Paycheck

BOSTON -- Somewhere in the recesses of my desk drawer there is a battered old pink pin bearing the message: 59 cents. This was not the price of the pin. It was the price of being a working woman circa 1969.When these pins first began to appear at political conferences and conventions, the average woman was earning 59 cents for every $1 earned by a man. Today, after 30 years of change, guess what? Women are earning 74 cents for every male dollar.We have, in short, made economic progress at roughly the rate of half a cent a year.

Baltimore City schools chief Robert Booker promised yesterday to make up for a payroll error by cutting checks within a day for teachers who were underpaid Friday and by offering to reimburse employees for overdrafts.School employees hand-wrote emergency paychecks Friday to 407 summer school teachers and staff who were not issued their pay automatically. Another 50 staff members were paid yesterday.Many of the teachers were given partial payments, in some cases only a third or half of what they expected.

Here is an excerpt of an editorial from the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, which was published Friday.THE presidential salary has not been raised since 1969, when it was set at $200,000.Legislation that would double the president's pay to $400,000 a year is pending in Congress now. The raise, which cannot go into effect until the next president takes office, is overdue and warranted.It would be a shame if the volatile politics of public sentiment and congressional whipsawing were to consume the logic of paying the president of the United States decently.

MOST PEOPLE invest one way in their retirement plan, and another with the rest of their money.Retirement plans such as a 401(k) or 403(b) typically require regular withdrawals from paychecks, an amount chosen by the employee that goes directly into his or her investment account. The idea is automatic, pain-free investing that allows for purchases at regular intervals, regardless of market conditions, and lets a nest egg grow nicely over the years.Yet when it comes to saving outside of retirement plans, most investors do not make regular, automatic investments.

A bill sought by women's advocates to require health insurers to include birth-control services in their prescription plans won preliminary approval in the House of Delegates yesterday.A similar measure has cleared the Senate, and supporters are confident that the legislation is on its way to final General Assembly passage.Proponents contend that the bill is needed as a matter of "gender equity" because some insurers offer plans that don't treat women's contraceptive drugs and devices the same as other prescriptions.

WASHINGTON -- Last week, after California voters rejected an initiative that would have required unions to get permission annually from their members to take money from their paychecks to spend on political activity, AFL-CIO President John. J. Sweeney claimed that the clear message was that "pounding working families is a losing proposition." Maybe so, but the proponents say they will keep trying.The initiative, called "paycheck protection" by its advocates but derided as "paycheck deception" by organized labor, had led in early polls by as much as 72 percent to 21. But a television advertising and direct-mail blitz by labor costing $17 million or more eventually turned voter sentiment around, and the initiative was rejected by 54 percent to 46 percent.

A man entered a Jessup sandwich shop Wednesday evening, asked for a job application and then pulled a gun to ask for his first paycheck -- in cash, from the register.A state trooper patrolling the area along U.S. 1 arrested a Beltsville man in connection with the robbery.Police said that about 8: 40 p.m. a man entered Jerry's Subs and Pizza shop in the 7900 block of U.S. 1, approached the register and asked for a job application. The man returned to the counter a few minutes later, but instead of handing over a filled-out form, he displayed a handgun and demanded money, police said.

H. Allen Jerkens, the Hall of Fame trainer, didn't want to send Kelly Kip to Laurel Park.He had another race picked out at lovely Saratoga. And Jerkens prefers not to leave home.But when several heavy hitters failed to enter the prestigious Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash, David Rollinson, Laurel Park's stakes coordinator, talked Jerkens into entering Kelly Kip at the last minute.Kelly Kip responded yesterday with a breathtaking performance before 6,807 fans at Laurel Park and a simulcast audience of thousands.

BOSTON -- There are times when the demands of work and family ring in your ears like the words of the old highway robber: Your Money Or Your Life. Which will it be? Enough hours on the job to support a family? Or enough hours at home to raise a family? A paycheck to spend on your kids or time to spend with them?The either-or, the work-and-family crunch is by now so universally acknowledged that any flexibility should be cause for applause. And surely, something called ''The Working Families Flexibilities Act'' should be getting a standing-O.

