Nova Articles

Marriage counseling has arguably become a rite of passage for modern American couples. Social conservatives lament such facts are proof that the social fabric has frayed considerably while others view such developments as a positive sign that everyone is owning up to reality at last.

Whatever the case, marriage counseling has definitely been a growth industry, though whether these kinds of trends will hold in such recessionary times remains to be seen. What is expected, nonetheless, is that the need for such services will only increase – especially in recessionary times. For what most drives couples apart is not sex or the children but money.

Marriage counseling often reveals that the main issue eating away at a relationship is one of control, or who has how much say over what. This is why it’s important to choose spouses with very similar values! But whatever the situation, the first thing to establish is clear and open lines of communication. Understanding is fundamental, and without good communications it is really unlikely for anything to be accomplished.

Interestingly, the decision to go into therapy or counseling often seems shameful but is really a good sign, a sign that the couple in question is still willing to try to work things out somehow. The very agreement, however reluctant, to enter into a possible make-up instead of heading straight into breakup shows that honest communication is desired, at least minimally.

Depending on the situation, things may be so bad that the counselor or therapist has to meet each party separately, but the fact that any attempt is being made at all at a reconciliation is hopeful. However, while reconciliation might be desired, it doesn’t follow that breaking up, despite counseling, means failure. In cases of intractable differences, going separate ways may actually represent the best possible option for all concerned.

All of it started when I was swimming pool resurfacing just last week. I usually see her only in her bikini, which is quite an eyeful all right, but this time she wasn’t wearing one.

No, despite the hot summer sun she was all dressed up in a business suit. But her buxom bosom couldn’t hide itself, all the same, and her generous shapely hips filled up every centimeter of her mini-skirt.

I looked up from swimming pool resurfacing, of course, and greeted her the way I usually do, politely, professionally.

“I like that pink skirt you’re wearing.”

I answered that they were shorts, fashionably baggy and made out purposely to look like skirts.

“They look terrific on you, honey.”

Now usually I’d think she was being polite, but for some reason I suspected – hoped – that this being my last day on the job before school starts, which meant that there was a subtext to our conversation now.

“I’ve never ever seen you like this, Mrs. Fugon. You look great!”

“I’m glad you think so. I sort of wore it just for you.”

And there I was, in the middle of swimming pool resurfacing when she and I somehow found ourselves kissing and fondling one another. I told her how lovely she was and she said the same of me. We spoke of our mutual secret yearning all the days of this long summer now so suddenly short seeing how I was heading off back to college across the country and we finally decided to confess to one another.

“There’s always the weekends, Amy. Not to mention the holidays.”

I began to protest that there would never be enough time for me to spend time with her – all the usual sentimentality that comes with being so young, I now realize scarcely a week later, but she hushed me with a kiss and told me never to say never.

“And don’t call me Mrs. Fugon; you know it’s Claudia.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite come to pass that way. I blame youthful exuberance for embarassing her, though she was quite gracious in demurring.

Well a girl can still dream!

Headaches? Squinting? It might possibly be indications of failing eye-sight. So what do you do next? You go to see an eye doctor (of course) and it may possibly be that you will require eye glasses or contact lenses. Now there is always the option of laser surgery but this post will not talk about that.

Go for the glass? Spectacles have been around for years – think Benjamin Franklin, an iconic wearer of eyeglasses. Eyeglasses are either produced from plastic or glass. The frames for them also come in a number of materials. And, if you’re nervous about not finding the proper frames, don’t worry they currently have frameless styles. And if you are one of those folks who can’t even consider putting their finger in their eye and cringe at the notion of it, eye glasses may be your best choice.

Having said that contact lenses offer some advantages over eye glasses. One benefit, the rain, I assume you know what happens. Two, fog, eyeglasses tend to fog up. Three, moving down your nose when ever you perspire, etc.

Whichever you select, the most essential issue is the fact that you see clearly.

Ah, summer – baseball, backyard barbecues, and swimming pool resurfacing. That’s correct, swimming pool resurfacing. Once an occasional chore every other year, it’s now practically a once-every-other-decade spring or even summer pastime (for those who like to wait until the very last minute) – all thanks to the new do-it-yourself fiberglass pool resurfacing in a can made possible by modern chemistry.

