So you're glad you're not a Wall Street trader these days? At least they banked fat salaries and maybe got a golden parachute. The story's not so green at your local restaurant. These are bad times to be a server. Dangerous, even, because their tips have plummeted faster than the Dow Jones.

One New York City waiter has said that the bottom has fallen out for America's service professionals. He wrote that early this year, he'd make about $500 a week over five shifts. This summer, restaurant sales fell for the first time in two and a half years. Today, $270 for a full week is typical. People are guarding their cash, and they aren't coming into restaurants as much anymore. When they do, they're increasingly cheap. The 20% tip, once more or less standard for good service, is a memory. Some customers are merely rounding up to the nearest dollar.

The horror of this comes from the fact that many of our service professionals are vulnerable even in the best of times. They simply don't make an adequate hourly wage -- it's below minimum wage. They usually don't get insurance. They can be fired at the drop of a napkin. The expectations have been that they'd make plenty to live on through their gratuities, and if that failed, they could just switch to another restaurant. But with more people paying less in service charges, and with few places in need of new staff, that is now just a fantasy.

Most customers would never consider walking out of a restaurant without paying their bill in full. That would be theft. But because tips are discretionary, there are plenty of cheapskates who think nothing of bolting without a proper tip, or of justifying a dramatically reduced tip with some minor infraction. And now waiters (and bellhops, and valet parking attendants, and dozens of other ubiquitous workers) are finding it impossible to make their rents.

When your son or daughter applies for educational aid from the government you first have to fill out the FAFSA, a free application which helps determine how much money you as a parent should be able to contribute towards their education. In most cases the dollar amount that you are expected to put towards his or her future is easily way more than you can actually provide.

The Wall Street Journal took a look at one of the additional expenses of sending your child off to college this fall; spending money. It's hard to believe that you'll need more money after you've already covered room and board but students realistically will need some funds to get by. The amounts which several colleges recommend students have for personal expenses are rather large, especially if all of the money comes from mom and dad. The estimates are different for every school but can go above $2,000 in some locations.

The article also looks at whether the student or the parents should be the ones footing the bill for incidentals at school. One concern they raised is that some colleges suggest students do not work their first semester in order to adjust to college life. Personally I think students should get a J-O-B; there are plenty of student jobs on campus that typically provide low hours and the ability to work around class and sports schedules while still providing spending money.

Today the federal minimum wage increased 70 cents to $6.55, as the second phase of a series of moves meant to bring the minimum wage up over a three year period. The "raise" will affect roughly 1.7 million workers or 2.3% of hourly workers, which means that collectively the cost of employing all minimum wage workers for one hour jumped $1.19 million today.

Despite the increase, the new rate is still below the inflation-adjusted 1997 level of $7.02, and far below the inflation-adjusted level of $10.06 from 40 years ago, according to a Labor Department inflation calculator. And it obviously still leaves many families well under the poverty line.

You'd think that getting a 12% raise during poor economic times would be a great help for 850,000 people over 25 who are making minimum wage. Unfortunately the increase is often quickly passed to the items these same workers need to buy; including food and gasoline. Smaller Businesses will also feel the pinch as they struggle to cope with higher wages and customers who are sick of seeing prices go up time and time again.

I recently read a post by a blogger who did a little exercise to see if he could survive on minimum wage. He chose a location of Hartford, CT, and used the state's minimum wage of $7.65. He assumed a forty hour work week, which equaled an income of about $1,224 a month. He then went down his list of expenses and determined that he couldn't survive on minimum wage. His conclusion: Minimum wage doesn't work.

The debate about minimum wage is largely pointless, because there are so few adults who actually are paid minimum wage. But I'll play along and pretend that lots and lots of adults are trying to survive on minimum wage. Is the problem with the wage or the people? I say the people.

First, if you're being paid minimum wage, it means that you have next to no skills and probably no work experience. You're probably unreliable and you probably have a spotty work history. Why should an employer pay for your lack of skills? Minimum wage shouldn't be a goal for anyone. It should be a starting point that can quickly be surpassed if one is willing to show up, work hard, and develop skills. Talk to any business owner, and nine times out of ten, I bet you will find that they'd be happy to pay more than minimum wage if they could find suitable employees.