Here’s the good news: Bankers seem pretty confident that most Americans will continue to pay off most of their consumer debt on time.

Here’s the bad news: They’re not nearly as optimistic about Americans’ ability to deal with ballooning student loan debt.

A new quarterly survey of U.S. banks’ risk managers finds that more than six in 10 expect student loan debt delinquencies to increase in the next six months. Only about 13 percent expect delinquencies to decrease.

The survey of 215 risk managers, released Tuesday by the credit risk analysis firm FICO, shows that student loan delinquencies have been worrying bankers for most of the year. Nearly 64 percent of the bankers surveyed in the previous quarter had predicted an increase in student loan delinquencies, and about half were expecting such a rise when the survey was conducted in the first three months of the year.

The survey found that bankers were much more optimistic about Americans’ ability to pay off other types of debt.

About two-thirds of the bankers surveyed said they expected delinquency rates on credit card debt to stay the same or go down in the next six months. About three-fourths were expecting delinquency rates for car loans and residential mortgages to stay flat or go down.

Despite worries about rising student loan debt, it appears Americans are continuing to borrow heavily to fund their education. On Friday, the Federal Reserve reported that consumer credit for things like car and student loans rose by nearly $14 billion in August from July. In total, U.S. consumer credit rose by more than $18 billion in August.

Financial experts have traditionally said that it’s OK to borrow some money to pay for college because the investment should pay off with higher earnings and more stable employment. In recent years, many adults also have flocked back to school in the hopes that more education would give them an edge up in a tight job market that increasingly prizes specialized skills.

But the high cost of college and easy access to student loans have left some Americans deeply burdened by debt.

According to the College Board, for students who received a bachelor's degree in the 2007-08 academic year, the median debt load was about $7,960 for public institutions, $17,040 for private, not-for-profit institutions and $31,190 for-profit institutions. The figures include students who graduated with no debt.

Related:

Student loans, backed by government, crushing families 

 Economy leaves many returning students disappointed, deep in debt

Loving the job, but hating the student loan debt

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus rolled out its annual holiday catalog Tuesday, and the priciest gift this year is a pair of "his and hers" timepieces for just over $1 million from Van Cleef & Arpels.

The watches depict a tale of lost love on the faces and come with a trip to romantic Paris and Geneva. 

Dallas-based Neiman Marcus is known for featuring expensive and often outrageous "fantasy gifts" in its Christmas Book. The 86th edition also includes a red special edition McLaren 12C Spider for $354,000, a hen house inspired by France's Versailles palace for $100,000 and a walk-on role in Broadway's "Annie: The Musical" for $30,000. 

Neiman Marcus

These his and hers watches are the priciest gifts in this year's Neiman Marcus holiday catalog, starting at $1,090,000 for the pair.

Those with smaller budgets can take heart, though — almost 40 percent of the items offered in the catalog cost less than $250. The cheapest item is a $10 monogrammed mug. 

The "his and her" watches each show a scene from the love story. One depicts a scene of a woman on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower, gazing toward Notre Dame. The other watch features a man on top of Notre Dame looking toward the Eiffel Tower. 

"It's a classic love story. Boy meets girl, a romance is sparked, but fate has intervened and they are separated, but both are left longing to find one another," said Marisa Neira, watch product manager for Van Cleef & Arpels. 

Neiman Marcus

This French-inspired custom-made hen house can be yours for a mere $100,000, $3,000 of which will be donated to The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

The watches and the trip cost $1,090,000. While in Geneva, buyers receive a tour that includes the Van Cleef & Arpels watchmaking workshops. 

Ginger Reeder, Neiman Marcus' vice president of public relations for Neiman Marcus, said the fantasy gifts are a nod to the spirit of the holiday season and the fantasies children have about what they want for Christmas.

"All we've done is notched up what's on the list or what's available to be on your list," Reeder said.

Other offerings include a $90,000 gaming machine, a $150,000 woody tailgate trailer complete with a sound system and stocked bar, a $99,500 water-propelled jetpack, a $250,000 private dinner for 10 featuring four famous chefs and a $70,000 piece of art by Robert Wilson that features a video portrait of a snow owl.

All nine of the fantasy gifts are paired with a charity that will benefit from their sale.  

Slideshow: Neiman Marcus' 2012 fantasy gift guide

Neiman Marcus

For 86 years, Neiman Marcus has offered one-of-a-kind holiday gifts in its yearly Christmas Book. This year continues the tradition of extravagant gift possibilities costing up to more than $1 million, including a walk-on role in "Annie: The Musical."

Launch slideshow

Are older workers stealing jobs from the young by sticking around in the workforce longer? Balderdash, says a new study.

Since the financial meltdown in 2008, we've been hearing about how downsized older workers are chasing entry-level jobs, removing those first rungs on the career ladder for young workers. After all, with unemployment still high at 7.8 percent, there's only so many jobs to go around. If we're both fighting to get a job and you get one and I don't, that means one less job for me, right?

While that might feel true when you look at one open position with one employer, it's not the case when you look at the big picture.

"There's no crowding out effect," April Wu, co-author of the study and an economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, told NBC News. "If anything, there's a positive impact."

Researchers analyzed data from 1977-2011 from the Current Population Survey, a large annual labor market survey. They found a 1 percent increase in the employment of older workers actually increased employment of younger workers by .21 percentage points. It also increased hours worked per week by .13 percentage points.

Even after running the numbers again and factoring for differences by age, gender, education, state, and the impact of the Great Recession, the results still held steady.

How can that be? If Grandpa eats the last slice of pie, that means no pie left for little Billy, right?

Well, economies are not pies. They're complex organic systems that can grow and evolve. 

With increased income, older workers, "become consumers themselves," says Wu, buying goods and services. That in turn creates more jobs, for both young and old.

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studiobananathings.com via CNBC

Need to escape from problems at work? Take a nap at your desk in peace with the Ostrich Pillow.

Napping has been endorsed by everyone from NASA to the NBA. Studies have shown it can boost your brainpower, improve performance, help with weight loss and even enhance your libido! 

But as compelling as all that is — who has time for a nap?

Enter the Ostrich Pillow, an invention out of a Madrid architecture and design studio that basically allows a human to do the equivalent of an ostrich putting their head in the sand in order to create a quiet space anywhere to nap — from the office to an airport.

The product, which has been called everything from “super cool” (The next Web) to “the most ridiculous idea ever to get funded on Kickstarter” (BusinessInsider.com) was born from the fact that its creators themselves worked long hours, had peaks and troughs in productivity and creativity — and learned that a nap could make a huge difference.

The product makes you laugh the minute you see it (hence the “ridiculous” description) and makes whoever is wearing it look like a hammerhead shark. The pillow slips over the napper’s head, with a breathing hole around the face and  two holes in the sides above the head to put your hands — which makes sense when you’re lying face down on the desk — not so much when you’re sitting upright at the airport.

“We wanted something that would give us a feeling of a different environment — a microenvironment if you like,” said Ali Ganjavian, a partner at the Kawamura-Ganjavian design firm and co-creator of the pillow. “So you could feel that you were away from the madness and had ‘space’ from the outside world. That’s what gave us the cocoon idea,” he said.

The product has been so successful on crowdfunding site Kickstarter.com that it’s already doubled its goal of raising $70,000 and still has more than a week to go.

"We discovered that thousands of people around the world shared our need to nap and we just had to share our dream with you,” Ganjavian says on the promotional video on Kickstarter.

So, yes they take their product very seriously — and yes, they’re aware that people are giggling about the product.

“We think it’s great that people are seeing the ostrich pillow and talking about it. Naturally, we have comments and questions ranging from ‘Is it real’ to ‘We would like to buy these for our army unit,’” Ganjavian said. “We design objects that are intended to be fun and functional so we are not surprised with the joke comments!”

Wait — army units?!

And, while it may seem like a joke product to some, the inventors cite several sober facts for why they decided to get into the napping market: 1) power naps have been shown to improve productivity by more than 30 percent and 2) the well-being market is HUGE — be it alternative therapies, exercise, supplements, spas – or vehicles for mobile napping.

This is what you call a “feeder product,” much like those five-fingered running shoes, where it’s something most people buzz about rather than buy (early on, anyway), said Mike Michalowicz, a consultant for entrepreneurs and the author of “The Pumpkin Plan” and “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.” The people who buy it are the early adopters, he said.

Michalowicz actually has a pair of those five-fingered running shoes, which his wife calls his “clown shoes.”

“Why do early adopters exist? You want to achieve some form of recognition or celebrity status for being a little bit different in some small way,” he said.

The operative word being “small” way.

'A conversation point'
“If I decided to do something extreme and become a nudist, my friends wouldn’t follow me. In fact, they’d probably disassociate with me,” he said. “But if I do something different in small way – five-fingered running shoes or an ostrich pillow – I become a conversation point.”

And the fact that people are laughing about it isn’t a detractor — it’s actually a key to the product’s potential success.

