Here’s a link to a list of 10 companies that are hiring for the holiday season. Most of it’s retail…but that’s not a bad thing. Everybody needs to know how to sell. YOU especially need to know how to sell yourself and you need to know how to interact with customers.

For at the end of the day, business is selling and all of selling’s associated components.

Plus, if you’re currently looking for work, it’s not a bad idea to fill in that resume. Hiring managers and HR folks get turned off pretty quickly by unemployment gaps. A seasonal job addresses this concern.

10 Companies Hiring for the Holidays : The Work Buzz

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Will this ever end? The economy seems like it's in a funk. The patient is recovering from cancer, only to find out that it has heart problems. What's next? TERMINAL brain damage.

CIT files for bankruptcy as part of reorganization plan – Nov. 1, 2009

CIT files for 5th largest U.S. bankruptcy
Small business lender seeks court approval for a debt reorganization that has approval of bondholders.

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Now what?

In 12 years, Antoine Walker(notes) made more than $110 million playing professional basketball moderately well.

It always seems to happen.

Whatever the details, it was a big chunk of change, which, amazingly, wasn’t enough.

These guys seem to wind up in debtor’s prison or the poor house, or both. It’s a shame, in a way, to see all that money wind up gone, but at least these guys stimulate the economy, right? I mean, that money didn’t just vanish; it just moved from his pockets to everybody else’s.

I’m really surprised that the professional sports leagues haven’t really come up with a solution to this widespread problem. Why haven’t they employed the likes of American Express, Fidelity, or some of the better-known financial institutions to not only teach these guys how to manage their money, but why not even do more than that?

Don’t you see a very lucrative niche here? I guess much of this is handled by the athletes’ agents. But maybe therein lies the problem.

Why not employ financial planners? Why not, instead of giving them x percent (10 percent, is that the going rate for “talent?”) on the front end, give them 7 percent on the backend?

If I make you money as a financial guru, give me a piece of it when it’s bigger? Then, there is an incentive for both parties to utilize my services?

What am I missing here?

Is it that these guys are so toxic that nobody wants to touch them? Are the sports agents so powerful that nobody can “break in” to this aspect of an athlete’s life?

Why aren’t the players unions more involved? Or are they in on the money grab, too?

Just think what a really talented money manager could make out of an NBA star? It boggles the mind how much better off he could make not only the athlete, but the athlete’s community. And all without the extreme sadness experienced by the once highly-sought after athlete, once he is put out to pasture.

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Banks, insurers head higher – MarketWatch

A quartet of top U.S. bank stocks rose on Wednesday after J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. reported earnings that surpassed Wall Street estimates, and the insurance sector also weighed in with gains to lift financial stocks more than 2%.

I suggest that the management at JPM horde all that cash, as the next big mortgage resets occur in 2012 (5 years after the peak of 2007, when everybody and their mother, dog, parakeet, and gerbil bought houses with no money down, poor credit, and insufficient income).

Now that many of those same people are now either unemployed or still making less money than their mortgage payment, the pressure is going to be HUGE on the housing market, banking sector, and overall economy. Let’s hope the news that the economy and employment pictures are improving, else we fall into a really nasty tailspin. Let’s also hope I’m wrong about the resets (here’s the good personal news: my mortgage from 2004 reset at a lower interest rate).

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A New York man is suing Bank of America for $1,784,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (I think that’s right).

If only they had that much. Reminds me of the old quote from the infamous Willie Sutton, bank robber:

Why do you rob banks?
Because that’s where the money is!

Man sues BofA for ‘1,784 billion, trillion dollars’ | Reuters

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While I don’t necessarily agree with the author on most things, this article is worth reading, if only to stimulate your “BS” signal reception. The gist of the story — preparing for the worst — however, rings true. Never a bad idea!

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

In spite of the more positive news that is coming out today, preparing for the worst is still a good idea. Read more.

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Now if only they could get back to helping the rest of us. Read more.

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I got this from my wife, who got it from her “Mommy group.” If this is not foreshadowing, I don’t know what is!