Swimming pool resurfacing done right means fiberglass in this day and age. Swimming pool resurfacing is an essential aspect of swimming pool ownership, just the sort of renovation that’s made periodically to counter the effects of corrosion. Whether constructed of gunite, concrete, plaster, or wood (especially wood), swimming pools will deteriorate over time to the point that a complete resurfacing is not only advisable but required.

Thankfully, as previously mentioned, modern technology has made it possible for the finest kind of resurfacing, fiberglass resurfacing, to be performed entirely by oneself safely and fairly quickly. Best of all, it’s as permanent as any job handled by licensed contractors but much less expensive.

Fiberglass pool surfaces have a proven track record of more than three decades now as a durable coating that happens to also provide other benefits, such as reduce operating coasts. Fiberglass is really a material that bonds extremely well with existing surfaces, giving pools a nice sheen that makes them appear to be brand new.

This wondrous item is now available in simple cans like paint, readily applicable and requiring no sand-blasting. Approved for both commercial and residential use, do-it-yourself fiberglass resurfacing will need much less maintenance than even marcite or vinyl pools. In addition, with proper care you won’t have to worry about your swimming pool’s surface for another twenty to thirty years or more!

Less prone to staining. Gorgeous shiny protective shell. All easily applied and ready for duty within one day. That’s swimming pool resurfacing in the 21st Century. Now that’s progress!

For the most part detox diet’s will allow for a gradual re-introduction of foods (other than those that were not allowed on the diet). A Detox Diet restricts foods that contains anything believed to be harmful to your health. The moment you have completed a detox diet, it is a great moment to put more fruits along with vegetables to your diet, and stay to that habit. Examples being to add some berries to your breakfast or a tomato at lunchtime, and them possibly some broccoli with supper. And please do not forget the drinks, forget the soda and drink some vegetable juice. Lots of people that complete a detox program will tell you that it is a wonderful way to improve health and over-all well being.

Blank storage media, it its most limited, basic sense, is any medium by which data or information can be stored for later admittance. This may range anywhere from the printed page, to computers, to the human brain. For thousands of years, blank media was – while varied – restricted to techniques that involved physically marking an object (the storage medium itself) with information that could later be read by the human eye and refined by the brain.

These involved everything from scriptures hand written with paper and ink, to hieroglyphics carved into stone. Nonetheless, within the last several decades, advances in technology have opened a whole new avenue that has revolutionized the way humans record and maintain information: electronic storage media.

Everybody is accustomed to electronic storage media in the kinds of optical discs, including CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray dvds, all of which can store music, video, or essentially any sort of data in any format that can be accessed with a computer. Optical storage media works by recording data onto the surface of a disc, which stores information by encoding it in a binary file format in the form of “lands” as well as “pits” – comparable to the crests and troughs of an ocean wave, respectively.

These almost microscopic grooves represent data as binary code where lands equal a 1 and pits a 0, which is then read by reflecting a laser beam off the surface of the disc. The reflection of the laser is distorted by the set up of lands and pits – 1s and 0s – and these distortions are then read and translated as unique information. As the discs by themselves may be a relatively fragile storage media, the amount of data they can carry is enormous. A regular CD can hold about 700mb of data, which if entirely devoted to text data can store very similar to thousands upon thousands of written pages.

While written storage media made up of this quantity of text data might weigh several pounds and be so physically cumbersome as to make carrying the data somewhat difficult, a CD weighing only a few grams can easily contain many books worth of text. What’s more is that while on paper, more data calls for more storage space, therefore increasing the physical weight and size of the medium, optical data weighs literally nothing so that a CD stuffed with data weighs no more than a CD with nothing on it.

And whilst creating duplicate copies of this much written data would likely take loads of man hours to manually replicate using a pen and paper, a duplicate CD may be copied and recorded within a matter of minutes. The downside is that, while paper storage media could possibly be heavy and cumbersome, it requires nothing more to interpret than the human eye. Optical storage media, in contrast, calls for other equipment to interpret the information for the user, which alone can be physically cumbersome and also vulnerable to damage.

