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Tim Grant

Student loan debt reaches all-time high

Last updated Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - 12:51pm

The rising cost of a college education and the failure of federal grants to keep pace has led to average student loan debt hitting an all-time high.

Business, Banks, Education costs, Student Loans, College Read more Comments

Second child can result in more debt for parents than first

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tim Grant Scripps Howard News Service

Last updated Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 3:20pm

Parents who are considering having a second child had better put away the credit cards.

Data compiled by a national debt management company shows the second child will often trigger more debt than the first.

Features, Children, Debt, Parents Read more Comments

Succession plans essential for small businesses

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tim Grant

Last updated Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - 12:13pm

Many small-business owners are so busy running their businesses that they don't take time to consider who would take over if they became disabled or died.

Business, Small business Read more Comments

Franchises can mean opportunity for the unemployed

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tim Grant

Last updated Friday, December 31, 2010 - 10:09am

After 20 years working in corporate finance, Brian Achenbach was laid off in February for the third time in his career. Instead of looking for another job, he decided to open his own business.

"I found myself in a situation where I was looking for another job," said Achenbach, 46. "... I didn't want to spend the next 20 years working for someone else if there was an opportunity to venture out on my own."

Worried that his experience -- most recently at a large pharmaceutical company -- would command too high a salary in the weak area job market, or that he would have to move his family to find a comparable job, Achenbach made the leap to entrepreneurship.

Business, Unemployment Read more Comments

Multigenerational family households on rise

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tim Grant

Last updated Monday, November 29, 2010 - 4:42pm

Families are coming back together in ways this nation has not seen in 50 years.

Multiple generations of the same family are finding themselves living under one roof, as children take longer to leave home, grandparents care for grandchildren and adult children help care for their aging parents.

Since bottoming out around 1980, the trend has risen to a 50-year high because of more people needing help after losing jobs, filing for bankruptcy, facing foreclosure or having their savings wiped out.

As of 2008, a record 49 million Americans, or 16.1 percent of the total U.S. population, lived in a family household that contained at least two adult generations or a grandparent and at least one other generation, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis of Census data.

Features, Family, Households Read more Comments