are the regular unemployment benefits which are available regardless of the economy.
  • Emergency unemployment benefits Tier I (EUC Tier I – 20 weeks)
  • Emergency unemployment benefits Tier II (EUC Tier II – 13 weeks)
  • Emergency benefits will be paid by the same method as the regular benefits (direct deposit or check).
  • Extended benefits (EB – 20 weeks)
  • 13 weeks from bill H3548 – Note that this has not passed yet.


The past year has not been very good for a lot of American workers.  Because of the 2008 financial crisis and recession – millions of Americans have lost their jobs.  The current national unemployment rate is 9.7% as of Sept 4.  While many workers will find new jobs within the time period of existing employment benefits – many more will run out of benefits before finding a new job.

On September 22, the House passed legislation called Bill H3548 which will allow any states with a total unemployment rate (TUR) of 8.5% or higher to be eligible for federal funding which will allow 13 more weeks of extended unemployment benefits for those people who have exhausted all the current benefits.  If this bill is passed then New Jersey would qualify for another 13 weeks of extended benefits.