One way of making money on the internet is to find explosive niches to blog about, wildly popular topics that individuals go on the internet to research and read. For example, you can start a web site devoted to a successful Tv shows with a huge audience. This ensures interest in your website, which is the first step in generating money online: providing something that people find valuable.

This is what it means to find explosive niches to blog; you want to provide a forum where individuals interested in a certain topic can congregate and exchange views. In order to make money, the topic has to be “explosive” but “niche” – popular but not so popular where you are likely to be a Johnny-come-lately to the proceedings.

The trick is to find that delicate balance where the territory is still fresh enough, so to speak, so that you can claim your own stake, and territory that isn’t so out of the way such that really few people will be interested in dropping by (your web site).

That’s how you can blog residual cash to your business, making money even while you sleep because the whole thing is computerized and automated! The idea is that you have what’s known as a turn-key system set up that will basically run on its own without needing your constant supervision.

So to continue with our Tv show example from above, you would produce a web site devoted to that Tv show, with gossip, news, and reviews on the stars, episodes, and plotlines – anything that would be of interest to a fan of that show. This show has to be popular enough to assure you of numbers (extremely important as any salesman will tell you: only 1-3% of “eyeballs” actually “convert” into real sales – money in your pocket), but not so popular such that other individuals already have sites up (which you will be hard-pressed to steal readers from!).

From Greek vases to Italian marble statues, consumers just can’t get enough of quality museum replicas for their homes and offices. It’s small wonder, of course, that folks should wish to surround themselves with timeless classic beauty. Indeed, museum replicas can lend elegance and even authority – the authority of tradition, the gravitas of high culture – to any setting, imbuing a sense of importance to one’s own endeavors in such an environment.

Bronze sculpture is also favorite among museum replica connoisseurs for just those reasons. Do not laugh; it is true. Such showpieces symbolize one’s erudition and, even, personal nobility. Art certainly communicates those qualities, anyway, on behalf of their owners. And here’s the curious thing: it all sounds so crass, ironically, given the high-minded perception that usually surrounds art!

The very act of wishing to connect oneself with some past glory seems pretentious at best and downright absurd at worst. Yet it is a fine line between true aesthetic appreciation of the informed sort and mere fashionable accessorizing of one’s residence or workplace.

Museum replicas allow us all to play the part of a refined collector of antiques – not “antiques” in the now commonly debased sense of someone’s grandmother’s grandmother’s quilt abandoned at a yard sale, but treasures of the ancients now ours to enjoy. The pottery of ancient Greece is not only gorgeous but bear witness to one of the most intellectually remarkable civilizations of humankind.

And who has not gasped at the workmanship of a David, an Augustus Caesar, or an Ecstasy of Saint Teresa? These are some of the most prized examples of Italian inspiration anywhere, for all time, and owing one puts us in touch with the human potential for imagination, the cultural heritage of our species. They lift us from the everyday into a realm of the spirit.

Bronze sculpture is the most numerous form of cast metal sculptures as a result of a characteristic trait that is as unusual as it is desirable. Commonly used bronze alloys will expand a little just before being set so that even the finest details of a mold are filled.

Bronze sculptures are also strong while ductile, or lacking in brittleness, allowing figures to be depicted in actions such as leaps and flights. Supports for bronze statues need smaller cross-sections as a result of such qualities, as may be seen in equestrian statues where only two hooves are on the base.

Today’s examples are usually created of ninety percent copper and ten percent tin, while in antiquity bronze works were occasionally created with other elements such as phosphorus, manganese, aluminum, or silicon. Interestingly, far more stone and ceramic works have come down to us through the ages than those made of bronze, as the metal was quite precious and frequently melted down to produce new sculptures or weapons and armor in times of war.

Thus, really few large examples in bronze are available from ancient times, and of these most aren’t in good condition. Indeed, most works exhibited in museums, while still full of the evidence of wear and tear, have been painstakingly restored to a quality suitable for display.

