If you’re making more than $250,000 in the commercial real estate industry, you're most likely a man.

A new, in-depth comparison of women and men in the commercial real estate field finds the pay gap narrowing, but men are still much more likely to be making the really big bucks.

The survey found that 31 percent of men and 11 percent of women in the commercial real estate industry reported more than $250,000 in total annual compensation in 2010. In 2005, 34 percent of men and 8 percent of women were in that top-tier wage bracket.

On the other hand, 28 percent of women but just 12 percent of men reported that they take home less than $75,000 in the most recent study. In 2005, 32 percent of women and 11 percent of men said they were taking home less than $75,000.

“The gap definitely still exists,” said Kristin Blount, senior vice president and partner with Colliers Meredith and Grew in Boston, and current president of the CREW Network, an industry networking organization for women.

The research is based on a survey of nearly 3,000 commercial real estate professionals in fields ranging from brokers to engineers, and it uses comparisons from a similar study done in 2005. It was sponsored by the CREW Network and prepared by researchers at Cornell University Program in Real Estate.

The narrowing pay gap can be partly seen as a sign that women are making headway in the most lucrative positions and commercial real estate fields.

But the researchers said the changes may also partly be explained by the recession, which may have hit men in the profession harder than women. That's because, especially at the upper pay levels, more of men's pay is coming from things like bonuses and commissions that are more likely to drop in a difficult market.

“I think it’s probably a little bit of both,” Blount said.

Still, the survey found that women’s pay was lower even when the women were the same age and had the same years of experience as their male counterparts.

They work less, they look great and now it turns out that the French – and citizens of six other countries - are richer than us, too.

The average wealth per American adult hit $236,213 in 2010, according to Credit Suisse. That’s a 23 percent increase over a decade ago, but leaves us far behind No. 1 Switzerland, which surged 60 percent over the past decade to an average of $372,692 per adult.

The U.S., which ranked No. 2 in average wealth behind Switzerland a decade ago, has been surpassed since then by rapidly growing Norway, Australia, Singapore, France and Sweden, according to Credit Suisse.

Credit Suisse defined wealth as all assets, including real estate, minus debt such as bank loans.

Is all that wine and joie de vivre actually making the French more productive? Maybe so – as Business Insider points out, renowned workhorses Germany and Japan don’t even crack the top 10.

Thanks to Econompic Data, which created this graphic based on data from Credit Suisse.

In tough economic times, any kind of support is appreciated. Free career and resume counseling for the unemployed? Great! Free image and style consulting? Sign me up! And free Botox injections too?

Oh yeah.

Today, at a five-hour event at a cosmetic-surgery office near Portland, Ore., 20 out-of-work folks will see their syringes runneth over. They'll be given all sorts of targeted assistance to help them get back into the work force -- and that assistance will include free Botox treatments valued at $300 to $500.

"Your first impression is a big deal," explained Leslie Denfeld, practice manager for Oswego Spa & Laser in Lake Oswego, Ore. "If you're feeling confident and looking the best that you can be, it's certainly not going to hurt in your job search. If anything it will help, and let's face it, it's a competitive market out there."

Denfeld said the idea to offer free Botox treatments and help unemployed people with their resumes and job-interview preparedness sprang from a desire to give back. Dr. Lee D. Robinson, medical director of Oswego Spa & Laser, has been working for more than 20 years as a facial cosmetic surgeon in his community -- and that community is hurting.

In August, Oregon's unemployment rate stood at 10.6 percent -- a full percentage point higher than the national jobless rate. Many people are beginning to tap out their unemployment benefits.

So, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that demand to attend this event has been high. Oswego Spa & Laser limited the number of attendees to 20 so its two nurses could handle the Botox workload, but twice that number tried to sign up. Denfeld said the spa is hoping to accommodate the turned-away applicants at another event like this in January.

Besides receiving the Botox treatments, attendees will listen to presentations and have one-on-one sessions with two visiting consultants: a resume-writing expert and career coach named Barbara Barde, and an image and style consultant named Valerie Beset-Price. They'll also be given makeup help and gift bags containing facial cleanser, lipstick, a mirror and other goodies.

"We want this to be really nice for them," Denfeld said. "At first we thought, 'Oh, well, people are just going to want the Botox.' ... But I think they really are excited that they can bring their resume and get it critiqued and get some career help."

The recession has been hardest on the millions of workers who lost their jobs, but that doesn’t mean it’s been easy on those who have kept working.

