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Sometimes, a social media faux pas is more than embarrassing. Failing to police your online behavior could get you into big trouble at work if you’re not careful. An ill-timed tweet or a thoughtless Facebook post might earn you a stern talking-to from your boss. In the worst-case scenario, a social media blunder might cost you your job.
Everyone’s heard the stories of people who’ve been fired because of their social media screw-ups. But until you find yourself in the hot seat, it’s easy to forget that your actions online may come back to haunt you.
“Social media is now so woven into the fabric of young people’s lives that they forget not everything is suitable to put out there,” Alison Green, a former hiring manager who runs askamanager.org, told Time.
A healthy dose of common sense is usually enough to stop most social media blunders before they start. Yet given our culture of constant sharing, it’s easy for a momentary lapse in judgement to turn into a big problem. Short of shutting down all your profiles, your best approach is to think before you post. That should help you avoid these seven big social media screw-ups, which are potential career killers.

1. Making racist, sexist, or other offensive comments

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Posting inflammatory content online is a quick route to a pink slip, a lesson many people have learned the hard way. Back in 2013, PR rep Justine Sacco tweeted an insensitive comment about AIDS just before getting on a plane to South Africa. By the time she landed a few hours later, her job was history and her reputation was toast. That’s how quickly things can spin out of control.
Sacco’s hardly the only person who’s had a career go up in smoke because of an offensive or thoughtless post. In Little Rock, Ark., the owner of travel agency fired an employee for making homophobic comments online. The employee’s remarks were not only offensive, but they were costing the company business.
Policing what an employee says outside of work may seem unfair, no matter how despicable their comments. But a company that ignores those comments may be putting themselves at risk.
“[Employers] are required by law to maintain a diverse and respectful workplace,” Nicholas Woodfield, an attorney with The Employment Law Group in Washington, D.C., told the Associated Press.

2. Complaining about your job

Everyone needs to vent sometimes, but publicly sharing your true feelings about your job on social media can land you in hot water. While valid complaints about working conditions are protected speech in many cases, according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), general gripes about your boss probably aren’t.
Employees are allowed to engage in “concerted activity” to improve their pay and working conditions, says the NLRB. So, when a group of construction workers posted a YouTube video sharing their concerns about unsafe working conditions, the NLRB said they were within their rights to do so. But if your complaint is that your job is boring or your boss is a jerk, you should probably keep it to yourself.
“Be very careful what you write,” Kathleen Lucas, labor and employment attorney at Lucas Law Firm in San Francisco, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Not only can there be consequences, you can really create a problem in your workplace.”

3. Sharing confidential information

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Accidentally sharing your company’s secrets online may be easier than you realize. While posting confidential reports and documents is an obvious no-no, even innocent updates may inadvertently reveal information that your employer would prefer to keep private.
Say your company is planning a merger that hasn’t been formally announced yet, but you tweet something that gives away the big news. Or a big deal you’ve been working on falls apart and you post about your disappointment on LinkedIn, even though your bosses would prefer to keep the news under wraps.
“[O]ften employees don’t recognize the crossover between their professional and personal worlds and the ways that seemingly personal updates can reveal business information,” noted Inside Counsel, a magazine for corporate lawyers.

4. Posting something stupid on behalf of your company

It pays to think twice about what you post if you’re in charge of your company’s social media. Just ask the American Apparel employee who tweeted a photo of the Challenger explosion to mark the Fourth of July (it turns out the employee, who was born after 1986, didn’t realize they were sharing a photo of a national tragedy). Or the Houston Rockets employee who posted a tweet with some inappropriate emojis during the playoff series with the Dallas Mavericks (the employee was later fired).
If you’re tweeting or sharing on behalf of your employer, remember that whatever you do reflects on them. While some mistakes are truly innocent, post anything wildly out of line and you’re likely to be shown the door.

5. Sharing when you should be working

Man uses an Apple iPhone in Tokyo, Japan on July 16, 2014

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Not only does using social media while working make you less productive, it could reflect poorly on you as an employee. Some old-school employers may still look unkindly on any kind of social media activity during the workday. More forgiving bosses are likely to understand that you might occasionally check Twitter from your phone. They may even want you to use your personal accounts to promote the company. But getting too caught up in the online world and ignoring projects at work could spell trouble.
“Are you blogging or Facebooking during work hours when you shouldn’t be? Your boss or a vindictive, catty co-worker can easily catch on, landing you a warning or a meeting with the HR department,” CEO and co-founder of Strikingly.com David Chen told CIO.

6. Posting drunk photos from work gatherings

You and your co-workers hit the bar after a long day at the office, and everyone indulges in a few too many drinks, including your boss. You snap a few goofy picks of everyone and share them on Instagram, not thinking anything of it. That is, until the next day, when your boss sobers up and isn’t so happy that those photos are out there in the world for anyone to see.
When it comes to work gatherings that involve alcohol, remember that the rules are different from hanging out with friends. The best move is to stay sober, but if you do find yourself a little tipsy at an office gathering, try to keep your phone in your pocket.
“In college, getting drunk is rewarded. But when you’re in a workplace, there are different consequences,” Michael Ball, founder of CareerFreshman.com, told NBC News.

