A Week's Worth

• Location, location: If you want to build equity, move to Alaska. It and nine other states (Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Vermont) earned A's for having financially secure residents and helpful policies, says CFED, a nonprofit research group. Five states - Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada, Texas, and West Virginia - earned F's.

• Lower pay: Despite a brighter industry outlook, wages for high-tech workers fell 0.8 percent overall in the first quarter compared with year-ago levels, says the Yoh Index of Technology Wages.

• Tough at the top: The rate of CEOs dismissed has risen 300 percent since 1995, reports Booz Allen Hamilton. Last year, nearly a third of all CEO departures were performance-related.

• Time off? Although 4 in 5 American workers plan on taking a summer vacation, nearly a quarter of those expect to spend some of that time checking in with the office, says worldwide staffing firm Hudson. The average full-time worker gets 12 vacation days a year and will probably not use three of them, says an Expedia survey. The most vacation-deprived city, according to Universal Orlando Resort? Newark, N.J.

• Stamps or stocks? Since 1971, the price of a first-class stamp has risen from 8 cents to 37 cents - a 363 percent increase, reports Standard & Poor's. How much has the S&P 500 stock index risen in that time? More than 900 percent.