TV series seeking historic homeowners in Detroit

A television production company is looking for owners of historic homeowners in the Detroit metropolitian area who are overwhelmed with the restorations that they need.

This is an incredible opportunity to get expert help from a seasoned professional and to be featured in an all-new television show on a major cable network.

Historic homes should be at least 50 years old or older and be in the metro Detroit area. Clients should have a budget in place and be interested and ready to restore their home within the next three months.

Interested homeowners should email tvhomecasting [at] gmail [dot] com. With the following information:

• Full name(s)
• Location (Must be in the Detroit area)
• Contact information (Email & Phone)
• Brief bio explaining why you need/deserve help restoring your historical home
• Several photos of yourselves and the property

I look forward to seeing some of my readers on television soon.

Gas prices drop in Detroit

Refueling a car - Photo by Andreas160578/Pixabay

Gas prices across Michigan are down an average of 7 cents compared to last week, according to research compiled by AAA of Michigan.  Michigan drivers are now paying an average of $2.53 per gallon for regular unleaded. This price is 8 cents cheaper than this time last month but 44 cents more than this time last year.

Gas prices in the Warrendale area range from $2.39 per gallon for regular unleaded to $2.47 per gallon. This includes both the stations in the Warrendale neighborhood of Detroit as well as those nearby in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights.

Motorists are paying an average of $38 for a full 15-gallon tank of gasoline. This is a discount of $6 from when prices were their highest last July.

“Many motorists across the nation saw gas prices increase last week as a record number of travelers hit the road for the year-end holidays,” said Adrienne Woodland, spokesperson, AAA-The Auto Club Group. “Michigan drivers are now seeing a decrease in prices following the holidays.”

Compared to last week, Metro Detroit’s average daily gas price decreased slightly. Metro Detroit’s current average is $2.57 per gallon, 3 cents less than last week’s average and 53 cents more than this time last year.

The most expensive gas price averages are in Ann Arbor ($2.60), Metro Detroit ($2.57), and Flint ($2.50). Meanwhile the cheapest gas price averages are in Traverse City ($2.34), Jackson ($2.42), and Grand Rapids ($2.45).

Tech training in Detroit

Computer technology - Photo by Daniel Agrelo/Pixabay

Early this morning, the folks at WalletHub released a report that named Detroit the worst city in America to find a job in. I posted my analysis and commentary about it over here. A few minutes after that post went live, I received an email announcing that one of the country’s largest free tech training programs, NPower, is launching in Detroit this month.

NPower providing free tech work training to minorities, former felons and veterans right from their location in the New Center area.

They have already empowered neglected communities in Baltimore, Harlem, Brooklyn, Jersey City, St. Louis and Dallas. They offer programs that teach basic coding skills, cyber security, and tech fundamentals. The nonprofit has had so much success in these cities, they’ve now launched in Detroit.

In Detroit and Southeast Michigan, NPower will connect young adults from some of the most dangerous and impoverished neighborhoods to the fast-growing companies in the area who are in urgent need of tech workers. Equipping these students with tech skills will also help bring new business into the city.

NPower’s new Executive Director - Camille Walker Banks - is a Detroit native. She has more than 20 years of experience creating 5,000 new jobs and generating $5.5B in capital investment for the city.

Anyway, the fact that all of this happened right after that other was report was released about the job market in Detroit’s inner city. Quite frankly, I think this re-enforces my earlier point that Detroiters need to keep plugging along. If we do that, I’m confident that the improvements that we need to happen will happen.

Detroit named worst city to find a job

Landing a job - Photo by FotografieLink/Pixabay

As national unemployment figures continue to be at historic lows, the personal finance website WalletHub ranked Detroit to be the worst city for one to find a job in. This was the result of their researching into a total of 182 American cities and the labor market in those communities.

According to statistics from the Labor Department, the unemployment rate is 3.5% at the national level. Michigan meanwhile ranks 38th with a statewide unemployment rate of 4% and Wayne County has an unemployment rate of 4.5%. Detroit is clearly still behind the rest of Michigan and the rest of the nation.

For their rankings, the staff at WalletHub looked at nine different areas related to finding a job. They compiled data from government and other sources related to those nine areas to determine a ranking in each category. Detroit’s status as the worst place to find a job is a composite of those nine areas.

Rankings in the individual categories did, however, show some positive signs for Detroit. For example, Detroit ranked 23rd out of 182 cities in terms of employment growth. The problem, of course, is that even though Detroit is growing faster than the national average, our city still has a long way to go.

The nine areas that researchers from WalletHub looked at for this ranking are:

• Average work and commute time where Detroit ranked 40th;
• Employment growth where we came in with the 23rd fastest growth;
• Housing affordability where the Motor City ranked 33rd most affordable;
• Industry variety where the city ranked 165th least;
• Job opportunities where Motown ranked 179th lowest;
• Median annual income where we ranked 178th lowest;
• Monthly average starting salary where we came in 72nd;
• Percent of workforce living in poverty where Detroit was the 181st highest; and
• Unemployment rate where we are the 180th highest of the 182 cities.

