Women’s portability comes from two sources: a greater emphasis on external relationships, and conducting better research about a company before joining it.

HBS professor Boris Groysberg started to notice something quite different about the career paths of successful analysts who were female. Star women, he found, maintained their shine even after switching companies. Unlike their male peers, they thrived in new work environments.

Why the difference? Female star analysts, it would seem, take their work environment more seriously yet rely on it less than male stars do. They look for a firm that will allow them to keep building their successful franchises their own way.

Women tend to do better after a move for two reasons. One is that they are more invested in external than in in-house relationships. There are four main reasons why star women maintain external focus: uneasy in-house relationships, poor mentorship, neglect by colleagues, and a vulnerable position in the labor market.

The other reason is that women do far more due diligence when they receive a job offer than men do, because women need to ensure that the company is good for women and that they won’t be treated as token females. In the process of due diligence, star women learn a lot of valuable information about the company that helps them make good strategic decisions. They scrutinize prospective employers on receptivity to women, managerial support, latitude and flexibility, and performance measurement.

A company that is willing to double your current salary, but will not invest in your long-term success, is not a good choice. Investigate a firm’s management, its culture, its resources, the commitment it is willing to make to you. Women in a male-dominated industry realize that they are vulnerable, but men are vulnerable to bad management and cultural mismatches more than they realize.

In virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while. When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home — to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.

“When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” says a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congressional study, said in an interview. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.”

For the first time since the women’s movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen. The pattern is roughly similar among the well-educated and the less educated, among the married and never married, among mothers with teenage children and those with children under 6, and among white women and black.

A handful of women have achieved C.F.O. status at major Wall Street firms. Yet none of them have moved to the top job at their firm or even to an obvious precursor position.

Lehman Brothers’ pugnacious C.E.O., Richard Fuld, chief operating officer, Joseph Gregory, and the company’s co-chief administrative officers, Scott Freidheim and Ian Lowitt are all men who oversee the army of traders and bankers who make up the capitalist heart of the company. This is not a place where you see many women, unless they’re part of the secretarial pool.

To visit the floor is to realize how remarkable the presence of Erin Callan is. Ensconced in the office next to Gregory’s, seated before twin blinking flat screens, Lehman’s new chief financial officer is the first woman ever to serve on the firm’s 15-member executive committee. A former tax attorney who started at Lehman in the fixed-income department and then rose to advise hedge fund kings like Ken Griffin and Steve Cohen, Callan led some of the most important initial public offerings in the financial world in recent years.

Yet the C.F.O.’s office may be as far as Callan gets. She begins her new job just as women’s advances in corporate America and banking in particular have entered a surprising state of limbo. No woman has ever been named the C.E.O. of a Wall Street firm, and the prospects of it ever happening seem even more remote now than they did a year or two ago.

A Proof of Virginity Presented To Families Before A Wedding

The surgery in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées involved one semicircular cut, 10 self-dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900.

Like an increasing number of other Muslim women in Europe, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent had a “hymenoplasty,” a restoration of her hymen, the thin vaginal membrane that normally breaks during the first act of intercourse. “In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt,” said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery Thursday. “Right now, virginity is more important to me than life.”

Gynecologists report that in the past few years, more Muslim women are asking for certificates of virginity before marriage.

That trend in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; there are medical tourism packages to countries like Tunisia where the procedure is less expensive.

Teach Your Children Financial Lessons As Young As Possible

There are plenty of resources on the internet that’ll teach you how to educate your child about finance. So hop to it.

Car Buying Is Easy If You Have The Right Resources

With car sales expected to be down this year, many dealerships will be desperate for any sale they can get, says Danny Chan, CEO of AutoBrag.com, a car-shopping comparison Web site that compiles price data from no-haggle dealerships. The slow conditions could prompt many of them to accept better deals as they struggle to keep their doors open, he added. But even though dealers might be hungry to make a deal, don’t expect that they’ll give in to your offers without a fight.