Now some reprieve may be coming.

Three-quarters of the companies that instituted pay freezes in the past 18 months have either lifted them or plan to by the end of the year, according to a new survey of 239 employers done by Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary.

The survey also found that 70 to 80 percent of employees can expect a pay raise this year, and that figure should reach around 90 percent next year.

That’s a big improvement over 2009, when 50 to 60 percent of employees received raises.

But don’t start dreaming about a new house or car yet. The survey found that salary increases will average 2.8 percent in 2011, up from from an average 2.5 percent this year and 1.8 percent in 2009.

“Employees shouldn’t expect big gains in pay until there is a sustained economic recovery and significant improvement in the unemployment rate,” Tom Burke, principal at Buck Consultants, said in a release.

This is not what India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was talking about when he called in 2007 for India's business leaders “to eschew conspicuous consumption.”

The Daily Telegraph reported Thursday that the richest man in India, who is also the fourth richest man in the world, just moved into what is likely one of the priciest pads on the globe: a 630 million pound ($1.08 billion), 27-storey-tall monstrosity in Mumbai.

Here’s what Mukesh Ambani, head of Reliance Industries, and his brood got for that price tag, according to the Telegraph: A health club with a gym and dance studio; at least one studio; a ballroom; guestrooms; a 50-seat movie theater; and three pads for helicopters (to fly over Mumbai’s legendary traffic) and underground parking for 160 cars (in case people simply must drive in Mumbai).

It has more space than the Palace at Versailles and takes 600 staff to run, the Telegraph reported. Ambani dubbed the home Antilia after a legendary island in the Altantic that may have driven Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors to search for cities of gold in the Americas.

Why does 53-year-old Ambani's home cost so much? Location, location, location. The Guardian newspaper says it cost $70.4 million to build, but Mumbai's soaring land prices have driven the estimated price up many times that.

How's that for conspicuous?

Watch the video below to take a peek into some of the lavish rooms.

The 2008 stock market crash and the deep, brutal recession appear to have left more workers focusing on bills rather than financing their future.

Just 39.6 percent of all workers participated in a retirement plan last year, nearly a percentage point less than in 2008 and almost 5 points lower than a high of 44.4 percent in 2000, according to data released Wednesday by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Craig Copeland, senior research associate at the think tank, said the drop in participation can be attributed in part to the stock market crash and the need for workers to cover other, more immediate costs.

But another factor is that with the unemployment rate hovering near 10 percent, employers don’t feel much pressure to offer retirement plans attract the best workers.

Only 49.3 percent of workers had access to an employer-sponsored plan last year, marking the first time since 1990 that the figure has fallen below 50 percent.

The figures do not bode well for folks hoping to live comfortably into their golden years.

Even full-time, year-round workers in the core demographic group of ages 21 to 64 are far less likely to participate in a retirement plan than they were a decade ago, according to the report. Only 55 percent of those workers participated in a retirement plan last year, down from 60.4 percent a decade earlier.

“Retirement plans are part of compensation, so tough economic times leads to less participation in retirement plans,” Copeland wrote in an e-mail.

Do you regularly set aside money for retirement? Vote and discuss here.

If you’re already frustrated by the long lines at your local Starbucks, just wait: it may soon take a little longer for your barista to whip up your next grande mocha frappuccino.

Amid customer complaints that the Seattle-based coffee chain has turned coffee-making into something more akin to a factory assembly line, The Wall Street Journal reports that Starbucks is telling its busy baristas to slow down, and the change of pace behind the counter may result in longer lines.

Starbucks has instructed the coffee chain’s baristas (from the Italian for “bartender”) to stop making multiple drinks at the same time (no more than two at a time, according to the report). Baristas also are supposed to steam milk for each drink rather than steaming an entire pitcher to be used for several beverages. Other instructions include rinsing pitchers after each use, staying at the espresso bar instead of moving around and using only one espresso machine instead of two, according to company documents obtained by the newspaper.

Starbucks is making the changes, which it expects to roll out nationwide and across Canada by next month, as part of a company effort to make its stores more efficient, the Journal reports. It says Starbucks believes the new procedures will eventually hasten the way its beverages are made and lead to fresher, hotter drinks and reduce the “possibility for errors.”

Starbucks spokeswoman Trina Smith told the paper that it will take time for baristas to become comfortable with the new drink-making method, but some baristas interviewed by the Journal are worried that the changes will create longer lines.

