By Heather Chapman (New York City)

U.S. companies could save upwards of $260 billion dollars a year by implementing a telework (also known as “telecommuting”) policy. So says Undress for Success, an online resource site for people who work from home. Using recently released U.S. Census figures and data from several different studies, as well as their Telework Savings Calculator, they also determined that U.S. consumers could save around $228 billion dollars a year and that the U.S. government could see $14 billion dollars in savings.

Currently, there are less than 6 million people in the U.S. who currently work from home, half of whom are not self employed. But, according to Kate Lister and Tom Harnish, publishers of the Undress for Success site, there are another 33 million people working in the U.S. whose jobs are suitable for teleworking. They say that if these people worked from home for half of the time, “businesses could improve their bottom line by over $7,900 per new telecommuter per year—the result of lower real estate, electricity, absenteeism, and turnover costs together with increased employee productivity.”

Undress for Success found that, thanks to teleworking:

• Sun Microsystems saves $70 million a year in real estate alone;
• McKesson saves $2 million a year in real estate and other expenses;
• Dow Chemical saved a third of its non-real estate costs through telework;
• Best Buy, British Telecom, JD Edwards, and American Express show home-based employees to be 20-40% more productive than their office counterparts.

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By Paige Churchman (New York City)

The overpaid executives have become a lightning rod for our rage. Everyone’s jumping in. The President calls them shameful. The Merrill Lynch cafeteria workers, who make about $410 a week (paid by their contractor Aramark), take to the streets with a picture of John Thain’s $87,000 area rug. The exorbitantly paid have gone from star status to villains. Not so long ago, Thain was hailed as “Mr. Fixit.”

The problem started sneaking up on us about thirty years ago. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 1965 US CEOs in major companies earned 24 times more than the average worker. That seemed about right. The ratio had been around 20:1 for most of the twentieth century. Then in the late seventies the gap slowly began to grow, reaching 35:1 in 1979. But in the 1990s, the gap broke into a full gallop, hitting 275:1 in 2007. In other words, says the report, “a CEO earned more in one work day…than the typical worker earned all year.” Occasionally, when a study drew attention to the growing imbalance, there was some shock, but it didn’t stay on our radars. The economy was strong. A President spoke of “trickle down.” People were happy. Until the economy fell apart. Now the gall of those overpaid guys is all we hear about, and President Obama has just announced a $500,000 cap for executives at companies receiving the largest amounts of bailout money.

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by Zoe Cruz (New York City)

It’s happening in affluent families all over the country. It’s “the talk.”

“Honey, now that you and Dave are getting engaged, let’s have a talk.”

“Mom, we’ve been living together for a year now…that ship has sailed.”

“No, honey, not THAT talk. Let’s talk about money.”

“Mom, can’t we talk about sex instead?”

Women and Company, a membership service provided by Citi that provides financial education and related resources intended for informational purposes, commissioned Synovate to conduct an eight-month long survey of more than 1,000 affluent women–those with household investable assets of $100K or more–between the ages of 40-70. The newly-released resulting study, Women and Affluence 2008: A Generational Study revealed that finance is now the number one topic of discussion between affluent women and their daughters.

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by Heather Cassell

What if you could provide your employer with a constructive review? How about knowing what your male co-workers are earning in the same position that you hold? What if you could tap into market trends in your career?

This important career information is available—if you are willing to take the time and energy to dig for it or pay your assistant to keep you abreast of industry vicissitudes. Or you can simply open Glassdoor.com, a new free consumer-based tool launched last month for executives and employees to post, review, rate, and monitor corporate culture, top company officials anonymously, and the golden egg—salaries—all sorted from industry to career field in a user-friendly format.
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Todd Petzel of Offit Capital Advisors kicked off the Hedge World’s Managed Futures and Commodity Trading Conference last week at Chicago’s University Club. Buy side professionals gathered to discuss their investment options in the current crisis market. They listened as Petzel went through examples of failed investment approaches and the common factors each case shared.

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