If you’re considering the purchase of a new car, you’ll need to prepare before browsing the show floor. Here are five tips on how to get a good deal on your new set of wheels:

1. Hit The Internet
The Web has a wealth of automobile information that can help consumers know how much they should be paying for a car and what deals they can get. AutoBrag.com tells consumers how much cars are selling for at actual no-haggle dealerships, and shoppers can use those quotes during their negotiation. Deals can also be found by expanding your online search to dealers beyond your immediate area. Even if the best deal is states away and the automobile needs to be transported to you, it may be worth the hassle.

2. Know What You Can Afford and Your Loan Options
Before negotiating, it’s also important to know exactly how much you can afford. But don’t max out your budget. Experts also advise not extending the term beyond the standard five years to bring monthly payments down. More manufacturers and dealers are now offering 7-year car loans; for a $20,000 car, the loan would rack up an additional $5,335 in interest.

And investigate loan options before hitting the showroom. Often, credit unions offer favorable automobile financing, Chan said. If opting for dealer financing, make sure you know what interest rate you should be paying before signing, he said.

3. Consider Older Model Years
When the 2009 models come out and 2008 cars are still on the lot, the older new cars can be bought at a decent discount for good reason — their age will cause them to depreciate faster. Two months before the release of the 2009 Toyota Camry, the 2008 model was being sold to consumers for an average of 5.32% below the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, Chan said. But during February 2008, when the new model was released, the 2008 model was being sold for an average 10.39% below MSRP.

4. Negotiate Before Incentives
Get down to a good price before adding an incentive, even if adding a manufacturer’s rebate pushes the price below invoice. In fact, keep all the transactions separate — negotiating the price before the financing and the trade-in value. You’ll often get the most for your vehicle if you sell it yourself. But if you decide to trade in your old vehicle, use the Internet to learn what it’s worth. You can simply ask AutoBragBlog.com for your used car value.

5. Don’t Cave To Pressure
It’s a buyer’s market, so don’t be intimidated and be aggressive in your negotiating. If the salesmen won’t budge and you can’t get the price you want, be prepared to walk away and try another dealership, Chan said. He also recommends not paying for extras such as paint protection; dealers often put a huge mark-up on this extra, and you may be better off having it done somewhere else.

Are people having four or five children just because they can? Because they feel that it shows their wealth and status?

Raising kids today costs a fortune. Last month, the Department of Agriculture estimated that each American child costs an average of $204,060 to house, clothe, educate and entertain until the age of 18. What’s worse, the desire to have another child opens one up to charges of elitism and status consciousness. In many major U.S. cities and their suburbs having three or more children has now come to seem like an ostentatious display of good fortune. The family of five has become “deluxe.”

We not only wonder, we marvel, we get jealous, we gawk. “Having three kids in the city is a way of showing off, absolutely,” says Elisabeth Egan, who, like many families she knows, moved out of New York to the suburbs of Montclair, N.J., to manage the feat. “A third child in the city is definitely a luxury good.”

A February analysis of Current Population Survey data by the Council on Contemporary Families found that in the past 10 years, the top-earning 1.3% of the population has seen an uptick in families with three or more children. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 12% of upper-income women had three children or more in 2002, compared with only 3% in 1995.

For a couple’s every conceivable wish or worry, the parenting industry knows the precise formula of guilt, fear, hope, love and desire that will empty the parental wallet. Rather than fret about spending too much money, most parents these days are consumed by the anxiety of underspending on their children.

So parents quickly adjust to the demanding realities of the child-rearing industry. Today’s American children, by contrast, get an average of 70 new toys a year.  Baby showers have replaced bridal showers as the blowout du jour; American women today have an average of three. The accompanying baby registries have mushroomed into a $240 million business. In upscale urban areas and tony suburban enclaves, where luxury families are flourishing, that can translate to $800 a week for child care alone. So-called high-end nannies (those who hail from licensed agencies and come equipped with working papers and even driver’s licenses) can cost more than $50,000 a year on the books.

Most families simply can’t afford all this. And surely it can’t all be necessary.

Yahoo’s First Site Aimed At A Single Demographic 

Yahoo Inc. on Monday launched a site for women between ages 25 and 54, calling it a key demographic underserved by current Yahoo properties. The site, Shine, is aimed largely at giving the struggling Internet company additional opportunities to sell advertising targeted to the key decision-maker in many households.