“While I’m blending a frappuccino, it doesn’t make sense to stand there and wait for the blender to finish running, because I could be making an iced tea at the same time,” Tyler Swain, a barista in Omaha, Neb., told the Journal. He also said he is worried that he will not be able to keep up with volume if he can only complete one drink at a time.

Erik Forman, a Starbucks barista in Bloomington, Minn., confirmed these fears. He told the paper his store adopted the new drink-making guidelines last week and said the changes have “doubled the amount of time it takes to make drinks in some cases,” resulting in longer lines.

Working longer may not just be good for your bank account – it also might be good for your brain.

New research, reported in the New York Times, suggests that people who retire early may also see their memories decline quicker.

The findings are based on memory tests conducted with people in the United States and Europe. The researchers found that in countries where people are likely to work longer, people in their early 60s also did better on average on the memory test.

The results may provide a silver lining for the many Americans who need to work longer to bulk up their retirement savings following the Great Recession. But it may yet another piece of depressing news for folks who have been pushed into retirement because they cannot find a job.

Related:

Four in 10 plan to delay retirement

Out of work, out of options, into retirement

When the golden years include a commute

Former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping once said, "To get rich is glorious." It seems that Chinese women have taken that to heart.

More than half the world's richest self-made women are from China, according to the Hurun List of Self-Made Women Billionaires, the findings of which are reported in Tuesday's Financial Times.

The world's three richest women are Chinese, according to the list, which compiles information on the wealthiest people in China, as are 11 of the top 20 on the list, the newspaper said.

The head of recycled paper company Nine Dragons Paper, Zhang Yin (shown above), ranks as the world's wealthiest self-made woman with a fortune estimated to be $5.6 billion, while Wu Yajun of Longfor Property comes in second with $4.1 billion. Chen Lihua of Hong Kong conglomerate Fuhua International is third with a fortune of $4 billion, the FT said.

Spaniard Rosalia Mera of the Zara fashion company is the world's richest non-Chinese with $3.5 billion. U.S. television show host Oprah Winfrey ranks at ninth with a fortune worth $2.3 billion.

Why is China dominating the list of richest women? The Hurun Report identifies the Communist party's ending of gender discrimination in China, the paper said. Working mothers in China and other "BRIC" nations (such as Brazil, or India) are also able to depend on a larger pool of friends and family than their American and European peers when it comes to childcare, according to the report.

The FT also cites a study from the Centre for Work-Life Policy in New York that shows Chinese women are among the most ambitious on earth (76 percent of women in China aspire to top jobs, compared with 52 percent of women in the United States, the report found).

With the broad stock market up a modest 4 percent for the year so far, it's probably too soon to say whether it will be a good year for individual investors. But the folks on Wall Street are apparently thinking they will end the year on a high note: 50 percent are expecting a higher bonus than last year.

That's acording to a survey of about 2,000 U.S.-based financial services professionals released Monday by efinancial Careers, a job site focused on the financial sector.

The survey also found that 21 percent are expecting no change in their bonus as compared to last year, while only 9 percent they don't expect to get a bonus at all.

Why the big bucks? About one-third cited "personal performance," while another third said "firm performance" is the primary reason their bonus will increase.

Still, nearly 60 percent said market conditions are the top concern among factors that could hold their pay down.

Here's more from CNBC.

President Barack Obama may be taking heat because of the weak economy and high unemployment rate, but that doesn't mean people wouldn't want to work for him.

Thirty-five percent of people surveyed for staffing firm Adecco would like to have Obama as their boss, according to a telephone poll of 700 employees and 300 bosses released Monday.

The survey asked participants to choose their favorite three potential bosses from a list of celebrity leaders. The only person to get more votes than Obama was Oprah Winfrey, chosen by 37 percent of participants.

Republican celebrities did not fare as well: Only 19 percent said they would like to work for former President George W. Bush, while former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was chosen by 15 percent.

The potential bosses to receive the lowest percentage of votes? Former BP CEO Tony Hayward and former "American Idol" judge Simon Cowell

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, also didn't fare well with only 9 percent choosing him.

Most people also seem to recognize that being the boss is hard work. Adecco also found that while 37 percent of people think they are smarter than their boss, most - 70 percent - don't aspire to have his or her job.

