The headlines on housing today offered some good news about home prices: they rose in June for the third straight month.

But while the scene in the rear-view mirror was hopeful, the road ahead still looks pretty rocky.

June, you’ll recall, was the last month the government offered an $8,000 tax credit to first-time homebuyers, sending house hunters flocking to the market. Unfortunately, home sales plunged after the credit expired. Some housing analysts worry that the credit just sped up sales that would have happened anyway, stealing demand from the second half of the year.

It's the second time the Obama administration has offered the credit to jump-start the market - with only limited success. A third round is under consideration, but the White House hasn't yet decided whether to go ahead with it.

With more than 12 months worth of inventory looking for buyers, foreclosures are still flooding the market with new homes; bankers are listing them at discount prices to sell them quickly. A stubbornly high unemployment rate is keeping millions of potential homebuyers on the sidelines. All of which could send house prices back down again.

The national averages mask sharp regional differences: prices aren't falling everywhere. And there are several different indexes tracking national and regional home prices. But they're all showing the same trends. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday, for example, showed a 1 percent increase in June from May and a 4.2 percent gain from a year ago. Nationwide, the average price of home has risen 6 percent from April 2009, when the index hit bottom. Prices are still 28 percent below the July 2006 peak.

Something to keep in mind if you’re trying to sell your house. If you do find a potential buyer, be prepared to price aggressively.

You’ll also have to get creative about trying to stick out among the pack. For some ideas about on selling your house in a lousy market, check out this story by my Msnbc.com colleague Allison Linn, who polled real estate agents in several markets for their best advice on how to sell your home.

From the killing-yourself-on-the-cheap file: The Wall Street Journal reports that cigarette smokers who have been burned by a massive tax hike on their cancer habit are turning to shops that will roll cigarettes for you. Evidently if you buy a carton of Marlboros that were put together at a plant, that’s taxable. But if you go to a shop that employs a machine that can crank out the equivalent of a carton in eight minutes using “pipe” tobacco, then that’s not subject to the levy.

Some loose-tobacco makers and retailers say they are doing nothing wrong and that Congress created the problem by raising the excise tax on rolling tobacco—typically used by smokers with lower incomes—by more than 2,000%. "I don't think the founding fathers of this country meant for taxes that could put companies out of business," said Jeff Martin, general manager of Rouseco Inc., a pipe and rolling tobacco maker in Kinston, N.C.

It is hard to argue with the sizable savings. The cost at on Illinois shop that provides the service: $21 a carton. Which is less than half the cost of the same amount of Marlboros. Our advice: Don't worry about the tax issues and/or sticking it to the man. Just quit. Cold turkey.

Does handing out unemployment benefits to out-of-work Americans discourage them from finding a job?

In an op-ed article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Harvard economist Robert Barro argues that the current unemployment rate would be 6.8 percent rather than 9.5 percent if the Obama administration hadn’t extended unemployment-insurance eligibility to up to 99 weeks from the standard 26 weeks.

Barro reckons the program “subsidizes unemployment, causing insufficient job-search, job-acceptance and levels of employment.” In other words, the extension of jobless benefits actually creates unemployment by discouraging people from going out and finding a new job.

It's an old argument, and a divisive one, as msnbc.com’s John Schoen pointed out in a thoughtful piece on the topic recently.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has argued that in the current economic environment there are simply no jobs for unemployed workers to find, with or without benefits.

Mychal Massie, a columnist for WorldNetDaily.com, and Mark Sawyer, a professor of political science at UCLA, debated the issue on CNBC today:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Warren Buffett turns 80 today. As part of the celebration, here’s a link to 25 really smart things he has said. Our personal fave? No. 11. Yours?

Here are a few business headlines that grabbed our attention this weekend:

How Obama got rolled by Wall Street

In defense of homeownership

Why I'm happy I walked away from my mortgage

Microsoft dipping billion-dollar toe into smart phone pool

Our friends at ProPublica have come up with the latest in a series of investigative stories shedding light on the obscure world of Wall Street derivatives that were at the heart of the housing bubble and collapse.

The story, by investigative reporters Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, focuses on how Merrill Lynch and other financial outfits “created fake demand” to prop up the market for so-called collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs.

