On Friday, U.S. markets cheered after taking a look at unemployment numbers. Unemployment rate is at the lowest level since December 2008. U.S. Labor Department also significantly raised hiring estimates for the two prior months, by a combined 114,000 jobs. Without much argument, this is clearly a sign of economic recovery in U.S. But, the question is will it sustain? Especially with crazy housing boom (and the subsequent bidding wars for real estate properties) in many parts of the country.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 142.38 points, or 1%, to 14973.96. In an interesting development, gold futures are losing momentum which may indicate that investors are willing to sell gold to move back into stocks. Investors start accumulating gold when they feel that other investments are relatively worse and gold is the safe bet. They start selling gold when they feel that other investments are relatively better off.

Some Fed officials are adjusting their hopes for a stronger economic rebound. Economic growth has averaged about 2% a year during the recovery. “We are likely to see brief swings above and below that rate from time to time, but I don’t see a compelling case for a sustained departure anytime soon,” Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Richmond Fed, said in a speech Friday.

It’s not all rosy. The Institute for Supply Management’s non-manufacturing index released on Friday fell to 53.1 in April, from 54.4 in March. This index is still above 50 which typically indicates improvement for the service sector. However, the decline from previous month is something to watch out for.

We discussed about keeping your passwords strong and safe few days ago. It’s great that you choose a strong password and keep it secret. What if you suddenly depart this world and your loved ones do not know the passwords to your bank or stock accounts? Wall Street Journal published an article about this two years ago. You can find that here. If you can, follow the details in that article. Or share your passwords with your spouse or someone who is really really close to you. If you do share your passwords with others, do not just write down all the details in one sheet of paper. Write at least two sheets of paper. In one sheet, write down the usernames of the financial accounts. In another sheet, write down the passwords. Then, keep the papers in separate rooms. Ok, here is the important stuff. When you write down the passwords, do not write the entire thing. Keep it little cryptic and let the person you share with know how to decrypt it.

Let me give an example. If the password is “ILoveYouJane4Life1999″, write down the password as “ILoveYouJJJJ4LifeWEDDINGYEAR” and let your spouse/friend know the meaning of JJJJ and WEDDINGYEAR. You can play around with this basic idea. Come up with some words/phrases/numbers that are important for both you and the person sharing the password. Stick with pen and paper. Do not write down your plain text passwords in a document in your computer!

If you are bi-lingual, you can add more spice to your cryptic passwords. Sprinkle other language phrases in your cryptic password and let your spouse/friend knows about that too. I am assuming that your spouse/friend knows that language as well. For example, if you and your spouse knows Hindi, your cryptic password will be “IPyarYouJJJJ4LifeWEDDINGYEAR”. If someone breaks into your house and manage to steal both sheets of secret papers, that guy needs to know a lot before he can crack your secret code. Finally… remember to update your papers when you change your passwords for your online accounts.

If you are tech savvy, try tools like Password Safe and share just the master password with your spouse. I would personally stick with pen and paper rather than using Password Safe tool unless I have dozens of bank accounts! Password Safe tool recommends you to copy/paste the username and password from its database to web form. If someone is recording your keystrokes, you are out of luck. I prefer On-Screen keyboard that comes with most operating systems and anti-virus software products to enter the password in the online forms.

Whew… It seems to me that simplest thing would be to get rid of all online accounts!

If you want cheaper or free internet access, check out FreedomPop. It is offering 1 GB/month free of charge to any user who signs up for service. There is a catch though… you need to buy FreedomPop’s $89 home WiMAX router. Not too bad, because it’s a one-time charge. If you want higher data plan like 10GB per month, it would cost $10 per month. “Freemium” is the new marketing mantra. Companies give you something for free and try to influence you to buy more stuff from them. FreedomPop hopes that free users would eventually convert to paid users.

If you watch Netflix at home, you will be better off sticking with your local provider. FreedomPop is only for the users who use Internet only for casual browsing and emails. For heavy users, 1GB data plan won’t last even a day.

