Edited by CRISTINA LOUROSA-RICARDO

There are plenty of stupid investments you can make in this world. Stock in Pets.com and Washington Mutual didn’t work out so well. Nor did those Las Vegas condos. Some of the social media and Web 2.0 stocks flying high on Wall Street will probably follow suit.

But the most foolish investment of all may be right in front of you. And there’s a worrying chance you’re buying it.

The investment? Stock in your own employer.

According to data from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, only about 40% of employees participate in 401(k) plans that even offer the company’s stock as an option. Those employees are still investing from 16% to 19% of their plan portfolios, on average, in their employer’s stock. At the same time, they have been shrinking their overall equity exposure dramatically.

One dollar in your employer for every two dollars spread across all the other companies out there? It makes no sense.

First, you already have a big investment in your employer. You work there. If you are hoping to work there for some time, it may well be the biggest investment in your portfolio.

The value of an investment comes from its cash flow. Let’s say you’re hoping to earn a modest $45,000 a year for the next 10 years. An annuity producing that series of cash flows might cost you about $380,000. For 20 years: nearly $600,000.

No, a job and an annuity aren’t identical. But the analogy is useful. Your cash flow already gives you a huge stake in the company. Do you need to double down?

Legions of workers did just that and became two-time losers. Their employer collapsed. They lost their incomes and their savings at the same time. Think of Enron. Think of WorldCom. Think of all those who worked at banks that collapsed in 2008. Bank of America and Citigroup avoided bankruptcy, but their stocks fell to pennies on the dollar.

The second problem with investing in your own employer’s stock? It’s based on the theory that you’ll benefit from the company’s improved performance and that you’ll have incentive to contribute. You’ll be a stockholder as well as an employee, and you’ll think like one. Employees buying company stock think they will have some influence over how it does.

Good luck with that.

The theory is fine if you work for yourself, or in a small partnership. But in a company of 500 or 1,000? No matter how hard you work, you won’t have any material effect on the share price. The only people who can do that are the senior executives.

Speaking of whom: Many people who buy company stock think they’re following safely in the footsteps of top executives. But this, too, is an illusion. Even if the CEO holds $10 million in company stock, so what? His financial situation is totally different from yours. He may hold $50 million in other investments. If he gets canned, he may have a golden parachute and a network of golden handshakes to fall back on.

And are CEOs really investing in the company? Most just get free stock and options—which they then sell.

—Brett Arends, SmartMoney Magazine

Eye on Overdraft Fees

Bank overdraft fees are the latest target of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which said last week that it would demand data from the biggest financial institutions and look at ways to make the fees on checking-account statements easier to understand.

This overdraft-fee campaign could eventually help consumers avoid unexpected charges.

The bureau said it will gather data “from several of the largest banks in the country to evaluate how those institutions’ overdraft policies affect consumers,” without specifying which banks were asked to supply data.

The American Bankers Association has said most bank customers don’t pay overdraft fees and that customers can avoid the charges by keeping extra money in their accounts or by linking checking accounts to savings accounts.

The bureau, however, said it’s concerned some banks may be charging and calculating the fees in a way that is misleading or confusing for consumers and that the banks aren’t consistently following previously outlined “best practices.”

—Maya Jackson Randall, Dow Jones Newswires

Bypass the 10% Penalty

Thinking about raiding your retirement funds? There are ways to do so without triggering the dreaded 10% penalty on early withdrawals for people under the age of 59½.

If you leave a company in the year in which you turn 55 or older, you can take penalty-free withdrawals from a 401(k) plan. (The distribution would be taxable, of course, but the 10% penalty would not apply.)

There also are ways to avoid a 10% penalty with an IRA.

IRA owners can take so-called 72 (t) withdrawals. Under their rules, you can start taking these withdrawals at any age. But once you start, you must continue for either five years or until you reach age 59½—whichever is longer. (You can do it with a 401(k) as well, but you must have left the company first.) Moreover, because the payments are calculated according to actuarial tables, you won’t be able to adjust the amounts.

IRA owners who are unemployed can take distributions from a SEP, Simple, Roth or traditional IRA to pay health-insurance premiums for themselves, a spouse and/or dependents. You have to have received unemployment compensation for at least 12 consecutive weeks among other qualifications, says Ed Slott, an IRA expert in Rockville Centre, N.Y.