JOB DESCRIPTION

• Long term, team players needed, for challenging, permanent work in an often chaotic environment.
• Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call.
• Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities!
• Travel expenses not reimbursed.
• Extensive courier duties also required.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• The rest of your life.
• Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5.
• Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly.
• Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf.
• Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets and stuck zippers.
• Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars and coordinate production of multiple homework projects.
• Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks.
• Must be a willing to be indispensable one minute, an embarrassment the next.
• Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a half million cheap, plastic toys, and battery operated devices.
• Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.
• Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product.
• Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility.

POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT & PROMOTION

• None.
• Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills, so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you.

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

• None required unfortunately.
• On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.

WAGES AND COMPENSATION

• Get this! You pay them!
• Offering frequent raises and bonuses.
• A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent.
• When you die, you give them whatever is left.
• The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that you actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.

• BENEFITS

• While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and no stock options are offered; this job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth, unconditional love, and free hugs and kisses for life if you play your cards right.

POSITION

• Mom, Mommy, Mama, Ma
• Dad, Daddy, Dada, Pa, Pop

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How’s that for a catchy title? My friend, Jodi Beggs, has begun a video series on intro to econ. If you even remotely are interested in learning about the “dismal science” then you ought to check them out!

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I want to start off this post by saying that I’m sorry I haven’t posted in quite some time.

You see, at the end of July, July 31 to be exact, I was laid off. I knew it was coming as it was part of the transition plan to acquire Washington Mutual by JP Morgan Chase.

So what have I been up to the past few months? At the beginning of August, I took the family on a long vacation (3 weeks) up through Oregon, then west to the Oregon coast, and back down. We stayed at a large ranch, visited Ashland (the Shakespeare Festival), saw my cousins in Junction City near Eugene, then we stayed 5 days in Portland.

Portland is a beautiful city. We took bike rides (that first mile up the trail in Forest Park is a killer, what with me towing a double-wide Chariot bike trailer loaded with my two boys), went to the Children’s Museum and the Portland Zoo, visited Powell’s (a killer bookstore).

Then we went to Astoria (nice coastal city) and stayed a few days. Then we went south, through Gold Beach (the 25 miles south of Gold Beach is the most spectacular coastline I’ve ever seen and I live in California), and many coastal towns between there and my home.

We had a wonderful time.

I am in no mood to look for more work, either. I kind of like staying home. But for now, that’s a big dream I have. October might be the month where I get really serious about a job. I will be looking in the Portland and Seattle areas, though — that’s for sure. Places like REI, Columbia, Yakima, Nike, and a few others come to mind as places I’ll target to find gainful employment.

I’ve let the blog carnivals slip. I kind of dread sifting through all the posts because there’s got to be a ton of them. I most likely will break them up into 5 or 10 bit chunks, just to manage them better and give each post more attention. Sound good?

In the meantime, I’ve got a ton of stuff to do around the house. I’ve reorganized the office closet and have eliminated a lot of clutter (but there’s a lot more). We’re going to be redoing the front patio with tile. We’ll also being laying down some more sod in the front and back yards.

Plus, we’ve got our back yard landscaping plans back. I haven’t even looked at them yet. This is one project where I’ll have to really think about how to chunk it up into much smaller pieces because if I tackle it all together, I will literally kill myself!

Also on my list of to-dos is to install (or have installed) a door in the office that leads to the new back yard.

Boy, have I got a lot of work to do!

I don’t have time to look for a job.

Meanwhile, I am still laying the foundation for my eventual exit from the corporate world. I have redesigned a lot of my sites and hopefully will be able to put a lot of them on semi-autopilot (I have tried “autoblogging” software and I just really don’t like the outcome on anything other than a news blog), so I’ll be posting a lot to my sites:

• Muscle-Build.com and here
• Affiliate Central
• Internet-Marketing-Muscle.com
• Hardgainer’s Manifesto and here

Computer Monkeys will get a redesign, too (at least the blog will) as well as a lot more posts added.

Photo-dodo is on hiatus. I love photography and took a ton of photos while on vacation, but I just don’t foresee finding the time to devote to the site.

That’s it for now. I hope to make some contributions to this site in the very near future.

By the way, if anybody wants to guest-post, I’m all ears!

Leave me a comment if you want to make a guest post or two about personal finance (please, no topics other than PF).

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