There are times in life when we all need support. When you create your own personal safety net you put together in a useful way all the plans, systems, resources and people who will help. Using real life stories, examples and suggestions, this book will guide you in getting read for the changes and challenges - good and bad - that will inevitably come your way.
How can you construct a financial investment strategy to protect yourself … yet still get the growth to ensure a solid financial future and comfortable retirement during these turbulent times? By building an investing safety net that gives you the gains needed for growth – though more modest than those of past years – but protection against the downside. So when turbulence strikes again – and it will – you won’t re-live the financial nightmares of recent years when portfolios and 401Ks were devastated. Jim Glassman provides the specifics you need for shrewd asset allocation, specifically: Reduce stock ownership. For those stocks you do own, ensure they meet one of these criteria: pay dividends; are low-priced and from industries of the future; or companies based in aspiring nations such as India, Brazil and China. Make a substantial investment in bonds, especially US Treasury TIPS bonds and corporate bonds Hedge against decline by owning a bear fund that shorts the US economy. Own funds based on other currencies, thus protecting yourself against the potential declining value of the US dollar. And consider derivatives. Yes, derivatives! Specific stock, bond and fund recommendations and ample portfolios then provide the starter ideas for properly balancing a portfolio. And the 5 principles and 18 specific rules of “the new rule book” help keep “animal spirits” in check when fads and news flashes provide the temptation to make rash investing decisions that will be quickly regretted.
In one of the most provocative books ever published on America's social welfare system, economist Janet Currie argues that the modern social safety net is under attack. Unlike most books about antipoverty programs, Currie trains her focus not on cash welfare, which accounts for a small and shrinking share of federal expenditures on poor families with children, but on the staples of today's American welfare system: Medicaid, Food Stamps, Head Start, WIC, and public housing. These programs, Currie maintains, form an effective, if largely invisible and haphazard safety net, and yet they are the very programs most vulnerable to political attack and misunderstanding. This book highlights both the importance and the fragility of this safety net, arguing that, while not perfect, it is essential to fighting poverty. Currie demonstrates how America's safety net is threatened by growing budget deficits and by an erroneous public belief that antipoverty programs for children do not work and are riddled with fraud. By unearthing new empirical data, Currie makes the case that social programs for families with children are actually remarkably effective. She takes her argument one step further by offering specific reforms--detailed in each chapter--for improving these programs even more. The book concludes with an overview of an integrated safety net that would fight poverty more effectively and prevent children from slipping through holes in the net. (For example, Currie recommends the implementation of a benefit "debit card" that would provide benefits with less administrative burden on the recipient.) A complement to books such as Barbara Ehrenreich's bestselling Nickel and Dimed, which document the personal struggles of the working poor, The Invisible Safety Net provides a big-picture look at the kind of programs and solutions that would help ease those struggles. Comprehensive and authoritative, it will prompt a major reexamination of the current thinking on improving the lives of needy Americans.
This is an edited volume reviewing the major means-tested social programs in the United States. Each author addresses a major program or area, reviewing each area’s successes and recommending how to address shortcomings through policy change. In general, our means-tested programs do many things well, but some adjustments to each could make the system much more effective. This book provides policymakers with a broad overview of the issues at hand in each program and how to address them.
At the center of a terrorized society buttressed by oppressive police protection and surveillance is the Tolm family, Fritz, the father, the elected head of the Association, and the children, part of the counter-culture.
Are you searching for a survival tool that is unconditional, reliable, and unique for you? Have you been baptized, but you have questions about it? Are you struggling to accept what you know to be true because you can’t verify it? In Finding Your Safety Net, Glen W. Covert offers an encouraging and inspiring, spiritual how-to guide that leads to a tool which can help you overcome personal, occupational, and existential crises. A former agnostic and atheist, he shares his journey to discover the unique survival tool he was seeking. For everyone, especially agnostics and atheists, Glen describes what convinced him to have faith. For believers in Jesus, he gives compelling reasons for why you can survive depression and spiritual attacks. Glen chronicles his story of survival in five testimonies. He discusses: • how he knows souls and spirits exist, • how he came to believe in God, • how he came to believe in the Christian God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, • why he decided Christian baptism and Communion were for him, and • a truth he discovered about the genealogies of John the Baptist and Paul the Apostle. Finding Your Safety Net provides solid insight into central topics in Christianity to help you find your survival tool or become more resilient, anchored, and unshakable in your Christian faith.
The State of Social Safety Nets 2018 Report examines global trends in the social safety net/social assistance coverage, spending, and program performance based on the World Bank Atlas of Social Protection Indicators of Resilience and Equity (ASPIRE) updated database. The report documents the main social safety net programs that exist globally and their use to alleviate poverty and to build shared prosperity. The 2018 report expands on the 2015 edition, both in administrative and household survey data coverage. A distinct mark of this report is that, for the first time, it tells the story of what happens with SSN/SA programs spending and coverage over time, when the data allow us to do so. This 2018 edition also features two special themes †“ Social Assistance and Ageing, focusing on the role of old-age social pensions, and Adaptive Social Protection, focusing on what makes SSN systems/programs adaptive to various shocks.
A major study drawing on the work of nineteen programs across the nation devoted to the care of the homeless. Describes the dimensions of the problem and discusses remedies and strategies for its solution.