Trying to understand the “daisy chain” transactions that lined pockets on Wall Street -- and made it easy to get a mortgage – can be some pretty heavy slogging. But just as they did with their previous investigation into a hedge fund called Magnetar, ProPublica and their partners at NPR’s Planet Money leaven the mix with comedy.

In the Magnetar case, the producers behind the story commissioned a pretty hilarious Broadway-style song, “Bet Against the American Dream.”

This time around, there is a great comic strip explaining how CDOs work, along with this very funny video from Auto-Tune the News, titled “Bankers’ Song – We Didn’t See It Comin.’” Suddenly, it all makes sense.

The weak economy appears to be taking a big toll on a traditional rite of passage: the summer job.

For the first time since the government began keeping records in 1948, fewer than half of all young people ages 16 to 24 were employed in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

That figure reflects both teens who wanted to work and those who didn’t. That implies that two things are going on: There is a high percentage of 16- to 24-year-olds who wanted a summer job and couldn’t find one, and there is also a growing percentage of young people who decided not to try to find a job at all.

The number of 16- to 24-year-olds who were employed between April and July grew by 1.8 million -- slightly more than last year -- to 18.6 million. But during that same time, the total youth labor force grew by 2.4 million, meaning more people entered the labor force than found work.

You can see the full report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics here.

The youth unemployment rate hit 19.1 percent in July, the highest unemployment rate for that month since the government began tracking such data in 1948. July is typically the summertime peak in youth employment, when many high school and college students find work scooping ice cream, waiting tables or bagging groceries and recent graduates start looking for permanent jobs.,

The percentage of young people who want or have a job has actually been trending down since a peak in 1989, when 77. 5 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds participated in the labor force.

Still, the recession appears to have caused even more high school and college students to opt out of even trying to find a job. The labor force participation rate for 16- to 24-year-olds was 60.5 percent in July, the lowest on record and down 2.5 percentage points from July of 2009.

By now you’ve probably heard of Groupon and its ilk: Companies that offer big discounts on anything from sushi to spa treatments, as long as enough other people also agree to take part in the deal.

If you haven’t, we’ll go out on a limb and guess that you are male.

Among the many fascinating details Groupon reveals in these charts detailing its customer demographics, the nearly 2-year-old company says that 77 percent of its customers are women.

Groupon users also are more likely to be young. In fact, the company says only 3 percent are 55 years or older, while 68 percent are 18 to 34 years old.

Also, they tend to be wealthy: Groupon says 29 percent of its customers are making six figures.

Do you use Groupon or one of its competitors?

Having a hard time getting credit? So is everyone else, from homebuyers to businesses. After the rogue lending wave of the past decade, bankers have gotten very choosy about extending credit.

That’s going to be a hot topic at a meeting of Federal Reserve officials who are gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyo., for their annual thinkfest. This year, they’ve got a lot on their plate.

The dismal housing market, for one. Despite the Fed’s moves to slash interest rates to the bone and shell out over a $1 trillion to buy shaky mortgage bonds, home sales have fallen through the floor. It’s not that mortgages are too expensive; the average rate on a 30-year fixed loan fell to 4.36 percent this week, the best deal for home buyers since Freddie Mac began tracking rates in 1971.

The problem is that the Fed’s rate-slashing hasn’t prodded skittish lenders to take on more risk. With home prices still falling in many parts of the country, lenders are looking at continued losses from all the bad mortgages they wrote during the housing boom. The latest numbers on mortgage delinquencies from the Mortgage Bankers Assn won’t do much to calm lenders’ nerves.

The number of homeowners falling behind on their mortgage payments seems to be topping out, but roughly one in ten mortgage holders face foreclosure. Forecasters at Capital Economics figure that means as many as four million households may lose their homes; that's on top of the nearly three million homes that have already been lost.

So what’s a central banker to do? Unfortunately, the folks at the Fed have few options. They can buy more bonds, pushing long-term rates even lower. But that will hurt consumers, who are already getting paid next to nothing on their savings accounts.

One idea Fed Chairman Bernanke & Co. are looking at: stop paying banks interest to keep their money in the Fed’s vaults. With bankers so skittish, paying them not to lend may be doing more harm than good. The Fed could even charge banks interest to stash their cash, giving them more incentive to start lending it again.