Taken together, this means that we ranked as better than average in four of the nine categories. It really is the remaining five areas where we are doing so badly.

The key takeaways from all of this, in my opinion, are two points. First, Detroit has made a lot of progress in recent years, particularly in the area of overall employment growth. The strategic neighborhood initiative has been showing some real progress, which I discussed earlier.The housing market is continuing to improve as previously reported. However, we still have a long way to go on our journey to recovery.

Anyone who is interested can download the full report from WalletHub is available for free from here. As for Detroit and its job market, I believe the best thing for us to do is to keep doing what we’ve been doing since leaving bankruptcy. It took us almost half a century to hit rock bottom. It will take several more years for our community to recover.

As always, each step along this journey will be chronicled in this blog. Please subscribe to get regular updates by entering your email address in the upper right corner of this site or by subscribing to one of the RSS feeds. You can also follow along via the Facebook page for this blog.

This post is a part of this blog's semi-regular Friday Focus series, which endeavors to highlight news and opinions that, in my opinion, don't get as much attention as they deserve.

Please follow this blog on Facebook for more great content. I'm also on Twitter and Instagram as @fnemecek.

From Detroit to Israel

Israeli flag - Photo by Eduardo Castro/Pixabay

I don't know what exactly is going on in Israel right now. However, according to Google Analytics, 1,400 Israelis have visited the Warrendale Detroit Blog in the past 24 hours.

To put this in perspective, this blog normally gets anywhere from 5,100 - 5,600 unique visits per month. 1,400 visitors within one day is simply off the charts. For them to all be from Israel on top of that is confusing as heck.

Anyway, on behalf of all of my normal readers in the Detroit area to all of my new readers from Israel, welcome to the party.

Update @ 7:23 p.m.
I'm looking at news stories from Israel. I see that their Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has requested immunity from corruption charges.

Did someone somewhere mention Benjamin Netanyahu and Kwame Kilpatrick in the same sentence?

I don't know if that actually happened. It's just the only thing that I can think of that might send that much traffic from Israel to this blog.

If anyone else has an idea as what would get that many people from Israel to visit a blog about life in Detroit's Warrendale neighborhood all of a sudden, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Happy New Year, Detroit

2020, Happy New Year - Image by Annalise Batista/Pixabay

2020 is only about 90 minutes old as I'm typing this. Regardless, I want to take a brief moment to wish a very happy New Year to everyone in Detroit's Warrendale neighborhood and beyond.

2019 was a really good year for me personally and for this blog. I look forward to a 2020 that will be absolutely amazing.

Most importantly of all, though, I look forward to sharing everything that this new year has to offer - the good things, the bad things, and all of the things in between - with all of my neighbors and readers.

Happy New Year, everyone!

What is better? Term insurance or whole life?

Couple looks to the future - Photo by Tatyana Kasova/Pixabay

One of the most frequently debated questions as it relates to financial planning and personal finance is debate surrounding what type of life insurance a family should have. Everyone seems to agree that life insurance itself is a good idea. However, when the question becomes whether to go for a term policy, which is only good for a set number of years, or for a whole life or universal life insurance policy that is permanent - well, it was an age old debate when I started working for Merrill Lynch back in the 1990s. More than 25 years later, this debate still hasn’t been settled.

I'm my opinion, the entire term insurance versus whole life debate boils down to two questions that everyone has to answer for themselves. There aren’t any purely right or wrong answers in this debate; only one that is right or wrong for your own unique circumstances.

The first question related to this life insurance debate is:can you afford to buy enough coverage to protect your family with a whole life policy?

If you can afford a whole life insurance policy that provides enough coverage to protect your family adequately, great. A whole life or universal life policy might actually be a good idea for you to consider. However, if you cannot afford as much coverage as you need with a whole life policy then, in my opinion, you have to go with a term policy.

In my professional opinion as an insurance agent who blogs about his neighborhood as a passion project, it is always better to have a term life policy that gives your family the coverage and protection that you need rather than a whole life policy that doesn’t.

The second question that I believe one should ask is: what would happen to your family if you died the day after a term policy expired?

Let’s say, as an example, that you're comparing whole life police and a 30-year term one. If you are confident that 30 years and one day from now, your kids will be on their own, your mortgage will be paid off, your spouse won't need your income, and you're not going to have to get a new policy then, by all means, go with a term policy.

Take the difference between your term and whole life policies and invest it or - if you prefer - buy an even bigger boat.

However, and I cannot stress this enough, having to get a new life insurance policy 30 years from now will be a disaster in the making for you. At minimum, you will be 30 years older and that means your rates will be drastically higher.

Plus, there is also a very real possibility that your health will be worse 30 years from now than it is today. This, in turn, raises the possibility that you won’t even be able to get a new life insurance policy when your term one expires.

And there you have it, the two questions that I believe will enable every American family to decide for themselves whether a term insurance policy or a whole life one is better for them.

These tips are brought to you by the Warrendale Detroit Blog as part of our Tip of the Week series. Please check back next week for more advice on your home, money, and life. The rest of the tips are avilable here.

Please feel free to follow the author Frank Nemecek on Twitter and Instagram as @fnemecek for more great content.