In the last 5 weeks, almost all major websites were hacked. Facebook and Apple included. There are serious attempts to hack into all leading banks in USA and other parts of the world. If you have online banking accounts, it’s wise to change your password every month. If you live in a country where you don’t have legal protection if your online banking account is compromised, you should seriously think about disabling online banking access. No kidding.

Security company Mandiant identified the People’s Liberation Army’s Shanghai-based Unit 61398 as the most likely driving force behind the recent hack attacks. In response to this allegation, China claims cyber attacks on its defense units originate from U.S. What the hell?!

This crap is not going to stop in the near future. If you stop using internet and emails, you may not need to deal with the spams and hackers. If your job or business or social life demands you to use internet, there is no escape. People like me deal with the spammers and hackers on day to day basis. One of the leading banks sent me email few weeks ago stating that someone used wrong password three times to log in to my account. So, the bank asked me to follow a link to reset my password. I think “someone using wrong password” is the drama staged by the bank. Their system was probably compromised and they were trying to save their face. Some companies like Evernote is very upfront and acknowledge the security breach.

It’s better to play it safe. Assume that the websites you frequently visit can be hacked. Be paranoid and change your password. When you change your password do not keep as “test1234″, “temp999″ or “<yourname>123″. Keep your password really strong.

We wrote “Is it the right time to buy a house?” in Feb 2009. We got some criticism for our post (check out the comments in that post). Market slowly recovered since then. Real estate market picked up momentum in 2011. Now, the hot news is “Single family home prices rose in September for 8th straight month”. Real estate market picks up the momentum slowly. The market doesn’t behave like Apple stock. It won’t go up and down 4% in one day.

Our article in 2009 encouraged the buyers who could afford to pay for the house. Whoever acted then would be happy now. The S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas gained 0.4 percent in September on a seasonally adjusted basis, in line with economists’ forecasts. Prices in the 20 cities rose 3.0 percent year over year, just topping expectations for a rise of 2.9 percent. More on this at NBC news. In some housing markets, sellers are getting multiple offers from buyers. I hope the market won’t go back to craziness of 2006.

U.S. economy is definitely on the recovery mode. Housing data is positive in the recent weeks. Recently, The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its services index rose to 54.7 in November from 54.2 in October. The reading topped economists’ forecasts for growth of 53.5, according to a Reuters survey. Any reading above 50 is the good news; it indicates the expansion in services sector.

The survey’s business activity index also jumped to 61.2 in November from 55.4 in October. On the negative side, the employment index fell to 50.3 from 54.9. It’s better to keep an eye on ISM indexes to gauge the growth of the economy especially if you are an investor.

Median FICO credit score is 723 and the possible high score is 850. If your credit score is better than 723, pat yourself on the back.  If not, check out this article from Wall Street Journal. Basically, it boils down to the following:

1. Pay your bills on time.
2. Have low credit-utilization. For example, if you have $10,000 credit available to you, use only $3,000 max from that credit line. Wall Street Journal article claims that “you cant have too much credit”. I doubt it. Keep the limit on total credit available to you. Do not respond to all credit card offers that are coming your way. Also, keep the limit on your spending. That should take care of it.
3. Don’t get into collection mess.

This year, we had Black Thursday as well. Lot of retailers announced their Friday plans on Thursday. Frys.com announced their Friday deals on Thursday early morning and encouraged customers to confirm their orders on Thursday to pick up the orders from stores on Friday. Office Depot disclosed all the deals (HP Envy Laptop worth $799 for $499!) in its website on Thursday. If you got up in regular hours today, don’t worry about missing the deals. Some deals are still there. Checkout http://us.gizmodo.com/dealzmodo/ for deals that are due Shiny Sunday/Cyber Monday.

Customers associate black friday with bargain prices. Department store guys use their marketing tactics to advertise “fake deals” as deals. How about that? Wall Street Journal has more on this topic. Bottom line is that do your research. The price you see on Black Friday may not be cheapest price the store has offered.

Costco.com kicked off Thanksgiving deals yesterday. Amazon did this as well. Walmart is kicking off Cyberweek on 11/24 Saturday. Go get these deals!