Also, although 61 percent of people surveyed consider their boss to be their friend, that doesn't mean they are "friending" them on Facebook. Only 18 percent of respondents said they connect with their boss on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The survey was released ahead of National Boss Day, which is Friday.

Remember back in the good old, dot-com boom days when it seemed the only direction your investment portfolio could go was way up?

These days, nearly a quarter of investors would consider it a success just to break even, according to a new survey from Fidelity Investments.

And forget about getting rich quick - more than half of those surveyed said any gain in their portfolio would be considered a success.

Even the news Friday that the Dow is flirting with the 11,000 mark may do little to change their attitude – around 20 percent of investors say they’ve either pulled out of the market or stopped paying attention to their investments.

Deep Pocket, the Reuters blog on personal finance, has more on the new normal for investors here.

If you are unlucky enough to be among the 14.8 million unemployed Americans, here’s a slight bit of cold comfort: Your job search may be a bit shorter than in months past.

The average number of weeks a person is unemployed has been trending down slightly, to 33.3 weeks in September, since hitting a high of 35.2 weeks in June, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.

Of course, this isn’t exactly great news. Prior to this economic downturn the average had never risen above even 30 weeks - and the BLS has been keeping records since 1948.

In addition, many people are finding that it takes even longer than 33 weeks to find a job.

In general, the older you get the longer you can expect your job search to take.

Some people, dubbed '99ers,' are even exhausting their maximum 99 weeks of unemployment without finding work.

Related:

Government layoffs lead to big job losses

Budget squeeze in states will force more job cuts

The private economy was - slowly - creating more jobs last month. But the government was cutting them faster.

As a major budget squeeze forces state and local governments to make ends meet, those government job cuts are going to continue.

Friday's monthly jobs report showed again that the U.S. economy is growing. But job creation is woefully slow and not helping the nearly 15 million Americans sidelined by the worst recession since the 1930s. Private businesses added 64,000 jobs. That's not even enough to keep up with the roughly 100,000 people who typically enter the work force every month.

While private businesses were hiring, public agencies were firing. Some 159,000 jobs were cut by federal state and local governments. As expected, the biggest losses - about half - came from temporary Census jobs. Local governments shed 76,000 jobs from their payrolls. Of those, roughly 50,000 jobs were cut from local schools.

Watch for more cuts in public payrolls in the months - and years - ahead. High unemployment has slashed deeply into state tax revenues, forcing deep cuts in 2011 budgets. So far, some 46 states have cut spending by $125 billion - or about 19 percent of their budgets overall, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Looking ahead, 39 states are projecting budget gaps of $112 billion for the following year; when all states have weighed in, that's expected to hit $140 billion. Through 2011, the CBPP figures that states will have cut $435 billion in spending since the recession began in December 2007.

Related: 20 government workers with supersized pay

State and local jobs cuts would have been much deeper without the federal aid they got from the economic stimulus package. But that money will be gone by next year. With the midterm elections just weeks away, the latest jobs data will raise the volume on the debate about what the federal government should do next to boost economic growth and create jobs faster.

Congress was in no mood to borrow more money to pay for another round of stimulus - and the election likely won't change that. It's not even clear that another stimulus package would provide anything more than short-term relief for cash-strapped states.

"It was never intended to be a source of long-term growth," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "It was supposed to end the recession and it met its objectives. Now the onus is on the Federal Reserve. We can't do more fiscal stimulus. "

But having cut short-term interest rates to zero, Fed officials are in uncharted territory with a limited set of untested tools. One of the few that's left is a policy of trying to push more money into the system by buying up more public and private bonds - a policy known as "quantitative easing." The Fed has already tried it once - shortly after the Panic of 2008 all but shut down the credit markets.

That move may have prevented further damage to the financial system. But it's far from clear that another round would spur banks to lend more or get businesses hiring again. If the job market doesn't improve soon, watch for renewed debate about the government using spending - or fiscal policy - to get the economy moving again.

"There's relatively little monetary policy can do," said economist and former Fed governor Laurence Meyer. "If we don't get fiscal stimulus accommodated by monetary policy - the most powerful thing the government could collectively do - then we're in trouble."

When Congress returns in November, it will have to take up yet another contentious policy debate: What to do about the broad tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration that are set to expire at the end of the year. Some business leaders say uncertainty over tax policy is a big reason they're reluctant to hire. The Obama administration recently proposed tax cuts for some forms of business investment, but Congress delayed action until after the election. That's left business leaders on hold.