With Shine, Yahoo plans to expand its offerings in parenting, sex and love, healthy living, food, career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology.

Yahoo is entering a market already served by Glam Media Inc. and iVillage, a unit of General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal. It is Yahoo’s first site aimed at a single demographic, although other Yahoo sites like Finance and Sports already draw specific audiences.

So far, Crest Whitestrips looks like the largest (showing 2 advertisements on the home page).

Workers in certain industries can have more comfort in knowing that, even if they are fired, there is so much demand they should be able to find another job very quickly.

Talk of a recession and creeping unemployment rates are enough to make you wonder: Where can you find stability in unstable times? Kiplinger consulted career experts and combed through job trend data to come up with five industries that should provide safer havens to workers, no matter what the economy is doing. No matter what field you work in, you have the possibility of losing your job. But there are things you can do to protect yourself and increase your odds of getting another job, just in case.

Healthcare  
Many of the nation’s fastest-growing careers are in the health care industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. An increasingly aging population fuels demand in this field. Some specific jobs with stable prospects include doctor, nurse, pharmacist, physical therapist and physician assistant.

Education
Teachers for any grade level who specialize in high-demand fields such as math, science or bilingual education should have an easier time finding and keeping a job. And the outlook for college instructors looks stable, too. College enrollment is rising as the number of 18- to 24-year-olds increases. Some areas of the country are more stable than others for teachers because education jobs follow population trends. So teachers in fast-growing states in the South and West, such as Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Georgia, will have more opportunity than in slower-growth areas in the Midwest and Northeast.

Security
Crime doesn’t stop in a recession. That makes security jobs, such as police officers, detectives, private security guards and international security experts, a good bet. Layoffs in this industry are rare. In the off-chance law enforcement officers lose their jobs to budget cuts, they have little difficulty finding jobs with other agencies because demand is so high.

Environmental Sciences
The current “green” movement reaches far beyond changing your light bulbs to fluorescents. It’s also translating into a solid career choice. The BLS expects environmental careers, including ecologists, hydrologists, environmental chemists and others, to grow 25% over the next decade.

Government
Some of the most stable jobs around are within the federal government, where firings and lay-offs happen at just one-quarter the rate in the private sector. One reason: Even in hard economic times when big businesses are forced to downsize, the government must carry on. And only one in every 5,000 non-defense workers is ever fired for poor performance each year. Crazy odds! Due to an increasingly aging workforce, the government is doing a lot of hiring lately, especially among the 20-something crowd.

Check Out Their Company’s Reputation 

A federal court handed down indictments against 14 moving company employees for extorting money from customers. Allegedly, they would sucker people in with low estimates, then ask for much more money on delivery, and not release the goods until the price was paid. Of all the moving company complaints we receive at The Consumerist, this one is the most common.

It’s always important to check out a moving company’s rep beforehand; ask friends for recommendations, look up their BBB report, and see if they’re talked about on sites like MovingScam.com and MovingSham.com. Don’t just go for whoever is cheapest, a low-price could end up costing you a lot.

If you follow the 7 goal setting steps outlined in this article, you will be well on your way to becoming an expert in building the road maps to your goals.

1. Make sure the goal you are working for is something you really want, not just something that sounds good. Sure, when talking to people about your goals it sounds pretty good, and many people will be quite impressed. When setting goals it is very important to remember that your goals must be consistent with your values.

2. A goal can not contradict any of your other goals. For example, you can’t buy a $750,000 house if your income goal is only $50,000 per year. This is called non-integrated thinking and will sabotage all of the hard work you put into your goals. Non-integrated thinking can also hamper your everyday thoughts as well. We should continually strive to eliminate contradictory ideas from our thinking.

3. Develop goals in the 6 areas of life:

• Family and Home
• Financial and Career
• Spiritual and Ethical
• Physical and Health
• Social and Cultural
• Mental and Educational

Setting goals in each area of life will ensure a more balanced life as you begin to examine and change the fundamentals of everyday living. Setting goals in each area of life also helps in eliminating the non-integrated thinking we talked about in the 2nd step.