Working successfully with bronze usually requires a high level of skill, and a number of distinct casting processes may need to be employed, such as lost-wax casting as well as the related modern-day technique of investment casting. Other methods include sand casting and centrifugal casting.

After final polishing, corrosive materials may be applied to bronze works in order to form a patina or film produced by oxidation or some other chemical procedure and establish some control over the color and finish. For example, reactive chemicals might be applied to produce a novel marble-like appearance.

Plastic water tanks are a far cry from the armored behemoths also called tanks, but they do share a curious historical connection. Yes, that’s correct, modern plastics were developed after World War II, while tanks first made their debut in the waning years of the Great War, but there is something of a relationship.

Although not plastic water tanks, military tanks had been first so named by their British inventors in an effort to cover their research and development. It was hoped that by classifying these inventions basically as “tanks” on paper, any German spies who might have gotten a hold of the secret documents that referred to them could maybe be mislead. As it turned out, the label stuck and tanks have been referred to as just that ever since.

In English, anyway. In German, and numerous other languages, they’re known as only “armor,” a much more appropriate term that is a recognized synonym in the English-speaking world, particularly among military circles. A far cry from today’s plastic water tanks indeed, but the notion is never far away in the minds of military history buffs.

The connection is a little more than simply etymological, really, as the earliest designs did look like nothing more than basic water tanks to those who had the security clearance to see them. Tanks have dominated the battlefield for over sixty years, and even these days they form the core of most conventional land warfare tactics.

The appearance of attack helicopters and guided missiles have greatly reduced their striking power, and also the asymmetrical warfare prevalent in conflicts these days render them ill-suited for most missions, but nothing on the horizon can match the tank in its useful combination of firepower, maneuverability, and defensive capacity. Though less used, the tank still figures eminently in offensive tactics and grand strategy and should find a role for itself in the decades yet to come.

Surgical masks are most frequently worn by health professionals, but in several Asian countries they are worn simply as a way of protecting oneself from the smog, a common problem in that part of the world. Asians also wear surgical masks when sick in order to not infect anybody else. Interestingly, such a basic everyday thing is involved in one of the most uncanny of popular legends in Japan.

Kuchisake Onna, or “slit-mouthed woman” in Japanese, was originally a extremely gorgeous woman whose jealous husband cut her mouth from ear to ear, taunting, “Who will think you are beautiful now!” Ever since then, on foggy nights, she can be seen roaming around in a surgical mask. When she encounters someone, typically youth, she will shyly inquire whether the individual thinks she is beautiful.

If the response is yes, Onna will take off her surgical mask and ask, “How about now?” Different versions of the legend give various outcomes if the answer remains affirmative, all bad: she will either cut the individual from ear to ear to resemble herself or kill the person – or both – or, inexplicably, give a large blood-soaked ruby and walk away.

Different versions of this tale offer for the same general set of options even if the original answer had been negative – mutilation or murder. Basically, meeting Kuchisake Onna is bad luck. However, more modern versions nowadays advise that responding “You’re average” or “So-so” or even asking her what she thinks of one’s own beauty will turn the tables on her and confuse her, providing an opportunity to escape.

And, in one of those only-in-Japan kind of things, there’s even the tactic of basically informing her that you must be on your way, so as to embarrass her for forgetting her manners and making her excuse herself from your presence!

New York City is a great place to live if you have the means to live in a great neighborhood. However, while rents are very high, industry experts like Isaac Toussie say that it is still possible to find fair honest deals where you get a lot of space in return, among other things. Many factors go into any consideration, such as convenience and access, look and feel, and noise levels. Here is a survey of some neighborhoods that offer a good balance of all these factors in relation to typical prices.

For the most part, we will consider only Queens and Brooklyn neighborhoods, as these are the ones that best fit our criteria for all-around value. The other boroughs are either too expensive or too run-down, as in the case of Manhattan and the Bronx, respectively, or just too remote and isolated, as with the case of Staten Island. Of course, the Bronx does have nice neighborhoods, too, but these are going to be expensive, and you’ll have to avoid the rest of your borough if you want to see something civilized. Industry observers like Isaac Toussie note that while Manhattan also has its pockets of urban blight, anything decent is going to be astronomically priced. Staten Island is just another world altogether and you might as well not bother living in New York City, then!