“Any product that’s new is resistant,” Michalowicz said. “You crack that resistance by making it humorous. People will mock it first, then adopt it later.”

The more people hear about it and then see it on people, the more likely they are to buy it.

Take those five-fingered running shoes. At first people made fun of them — calling them clown shoes and the like — then gradually became more comfortable with the novelty as they started to see them all around. Soon, he said, people reach a point where they rationalize a need for the product. With the shoes, it’s walking better, being healthier — I need it.

“With the ostrich pillow, first people will see it and make fun of it, then start justifying why they need to have it,” Michalowicz said. “Humanity has always needed a nap! You start justifying – then you buy it.”

Michalowicz said if this were his product, he wouldn’t spend a dime on advertising the product — he’d spend his marketing budget paying actors or models to wear the ostrich pillow in public.

“Hire a guy to go sit in JFK airport and just ostrich out!” Michalowicz said.

I think he just coined a catch-phrase. You know what’s next don’t you? “Ostrich Out” T-shirts!

And if you’re still wondering why you might need an ostrich pillow, here’s Ganjavian’s 30-second elevator pitch:

“Modern life is busy. We don’t give ourselves enough love, time or space. The ostrich pillow provides that – and all it asks for is 20 minutes!”

Oh, and if you get any flack about being lazy for napping at your desk, consider the following facts:

 Suddenly, a pillow that makes you look like a hammerhead shark doesn’t look so ridiculous anymore, does it?

Related stories:

Rick Bowmer / AP file

A job seeker in Salt Lake City, right, receives assistance from an employment counselor.

There are a lot of ways you can go wrong during your job search. You can fail to devote enough time to it, or you can get so involved you become isolated from family and friends. Those are among the most common mistakes job seekers make, according to a study by Connie Wanberg, Jing Zhu and Edwin A.J. van Hooft. The researchers wrote a paper on their study titled “The Job-Search Grind: Perceived Progress, Self-Reactions, and Self-Regulation of Search Effort,” which was published in the Academy of Management Journal in 2010. Though the study was conducted two years ago, Wanberg says its findings are still entirely relevant today.

Forbes.com: The 10 worst body language mistakes you can make in an interview

The three scholars asked 233 participants to complete a base-line survey and then follow up online every Monday through Friday for three weeks. Participants kept track of their emotions, the time they dedicated to their job search and the level of confidence they felt about finding an acceptable job. They all had been out of work for about 16 weeks.

Forbes.com: Common mistakes job seekers make and how to avoid them

“There is a significant amount of research available on job search; however, there is little understanding of what job seekers do on a day-to-day basis,” said Wanberg, a professor of human resources and industrial relations at the University of Minnesota. “I found that there are a lot of ups and downs in the process, and I would say that one of the biggest mistakes that job seekers make is that they don’t regulate their emotions. They often start off angry, especially if they were let go from their previous job. Once they start the application process, they become very confident. Next, they get frustrated by their rejections.”

In Pictures: The happiest companies for young professionals

The study revealed that more than 40 percent of the participants dedicated less than three hours a day to their searches, while another 40 percent spent more than half their day at it. Wanberg warned against taking either too many or too few breaks from the job hunt. “Some people tether themselves to the computer and become isolated,” she said. “It is healthy to take time out to exercise or have lunch with a friend.” On the other hand, the study found that progress tends to induce loafing, as some job hunters take long breaks after a particularly productive day. They feel complacent or want to reward themselves.

Forbes.com: How to get a job when you're over 50

Wanberg said job seekers tend to make these kinds of mistakes because they don’t always have the help and resources they need to conduct a successful job search. “A lot of unemployed people go into the process without talking to people or researching effective methods for finding a job,” she said. “For instance, many people are not aware that they need to diversify their approach.”

She stressed the importance of using different search methods, including networking, online searches and making phone calls. “Sticking to one method is one of the biggest mistakes job seekers make,” she said.

Forbes.com: The most underrated jobs of 2012

In August, Wanberg, Zhu and van Hooft won the 2011 Academy of Management’s Human Resources Division’s Scholarly Achievement Award, an annual distinction the academy gives to authors of human resources articles published in recognized journals and research annuals that it deems most significant.

Forbes.com: The most overrated jobs of 2012

More recently, Wanberg and van Hooft teamed up with Gokce Basbug of MIT and Archana Agrawal of TheLadders to follow up on the topic. They conducted a qualitative study on job search demand and wrote an in-depth paper, titled “Navigating The Black Hole: Explicating Layers of Job Search Context and Adaptational Responses,” which will be published later this year.

Michael Conroy / AP

Frost- and drought-damaged apples hang on a tree Monday at Tuttle Orchards in Greenfield, Ind. Although this year's apple supply has been hard-hit, shoppers are unlikely to see a shortage at the store.

First bacon, now apples. The crispy, sweet, tart treat is the latest food that headlines suggest is in danger of going missing from your supermarket due to crimped supplies.

The culprit is an early warm spring that brought out the blossoms on the apple trees, followed by a March-April cold snap that killed them off. No blossom, no apple.

The crop in Michigan, the nation's third largest source of apples, is down 80 percent. New York's, the second largest source, is cut by half. The U.S. Apple Association estimates this year's inventory at 202 million bushels, down about 10 percent from a 5-year average of 225 million. A bushel equals 42 pounds. That's 966 million fewer pounds of apples to go around for biting, bobbing, and baking. The USDA's estimates are for even less, down 14 percent and the lowest harvest in 20 years.

Buffering the shortfall somewhat is Washington state, boasting a near-record crop of 145 million bushels, up from their usual output of about 125-130 million. The state normally supplies 60 percent of the nation's apple inventory. The question is whether they can get enough hands to pick them before the apples begin falling. If they're not in the back of the truck by Thanksgiving, they're on the ground and all that surplus goes to the worms.

But even if Washington plugs their picker gap, a recent USDA report says it won't be enough. The harder-hit central and eastern states are responsible for supplying most of the processors, who in turn use fresh sliced apple slices and frozen apples for pies, baking, canning and juice. Production in those categories is projected to fall 30 percent, which could boost prices in these categories, although there are "strategic apple supplies" distributors can dip into. There apples are put "to sleep" naturally and placed into storage year-round.

Local apples may be hard, or impossible, to find in the more heavily dinged geographies, but overall you should see full bins of apples at the supermarket throughout the year. The most commonly produced apple in America, the Red Delicious, is actually seeing slightly lower prices this year from last, down .025 dollars from a year ago. Otherwise prices for early varietals are running about a dime more per pound than a year ago.

"Right now, we are expecting no shortage and should be able to keep the apple supply steady," the U.S. Apple Association's Mark Gedris told NBC News. "We don't expect people to be paying more for apple pies this Thanksgiving." It's not until the spring that shoppers might notice changes at the supermarket level, although by then imports from Chile and New Zealand can start to pick up some of the slack.

That said, your homemade apple pie isn't totally safe this Thanksgiving.

Two of the most popular varietals for baking are also the two hardest hit. Macintosh and Empires apples, which come from Michigan and New York, respectively. Instead you can try using Honeycrisp or Macouns, or the Golden Delicious.

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Terry Gilliam / AP

Full speed ahead. Wendy's drive-thru came in first in a survey of the fastest, fast-food restaurants.

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Larry Busacca / Getty Images file

Anne-Marie Slaughter has some advice for critics of her controversial magazine piece, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All": Get over it.

When Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote her now infamous The Atlantic article titled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” she wasn’t naive about how the piece might stir women up.

She wanted to question the status quo, and possibly help inspire change.

But for everyone out there who may have interpreted her article as a narrative meant to inspire women to give up their careers for motherhood, she says those people are wrong.

And for those who thought she damaged the women’s movement’s progress in leveling the workplace playing field, she says, get over it.

It’s time to move beyond the tired Mommy Wars and the notion that women should be afraid to point out the flaws in the U.S. workplace for fear of rocking the boat. It’s time to “make work choices in a different way” and not condemn women, or men, who want flexibility at work, said Slaughter during Families and Work Institute’s Immersion Learning Experience session held last month at the New York headquarters of JPMorgan Chase.

“I would never choose family over my work. I would make them work together,” she said.

The institute honored Slaughter on Sept. 19 with the Work Life Legacy Award, in part because of the national conversation her magazine story ignited.

She is a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University who left her job last year as director of policy planning in the State Department in part to spend more time with her family.

The idea to write The Atlantic piece sprang from her realization of how far the workplace still had to go when it came to accommodating employees who want to have a good family life.

“What changed was actually my own calculation about what was needed,” she explained. “My kids needed me, but more importantly (was the question of) what I wanted.”

She realized her sons would be home for only a few more years but she knew she didn’t want to stop working. The ultimate goal, she explained, was to “work in a way that will allow me to have that time with them.”

“Something changed with me,” she noted. When women, especially younger women and her students, used to ask her about how to have it all when family responsibilities beckoned, “I had always said, ‘well you know, you just make it work.'’”