MIAMI -- The Florida Marlins could still trade Gary Sheffield to the New York Mets, but it's going to take awhile, and a new formula to get a deal done.A proposed trade Tuesday fell through when the Mets asked Florida to pick up a chunk of Sheffield's six-year, $61 million contract. The Mets were offering outfielder Bernard Gilkey, who is in the second year of a three-year, $15.8 million contract. The Mets wanted the Marlins to pick up as much as $4 million of Sheffield's paycheck ($24 million, six years)

Americans are in line for several tax breaks under the $787 billion stimulus package that President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law today. I answered several questions in my Sunday column, but readers continue to have plenty of others about how the tax breaks will affect them. Here are answers to some of your e-mails: Is every worker making under $75,000 and single getting the Making Work Pay credit? Yes. The credit is worth up to $400 a year, this year and next. (Married couples filing joint returns can receive up to $800 a year, with the credit starting to disappear once incomes reach $150,000.

So the newspaper where you toiled for more than two decades gives you a mention - and misspells your name. If that doesn't say something about the sorry state of journalism, this does: Rafael Alvarez was actually happy that I'd goofed up his first name recently. He could use the exposure of a mea culpa column. It's tough out there for a writer, even one who went on from newspapers to work for The Wire and network TV. Alvarez said he was making $7,000 a week as a producer on the NBC show Life when he went on strike with other Hollywood writers last year.

The Q: Do you have a right to collect interest on a paycheck if an employer is late with your wages? Mike McGee of Towson was outraged recently when his two 19-year-old sons waited almost a month to receive their final checks for their summer jobs as lifeguards for a local pool management company. "Both sons turned in their keys on 9/4/07 of this season and did not receive a paycheck for a few weeks," McGee said. "At some point towards the end of September, when they pushed the issue with [the]

As a news reporter for many years of my working life, one of my most important resources was a pocketsize notebook I carried with me every day. It contained an almanac of sorts: the major news stories I had covered in prior years. I turned to it every day, and on many a slow news day, it bailed me out with good story ideas: the first anniversary of this, the 20th year since that, and so on. Recently, I found one of those old books and leafed through it. Before I knew it, an hour had passed.

NEW YORK -- There are two kinds of nonsavers, according to certified financial planner and investment adviser Bill DeShurko: people who don't earn enough money to put anything away and people who think they don't. If you're making a reasonable salary and still find yourself living paycheck to paycheck, the problem almost certainly isn't your income - it's your attitude. So says DeShurko, author of a book scheduled to be published next month, The Naked Truth About Your Money. The undressed truth about saving money is that we simply have to seize every single opportunity to sock it away.

With ball games, barbecues and boat trips, area law firms have wooed another batch of summer associates -- in hopes they will stay on. It's a time-honored tradition that's evolved with economic times and the competition for good candidates. But now, sandwiched between crab feasts and casino nights, happy hours, golf games, and even a tour of the King Tut exhibit at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, there is more legal work than ever before. "Every year we seem to ratchet down the number of social events," said Jason M. St. John, head of Baltimore law firm Saul Ewing LP's summer program.

About four years ago, Jim Kucher and his wife and business partner Cindy Leahy sat in a darkened Baltimore bar, drowning their sorrows. The couple's 10-month-old startup, Wickford Technologies, had fallen victim to the tech sector's implosion, and their lawyer had a message for them. "This has either cured you forever of a horrible disease or given you a taste for something you'll never be able to get rid of," Kucher recalled his lawyer saying. For Kucher, it was definitely the latter.

We hear so often that Americans are poor savers that we forget there are plenty of workers who amass sizable sums with little fanfare. They might be in the next cubicle, next door or next-of-kin. It's not that they save because they make tons of money. Many good savers have modest incomes. They just don't spend every penny of it. Savers say they don't deny themselves the fun things in life. They spend on things that are important to them but don't waste dollars on the other stuff. But you can't help but wonder: Why are some people such good savers while others - even those with healthy six-figure incomes - live from paycheck to paycheck?

Just what you need - a few more New Year's resolutions. If you've already given up on the promise you made to get into shape, perhaps you can try to make your finances a little healthier. And if you are still at it on your workouts or weight-loss program, keep in mind that getting the basics right on your finances can be a lot like losing weight - the hardest part is getting started. When you put the financial fundamentals in place and feel more secure about taking care of yourself and your family, you should give yourself the positive reinforcement you need to keep on going.

As expected, County Executive David R. Craig has kept his Cabinet intact, reappointing 14 members, including holdovers from past administrations and those he chose after his own appointment last year. About half of the returning members have been chosen by Craig since July 2005. After his election last month, he had said there would be few changes in his Cabinet. "I feel that the team of cabinet members who have worked with me over the last 16 months in office work well together and have the same passion and philosophy to serve the citizens of Harford County to the best of their ability that I do," Craig, a Republican, said in a news release.