"It's business investment that needs to be stimulated as opposed to further easing or stimulus by the government," said FedEx CEO Fred Smith. "It's business investment that has to pick up to create additional jobs and the economic activity. It's just that simple."

It’s hard being a woman in a male-dominated world (just ask a woman about this). Guys are generally paid more than their female peers and they don’t even have to go through childbirth. But should women really have to pay more for being overweight?

Researchers at George Washington University have found that a man pays $2,646 annually for being obese (on such things as medical expenses, loss of wages or diminished productivity), while a woman pays almost twice that amount ($4,879).

The overall annual costs of being overweight are $524 and $432 for women and men, respectively. When they added the value of lost life to these costs the researchers found that obese men must pay $6,518 while the cost to women is $8,365.

All this is disheartening enough for women, but it’s made all the more depressing when you factor in the findings of another study, this time from the University of Florida, which finds that the skinnier a woman is, the more she gets paid.

<p></p>

Separate studies of 11,253 Germans and 12,686 U.S. residents found that very thin women (who weigh 25 pounds less than the group’s norm) earned an average $15,572 a year more than women of “normal” weight, according to the study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology the findings of which are reported in The Wall Street Journal.

For overweight men, however, the trend is reversed. Overweight guys tend to earn more than their skinnier colleagues, the study found. Thin guys earned $8,437 less than men of average weight, and they were consistently rewarded for getting heavier. The highest pay point, on average, was reached for guys who weighed a strapping 207 pounds, the Journal said.

Maybe employers will start examining their assumptions about employees’ weight? Fat chance.

Someday, perhaps in our lifetimes, there won't be a need to rank the world's "most powerful women" in neat, numbered lists. Publications will simply run lists of the world's "most powerful people."

For now, though, "powerful women" lists are still kind of useful since most "powerful people" lists consist almost exclusively of -- you guessed it! -- men.

Bearing that in mind, the competing "most powerful women" lists released in recent days by Forbes and Fortune seem almost quaint and even a little retro -- like a throwback to the ladies' sections that graced newspapers of yesteryear. Still, the lists do say a lot about the contributions of women circa 2010, and it can be fun to compare them.

Fortune released its list of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" first. This list features powerhouse players from big U.S. companies, starting with PepsiCo chief executive Indra Nooyi in the No. 1 spot. (Indra must really have some power; she's one of the only women to be included on any "most powerful people" lists in recent years.)

Forbes' list of the "World's 100 Most Powerful Women," unveiled on Wednesday afternoon, is a little different because it isn't as limited by geography or career path. In addition to highlighting powerful women in business, the Forbes list also includes dynamos in politics, media, entertainment, sports and fashion.

So that helps to explain why the top 10 women on the Forbes list could include the likes of Michelle Obama (No. 1), Lady Gaga (!!), Hillary Clinton, Beyonce Knowles, Ellen DeGeneres and Angela Merkel -- and why none of those women show up anywhere on Fortune's list.

Forbes' decision to "look up and out into the broader culture" also made it possible for women like Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin, Madonna, Serena and Venus Williams, Melinda Gates, Sarah Jessica Parker, Gisele Bundchen, Queen Elizabeth II and TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira to crack the list. (They're no-shows on Fortune's list as well.)

The Fortune and Forbes list do have two noteworthy things in common: Oprah Winfrey appears in the top 10 for both of them, and Irene Rosenfeld, chief executive of Kraft Foods, nabbed both No. 2 spots. (Way to go, Irene!)

So which list is better? That depends on your interests. If you want to tip your hat to women who are duking it out -- and running the show -- in the rarified air of U.S. boardrooms that remain stubbornly male-dominated, check out Fortune's list. If you want to see a ranking of women who are more likely to be household names, then Forbes' list might be more your speed.

Entrepreneurs like Britain’s Robert Edwards — who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in medicine this week for developing in vitro fertilization and radically changing the field of reproductive science — don’t usually do what they do for financial reward alone, but a big payout sure would be nice.

It’s a pity then that this year’s Nobel laureates will receive the lowest prize money in real terms for a decade, according to a report in Wednesday’s Financial Times.

The prize amount for the major Nobel awards being announced this week in Stockholm for such fields as physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace has remained at $1.5 million (10 million Swedish Krona) since 2001 and is at its lowest level in real terms (after correcting for the effect of inflation) since 1999, the paper said.