She came to realize, she said, what so many other working parents had already figured out. Sometimes You have to rethink what you’re doing in terms of your career.

Women, and even men, who say they’re leaving a job because of family are often viewed with scorn, she said. She admitted that she too was guilty of this in the past.

“Leaving to spend time with family is a euphemism for getting fired,” she continued, indicating this is especially true for men.

Slaughter wondered why we don’t hold up commitment to family the way we hold up commitment to fellow soldiers in the military. “We glorify ‘Band of Brothers’ but if you say, ‘I can’t stay in this job because of my commitment to those I love’ it’s viewed differently. In so many ways caring for family is not OK.”

“I value people who value those they are closest to,” she said.

So just in case you were wondering, Slaughter stressed, “I believe you can do it all.”

However, she’s come to the conclusion that it’s not “just a matter of individual commitment” when it comes to making it all work.

If we don’t change “the work environment” in the United States, or the arc of what makes a “successful-career environment,” she stressed, “some women will make it, but for every one else we actually need change.”

Eve Tahmincioglu, director of communications for the Families and Work Institute, blogs about family and work issues at  familiesandwork.org/blog.

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• Video: You can still get free checking — here's how
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Follow NBCNews.com business on Twitter and Facebook

What is the middle class, anyway? There's no official definition, but Americans and their leaders seem to know it when they see it.

And after five tough years of a recession and slow economy, there's plenty of evidence that fewer people see a middle-class life when they look in the mirror.

“You can’t define middle class,  but you can ask people, ‘Do you still feel middle class?’ And more and more people don’t,” said Tim Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin.

Still, as election season heats up, that’s not stopping many politicians from promising to help the middle class, whoever they may be.

"The whole attraction of middle class … is it doesn’t mean anything," said Dennis Gilbert, a sociology professor at Hamilton College who studies class issues. "Middle class means anybody who might vote for you."

The focus on the middle class starts at the top of the ticket, where President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have both repeatedly invoked the middle class in their quest to win the presidency next month.

Obama told voters during last week's debate that he cut taxes for middle-class families “because I believe that we do best when the middle class is doing well.”

Then he questioned whether Romney had the same dedication to the middle class.

“And at some point, I think the American people have to ask themselves, is the reason that Governor Romney is keeping all these plans to replace secret because they're too good? Is it -- is it because that somehow middle-class families are going to benefit too much from them?” Obama said, according to a transcript provided by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Romney argued that Obama’s policies have hurt the middle class and would continue to do so.

“There's no question in my mind that if the president were to be re-elected you'll continue to see a middle-class squeeze with incomes going down and prices going up,” he said during the debate. “I'll get incomes up again.”

The traditional political focus on the middle class comes as fewer people feel like they’re still part of it. A Pew Research Center report  this year found that 49 percent of people define themselves as middle class, down from 53 percent from four years ago.

“Statistically, that’s a significant shift, but beyond statistics it feels right,” said Rich Morin, a senior editor with Pew Research Center. “It’s been a tough four years.”

In fact, Morin said, Americans’ sense of how the middle part of the economic spectrum is doing is surprisingly accurate. The polling data on whether Americans feel like they are still part of the middle class matches well with the researchers’ economic data on median income in the United States, which has fallen in recent years after adjusting for inflation.

Still, experts say the term middle class has a cultural connotation that goes beyond the number on your paycheck or tax stub.

Kevin Leicht, director of the Iowa Social Science Research Center at the University of Iowa, said many Americans think of a middle-class life as being one in which you have a stable job, own your own home and occasionally buy something substantial like a new car. You also either went to college or have the aspiration of sending your children to college.

Beyond that, he said, the term middle class invokes the type of person who gets married and has kids, pays their bills on time, doesn’t get in trouble with the law and maybe goes to church.

“In the United States, it’s probably more of a cultural category than an economic one,” he said.

He thinks Americans’ affinity for the middle class also comes partly from a natural suspicion for both the richest and the poorest Americans. Audacious wealth has traditionally been frowned upon in this country, he said, while there’s also often a fear-based bias against people who are poor.

“Because a lot of us are two missed paychecks away from being in exactly the same position, we have to act like there’s something systematically wrong with people who are in that position,” Leicht said.

The sense of a shrinking middle class also comes amid evidence that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, discouraging many Americans.

“They are aware that economic inequality is growing. And a majority – a substantial majority – say it’s a bad thing,” Morin said. “Everyone aspires to be upper class, but people are aware that as more Americans move up into the upper class, more Americans are moving down, and that’s not a good thing.”

The big question now is whether Americans’ discouraged attitudes about the middle class will change if the economic recovery starts to pick up.

In general, experts say that history would show that Americans will grow more optimistic about the middle class, and the American dream, as economic conditions improve. But, they note, this recession and weak recovery has been different from any other we’ve experienced in recent decades, and the future remains uncertain.

“I’m sure a strong recovery would help, but that’s a ways off,” Smeeding said. “Our standard of living is lower now than it was in 2006.”

Readers, how do you define a middle class life and do you think you are living it? Send me an e-mail, including contact information, and and we’ll use some of your responses in an upcoming story.

Related:

Rags to riches? That's Hollywood fiction, study finds

Many in middle class say they are doing worse financially

Economy's long slump pushing many down the ladder

Anyone who’s ever lived with a person of the opposite sex knows that one key to household harmony is figuring out who cleans the toilet.

The big question: Who does clean the toilet?

This week, a Norwegian researcher shared with TODAY his research showing that divorce rates are actually higher among people who share those household chores equally.

Still, he cautioned that the correlation between housework and divorce shouldn’t be mistaken for causation. The researcher’s theory is that modern couples, and those in which women have more financial power, are more likely to share household chores. Those are also the type of couples who are more likely to divorce.

Here in the United States, it seems housework is still often women’s work.

Over the 17,000 people who took our poll on the subject, more than 50 percent said the woman in the house does more of the housework than the man.

Only about 12 percent said the man does more, while about 20 percent said they share it equally. The rest said they were single.

Many readers told us that the woman does more housework because she does less work outside the home, or makes less money at her job.

“My husband works outside the home and I am a (stay at home) mom. He helps when he can but I consider it my responsibility to do the household chores,” one reader wrote.

Another wrote: “My wife does more as she should since her income contribution is zero-to-1/5 during our marriage. She would hate for my income to drop.”

Many who share responsibilities equally defended the practice and derided the study’s findings.

“Married for 40 years. I do carpets and floors, she does laundry. We share as we have shared all of our lives. Til death do us part,” one reader said.

While we are quite happy for that couple, it’s clear that in many of our readers’ homes chores are a battle of the sexes. Many men complained that they have to do the housework and yard work, adding up to more total work. Meanwhile, many women complained that their spouses spend more time sitting on the couch than cleaning it -- or their husbands don’t understand how to clean well.

Happily, some readers also seemed to recognize that humor is key to a good marriage.

“I do a significant amount of the housework, but after reading this article I'm going to tell my wife that she has to do it all. It's for the sake of our marriage!” one reader joked.

Slideshow: Bald and beautiful

EPA. AP

Some of Hollywood's toughest leading men sport shaved heads.

Launch slideshow

Looking for an edge at work? Break out your razor. A new study says that men with shaved heads are perceived as more dominant, more masculine, and more suited for leadership roles.

The lead researcher, Albert Mannes at the Wharton School of Business, decided to go "bare up there" in his mid-thirties when he was starting to lose his hair. And people started treated him differently. He then designed a series of experiments to test what people really thought of guys with shaved heads.

In the first tests, he showed participants pictures of similar-looking men with shaved heads and those with hair. The men without hair rated statistically significantly higher for dominance. They were also rated as being 3 years older, and slightly less attractive.

To isolate the results further, Mannes devised a second experiment. He showed a panel pictures of men with hair. He also showed pictures of the same men with their hair Photoshopped out. The panel rated the men with shaved heads higher for dominance, confidence, masculinity, and leadership potential.

But get this: The panel also said the guys with shaved heads were an inch taller and could bench-press 13 percent more weight than the guys with full hair.

Remember, these are the same guys, just with their hair digitally erased.

The third and final test used no photographs. Just words. Mannes asked subjects to read a two-sentence description of a man and rate him on the same attributes as the second experiment. The paragraph was the same each time, with one difference, whether the man was described as having a "shaved head," "thinning brown hair," or "thick brown hair."

Even when responding to just the text, the guys with the shaved heads ranked higher on those alpha-dog traits.

However, there was a much smaller margin between the "shaved" head and the "thick brown hair." The greatest difference was between "shaved" and "thinning." Which means that men with all their hair looking to jump up the ladder shouldn't rush out and go under the clipper. Only men experiencing hair loss will have a total net benefit from shaving their head. Men with all their hair who shave it all off will lose more in social and psychological ranking than they gain, said Mannes. 

So if you have luscious locks, don't let this study be the Delilah to your Samson. Keep your hair.