So Queens and Brooklyn it is. Brooklyn is by far the more storied of the two, with more offerings of high-brow culture if that’s important to you. Queens offers culinary adventurers the best experience outside Manhattan, and the most authentic tastes at any price. Queens also tends to be much more diverse, whereas Brooklyn practically invented the ethnic enclave. Finally, Queens schools are better on average, whereas Brooklyn’s, while good, trails far behind in overall comparison.

So what are these great “nabes” and where are they? Well, in Brooklyn you will want Williamsburg and Greenpoint for the bohemian scene. Good, real middle-class areas include Bensonhurst, Gravesend, Bath Beach, Bay Ridge, Fort Hamilton, and Midwood. Canarsie would have once made the cut but has been on its way down. Borough Park seems like an “in-between” situation and can still swing either way. Your basically upper middle-class places are Dyker Heights, Marine Park, Brighton Beach, and Sheepshead Bay.

In Queens the toniest nabes are Forest Hills and Kew Gardens. Almost as good are Flushing (and East Flushing) and Bayside. Astoria is known for its night life. Sunnyside, Woodside, Ridgewood, and Elmhurst (but avoid East Elmhurst) are more working-class but still often quite civilized to live in. Middle Village, Queens Village, Maspeth, and Juniper Valley are demographically between the working and (true) middle classes.

Outside these areas, you’ll probably want to avoid. We’ll cover those in another article. But suffice it to say, even the areas mentioned here can be undesirable on their “border areas,” where they abut the urban blight of the next neighborhood over, as implied in the case of Elmhurst and East Elmhurst mentioned earlier. So exercise all due diligence and thoroughly investigate a neighborhood with some direct experience!

A webinar is a webcast that offers limited interactivity, for example audience polling or a brief Q&A session afterwards. If you think about it, however, the state of today’s webinars are not that much removed from something such as amusement rides like Oztrek by New York entrepreneur Zalman Silber. These are IMAX-like experiences that are passive, with no audience interaction, the only difference from a traditional movie screening being the synchronized motion seating effects involved.

But a webinar is more an online workshop than multimedia entertainment. Something like the Army Virtual Experience, or VAE, however, works to combine both aspects, possibly portending the future.

The VAE is really a mobile infantry combat simulator that allows participants to get a small taste of soldiering under extremely hostile environments. Created by the United States Army in conjunction with American software developer Zombie Studios, full-sized Blackhawk helicopter and full-sized Humvee vehicle simulators are employed to further develop the sense of realistic immersion. It is a mobile infantry combat simulator, available in a handful of different versions from full-sized to traveling packages suitable for indoor or outdoor installations. It was developed as a response to the increased appetite of young American males for electronic forms of entertainment, augmenting traditional advertising efforts on television. In two years and at a cost of almost twenty million dollars, the VAE has been hosted at a variety of sites throughout forty states at venues ranging from NASCAR races to music festivals.

Available in different versions, the full VAE requires just under twenty-thousand square-feet of room for all the various aspects of the simulation technology involved, from the aforementioned life-sized replicas of Army machinery to the various computers and networking equipment necessary for bringing it all together to life. It’s a long ways off from the kind of passive technology deployed by amusement rides such as the Oztrek by serial entrepreneur Zalman Silber. Employing a huge IMAX-like screen with motion seating that is activated in synchronization with onscreen events and actions, this type of immersive experience is purposefully safe and innocuous, suitable for the general family-oriented audiences it seeks. By contrast, the VAE leans heavily towards young males, with an emphasis on fire-and-forget gameplay. The full-version starts off in a traditional manner similar to something like the aforementioned Oztrek, with a twenty-minute ride in which video briefings are given by various soldiers of the United States Army explaining their areas of expertise and specialized duties as well as their personal goals outside of the military. But the similarity to yesteryear’s virtual tours soon ends as participants go on to engage in any number of war-fighting scenarios from inside life-sized Blackhawk and Humvee simulators.