7. Broadcasting your job search

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Social media is a key tool in the modern-day job search. But if you’re on the hunt for a new gig and your current boss sees that you’ve suddenly connected with half a dozen recruiters on LinkedIn, it could make for an uncomfortable situation at the office. You may find yourself passed over for plum assignments or even first on the list of employees to be let go in the next round of layoffs.
“[Your boss] will assume that you’re unhappy and worst case scenario, may start taking steps to terminate you. Supervisors want employees who are committed to the job, not to a job search,” Andy Teach, the author of From Graduation to Corporation, told Forbes.
That doesn’t mean you should take your job search offline, or give up looking for a new position. After all, you’ll find it easier to get hired if you’re currently employed. You just need to be savvy about your social media moves. Adjusting your LinkedIn privacy settings will help you keep your job search secret from your boss and coworkers.

Culled cheatsheet

How much one needs to save for retirement varies from person to person. Here’s how to figure out what you need.

It's probably clear to most of us that we need to be socking money away for our retirement. What's less clear, though, is how much we need to save for retirement. Making matters even more complicated is the fact that the answer depends on a bunch of factors, giving each of us a different answer.
First, let's be clear about how important it is to save for retirement. If you're leaving everything to chance, assuming that Social Security will support you and that things will just work out, think again. As of July, the average monthly Social Security benefit was $1,336 per month, or about $16,000 per year. If you earned an above-average wage for most of your life you can expect to collect more than that, but probably not as much as you'd like, by a long shot.
Not enough people seem to realize how critical it is for us to be saving on our own. That's evident by the results of the 2015 Retirement Confidence Survey. It found that 53% of American workers who were asked how much they have saved for retirement and answered have less than $25,000 saved (excluding the value of their home) and 35% have less than $1,000 saved. Yikes.

You can make your retirement better, by planning carefully.

The factorsSo what will dictate how much you need to save for retirement? Let's review a bunch of key factors first and then delve into how you might go about estimating what you'll need.
Risk tolerance: If you're very risk-averse, then you'll probably want to be aggressive in your saving. If you can handle some risk, then you'd do well to park your long-term money in the stock market, where it will likely grow faster than in other places. If that makes you uncomfortable, you could stick to "safer" alternatives, but you'll likely earn a much lower rate of return, requiring heftier investments.
Longevity: Few of us know how long we'll live, but if you're very fit and eat well and have many relatives who died in their 90s, you might want to aim for a big nest egg, as you stand a good chance of needing it to support you for a long time. Retiring at 65 and living to 95 means 30 years of retirement! Keep in mind the high cost of healthcare, too, which is unpredictable and can cost at least several thousand dollars per year.
Inflation: It's smart to keep inflation in mind as you estimate how much you'll need, because it can have a powerful effect on your money's purchasing power. If your income is truly fixed and stays so for decades, you may face difficulties in your later years. A Wells Fargo review of retirement risk factors pointed out that between 1990 and 2013, a span of 23 years, the price of a loaf of bread doubled, from $0.68 to $1.39, while the price of a gallon of gas nearly tripled, surging from $1.22 to $3.58. You can't know exactly what inflation will be during your retirement, but know that it has averaged about 3% over long periods.

Inflation will shrink the value of your money over time.

Crunching the numbersKeeping the above factors in mind, take a stab at determining how much you'll need to save for retirement. (Online calculators can help with that.) You might follow a common rule of thumb, estimating that you'll want about 70% of the income you earned while working. That makes things easy, but adjust it to better reflect your needs. If you expect to spend a lot on certain categories, such as travel or healthcare or you expect to live a very long life or to face above-average inflation, then ratchet it up.
Once you have a desired income level in mind, start thinking about what it will be made up of. For example, if you're looking for $50,000 in annual retirement income to start, list your known income sources. Perhaps you're expecting $20,000 from Social Security and maybe you're lucky enough to have a pension that will pay another $10,000. If so, then you need to make up the remaining $20,000. (You can get an idea of what to expect from Social Security by signing up for a my Social Security account.)
Another rule of thumb suggests withdrawing 4% from your nest egg in your first year of retirement, and then adjusting that for inflation in each successive year. To find out how big your nest egg will need to be, multiply your desired income, $20,000, by 25, and you'll get the answer: $500,000. If you're very risk averse, you might plan to withdraw just 3% annually, in which case multiply by 33. If you have faith that inflation will remain low and the market will perform well for you, you might plan to withdraw 5% annually, in which case you'd multiply your desired income by just 20, getting $400,000. Be careful taking on extra risk, though, as things don't always work out as hoped.

Plan, save, and invest today -- and enjoy it all tomorrow.

Building that incomeOnce you know how much you'll need, think about where it will come from. Give fixed immediate or deferred annuities (but not variable or indexed) some consideration, as they let you buy income streams that can last your lifetime. Healthy, stable, dividend-paying stocks are another great option. If you have, say, $300,000 invested in them with an overall dividend yield of 3.5%, you can look forward to $10,500 annually, while expecting the dividends and the stock prices to rise over time, too.
There's no way to know exactly how much you'll need in retirement, but it's vital to give it some thought and to come up with an educated guess. It's smart to be relatively conservative, too, as life can throw some curves at you.

The $15,978 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook
If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known “Social Security secrets” could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. In fact, one MarketWatch reporter argues that if more Americans knew about this, the government would have to shell out an extra $10 billion annually. For example: one easy, 17-minute trick could pay you as much as $15,978 more... each year! Once you learn how to take advantage of all these loopholes, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after.

Culled from motley fool