The big takeaway is that men who are losing their hair, Mannes said, "might better improve their well-being by finishing what Mother Nature has started," and shave it all off. It can give you social and psychological boost, and could open up pathways at work and in life.

This doesn't mean that men with shaved heads are in fact better leaders. Then again, perceptions can become reality.

"People may afford you opportunities to demonstrate your leadership if you look like someone who could be a leader. There is a reinforcement process that does happen with social perception," said Mannes. "How you're perceived affects how people treat you, which can alter your future."

But if you're experiencing male pattern baldness, a receding hairline, or thinning hair, Mannes said, "the simple act of shaving is a viable alternative to medical or surgical procedures, at a lower cost."

Best of all, if you try the look out and decide you don't like it, it's not irreversible.

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Though it's relatively rare, there are ways to break a prenup. 

Agreements are just agreements, after all, says Paul Talbert, a matrimonial lawyer in New York. "The most common way is paperwork mistakes," adds Talbert.

He's had clients come in to divorce and produce a copy of their prenuptial agreements. A form wasn't filled out correctly, and the prenup is derailed, says Talbert.

There are no statistics on how many prenuptial agreements are made a year, says Randall M. Kessler, a divorce lawyer in Atlanta, but he estimates that half of high-net-worth marriages have prenups. And, he says, "Overall, I'd say prenups are ten times more common than they were 20 years ago, when I started practicing. It's not taboo anymore."

Whether you can break a prenup depends mostly on where you live, as laws and judicial tradition vary by state. Beyond geography, what matters is how the agreement is drafted.

Prenups usually specify a division of assets, should a couple divorce down the road, and the reason for drafting one is that one or both parties want to protect the wealth they had coming into the marriage.

Frequently, prenups also dictate how much alimony an ex-spouse will receive if there is a divorce, and sometime detail the amount of child support as well. But since these are private agreements, anything goes.

Kessler knows of cases in which the prenup stated that in-laws aren't allowed to visit more than once a month.

David Steerman, a family law attorney in Philadelphia, has heard of cases with clauses, "where if you gain more than 10 pounds, that can be cause for divorce, or if you change your hair color, you might be rewarded extra in a prenup."

Steerman thinks that might not get very far in court, but he notes, "I have done some agreements with an infidelity clause."

If the marriage breaks up due to an affair, the cheater has to pay even more to the other spouse.

So if you're regretting that prenup, here are some situations that might make your prenup null and void.

1. Your spouse wasn't honest about assets
You may think outright fraud should be enough to break any legal agreement, but it can still be tough to overturn a prenup based on fraud. In New York, for example, even if a spouse hides a few million dollars in a bank account, that may not be enough, says Talbert. It depends on intent. If someone is worth $100 million and they don't report $3 million, the court probably won't see that as a big deal. 

But if someone says they're worth $400,000 and doesn't report $3 million, that may not go over well with the judge.

R. Scott Downing, a family law attorney in Dallas, Texas, had a client who was able to get her prenup overturned after a court ruled her husband had community property worth millions that he hadn't disclosed to his wife.

One of the husband's downfalls was that he had given his wife a revised prenup on their wedding day. When she said she wanted to call her attorney, he lied, saying that her attorney had said it was okay to sign it.

"People need to know that if you're going to promise somebody a complete disclosure in a prenup, you'd better give it to them," says Downing.

2. You were coerced into signing the prenup
"Literally, you'd have to have a gun next to your head," says Steerman, who finds coercion difficult to prove. "I've never had a case in over 23 years of practicing family law where a client claimed coercion or duress."

Steerman says even if a bride was told as she walked down the aisle that she needed to sign a prenup or the wedding would be called off, it would not be considered duress.

Inconvenient or rude, perhaps, but not enough to overturn a legal agreement in Pennsylvania.

But in New Jersey, where Steerman also practices, he says that a prenup case involving coercion would have a much better chance at being overturned.

3. There are unenforceable conditions
By unenforceable, think repugnant. Such as if your prenup says that your ex won't provide child support. "It would have to shock the conscience and be something that no person in their right mind would agree to," says Heidi Opinsky, a divorce attorney in Connecticut. "There's a very high bar."

Still, it happens.

Silvana Raso, a family law attorney in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, had one client with a prenup that said she had to move out in a certain number of days in the event of divorce. Meanwhile, the couple had a child.

"He wanted to move the girlfriend in the house, and he wanted to chase the mother and newborn out of the house," says Raso. She was able to get the court to agree that the mother and baby needed more time to find a place to stay.

Raso had another case in which a wife agreed to take no alimony, but, then, during her marriage, she developed a mental illness and was not able to support herself. Raso was able to get the courts to agree to break the prenup, much to the husband's chagrin.

"I've never met a spouse who wanted to pay alimony," says Raso. "Nobody feels it's fair."

(The author is a Reuters contributor. The opinions expressed are his own.) 

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If you want a great price on a TV, wait until the Thanksgiving weekend. Research found that television sets of all sizes are typically at their lowest price around Black Friday.

The shopping frenzy some people wait for all year long is still seven weeks away. And yet, we already have the first predictions about Black Friday sales prices. 

The shopping experts at dealnews.com studied what happened last year and they expect many popular electronic items to be at their lowest prices ever during what they call the “Black Friday Season” – mid-November to Cyber Monday. 

“Typically, people think of Black Friday as a bargain bin event, but we’re seeing hotter items get discounted,” said Lindsay Sakraida, features director at dealnews.com. 

If you want a great price on a TV, that’s the weekend to shop. Dealnews research found that television sets of all sizes are typically at their lowest price around Black Friday. 

“For example, we’re predicting you’ll be able to find a 47-inch TV for around $299, which is actually a very aggressive price,” Sakraida said. “We expect that to be the size that retailers use as the door-buster deal to get people into the store.”

Of course, this “rock-bottom” price is for third-tier manufacturers. If you want a high-end model, expect to pay more.

Apple tends to offer discounts of 5 to 10 percent on Black Friday. Free shipping for online purchases is also a traditional incentive. Sakraida told me she believes third-party merchants will once again beat Apple’s prices with discounts of up to 25 percent. 

“We predict deals around Black Friday on both the new 3^rd-generation iPad as well as the iPad 2 from a variety of stores, at prices lower than what Apple will charge,” she said. 

Dealnews predicts the new iPad (16GB with WiFi) could be offered for $499 and the iPad 2 (16GB with WiFi) for $299. If this happens, these iPads will get snapped right up, so you’ll have to watch the ads and act quickly if you see a discounted price. 

Black Friday is also the time to snag some super deals on videogames. Games released early in the year could be slashed to $15 – that’s 75 percent off the retail price. Some of the hot new titles (ones that were just released in October) should be marked down 50 percent on Thanksgiving weekend. That’s what happened last year. Keep in mind, prices on some videogame titles may go even lower the two weeks before Christmas. 

Toy stores slash prices on Black Friday with discounts of as much as 50 percent on some of the most popular toys and games. But you’ll probably see better deals later in mid-December on what’s left. Of course, if it’s a must-have toy that’s in demand, don’t wait too long.

Don’t forget, Black Friday also means deals on clothing. Sakraida expects “some of the best coupons of the year” which can be used on merchandise already on sale.  This is a great way to get a big discount on cold weather apparel before the clearance sales later in the year. 

Black Friday shopping tips
After analyzing the data for last year, dealnews found that the sale prices on Thanksgiving were often better than those on Black Friday itself. 

“So if you’re really particular about what you’re looking for, you probably want to get a head start and look on Thanksgiving,” Sakraida said. 

One more tip: It’s rarely necessary to fight the crowds. Sure there are some door-buster deals that are only available at the store. But dealnews found that about three-quarters of the in-store deals were also available online for the same price or less. 

More info: Dealnews Black Friday Predictions 2012 

Herb Weisbaum is The ConsumerMan. Follow him on Facebook or visit The ConsumerMan website.

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As couples plan for retirement, there is a helpful checklist they ought to consult to make sure they have enough money to maintain their accustomed lifestyle after they quit working.

It’s the impossible dream to many people: coming up with enough money to retire well. But Fidelity investments has come up with a new strategy to figure out if you are saving enough and not just making it a race to The Number.

The Number, of course, is the total you need to assure an adequate retirement. For some of us it’s like those medical charts telling you the optimal weight for your height. Great, but how do I get there?

For the savings-challenged, Fidelity’s Number is still daunting: You will need to have saved eight times your final salary by age 67 if you want to maintain a lifestyle similar to the one you have had while working, the company's planners figure. But Fidelity says it’s easier to get to the peak if you think of it as a series of manageable milestones through life.

To reach the 8x altitude, Fidelity says, here are check-down markers for getting to the golden peak at the right time:

• 1x — Reach age 35 with one times your annual salary saved.
• 3x — By 45, accumulate three times your salary.
• 5x — When you are 55, your savings should have risen to five times your salary.
• 8x — You are there. It is age 67.