4. Write your goal in the positive instead of the negative. Work for what you want, not for what you want to leave behind. Part of the reason why we write down and examine our goals is to create a set of instructions for our subconscious mind to carry out. Your subconscious mind is a very efficient tool, it can not determine right from wrong and it does not judge. It’s only function is to carry out its instructions. The more positive instructions you give it, the more positive results you will get. Thinking positively in everyday life will also help in your growth as a human being. Don’t limit it to goal setting.

5. Write your goal out in complete detail. Instead of writing “A new home,” write “A 4,000 square foot contemporary with 4 bedrooms and 3 baths and a view of the mountain on 20 acres of land.”

Once again we are giving the subconscious mind a detailed set of instructions to work on. The more information you give it, the more clear the final outcome becomes. The more precise the outcome, the more efficient the subconscious mind can become. Can you close your eyes and visualize the home I described above? Walk around the house. Stand on the porch off the master bedroom and see the fog lifting off the mountain. Look down at the garden full of tomatoes, green beans and cucumbers. And off to the right is the other garden full of a mums, carnations and roses. Can you see it? So can your subconscious mind.

6. By all means, make sure your goal is high enough.  Shoot for the moon, if you miss you’ll still be in the stars.  Some of you might be saying that I’m not setting my goals high enough. Not so.

7. This is the most important, write down your goals. Although just the act of writing them down can set the process in motion, it is also extremely important to review your goals frequently. Remember, the more focused you are on your goals the more likely you are to accomplish them.

Sell Your Soul For $1.5 Million

With the wealth boom creating unprecedented riches and greater opportunities for gold-digging by both genders, price-tag partnerships and checkbook breakups are increasingly making headlines. Even more surprising, according to a new survey, are the going rates for today’s mercenary unions. Yet even among the workaday (or wannabe) wealthy, marrying for money has become a popular pursuit.  In an infamous personal ad posted on Craigslist this summer, a twentysomething New Yorker who described herself as “spectacularly beautiful” wrote that she was looking for a man who made at least $500,000 a year. You can read her ad here.

According to a survey by Prince & Associates, a Connecticut-based wealth-research firm, the average “price” that men and women demand to marry for money these days is $1.5 million. The survey polled 1,134 people nationwide with incomes ranging between $30,000 to $60,000 (squarely in the median range for nationwide incomes). The survey asked: “How willing are you to marry an average-looking person that you liked, if they had money?”

Fully two-thirds of women and half of the men said they were “very” or “extremely” willing to marry for money. The answers varied by age: Women in their 30s were the most likely to say they would marry for money (74%) while men in their 20s were the least likely (41%).  Women aren’t the only ones with the gold-digging impulse. In the Prince & Associates study, 61% of men in their 40s said they would marry for money. As men get older, they become more comfortable with women being the bread-winners.

The Matrimonial Price Tag Varies By Gender and Age

Asked how much a potential spouse would need to have to be money-marriage material, women in their 20s said $2.5 million. The going rate fell to $1.1 million for women in their 30s, and rose again to $2.2 million for women in their 40s. Men are cheaper! Their asking price overall was $1.2 million, with men in their 20s asking $1 million and men in their 40s asking $1.4 million. Why so low? Men’s numbers are lower because they would feel threatened by women worth several million dollars. The men aren’t going to say they want $10 million, because they wouldn’t be comfortable with a woman who’s worth so much more than they are.

Whatever the case, the prices for both men and women seem surprisingly low, given the new landscape of wealth. While $1 million or $2 million may sound like a lot to people making $30,000, it’s hardly enough to transform someone’s life or make them “rich” by contemporary billionaire standards. No one in the survey quoted a price of more than $3 million. Of course, when the mercenary marriage proves disappointing, there’s always divorce. Among the women in their twenties who said they would marry for money, 71% said they expected to get divorced — the highest of any demographic. Only 27% of men in their 40s expected to divorce.