Adoption screening is a process that takes into account many elements in determining the suitability of a child and would-be father or mother. It is usually used to ascertain that the prospective parent has the means, financial and otherwise, to make the adoption a successful one. Adoption screening could be complicated, though perhaps unfortunately it is often a mere formality in many parts of the world, including even North America, Australia, New Zealand, as well as the European Union.

One of the most complex tasks of the overall adoption screening procedure involves a home study. This is when the home life of a prospective mother or father is scrutinized to make sure that the home environment will benefit the child to be adopted. As can be imagined, such a thorough vetting can cost a lot of money, typically borne by the prospective father or mother.

Various laws, agency regulations, and industry standards might govern a home study, but generally speaking all such investigations will look into the employment history of the prospective mother or father, whether there’s a criminal record, and so forth. Credit checks will most likely be involved, as personal finances would be one of the most important areas subject to an examination. As the name most immediately implies, however, a home study will carefully take into account the dwelling of a prospective father or mother, with such factors as cleanliness, fire safety, and even the condition of the surrounding neighborhood taken into account.

Naturally, given such levels of scrutiny, many criticize home studies for being uselessly intrusive and discriminatory, claiming that many otherwise perfectly capable and genuinely loving would-be adoptive parents are turned away on nothing more than whimsy and technicalities.

But such is the concern for child welfare in the most advanced societies that home studies are legally mandated and thus inevitable. And for all the criticism, it is arguable that a slow, even difficult, adoption process better helps ensure that only the truly committed will adopt.

It is essential to do your homework when it comes to investing in New York properties. New York City is a very diverse place, and even adjacent neighborhoods can be drastically dissimilar, never mind those in different boroughs. According to industry experts such as Isaac Toussie, nothing is as it seems, and if you are looking for residential property that you plan on living in yourself, you might even want to arrange to spend a few nights on the premises to really know personally what it’s like. For example, many peaceful-looking places are actually not peaceful at all but deadly, ridden with crime and pollution and a host of other social ills. Even when it comes to commercial real estate, things may not be as they seem. Developers like Isaac Toussie are common in this town, and to stand apart from the crowd you need to be known for something more than simply a hole in the ground of an empty lot.

New York real estate markets are one of a kind in many categories, including population density. As an investor you want to thoroughly explore them all before proceeding to a decision of any financial importance. It is often useful to think of different neighborhoods as cities or towns in themselves, which was indeed actually the historical case. Such an artificial view of the city would not suffice long-term, but it can be usefully dabbled in from time to time for specific purposes. For example, it is not uncommon to find the direst poverty fairly close to some of the most opulent luxury. As an investor in New York property you want to be aware of this possibility so as to not miss any good opportunities simply on account of ignorance.

When looking for property in New York City, you must consider the people, especially when it comes to homes for yourself or potential tenants. Ultimately, the people are what will determine the quality of life. Will it be a noisy place? Full of trash? Or does the local community take some pride in itself, without any kids running around making mischief?

Even when it comes to the commercial side of things such deliberations are important. If you have space for rent but the neighbors are lower class people, you probably won’t get any upscale businesses looking to sign a lease with you, even with all the governmental encouragement there is, such as tax breaks and the like.

It’s a delicate balance, which is part of the reason why rents are so high in the city. But what to do as an investor?

Watch. And learn. You can never learn enough about such an exciting, dynamic city, and you never can tell just when such knowledge may be put to good use. Why not bicycle around to get a good feel for a place? New York City has ambitions to become one of the most bicycle-friendly municipalities in the country, and this is one of the best ways to transport yourself through different places in order to get a personal feel for them.

After the miserable, fiery tailspin the world economy has slipped into, a growing number of people have been forced to rely upon credit when under ideal conditions they wouldn’t have, resulting in many people suffering harsh blows to their credit score because they are simply not in a situation to effectively use credit, but are left with no other choice. As such, a credit score increase is much sought after by a great many people being affected by credit card debt. Especially if given the attention to that matter immediately can make it easier for credit repair.