Seems easier than climbing to the 8x level all at once, right? That’s the idea. If you follow the rule of thumb, your savings along with Social Security will likely deliver 85 percent of your ending salary until you reach age 92.

“These savings targets offer a rule of thumb to help employees get engaged in retirement planning by making it simpler and more achievable,” said James M. MacDonald, president of workplace investing at Fidelity Investments.

Fidelity admits the rule of thumb might not work in all situations. But it offers a plan for millennials, gen-Xers and baby boomers increasingly skeptical that they will ever be able to retire.

Boomers already are swelling the ranks of the retired at a rate never seen before. Each day 10,000 Americans reach age 65. As they do so they are less likely to acknowledge the "R" word: retirement. A recent Pew Research Center study found that they believe "old age" begins at 72, and on average they feel nine years younger than their true age. Far more of them plan to work full or part time to an older age than the generation that retired before them. 

The fact the “Forever Young” generation is working longer into life might say more about lack of savings than feeling young for their age. The financial collapse of 2008 blew up savings plans, and low rates on fixed-income investments have had a hugely negative impact on financial plans.

“Retirement age is creeping up. And that may show that people have not have done the necessary steps to save enough and need to keep working,” said Jean Setzfand, vice president of financial security at AARP.

Some people might get “shocked and discouraged” when they hear they are far short of what they need to retire. The Fidelity savings plan, and similar lifelong saving plans, could help people think realistically about saving money over time, Setzfand said. But it is only a start.

“Generally, retirement savings calculators and self-assessments are great tools. The thing they do is create an 'aha' moment for people, a point of realization,” Setzfand said. 

Even if people end up discouraged, as many are, “the seed is planted, and they are more aware of the need to save and plan.” And research shows that people who undertake self-assessment get more serious about saving more, she said. The eight-times salary rule of thumb recommended by Fidelity is “in line with a lot of others.” AARP's own figure is nine times, she added. 

“Rules of thumb are a rigid way of looking at retirement — but (it's) easy to wrap your head around a figure that can go on the back of an envelope,” she said. “It’s better to use a more sophisticated calculator that lets you customize for your own needs. The most important thing is to get a clear understanding of what retirement means to you and get a better look at what you need to finance that kind of life.”

There are many variables in each person’s financial profile that the rule of thumb might not account for. Whatever they might be, goal-setting is a good way of jump-starting savings, Setzfand said — and the younger the better.

Fidelity lays out the steps savers need to reach their 8x level. It means contributing 6 percent a year to a workplace savings plan and raising that total 1 percentage point each year until you reach 12 percent. The assumption is that employers will add 3 percent in matching funds.

In its calculation, Fidelity factors in a 1.5 percent annual salary increase and average portfolio growth of 5.5 percent a year.

“The two factors that have the greatest impact on retirement savings over time are starting early and saving consistently,” said MacDonald. He added: “Having age-based targets provide benchmarks to help retirement savers stay on track toward their ultimate goal.”

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Checking your email can seem like playing "Spam Invaders," where your objective is to kill as many retailer email messages before they reach your brain and drive you crazy.  Just in time for the holidays, three new online services, Shopilly, Azigo, and Hipti, aim to help you extract the “spiced ham” from the spam. 

With retailers starting their holiday email campaigns even earlier this year than last, and the number of emails they're sending out each week projected to rise, consumers will need all the help they can get.

At the broadest level, each of the three services gives you a Pinterest-esque, photo-heavy grid as a dashboard for keeping track of the same deals you would get if you were signed up for the retailer's customer email list. Where they differ is to what degree they help you manage your existing personal inbox, how deep the filtering tools are, and how good they look.

"Good-looking spam?" Yes, these services are making it possible.

Shopilly is the most-promising and spiffiest of the bunch. Its killer feature is that, with your permission, it imports spam and commercial messages from your inbox. You can set the filter to keep out the riffraff so that only trusted Shoplift-affiliated brands show up, or that all email from merchants and newsletters goes in. It can even delete the original messages from your inbox. You can also set it so that the deleted messages are archived in a special folder, just in case the e-maid gets overzealous and an important message goes missing. The service also gives you a custom @shopilly.com email address that you can give retailers, at checkout, when creating an online account, or filling out those surveys and sweepstakes that you know are just email harvesters.

Azigo also lets you transform your brand emails spam into an appealing streaming visual matrix, and provides an @azigo email address to give out instead of your personal email. What the site will do differently is let you import your existing online account information so you can see that data in your dashboard too. It also boasts a broader spectrum of brands to choose to follow, although '"more" doesn't always mean "better."

Hipiti's approach is different in that it doesn't interact with your inbox at all. Instead, you pick brands to follow and you see the same deals on your dashboard as if you subscribed to their email list. The most promising feature of the site is its deal-filtering mechanism, allowing you to sort your deals by when they end, the type of deal offers, like flash sale, free shipping, or containing a coupon code, and topic category. While currently in private beta, it's not hard to find an invite code for Hipiti with a little light Googling.

In the end, there's nothing wrong with merchant emails or spam, per se, Anirban Datta, Shoppily CEO and former eBay senior product manager, told NBC News. It's how the messages are presented, and that they interrupt your personal email. "Shopping is visual," he said. "Email was not designed for shopping."

(Tip of the hat to Fast Company.)

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For the past 10 years, New Yorkers have gradually been eating out less and eating in more, but this year marks the first time that the two trends have crossed over.

Put down your forks and listen to this: New Yorker's at-home meals surpassed dining out for the first time in 30 years. That's the news from the Zagat 2013 NYC Restaurant Survey.

It said the citizens of the city that bills itself as the "food capital of the world" are only dining out and doing take-out 6.4 times a week, and they're making meals at home 6.7 times a week. That means more family pasta nights, and bagged lunches taken to work, and fewer trips to Per Se and Peter Luger's.

For the past 10 years, New Yorkers have gradually been eating out less and eating in more, but this year marks the first time that the two trends have crossed over. In 2002, New Yorkers made 5.1 meals at home and ate out or got take out 7.9 times per week. In 2006 that moved to 5.4 and 7.7. When the financial crisis hit in 2008, eating out took an immediate hit, dropping to 6.9 times per week. Meals at home jumped to 6.1 times per week.

In addition, the number of meals per survey per restaurant - an indicator of how many times diners return to their favorite eatery - rose from 9.6 in 2002 to 11.1 in 2008, then fell off to 8.5 in 2009, and declined to 8.1 in 2012. As the country's fortunes rise, so does its appetite for eating out. And vice versa.

But it's not just New York City, eating fewer meals out is a national trend. The NPD market research group reported in October that traffic to casual dining restaurants is down 2 percent this first quarter across the country, while visits to midscale restaurants is down 3 percent. That's in line with a four-year downward trend.

However, Tim Zagat, co-founder of the burgundy restaurant guide, told NBC News he's "not sure that it's more penny-wise to cook at home." There's a big opportunity cost to consider "once you factor in shopping, washing, cooking and cleaning." Instead, he said, budget-conscious diners might be "better off working an hour later -- assuming you have a job."

With persistently high unemployment figures in the headlines, that could be a big assumption. Still, he doesn't deny that New York restaurants have had to change with the times, and the recession, to keep their appeal.

"There isn't a restaurant in New York that still requires a tie," Zagat said. While some high-end joints like Le Bernardin still require men to wear a jacket, "If you put it over the back of your chair in the middle of dinner, they're not going to tell you to put it back on. Ten years ago taking your jacket off in a fine dining establishment would have been unthinkable."

Relaxing those standards means broadening your customer base, and that means being slightly more accessible to younger, more casual clientele, with lower purchasing power.

That's why Zagat sees what he calls "Better Alternative to Home" or "BATH" restaurants as a huge saving trend for the industry. They're the noodle shops, burger joints, BBQs, upscale diners, family style chains and ethnic eateries offering hardy fare and comfy and cozy atmosphere, "like having a second living room." They buy wholesale and, he and his wife wrote in a 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed on the effect of a bad economy on the restaurant business, "produce meals far more efficiently than home cooks."

Affordable and casual restaurants dominated the list of 199 new restaurant openings included in the Zagat 2013 NYC restaurant survey. 399 of the overall listings offered a complete dinner, including beverage to wash it down and tip for the waiter, for less than $25.

Related: http://lifeinc.today.com/frugal-food 

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Changing your body language can actually change body chemistry, research shows.

Want to be more successful in your next business meeting?

Try striking a "power pose," by standing tall and straight with an open posture. And whatever you do don't hunch over and make yourself "tiny," says Amy Cuddy, an associate professor at Harvard Business School.

Body language is especially important for women, who can easily be overshadowed in meetings by men, who naturally take up more space.

But Cuddy, who has done years of research on the topic, says both men and women can use body language to actually raise their testosterone levels and lower the levels of the anxiety-producing hormone cortisol.

Cuddy's views on the subject have gone viral after she told her own moving story before a packed audience at a TED conference earlier this year.