Parallel Lessons

• Let Them Cry   Sometimes, no matter how hard it may be, you need to let them cry it out. Whether it’s an employee who wants more of something but hasn’t quite earned it yet or a baby who is overtired and needs to sleep, you can’t always get what you want. As a parent and a CEO, you can’t always give them what they ask for.
• Count to 10   Losing your temper is not a good way to show that you are in charge and worthy of respect. It’s also not a good way to help your staff/child improve. Count to 10 before you react, and think about how a measured response will get you much better results. I’ve found that in most cases when I’m really angry, it’s a very temporary thing.
• Let Them Fail   There are many times when you just need to sit back and watch people fail for their own good. Employees need to botch a sale, sometimes, in order to learn how to do it correctly. Kids have to fall down when trying to stand, walk or ride a bike. If you save either from the mistakes before they happen, you’ll deprive them of the chance to learn important lessons firsthand.
• Carrots, Not Sticks   This is a wonderful lesson that really works with kids. Rewarding good behavior creates a desire to behave well without all the trauma of avoiding pain.
• Be the Boss/Parent   There is a desire among bosses to be friendly with your staff. When push comes to shove, you have to be able to separate as a friend and be the boss. There is a huge difference between being friendly and being friends. Parents are in the same boat — you can love your kids, but you are not their friend. You need to have that separation for times when you need to use your authority.

If you love each other, shouldn’t you be able to live and work together, right?

For many couples, this major decision is the ticket to wealth, self-actualization and happiness. For others, it can lead to severe financial and relationship stress. Such a move takes more than planning; it requires a full assessment of your personalities and your money issues to determine whether working and living side by side is right for you. Your first step should be a visit to a trusted certified financial planner. Here are some key steps to consider:

Give yourselves a timetable to startup. You might be tempted to give notice tomorrow morning, but it’s much wiser to lay out a timetable over the coming months with specific tasks, goals and objectives.

Study the viability of your business model. Talk about worst-case scenarios. Bring in trusted advisors to ask tough questions about what you’re planning to do and the viability of your idea. Convincing each other you’ll make it work isn’t enough.

Draft a business plan. Even if you don’t anticipate the need to seek outside financing, it is always a good idea to formalize your ideas with a business plan. Include profit and loss projections, so that you have a benchmark for evaluating your progress at a given point in time. Factor in both best- and worst-case scenarios, which could help with decisions down the road.

Understand how your tax situation will change. Depending on which business structure you choose, you may need to plan for income taxes, self-employment taxes and payroll taxes. You want to make sure you have reserves set aside for these liabilities. 

Set a spending plan for your business and personal life. Since startups have unpredictable cash inflows, you will want to establish adequate emergency funds–both business and personal–to carry you through the startup phase.

Set boundaries. Couples who live and work together need to assess whether they want to keep their work and personal lives separate. Some people are comfortable discussing their personal lives at work, while others make it clear that during working hours, they are at work and won’t discuss personal matters.

Make sure your legal documents are in order. If you haven’t had your estate planning documents updated in a while or don’t have them at all, this is a great time to have them drafted. Don’t forget to tell your attorney about your new business venture, which should be factored into the equation.

Plan for your kids in the business. There may be good opportunities to employ children for work commensurate with their skills.

 How Well Are You Dealing With Stress?

One-third of Americans are living with extreme stress and nearly half of Americans (48%) believe that their stress has increased over the past five years. Stress is taking a toll on people — contributing to health problems, poor relationships and lost productivity at work, according to a new national survey released today by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Money and work continue as the leading causes of stress for three quarters of Americans. Nearly half of all Americans report that stress has a negative impact on both their personal and professional lives. Stress causes more than half of Americans (54%) to fight with people close to them. One in four people report that they have been alienated from a friend or family member because of stress, with 8% connecting stress to divorce or separation.

Stress in America continues to escalate and is affecting every aspect of people’s lives — from work to personal relationships to sleep patterns and eating habits, as well as their health. Physical symptoms of stress include: fatigue); headache; upset stomach; muscle tension; change in appetite; teeth grinding; change in sex drive and feeling dizzy.  Psychological symptoms of stress include: experiencing irritability or anger,  feeling nervous, lack of energy and feeling as though you could cry.  In addition, almost half (48%) of Americans report lying awake at night due to stress.

While many Americans recognize that stress has a negative impact on their health, they may lack the motivation to make lifestyle and behavior changes. Only 35% report that they would modify their behavior following the diagnosis of a chronic condition. Encouragement from a spouse or partner would motivate 38% to make behavioral changes.