Blog

October 27, 2015 So say recent college grads A consistent theme of this blog has been that debunking the myth that you have to go to college to achieve financial success. I’ve written about the lack of jobs for most college graduates in the fields they study, about the skyrocketing cost of college...

October 13, 2015 Hard to do with big debts to pay Many, many years ago as a young man in my early 20s and recently discharged from the U.S. Army, I moved into my own apartment for the first time. While serving in the military I shared quarters with dozens of fellow soldiers — hardly […]

October 1, 2015 Set your sights on being better than average. It’s easy to be misled when you look at data about how much skilled trade workers earn. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes such data, but I have found their information to be outdated and lacking in context. For example, the most recent...

September 23, 2015 By Renee Tomlinson We keep hearing that technicians are in demand; that there is a skills gap facing our industry and that employers are having a difficult time filling open technician and HVACR related job openings, but where are all of these facts and figures coming from? The HVACR...

August 14, 2015 It’s a thrill to see the results of your work I spent more than three decades covering the skilled trades as a trade journalist. Now that I’m retired I look back with immense satisfaction at the friendships made and life lessons learned. Among the latter is a profound appreciation...

July 29, 2015 The trades offer a path to wealth. Maybe a career isn’t all you’re thinking about. Maybe you know successful people who own multiple homes, drive fancy cars and are able to afford a bunch of luxuries the average person can only dream about. Maybe your goal in life is to get rich […]

July 17, 2015 Student loan debt has reached crisis proportions. Former college students – not all of them graduates – owe a staggering $1.2 trillion in student loans, according to most estimates. Don’t even think of trying to count to 1.2 trillion. If you counted one dollar every second, it would...

June 30, 2015 Trade workers are retiring without replacements Anyone who regularly reads a newspaper or business publication will eventually come across an article detailing the predicament of a shortage of skilled trade workers. A recent survey from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) shows...

April 22, 2015 Youthful mistakes can haunt you for life. Many prisons have programs designed to teach inmates a trade that will translate to an honest living when they get released. This is an admirable effort at rehabilitation, but not a place I would recommend for any kind of job training. A prison...