The speech became a ‘moment’ at the conference when Cuddy became overcome by emotion in describing her own experience counseling a young woman who thought she “did not belong” in business school.

“Stay and fake it, you’re going to make yourself powerful. And you know you’re gonna…,” Cuddy said, suddenly pausing and stopping, tears welling in her eyes.  A supportive audience coaxed her on with extended applause and she regained her poise. "And you're going to go into the classroom, and you are going to give the best comment ever."

The student overcame her doubts and became a success “because she had not just faked it until she made it. She faked it until she became it.”

Cuddy went through her own crisis of confidence in becoming an advocate of body language as a transformative process.  A victim of a traumatic car accident while she was in college, she displayed signs of brain damage and was told she would not be able to finish college. She dropped out for a time.

A college adviser who saw her innate intelligence and wanted to help her back onto a successful academic track told her she needed to work on her confidence by speaking in front of people.

“Just do it and do it and do it, even if you are terrified,” was the advice she took to heart as she rose through the ranks of teaching and became known for her research. 

Cuddy in an article on Inc.com, suggested business people should "should be walking around the hallway, putting your arms up."

"Sit at your desk and put your feet up on it," she said, offering an example of the "power pose." "Stand on your tiptoes with your hands in the air. When you go into a sales meeting, you want to be as squared off and tall as you naturally can be. If you're sitting down, you might consider not crossing your legs."

Cuddy said the tendency to hunch over and make yourself small, protecting against outsiders, is an instinct that dates back to primates in the jungle and even a few rungs lower in the animal kingdom, Cuddy says.

By acting more powerful and pumping yourself up, people can learn to change she says.  She tells people to “audit your own body.”

“It’s not being fake,” said Sims Wyeth, of Sims Wyeth & Co in Montclair, N.J., a speech coach who has worked on the front lines with executives.  “It’s really you, but it’s an unfamiliar you that you start to understand.”

The process of “becoming assertive and confident” is a problem for both genders, especially in speaking in front of people, he said.

“I see it in a lot of men and women,” said Wyeth. “It doesn’t what you are like physically. Tall men sometimes feel awkward because they stand out.”

The transformative process that Cuddy talks about has been valuable for many women, he said. But men have their own issues to overcome, even if they are different ones.

Related: Why athletes strike the victory pose

“They are peacocks. It’s not about swagger. It’s about avoiding all affectation and showing calm, not anxiety. Your body posture is an important part of that.” 

Cuddy argued passionately that learning to be more confident can “significantly change the outcome of your life”       

Among hundreds of people who posted on the TED site in response, one man said he had been in a similar car accident and had recovery similar to Cuddy’s.

“Amy’s talk has been a Miracle delivered to me,” he said on the site.

You can view the entire TED talk below:

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Consumers need to be careful how they use, and don't use, their credit cards to avoid doing harm to their credit scores, experts say.

My husband and I recently refinanced our mortgage, and the bank sent us our credit scores during the process. Both scores were good, but my husband’s was 30 points higher than mine. This puzzled me, because we share the same spending and bill-payment practices. To find out why my score was lower — and to get a better understanding of credit scores — I decided to talk to some experts. I learned four lessons that I think you’ll want to know.

First, a brief refresher on what a credit score is: It’s an algorithm designed to predict your likelihood of repaying debt  Lenders use your score to determine whether to approve you for loans and credit cards and at what interest rates. Insurers use credit scores to set premium rates, and employers use them when making hiring decisions.

Forbes.com: 10 ways a bad credit score can hurt you

Your credit score is based on your credit report, which is a record of your borrowing and repayment history, typically compiled by one of the three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian or TransUnion. (You can get your credit report — not your credit score — free at annualcreditreport.com.  But watch out for sites offering phony “free” scores, as another Next Avenue article explains.)

Here are the four lessons I learned that could help you improve your credit score:

Lesson 1

Don’t sign up for new credit cards you don’t need — even if you’re offered attractive deals for doing so. This mistake, it turns out, probably cost me several points on my credit score.

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Shortly before I refinanced my mortgage, a retail clerk persuaded me to open a store credit card to save $40 on a purchase. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But, as I’ve since learned, opening a new line of credit negatively affects your score at first because you have no history with the new creditor. At the same time, a new account lowers the average age of all your credit accounts, which also dings your score. And closing the account quickly won’t help.

“Be strategic in deciding which credit card offers to accept,” said Gerri Detweiler, director of consumer education for Credit.com. “Only sign up for them if you’ll really save money over time.” For example, if the department store’s card has an interest rate that’s much lower than the rate on the card you’d otherwise use, you might want to consider it despite the impact it will have on your score.

Lesson 2

Make sure all your medical bills have been paid, either by you or your health insurer (or both of you). “It’s very easy for a payment to fall through the cracks and end up in collections,” said Detweiler. A 2003 Federal Reserve study found that more than half of all collection accounts noted on credit reports involve unpaid medical bills. “This is a huge problem,” Detweiler said.

Forbes.com: 10 top credit card choices from college to retirement

It could be that you assumed that your health insurer paid a bill when it didn’t. Or perhaps you thought you received all the bills for a recent surgery, but the anesthesiologist’s went to the wrong address. With that in mind, go through all your medical bills periodically to double-check that none is outstanding.

Lesson 3

You won’t have a good credit score if you don’t have any credit cards or loans. This is the downside to becoming debt-free just before you retire.

Forbes.com: Top credit cards for balance transfers

Here’s how Anthony A. Sprauve, public relations director of FICO — the most widely known credit scoring firm — explained it: “Some people may move to a cash-only existence when they retire. This can result in a ‘thin’ credit file, which could make getting new credit tough if they find they need it — to replace an aging car, for example, or downsize to a smaller home.”

So even if you don’t need credit now and don’t think you will anytime soon, consider keeping a couple of credit lines open and use them wisely. Using the card occasionally and paying it off in full won’t lower your score. But if you never use a credit card, sooner or later the issuer will cancel it.

Lesson 4

Think twice before closing credit card accounts and credit lines just because you don’t use them. Closing them may reduce your credit history and the total available credit on your credit reports, which in turn could lower your score.

Forbes.com: Best credit cards for hotel rewards

By the way, closing an account because you had a bad payment history won’t make that black mark disappear from your credit report — it will continue to appear for seven years. But take heart: The negative impact lessens over time. If you’ve been late on payments, bring them up to date as soon as you can. The longer you wait, the more your credit score will be nicked.

Sean Gardner for NBC News

Indelethio Nebeker spent five months chasing one job, only to be disappointed. He works odd jobs intermittently while trying to get the career he wants on track.

In 2008, Marcey Carver lost her job in the finance department of a Vermont car parts maker that closed its doors after the auto industry went into freefall.

With a degree in molecular biology, an MBA and a master's in accounting, Carver, 58, spent the next year and a half working temporary jobs, landing full-time work in October 2009 as finance director for a small non-profit. After 11 months, she was laid off again.

Since then she’s had temporary jobs, but her search for full-time work has run into a major roadblock.

“You can’t get the job you’re qualified for," she said. “But you can’t get a job you’re overqualified for because they think you’re going to quit as soon as you find something else.”

Carver doubts she'll ever land full-time work and now focuses on just making enough money to pay the bills.

Millions of other Americans have come to the same conclusion as the worst economic recovery since World War II has left them sidelined and unable to replace the job they lost to the Great Recession.

Many have given up altogether, left behind by the economy and left out of the government’s employment statistics. In fact, so many people have given up looking for work that the official jobless rate fell to 8.1 percent last month from 8.3 percent, even though the economy is not adding nearly enough jobs to absorb the growth in working-age population.

With the presidential election just weeks away, President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney squared off Wednesday night in the first of three campaign debates. The discussion focused heavily on which candidate has the better plan to spur the economy and create jobs more quickly. 

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will report September employment data and is expected to show another month of modest job growth that will leave the unemployment rate little changed.

Nobody knows exactly how many people have given up looking and left the workforce. The BLS monthly household survey has a relatively large margin of error, and the pool of "discouraged workers" is not static – people move in and out of the category from one month to the next.

But the pool is growing. Since last August, the official count of people who have left the work force but still want a job has risen by a half-million, to just over 7 million. That doesn't include the roughly 8 million "underemployed" people with part-time jobs who want full-time work, double the number when the 2007 recession began.

Millions of retirees also have left the labor force this year. That category has been growing as the outsized baby boom generation grows older.

But relatively few boomers approaching the phase of life traditionally called “retirement” can look forward to the pension checks that helped past generations pay the bills in their "golden years." For many, the individual retirement accounts that were supposed to replace pension incomes have been severely damaged by the financial collapse and by the drain on savings from extended unemployment since.

Older workers on the sidelines say that without that financial cushion, their current status can hardly be thought of as "retirement."

“It means no vacations, no repairs to my house, almost never eating out, no going out to a movie or other entertainment, no new clothes, dreading opening the mail, juggling paying bills, knowing every time you spend money, it is just adding to debt that there is little likelihood of paying off,” said Carver.