Credit score, being a numerical measure of one’s potential and competence in handling and paying off credit, is important for any large financial decisions in one’s life. For example buying a house, or a vehicle, or applying for various loans all require a decent credit score, given that these are purchases very, very few people can afford in one down payment (or in the case of loans, obviously can’t afford, otherwise there is simply zero reason to apply for one). However, people with bad credit scores – who are generally in that situation to begin with because of financial difficulty – are often not able to acquire these things, which sometimes are even necessary for them to improve their financial situation, resulting in a sticky catch-22 that is quite challenging to escape. Therefore, for people with bad credit it is essential to make attempts towards a credit score increase.

It takes a lot of hard work and time to net a credit score increase – sometimes as long as ten years before a substantial credit score increase can resurrect one from financial ruin. And in spite of the incompetence and irresponsibility formerly required to sink that low in America’s strong economy of the 1990s, many people just can’t afford it in an economic climate that has so suddenly and rapidly declined. To make any significant credit score increase one must rigorously apply oneself to a carefully outlined financial discipline that will allow them to consistently and decisively pay off debt and use credit to their advantage.

Because everyone lives a different lifestyle, in different circumstances, in different economic environments (which differ drastically across various states and parts of the country), there is no one set technique that will apply to everyone. And because many people are entangled in such fiscal disarray worsened by a myriad of factors (dependents, income, taxes, housing expenses, etc), the task of increasing one’s credit score may seem very overwhelming.

Fortunately, there are companies and services whose sole design is to help people improve their credit. Using their specialized understanding of the esoteric world of finance unavailable to those who live outside the Wall Street Journal and CNBC’s Mad Money, these companies apply their abilities to your particular situation for a modest fee that is far outweighed by the sheer amount of debt you can erase, thus making a good credit score increase.

When getting into anything, it helps to do a little reconnoitering of the facts, even for a professional developer such as Isaac Toussie. And for the correct socioeconomic context in which to put such data, it helps to consult governmental findings such as census reports.

New York’s median annual household income is almost forty-three and a half thousand dollars, compared with the national average of just under forty-two thousand every year. The state median family income also comes out ever-so-slightly ahead of the national figure at over fifty-one thousand versus just over fifty-thousand per annum. As might be imagined, per capita differences show the same general ratio at almost twenty-three and a half thousand to over twenty-one and a half thousand, respectively.

Some more facts and figures need to be taken into consideration for a well-rounded appraisal of realty trend lines in New York, but these pertain more specifically to real estate: the median value of owner-occupied housing units is well over a hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars, almost thirty thousand dollars more than the national average of only over one hundred and nineteen thousand. Curiously, the asking price for housing units statewide compared to nationwide posted only a slight difference of about five thousand dollars, at well over ninety-four thousand dollars to only over eighty-nine thousand, respectively.

Average sales prices for homes in the Empire State have normally been between two hundred and three hundred thousand dollars for four bedroom units, the most expensive category of housing. However, extremely dramatic spikes and drops have been posted periodically, such that gains of up to over seven hundred thousand dollars were reached. Such surges and declines have not lasted more than a year, and because the drop-offs have only very rarely fell past previous baseline levels, they may have been viewed as simple market corrections instead of anything more ominous. In fact, other categories of housing – that is, one, two, three, and even four-bedroom units – have held rather steadily for a decade, rising only gradually from an average of around one hundred thousand to no more than two hundred thousand almost ten years later. When considering just one and two-bedroom homes, prices have only appreciated around fifty-thousand dollars in eight years.

It can be deduced that New York’s residential real estate market is fairly stable on the whole. The recent economic woes troubling the nation have certainly made an impact, but residential realty statewide seems to have endured it fairly well, all things considered. After all, this is the capital of the world we’re dealing with here!

That means that New York City will forever be bustling with economic activity, and the state along with it in a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats fashion. Local developers like
Isaac Toussie find home prices of half a million not at all unusual, and should be regarded as the “entry-level” price one should expect to pay, even for somewhat dilapidated structures in some of the city’s worst neighborhoods. Rents are probably even more incredible, with people actually leasing out their walk-in closets as rooms!