Feel like you can never get ahead of your bills? If you’re in a family with a stay-at-home mom, your gut feeling may be right.

A new report from the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, “Women and the Economy 2010,” finds that married couples with a working wife saw income grow by 1.12 percent per year above inflation, on average, between 1983 and 2008.

That’s not much of a gain, but consider this: According to calculations by the Joint Economic Committee, families where the wife stayed home actually saw their annual incomes decrease by 0.22 percent each year on average, when including the impact of inflation.

Again, that’s not much of a decline, but it’s definitely worse than what you’d like to see – an income on the rise.

The report puts it bluntly: “Families need a working wife in order to see their incomes grow.”

The fact is, many more moms are in the work force now than a generation ago. According to the report, 78 percent of moms with kids ages 6 to 17 were in the work force in 2008, compared with 68 percent in 1984. In addition, 64 percent of moms with kids under age 6 were working in 2008, compared with 52 percent in 1984.

In 2009, the report found that 66 percent of employed moms with kids under 18 years old were married in household where both parents work. The other 34 percent were the families’ sole breadwinner, in most cases because they were single parents.

Women now make up around half the work force, although that’s partly because so many men have lost their jobs in the past few years.

The Great Recession that began in December 2007 has taken the hardest toll on traditionally male-dominated industries such as construction and manufacturing, and jobs continue to be scarce in virtually every field. The Labor Department reported Thursday that new jobless claims fell sharply last week but remain much higher than they would be in a healthy economy.

Do you feel like your family can never get ahead of the bills? Why?

If you’re trying to sell your home in Bend, Ore., no one would blame you for thinking the real estate crisis is more like a housing Armageddon.

But if you’re a home seller in Springfield, Ill., you might well be wondering if this housing crisis is at least bottoming out.

Home sale prices in the Bend area have fallen by nearly 19 percent over the past year ended June 30 - the biggest drop of any metropolitan area - according to calculations released Wednesday by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Including this year's drop, housing prices in the outdoorsy central Oregon area are down by more than 15 percent over a five year period ended June 30, the agency reported.

But in the Midwestern city of Springfield, Ill., housing prices rose - albeit by a meager 2.68 percent - over the year, and are up nearly 10 percent for the five-year period.

Other metropolitan areas that saw small year-over-year gains include Dubuque, Iowa, and the areas surrounding San Jose and Anaheim, Calif.

Still, the news was not all good for even the areas seeing housing prices rise: Both California metropolitan areas are still seeing significantly lower prices than five years ago.

And home sellers in the Bend area still have plenty of company across the country. The FHFA reported that housing prices fell by more than 15 percent over a year ago in six other metropolitan areas, including Ocala, Fla., Lakeland-Winter Haven, Fla., and the Reno, Nev., area.

Overall, the federal agency said U.S. house prices fell 1.7 percent in June, as compared to a year earlier.

The silving lining: Anyone looking to buy a home may find a good bargain, if they can get a loan approved. At this point, however, there appear to be few willing to take the plunge. The National Association of Realtors said Tuesday that sales of previously occupied homes plunged last month to the lowest level in 15 years.

Update: Also Wednesday, new home sales fell to the slowest pace on record, another sign that housing is still in the doldrums.

How is the housing market in your area? Check out the full report here and discuss below.

For the third year in a row, a national measure of U.S. parents’ readiness to pay for higher education has decreased, according to a survey released Tuesday by Fidelity Investments.

Fidelity’s “College Savings Indicator” surveyed over 2,500 families with children 18 and under and found that an American family with income of at least $30,000 a year is on track to cover 16 percent of total college costs, including tuition, room and board, and fees. That’s down from 18 percent in 2009, 21 percent in 2008 and 24 percent in 2007.

The survey was conducted between June 10 and June 29 of this year by an independent research firm.

Fidelity blamed several factors for the drop: rising college costs; a lower savings rate; and increased unemployment. Thirty percent of the families surveyed experienced a job loss.

That has forced some parents to dip into their children’s college savings accounts to pay basic living expenses, including unexpected medical costs.

Is there any good news?