As more baby boomers have left the official count of the labor force, a decades-long expansion of women working full-time has slowed. Those forces explain about half the shrinkage in the labor force participation rate, according to economists at the Chicago Federal Reserve. 

Sean Gardner for NBC News

Indy Nebeker, 37, of Mandeville, Louisiana is one of of more than six million workers who are not listed in the official tally of the government's jobless labor force. Many of these people still badly want, and need, to find work.

The rest of the drop is the result of the grim prospects job seekers face in the current stagnant economy, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

“Some people, because they have essentially given up or at least they're very discouraged, have decided to leave the labor force," he told reporters last month. 

The high level of unemployment "imposes hardship on millions of people, and it entails a tremendous waste of human skills and talents," said Bernanke."As the skills of the long-term unemployed atrophy and as their connections to the labor market wither, they may find it increasingly difficult to get good jobs, to their and their families’ cost, of course, but also to the detriment of our nation’s productive potential."

Concerned about the long-term impact of long-term unemployment, the Fed has begun a new round of bond buying designed to lower interest rates and spur more hiring.

With nearly three unemployed workers for every new job opening, it’s not hard to see why people get discouraged.  For many job seekers, the odds are much longer.

Indelethio Nebeker, 37, with a degree in communications and experience as corporate trainer, has been looking for full-time work for several years. He recently was up against 700 other applicants for an opening at a Louisiana pharmaceutical company. The interview process took five months.

After filling out an application, he got a call back and was asked to answer questions online. Then came a second call back for a preliminary phone interview, followed by a request to produce a five-minute video and write a personal statement. Then came a second phone interview, followed by a trip to the company for a 25-minute audition and a meeting with the hiring managers. More than a month later, a company manager called to break the news that they “had decided to go in a different direction.”

Up for another entry level job with a different company, he said, the interviewer recently asked why he was interested in a job that paid less than someone with his experience would typically expect to earn.

“I thought, ‘Because it’s the only one you’re offering. Have you looked around?” he said. “It seems like the people that are hiring have no clue about what’s going on out here.”

In the meantime, Nebeker is doing odd jobs, including part-time work as a driver’s education instructor while he keeps up an intermittent job hunt.

“I've stopped, I've started again, and I've stopped again,” he said. “It's a constant roller coaster.”

George Morris, 30, has been looking for a full-time job in advertising since he was laid off from his last one in February 2010. Since then he’s been working a series of related odd jobs, including photographer's assistant and writer for a website. He’s also paying the bills with unrelated jobs, from getting paid as a clinical test subject to suing telemarketers for illegal calls.

Those jobs are generating income. But they’re no substitute for the experience Morris needs to build traction in his career.

“People were laid off during the recession with more experience than I have,” said Morris. "But I can’t get enough depth in my field to keep up because I can’t get a company to pay me a living wage.”

For those sidelined from full-time work, odd jobs are critical to financial survival. But they also create an obstacle when it comes time to interview for the next full-time positions.

“(Employers) look at my resume and say, ‘Could you go back into a full time position when you’ve been doing this other stuff for so long?’” said Nebeker. “I look at them and think. ‘What are you talking about? I need a job.’”

Based on recent data, the odds of finding a job are improving – but very slowly. Since the recession ended in June 2009, roughly 140,000 net new jobs have been created every month. That’s barely enough to keep pace with the growth of the working-age population.

Economists point to continued gains in productivity to explain how companies have managed to increase profits with so little new hiring. Some job seekers agree.

“I think (companies) figure, ‘We’ve done so long without replacing all these positions, we’re just going to make people do more work so we don’t have to hire more people,'” said Nebeker.

The search for a traditional, full-time job with benefits has become tougher as companies rely more heavily on short-term, contract assignments to fill empty positions until the economy is on a stronger footing. Many employers also complain that uncertainty about changes in tax policy and health care costs have forced them to delay hiring decisions until the outlook becomes clearer.

Employers may also be slow to create full-time jobs with benefits because the large pool of jobless workers makes it easy to get the same work done with temporary and part-time workers at a lower cost.

“The loss of unions has played a major part in it,” said Morris. “There’s no collective bargaining. It’s become a very asymmetrical: ‘Here’s what I’ve got offer. Take it or leave it.’”

Morris is still hopeful the laws of supply and demand will eventually swing back in his favor. But it may take time.

“When I was in college, the unemployment rate was at a 4 percent rate, and if you could spell your own name right you could get hired,” he said. “The pendulum has swung the other way. I don’t think the pendulum is going to fall off and go away. But I do think we’re looking at painful cyclical changes that are going to go on for some time.” 

TODAY Money financial expert David Bach joined us for a live Web chat Wednesday to answer your questions.

Here’s one of his answers to questions from the live chat. (See below for the full Q&A and video of David’s TV appearance this morning.)

Raymond asked:

“How much of an impact will paying an additional $100/month on my mortgage make? Thanks!”

David replied:

“Raymond, great question. Funny though...did you think I could guess by looking at the computer screen how large your mortgage was? Here is what you do. You go to bankrate.com and put in mortgage calculator (or Google) and you go to a mortgage calculator and then you run the numbers. You put in your mortgage amount. Your interest rate. Adding $100 a month and length of mortgage. Then there will be a button below that calculator that says (click or submit). You click on that button and then you get a calculation that shows you how much you will save and how many years or months faster you will have paid the loan off. Go try that today. It's free and easy.”

Here’s the full chat archive and David’s TV appearance:

If you have a question for our TODAY Money experts, submit it here.

To sign up for an e-mail reminder for our next chat, click here.

Economics is becoming less of a man's world, and new research implies that as more women enter the profession that could lead to changes in economic policy.

"Without a doubt it will change policy," said Ann Mari May, an economics professor at University of Nebraska in Lincoln and one of the study's authors.

May and her co-authors surveyed hundreds of members of the American Economic Association for the study, which is due to be released in an upcoming issue of the journal Contemporary Economic Policy.

What they found was surprising: Despite similar training and background in economic principles, male and female economists tended to hold sharply different views about some of the biggest and most hotly debated economic issues.

For example, female economists were more likely to say employers should provide health insurance and that income distribution should be more equal. They also were more likely to disagree with the use of educational vouchers.

Women also were far more likely to conclude that job opportunities for men and women are not equal, and that specifically the economic profession favors men over women.

 “We were a little surprised to see that there were these striking differences,” May said.

The findings were especially interesting to May and her colleagues because they had taken great pains to ensure that they were surveying mainstream economists, whose views might be considered more closely aligned.

They also come as more women are pursuing the "dismal science" as a profession. Women earned 34.5 percent of new doctorates in economics in 2010, up from 27 percent in 2000, according to the researchers.

The research for the paper was conducted in late 2008 but took several years to compile and prepare for publication.

May thinks that as more women enter the field their voices will start to be heard when politicians and others craft economic policies. A more diverse group of expert opinions could lead to more rigorous debate and, perhaps, different ways of thinking about the nation’s major economic challenges.

If nothing else, she noted, the study should raise the awareness that all economists don’t think alike.

“It’s just sort of a snapshot that allows us to consider the diversity of the profession and how we sort of shortchange ourselves when we use phases like ‘all economists think this.’”  

Tip of the hat to USA Today, which earlier reported on this research.

John Moore / Getty Images

For the 5 million long-term unemployed, defined as those out of work for 27 weeks or more, it doesn't look pretty.

Call it "pink slip stigma." When you don't have a job, it's harder to convince a new employer to give you one. And we all know the longer you're out of the game, the harder it gets. What we didn't know was exactly how hard. Now, thanks to some sneaky economists, using 12,000 fake resumes, there's some solid data.

A team of researchers sent out over 12,000 fake resumes to over 3,000 online job postings. They designed the resumes so that the candidates were all equally qualified. The only thing they changed was the length of time the fictional candidate was out of work.

For the 5 million long-term unemployed, defined as those out of work for 27 weeks or more, it doesn't look pretty.

"The labor market penalizes you for being out of work," Kory Kroft, co-author of the study "Duration Dependence and Labor Market Conditions: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment," published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, told NBC News. 

From 0-6 months, the percentage of callbacks gradually declines from about 7 percent. But once it hits 6-8 months there's a steep drop-off. After 6 months of being jobless, there's only a 4 percent chance you'll get called in for an interview, a 45 percent plummet.

What gives? Well, "There's two kinds of employees, productive and unproductive," said Kroft. "Firms will use the number of months you've been out of work as a "proxy" or "signal" of how productive you are."

The idea is that when you're out of work, your job is getting a job. If you're not great at that job, you might not be great at the one the employer is hiring for. And the effect is greater the longer you've been out of work.

One bright spot, if you can call it that, is that after 8 months the "pink slip stigma" levels off. So if you're sitting on a chair in a lobby waiting for a job interview next to a guy out of work for 14 months and you've been without a job for 34, he doesn't have any better shot than you just based on that fact alone.

