Happy New Year, everyone!

As we start our romp through 2009, I thought it might be a good time to think about home ownership.  Some of you GenXers might be looking to buy your first home and with all the foreclosures out there, 2009 might be an excellent year to find that dream house.  Good for you!

Then there are folks out there who might have to deal with a job loss, or some unforeseen issue that impacts your ability to pay your mortgage.  This is a tough situation, and considering the current trend of layoffs, one that many of us will have to deal with in 2009.

I have a couple of links here to help with either of these scenarios.  This first link provides info and advice if you suddenly end up in a situation where you cannot pay your mortgage:

Help for Home Owners Facing the Loss of Their Homes

This link will help you if you are lucky enough to be able to buy a home in these trying times:

Tips For Buying a New Home in 2009

I hesitate in giving advice on these matters, as I am not a professional financial planner, but one thing you might want to check out is services offered by Credit Unions.  Credit Unions offer some of the best financial products like no fee ATM usage, totally free checking with no minimum balance requirements, car leasing programs, etc.  They also offer hard-to-beat interest rates for all kinds of loans.  Credit Unions are usually pretty flexible with membership.  If you your job doesn’t offer a credit union membership, but a family member’s job does, that might be good enough for you to join.  And if you change jobs or move, your membership is unaffected.

Good luck and enjoy/save that Dream House!

Ok, so I’ve been thinking about how to kick off my first post on this site.

Do I try to put something up to describe what a GenXer is? Do I dare attempt to define a generation that refuses to be defined? A generation that always sought out “the alternatives”?

Do I dare attempt to lay out requirements on what does or doesn’t make you GenX? Well, hell, if Generation X as a generation defining term is in dispute over at Wikipedia, who the fuck am I to lay down the ground rules? That won’t work.

Should I try to argue or whine about what is or isn’t GenX? Hell, that’s too predictable, and predictability is not becoming of a GenXer.

So, to kick shit off here, I guess I’ll just say – Hey, welcome. Feel free to dig around (I know, there isn’t much up here…yet) or feel free to reply to this with some topics you’d like to discuss.

Is it fun stuff, like toys games and gadgets? Fuck Yeah! They don’t call us “slackers” for nuthin!

Is it Music? Yeah, we’ve got opinions on that.

Is it Politics? Yeah, we can talk about that a bit.

Is it career advice? Yeah, we’ve got a ton of experience living in the cubical coal mine, so feel free to ask or kick off topics.

Is it raising your kids? Well, we can talk about it, but maybe that’s something we can all try to discuss and kick around as a subject.

Is it investing? Well, after the dot com era, most of us lost a ton of cash, but shit, maybe you can teach us a thing or 2.

Is it about Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster or the Chupacabra? AWESOME (Well for me, I’m a bit of a Cryptozoology junkie. Feel free to lol).

Basically, we want this to be as much about you as us. We’re gonna come here, spew shit that ticks us off, makes us happy, and might even embarrass us a bit, but fuck it. Why start caring now?