It's been a while since we here at Don't Quit Your Day Job have collaborated with another site to give you some original epic pieces. Today, we rectify that by teaming up with the inimitable ADP at American Debt Project. ADP is one of the good ones - a debt blogger who is actually seeing declining debt. And isn't that the way the debt genre is supposed to work? (And almost never does?). Follow her progress as she does what so few others do.

ADP came to us with a curious question: Can we use building statistics to see when economies become overheated? Basically, she wanted to know if watching building trends and construction would provide any clues to where an economy is headed. Evidence is slim, but let's take a look at the numbers and see what we can figure out!

Welcome to another glorious Weekender with your leader PK!

Spoiler alert for anyone who is still ignoring the Presidential race, Republican Mitt Romney has picked Paul Ryan (a Representative from Wisconsin) as his running mate (and President Barack Obama and Joe Biden work out some kinks). The battle has already begun as each campaign has pivoted from talking about the economy to talking about how their opponent will cut Medicare to the bone, and leave millions of seniors without health care options. If talking about Social Security and Medicare is the third rail of American politics, then the best way to describe it would be to say that the candidates are trying to push their opponents onto the track.

Sports are a funny thing, especially on an international stage. All sorts of sappy lines have been spilled about international sports - that they are a base of the global community, they foster goodwill between nations, they celebrate the world coming together. Let's cut to the chase - sports were originally a pretty solid tool to develop better, stronger, faster soldiers, at least before automation and weaponry closed the gap. Even look at the word which denotes a follower or supporter of a team - 'fan'. That word, of course, is short for 'fanatic', which describes excessive devotion to something - whether religion, politics, or yes... sports. Yes, if international sports is good for one thing - it's as a proxy for war. I'd much rather Ireland and Great Britain battled it out on a track than a battlefield. Same goes for China and the US, the ultimate rivalry of the last two games.

"Oh, I don't invest in stocks. They're too risky" said a young (urban) professional friend of mine. Five minutes later he was reconsidering that statement, and you'll be happy to know he's now the proud owner of some stock (well, at least some stock mutual funds).

Well, The Olympics are almost over and it's looking likely that the United States will take the overall medal count, and possibly the gold medal count too. There's nothing like a medal count victory on the world stage to get those patriotic fires burning...

I've made the warning before... and I'll make it again: be wary of false precision. This time, in particular, I'm talking about political odds - yes, of the very sort I now display prominently on the right sidebar of this very site!

One important thing to have an idea of - for personal and business reasons - is the amount of inflation expected in the future. Think about it - by having a reasonable number to plan for the erosion of the value of your money, you will better be able to make decisions on what loans to take out, what purchases to make, and how to invest.

Luckily for you, there are a few ways to gauge these predictions, which don't resort to guessing, praying, or going to a fortune teller. The methods are also more sophisticated than taking the last few years worth of data, drawing a trend line, and attempting to extrapolate future results.

Who's having as much fun watching the Olympics as me? I, for one, am definitely getting into random events that I probably won't care about for another 4 years.

Well, sports is a proxy for war, and it's better I cheer for athletic prowess than battle, right?

"Ask yourself, 'Are you better off now than you were four years ago?'” implored Ronald Reagan in his debate against President Jimmy Carter on October 28, 1980. Maybe it seems like the United States is on the cusp of a second recession, but in one key measure the US is finally starting to outpace inflation and population growth.

That measure? Real Personal Income - personal income deflated by the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index - is on a definite upswing. The personal income component is defined as all income earned from production and from transfer payments from both business and government.