The newspaper reports that the annual payout was frozen for the eighth successive year amid financial pressure on the foundation that manages Alfred Nobel’s endowment.

The fall in the Nobel prize money contrasts with the prior decade, when the prize money increased almost every year, according to the FT.

These are difficult times for the Nobel Foundation, which invests globally in assets such as stocks and real estate, to preserve the fortune left by Alfred Nobel (a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite) to pay for his famous prizes.

The Nobel fund lost 22.3 percent of its value during the 2008 financial crisis, the FT said. While some of the losses have been recouped, at the end of last year the amount remained nearly a third lower than at the height of the dot-com bubble ten years before.

Still, there’s good news for some of the prize winners announced so far this week.

The cash value of the Nobel prize has risen for many foreign recipients because of the Swedish Krona’s appreciation, the FT report said. Its appreciation has been especially pronounced against the British pound. That’s the bright side for Robert Edwards and Manchester-based Russian scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who won the physics prize, as they are all based in the United Kingdom.

Is your retirement plan on track?

If not, you're in good company. Some 40 percent of U.S. workers say they're going to have to delay retirement because they can't afford to stop working, according to a survey released this week by consultants Towers Watson.

The biggest reasons cited were the losses suffered in their retirement savings and the need to maintain company-sponsored health care coverage.

"The economic crisis has had a deep effect on employees' attitudes toward retirement and especially on risk," said David Speier, a senior retirement consultant at Towers Watson. "Workers continue to have a fear that they won't be able to afford retirement."

Most of those who plan to retire later figure they'll have to work at least three years longer than they previously planned. Two-thirds say they're paying down debts. More than half have cut back on their daily spending, the survey found.

Boomers headed for retirement are also worried about the Social Security trust fund that many of them are counting on to supplement their battered personal retirement plans. The financial health of the fund is getting renewed interest as the midterm election campaign generates dire warnings about politicians playing fast and loose with the money set aside to pay these benefits.

But a closer look finds that the Social Security trust fund isn't far off track, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. A recent report points out that the fund is in good shape in the short term, but faces a shortfall of about 0.7 percent of GDP over the next 75 years.

That means that - like any retirement plan - the trust fund needs to be updated to keep it in good financial health. That's exactly what President Ronald Reagan and Congress did in 1984, when the fund began running surpluses to help offset the coming wave of boomer retirees.

In the meantime, the money is stashed in Treasury securities "that are every bit as sound as the U.S. government securities held by investors around the globe," the report noted. "Investors regard those securities as being among the world's very safest investments."

Most American families with children who are likely to attend college rank saving for school as high a priority as saving for retirement, a survey released Tuesday shows, but despite their good intentions many of them still risk making expensive mistakes.

According to the results of a national study conducted in the spring by pollster Gallup and Sallie Mae, one of the nation's largest providers of student loans, the same amount of parents as last year (about 60 percent) say they plan to save for their child's college education, despite the difficult economy.

Those parents are on track to save on average $48,367 by the time their child turns 18, the survey found. That'll get you two years at a state school like one in the SUNY system in New York, but it'll barely pay for a year at a private school like Harvard or Columbia.

Watch video: Paying and saving for college

With college bills like these, you'll want to do all you can to avoid needlessly wasting cash. About a quarter of those parents saving for college risk doing just that by dipping into retirement accounts -- such as 401(k)s, IRAs and pension plans -- to pay for college, according to the survey.

Using a retirement account for college triggers big tax penalties compared to other types of investment plans. It can also reduce a family's eligibility for financial aid because the money could be counted as income.

A better way to save is through a tax-advantaged 529 college savings plan. The survey shows that the average amount saved for college in 529 plans is $3,340. By comparison, survey respondents said they have set aside, on average, $6,503 in their retirement accounts and plan to use it to pay for college.

"That's a concern because any financial planner would recommend you have a plan for retirement and another plan for college saving," said Patricia Nash Christel, a spokesperson for Sallie Mae.

Worse, although each state offers 529 college savings plans with low fees and tax incentives benefiting all income levels, half of those not currently using one said they are not at all familiar with them. And nearly half of those parents who are not yet saving for college say they are either unaware or aren't sure of the best college savings options.

The full report is available here.

Laid off as a corporate recruiter and getting nowhere with his own job search, Andrej Bula decided to try a more in-your-face approach to networking.