So what advice is there for job-seekers? For one, check out the odds of getting a callback in response to an online job posting. You have a 93 percent chance of your resume getting deleted. That's a pretty strong testament to how you don't want to just blast out resume after resume in response to Monster.com posts. Chat up friends and colleagues, go to networking events, and look for ways to make human, in-person connections to get you your next gig.

And if you're going to wallow in self-pity, make it quick. "Hit the ground hard early on," after losing a job, says Kroft, an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto.

Better yet, pay attention to common signals that you could be up for getting pushed out - like overall company layoffs, being left out of email chains and meetings, and people giving you pitying looks in the hallways - and start your job-search before you get called into HR.

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The right product to buy? You know you need to do your research, but who has the time? 

What most people don't realize, Mandy Walker, senior projects editor at Consumer Reports told NBC News by phone, is that you can "often get top quality products, from a brand name, at a good price." That's good news in this economic climate, where every penny counts more than ever. 

From their low-slung brown brick headquarters in Yonkers, N.Y., the testers, engineers, scientists, journalists and consumer advocates at Consumer Reports put a dizzying array of products through a battery of grueling tests, all year long. Now they've culled from all that data and published their 475 Best Products of the Year to give you a handy buyer's guide cheat sheet. These are the best of the best. From large to small appliances, from electronics to  wine, whether you're gearing up for Turkey Day or getting a jump on holiday shopping, don't enter the shopping aisles without it.

To make it onto the list of best products at the best prices, a product really has to get high marks in the Consumer Reports testing facility.

To test washers, they put a piece of fabric through the washer multiple times and then count by hand the number of threads exposed in the worn-down area. Vacuums are hooked up to a mechanical guide and forced to suck up crumb after crumb and hair after hair. They have a special room for testing audio equipment, baffled so that it's completely soundproof and echo free. To make sure that no building vibration disturbed the tests, it sits on a completely separate foundation from the rest of the building. Everything is measured, tested, and the results are tallied and reported.

Another thing that most people don't realize is that to maintain its objectivity and independence, Consumer Reports doesn't test samples provided by the manufacturers. They have an army of secret shoppers who buy the products on the open market and then ship them back to Yonkers for testing. That's to make sure the manufacturers don't send them any "goosed" versions that would cheat the tests.

"We test products for consumers from rival manufacturers to make sure they're going to work well, work for a long time, and that they're safe," says Walker. "That's our mandate."

Here's the best of the best:

• Best washer: LG Washer WM3470HVA, $1100‬
• Best dryer: LG Dryer DLEX3470V, $1200‬
• Best vacuum: ‪Kenmore Intuition 31100, $250 bagless upright
• Best TV: ‪TV Samsung UN55ES8000, $2500‬
• Best tablet: ‪iPad 3 16 GB 3rd Generation $500 OR ‪Google Nexus 7 16 GB $250
• Best eReader: Barnes and Noble Nook Simple touch $100 
• Best SLR camera: ‪Nikon D3200 $700
• Best camera: Nikon Coolpix AW100 $300
• Best GPS: ‪Garmin Nuvi 2455LT $160
• Best Mac laptop: Apple Mac Book Pro 15 inch $2200
• Best PC laptop: ‪HP Pavillion M6-1045DX $700
• Best streaming player: ‪Roku 2 Streaming Player $80
• Best olive oil: 16 oz. Trader Joe's California Estate Olive Oil
• Best red wine: ‪Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon $10‬
• Best white wine: ‪Bogle Chardonnay, $10‬
• Best coffeemaker: ‪Krups Grinder & Brewer KM7000, $130

Check out more of the 475+ Best Products of the Year over at Consumer Reports.

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Most of us would rather have a root canal than read the paper work that comes with our health insurance plan. Now this process is a bit less painful thanks to new rules that require all private health insurance companies to provide a “Summary of Benefits and Coverage.” This eight-page form highlights what the policy covers and how much specific benefits cost.

Because every company must use the same format to provide this information, it should be much easier to comparison shop, whether you are buying coverage on your own or choosing a plan at work. This new form comes just in time for the annual open enrollment period when employees get to pick their coverage for next year.

“Instead of having a huge document with lots of fine print and gobbledygook, now in a relatively short document you’ll get clear language that will help you compare one plan from another,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a national organization for health care consumers.

Even if you aren’t choosing between plans, it’s important to know how you are protected. The new form, required by the Affordable Care Act, uses a question-and-answer format to accomplish that. On it are the following questions:

• What is the overall deductible?
• Are there other deductibles for specific services?
• Is there an out-of-pocket limit on my expenses?
• Is there an overall annual limit on what the plan pays?
• Does this plan use a network of providers?
• Do I need a referral to see a specialist?
• Are there services this plan does not cover?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you could make decisions that are not in your best interest and wind up paying more than expected for medical care out of your own pocket.

“We need all this because insurance companies have been hiding stuff from consumers for years,” said Nancy Metcalf, a senior editor at Consumer Reports. “Many people who had bad plans didn’t realize it because things were hidden. Now, every plan must have this form so you can lay them all out side-by-side and compare, something that’s been extraordinarily hard to do up to now.”

The new Summary of Benefits includes an extensive list of common medical events — such as a hospital stay, outpatient surgery, pregnancy, prescription drug purchases and treatment for mental health or substance abuse — and what you’ll pay if you use a preferred provider or an out-of-network provider.

The new form shows the types of expenses the plan would pay for if you had a baby or needed treatment for Type 2 diabetes. By using these two examples, you can get a general idea of how much financial protection is provided by different plans.

There’s also an explanation of common but often misunderstood insurance terms, such as deductible, copayments and preferred providers.

The insurance industry opposed the new rule when it was proposed, calling it a burdensome requirement that was too expensive. State insurance regulators welcome the change.

“Every day we hear from people who are concerned that they had a medical treatment that may not be covered by their plan,” said Stephanie Marquis with the Washington State Insurance Commissioner’s office.  “All of this can really impact the family budget.”

That’s why it’s so important to consider more than just the monthly premium when you choose a health insurance policy. You need to know what’s covered, what’s not covered and how much you’ll spend in deductibles and copayments.

“A surprise medical bill these days can be devastating to a family,” Marquis said. “That’s why this new summary form is such a big deal.”

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Bryan Steffy / Getty Images

Sure the show must go on for a performer. But work can probably get by without you if you're ill.

It’s easy to make fun of teen heartthrobs, but let’s face it: You don’t become a pop star unless you’re willing to work really hard and make all sorts of sacrifices.

Still, the news over the weekend that Justin Bieber threw up onstage during a concert -- and then continued the performance -- was a bit extreme, even by the fame-at-all-costs standards of the entertainment industry. 

We may not all be pop stars, but most of us can relate to the feeling that you have to power through your work day even when it’s the last place you want to be.

Here’s the deal, overachievers: No matter how much work you get done that day, your staff, co-workers and customers are not going to appreciate it if you pull a Bieber in the cubicle farm.

“I don’t think anybody would argue with me: There is a rule that says, ‘Don’t hurl on your teammates.’ I think most people would agree with it,” said Jim Webber, who does workplace training on preventing harassment and runs an advice blog called Evil Skippy at Work.

It’s not just the “ick” factor -- one sick office mate can quickly create a germ factory that can kill productivity for weeks.

“You definitely are doing a disservice to your employees by coming to work sick,” said Rachel Wagner, a corporate etiquette expert who does consulting work for companies. “Nobody wants to get sick from somebody else and when you’re throwing up, obviously, it’s usually something that can be passed along.”

Wagner acknowledges that plenty of driven, career-oriented people -- including some that she knows personally -- will head to the office almost no matter how sick they are.

Some also may feel like they have no choice because they don’t have paid sick leave. And in other cases, she notes, people may be afraid to call in sick because they are worried about job security.

“They can be fearful of using too many sick days. That it shows, in today’s economy, that maybe you’re not loyal,” she said.

Webber said that mentality is often the product of bad management. A company with a strong corporate culture might make an extra effort to remind employees to stay home if they are sick, or work from home if they absolutely must.

But, he lamented, most employers don’t do that. Instead, they push people to come to the office no matter what.

It can be tricky, Wagner said, but there are polite ways to suggest that your colleague, or even your boss, might want to head home for the day. She suggests framing it as a question.

“I believe sometimes you just have to be upfront,” she said. “If it’s a peer (then) you can say, ‘Bill, I’m so sorry that you’re not feeling well. You should probably just go on home and get some rest because you don’t want everybody else to get sick.’”

If that fails, Webber said it’s appropriate to go to that person’s supervisor and suggest that the person be sent home.

It’s one thing to be Bieber, Lady Gaga or any other performer who has it drilled into them from day one that the show must go on. But many people may not want to go home because they think the office just can’t function without them. Webber advises against that sort of thinking.

“Do you really think you’re that indispensable? A lot of people … they’re just not being realistic about what’s going to happen if they’re not there,” Webber said.