Blog Posts by Lisa Scherzer

Are you getting a $25 discount on your monthly health insurance premiums for keeping your BMI between 22 and 25 or your cholesterol below 200?

If you haven’t been getting extra cash from your employer for keeping fit and healthy, just wait. More companies are rewarding workers – and penalizing others – based on their health habits.

As health care costs continue to take a bite out of corporate bottom lines, employers are aggressively trying to ease the burden. And more of them are turning to wellness programs as a possible answer to these escalating costs. But their potential to actually generate savings is coming under scrutiny.

The idea behind these programs: Healthier workers are more productive and carry lower medical costs than their unhealthy co-workers.

A win-win for both employer and employee, right? Maybe not. (More on that later.)

Climbing costs

Employers expect average total health-care costs for active employees to reach $12,136 in 2013, up 5.1% from $11,457 in 2012,

In a sign that American consumers' restraint may be easing, household debt rose at the end of last year after four years of declines.

In the fourth quarter of 2012, outstanding consumer debt rose 0.3% -- or $31 billion -- from the previous quarter to total $11.34 trillion, according to the latest report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Total debt, though, is still considerably lower than its peak of $12.68 trillion in the third quarter of 2008, at the beginning of the financial crisis.

Mortgage debt, by far the largest component of household debt, was about flat in the fourth quarter at $8.6 trillion. Non-housing debt is where the increase came, particularly student loans, which increased $10 billion from the previous quarter to $966 billion. In fact, student debt was the only type of consumer borrowing that continued to rise through the Great Recession and now has the second-largest balance after mortgage debt.

“The data provides early evidence that consumers may be reaching

Life expectancy has exceeded 80 in several countries as many have made huge strides in reducing mortality rates. Life spans have increased so much over the past 100 or so years that, evolutionarily speaking, 72 is the new 30, says a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany used hunter-gatherer mortality data as a baseline to measure the rate of mortality reduction and how the probability of dying at specific ages has changed over time. They found that the bulk of mortality reduction has occurred since 1900 and that mortality at younger ages is now 200 times lower than that of previous generations. “The mortality revolution of the last 100 years is biologically unprecedented,” Oskar Burger, one of the study’s authors, said.

The researchers examined Japanese and Swedish men (two countries with the longest life expectancies). Their most striking finding: the mortality rates of

The relatively high pay and high demand for nurses have made it one of a handful of professions attracting more men since the recession shifted the gender-employment picture. And now it looks like male nurses are earning more than their female colleagues.

According to a Census Bureau study published Monday, men account for 9.6% of all nurses in 2011, up from 2.7% in 1970. Male nurses earned, on average, $60,700 a year, while women earned $51,100 per year. (Until recently, the Census Bureau didn’t distinguish among various nursing jobs. Starting in 2010, it split the category of registered nurse into four occupations: registered nurse, nurse anesthetist, nurse midwife and nurse practitioner, and therefore is able to better examine men’s representation in the different occupations.)

Traditionally male professions like manufacturing and construction suffered greatly since the downturn. According to a 2012 brief by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank, the construction sector

"There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means." — Calvin Coolidge

Living within one’s means is the bedrock of financial stability. But for consumers still facing the lingering effects of years of frenzied borrowing and spending that preceded the recession, the sage counsel of our 30th president remains a lofty aspiration — and one out of many people’s grasp.

Financial difficulties rose last month for middle-income households, according to the Consumer Reports Index, an overall measure of Americans' personal financial health. The Trouble Tracker, a measure of financial difficulties, climbed to 37.5 from 32.7 for middle-income Americans. The areas that saw the greatest increase were missed payments on a major bill (other than mortgage) and the inability to afford medical bills or medications.

Whether the trouble stems from the increase in the Social Security payroll tax that hit paychecks in January or a holiday spending

A new app, called Facewash, is the latest tool that aims to save the unsavvy social-network user from himself.

Facewash works by searching the comments posted on your wall, your status updates, comments on photos you’re tagged in, photos you posted, links you’ve ‘liked.” After connecting your Facebook (FB) account, the site scans your profile to find “dirty” words and potentially unsavory photos. Users can also search for specific terms if they think Facewash’s list might have missed something.

The app was launched by three college students as an entry in a hackathon hosted by the University of Pennsylvania last weekend. Facewash’s developers – Camden Fullmer, Daniel Gur, and David Steinberg, all computer science majors at Kent State University in Ohio – discussed the idea for the app on the drive to the competition. They saw the need for such a tool, particularly for college-age young adults like them who use Facebook a lot and probably have “things on there you wouldn’t want a

Think you’ve got a clever, un-hackable password?

You might want to tack on a few numbers to it. Global consulting firm Deloitte released a report Tuesday with an alarming prediction. More than 90% of user-generated passwords will be vulnerable to hacking, the report, prepared by Deloitte’s Canadian Technology, Media & Telecommunications arm, said. Even those passwords traditionally considered strong — with eight characters and a combination of numbers, letters and symbols — are at risk.

It seems like every other week a major company reports its site was hacked in some way. A year ago online shoe store Zappos.com was hacked, exposing the names, email addresses, phone numbers and partial credit card numbers of 24 million customers, the company said. In June networking site LinkedIn confirmed that a major security breach corresponding to LinkedIn accounts compromised users’ passwords. About 400,000 Yahoo email addresses and passwords were hacked last July. (Yahoo! Finance is owned by

Count Wendy’s (WEN) as the latest fast-food restaurant to respond to Obamacare with a reduction in worker hours. Following some other chains that have made headlines recently, a Wendy’s franchise owner in Omaha, Neb., told about 100 workers in the area that their hours would be cut in anticipation of mandates in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

According to a local TV station, the store said that employees in non-management positions will have their hours reduced to 28 a week. A spokesman blamed the cuts on the new law that, beginning in 2014, will require employers to offer health coverage to employees who log at least 30 hours a week, or pay a penalty starting at $2,000 per worker. The Wendy’s spokesman said, as a small-business owner, he can't afford to stay in operation and pay for everyone's health insurance. Under the law, any company that has more than 50 full-time workers falls under the new health insurance mandate.

According to a report from an Oklahoma station on Monday, a