In the fall of 2008, he moved in with his parents and started a company that sells T-shirts emblazoned with the words “HIRE ME,” followed by the job the person is seeking.

The Hire Me Tee shirts cost about $22 and sweatshirts go for about $32. Bula said even the unemployed appear willing to scrape up enough cash for the splurge.

“The customer is not price-sensitive,” he said.

Living with mom and dad freed him of distractions, not to mention the need to pay rent, allowing him to focus on getting the company off the ground.

Still, earlier this year he moved out of his parent’s house.

“The lifestyle was a bit different, for lack of a better term,” he said.

But although he said the business is turning a profit, he’s still not paying his own rent. Instead, he’s living with his brother’s family in Parkesburg, Pa.

Bula, 36, is far from the only person to have moved back to the family home during the course of this long economic downturn. And he’s not the only one who has drawn entrepreneurial inspiration from mom and dad’s house.

Of course, the most famous example is "$#*! My Dad Says," the Twitter feed-turned-book-turned-sitcom that Justin Halpern conceived after moving in with his parents to save money while trying to make it in Hollywood.

Bula also isn’t the only one advocating a non-traditional approach to promoting your skills in these tough times.

In Britain, one man tried wearing a “hire me” sandwich board, and in Seattle an architect has been hawking his talents at an advice booth, just like Lucy in the old Peanuts comic strips.

The so-called “man-cession” may officially be over, but American families are still feeling the aftershocks.

The percentage of money that wives are contributing to the family bank account hit a high of 47 percent in 2009, according to a new report from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. That’s up from 45 percent in 2008 and the largest single-year increase in 15 years, according to the researchers.

Here’s the rub, though: The increase is not because women are earning more; it’s because men are earning less.

Report author Kristin Smith, a family demographer, notes that the median earnings for employed wives fell to $30,000 in 2009, from $31,041 in 2007.

But the median earnings of husbands of employed wives fell even more over the course of the recession, to $42,000 from $46,562.

Meanwhile, more wives became the sole breadwinner. The percentage of employed wives with an employed husband also fell to 81 percent, from 86 percent.

The report is based on government census data and labor statistics.

The recession, which officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, has been dubbed a “man-cession” because the job losses were so disproportionately high in traditionally male-dominated fields such as manufacturing and construction.

Although the National Bureau of Economic Research says we are technically in recovery, millions of Americans are still looking for jobs, and men remain disproportionately affected.

In August, the unemployment rate for adult men was 9.8 percent, compared to 8 percent for adult women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The September unemployment report is due out Friday.

The economic downturn has definitely caused Americans to rethink their free-spending ways but hasn’t completely curbed our appetite for the occasional big-ticket indulgence.

That’s especially true when it comes to one of our country’s favorite pastimes: watching television.

The percentage of homes with a large, flat-screen or high-definition television has risen steadily since over the past few years, according to data from the polling firm Nielsen.

Nearly 60 percent of American households had a high-definition television as of the second quarter of this year, up from around 37 percent at the beginning of 2008. That is despite a deep recession that officially lasted from 2007 to 2009 and left lingering economic pain.

Nearly half of all households had a flat-screen TV by mid-2010, up from around a quarter at the start of 2008.

At least 38 percent of homes have screens larger than 41 inches now, up from 24 percent in early 2008.

Maybe the economic doldrums have made us more impatient, too: 40 percent of households now have a DVR to record television shows, up from 27 percent at the start of 2008.

The data is based on Nielsen’s quarterly telephone survey of technology habits.

The fact that Americans have been willing to splurge on a TV - but little else – isn’t too surprising, considering how much time we spend in front of it.

A separate Nielsen survey found that Americans with access to a TV (almost all of them) spent an average of 158.5 hours a month watching the tube in the first three months of this year, or more than 5 hours a day. That’s up by about two hours a month from a year earlier.

We've gotten used to hearing that the Great Recession was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and we've all had a pretty good hunch that the recovery hasn't exactly been fantastic, either.

Now, here's more proof. The Council on Foreign Relations recently compared the current economic recovery - which officially began in June 2009 - to other economic recoveries since World War II. They found that this one has been the weakest on a number of measures, including real gross domestic product, employment and housing.

Want proof? The blue line in this chart shows average housing prices in other postwar recoveries. This "recovery," which shows housing prices continuing to fall, is in red.

"This continued fall in nominal home prices is easily the worst in postwar experience," the report says.

Related coverage

So this is what a recovery looks like?