Although families are saving less, 67 percent of those surveyed said they have started saving for college, up from 63 percent in 2009, 60 percent in 2008 and 58 percent in 2007.

And for all you young people, don’t fret too much: the survey shows that most parents still believe it is their duty to pay for your college costs.

Click here to read more from the survey.

Today’s housing numbers reported by the National Association of Realtors were uniformly awful. July was the worst month for sales of single-family homes since May 1995, the trade group said.

A breakout for 20 big urban markets shows that even the “best” city, San Diego, posted sales that were down 15 percent from a year ago, in July 2009.

In Minneapolis, the worst of the markets, sales were down 42 percent.

Even though sales were down in most markets, the median price was up a bit in some. Boston posted the best result on pricing, with the median price up 7.6 percent over year-ago levels, even as sales of previously occupied homes dropped 26 percent.

In Atlanta, it was the worst of both worlds; sales were down 17 percent and the median price of a home sold fell 11 percent.

The Realtors blamed the sharp drop on the expiration of a federal tax credit early this year. The tax credit clearly juiced sales in late 2009 and early this year. Now that all those deals have closed, sales have fallen off a cliff.

Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors, tried to put a bit of a positive spin on the report but said the current sales “pause” is likely to last through September.

“However, given the rock-bottom mortgage interest rates and historically high housing affordability conditions, the pace of a sales recovery could pick up quickly, provided the economy consistently adds jobs," Yun said.

That, of course, is a big if.

Read the full release with a link to city-by-city statistics, here.

http://www.realtor.org/press_room/news_releases/2010/08/ehs_fall

It’s back-to-school season, which means many parents are beginning to deal with the burden paying college tuition.

But millions of parents with younger children are dealing with a different kind of tuition bill - for their child care center.

More than 11 million children under age 5 are in some sort of child care each week, and costs vary wildly depending where you live, according to a new report from the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies.

The priciest child care is in Massachusetts, where parents last year paid a whopping $18,773 on average in annual fees for full-time infant care, according to the report, “Parents and The High Cost of Child Care.”

That’s more than four times the average $4,560 paid by working parents in Mississippi for full-time infant care in a child care center. Mississippi was the cheapest state.

For kids 4 and older, the cost of full-time child care ranged from $13,158 in Massachusetts to $4,056 in Mississippi.

Even parents of school-age kids can expect to pay thousands of dollars a year for part-time child care.

The cost of child care has been on the rise. Since 2000, the cost has risen twice as fast as the median income of families with children, the report said.

For working moms with new babies, the cost of child care may be more than what they are spending on food or rent, or even what they expect to spend on college tuition 18 years down the road.

Click here to read the report and find out how your state ranks.

Are child care costs eating up a growing share of your disposable income?

Does it seem like your mailbox – the snail mail one, that is – is more stuffed these days? Maybe it’s because of all those credit card solicitations.

Research firm Synovate Mail Monitor reports that U.S. households received 640.3 million credit card offers between April and June of this year. That’s an 83 percent increase over last year, when the recession and credit crunch left many banks leery of financing Americans’ freespending ways.

One year later, nearly 15 million Americans are still out of work and the economy remains on shaky ground. In addition, new credit card legislation has led to sweeping changes aimed at protecting credit card customers from unexpected fees and interest rate changes.

Still, banks appear to once again be eager to solicit your credit card business, and Synovate reports that Chase and Citibank are leading the mass mailings charge.

They’re even offering special deals like zero percent teaser rates to lure customers in — Synovate said introductory offers have increased by 71 percent.

Overall, however, credit card debt is the costliest it’s been in years. The Wall Street Journal, also citing Synovate, said the average interest rate on existing credit cards hit 14.7 percent in the second quarter of this year, up from 13.1 percent a year earlier.

It’s also not clear that recession-weary Americans are eager to bite on credit card deals. The recession appears to have left many rethinking their shopping habits, and working to pare down — rather than add to — how much money they owe a financial institution.

Total revolving debt, which is mostly made up of credit card debt, fell to $826.5 billion in June, according to the Federal Reserve. It’s been dropping steadily since September 2008, when it hit a high of $975.7 billion.

Have you seen more credit card offers lately?