—Anne Tergesen, Encore Blog, SmartMoney.com

Tooth Inflation

How sweet it isn’t.

The average gift from the Tooth Fairy dropped to $2.10 last year, down 42 cents from $2.52 in 2010, according to no less an authority than the Original Tooth Fairy Poll, which is sponsored by Delta Dental Plans Association.

“But the good news,” their PR folks hasten to add, “is she’s still visiting nearly 90% of homes throughout the United States.”

Some other data points:

• The most common amount left under the pillow by the Tooth Fairy is $1.
• Most children find more money under the pillow for their first lost baby tooth.

—Total Return Blog, WSJ.com—The Aggregator, edited by Cristina Lourosa-Ricardo, features news and commentary from The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications. Email: cristina.lourosa@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

About 40% of workers were members of plans that offered company stock as an option, according to data from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. An earlier version misstated that about 40% of 401(k) plans offered company stock as an investment option.

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By SOPHIA HOLLANDER

In most New York child support cases, courts award no more than $23,000 a year to cover a child’s basic needs.

Then there is the 5-year-old son of billionaire businessman Francois-Henri Pinault, whose companies include Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci, among others, and millionaire model Linda Evangelista.

On Thursday, the parents will appear in Manhattan Family Court to begin a trial over child support payments with staggering sums at stake: Ms. Evangelista has calculated the monthly expenses of their son, Augustin, at just under $47,000 a month—or about $560,000 a year.

Mr. Pinault, who never wed Ms. Evangelista and is now married to actress Salma Hayek, is challenging what would be a historic support amount if it were to be granted in total, according to lawyers across the state.

Ms. Evangelista’s attorney, William Beslow, declined to comment, as did Mr. Pinault’s attorney, David Aronson.

It is hardly the first time wealthy parents have tested the limits of New York’s child-support standards, enabling courts to issue their own judgments about appropriate awards.

That authority was largely stripped from judges when New York enacted mandatory guidelines for child support in 1989. Today, a formula applies to the first $136,000 of a couples’ combined income and assigns each parent a share of the expenses. Under that standard, an only child is entitled to about $23,000 a year—or 17% of $136,000—which is split by the parents in proportion to their relative incomes.

But couples whose income exceeds that threshold have more uncertain futures. In those cases, judges have a broad discretion to make more substantial awards. They must sift through claims about reasonable costs, while recognizing that lifestyle standards may change for income brackets that far exceed their own.

At the same time, they must be wary of requests that use child support to bolster a parent’s lifestyle, or what is known as “disguised alimony,” said Robert Stephan Cohen, who has represented Christie Brinkley, Dina Lohan and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Many judges will simply raise the income cap and apply the formula accordingly, though they rarely lift it beyond $500,000 said many lawyers—even when the parents earn millions.

“You don’t want to create a windfall—in essence give a support award that’s supposed to be for children,” said Nassau County matrimonial attorney Lee Rosenberg. “You look at the child’s actual needs and not the wealth.”

As a result, “there’s a tremendous amount of discretion, but that discretion is really limited to the proof of the child’s actual lifestyle needs,” he said. If claimed expenses are “too outrageous the court can cut it back.”

But outrageous is a relative term, some said.

For “parents with seemingly unlimited resources, the court is going to look at what we would call the ‘New York City package,’” said Manhattan matrimonial lawyer Alton Abramowitz, who is the president-elect of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

That includes a significant award for basic child support, along with additional expenses paid directly to a vendor, such as private school tuition, medical costs, and child care. Ms. Evangelista’s estimate of about $47,000 a month includes those additional costs.

Still, Mr. Abramowitz said, judges will draw a line. In some of his cases involving wealthy families, courts have declined mothers’ requests for summer homes and Rolls Royce cars as part of the child support payments, Mr. Abramowitz said.

“The sense of entitlement, that because someone has a child by a wealthy parent, that they should receive child support as if it were alimony, is really a foreign concept in terms of New York law,” he said.

Ms. Evangelista’s listed expenses include $175,000 a year for bodyguards and a driver and $90,000 to pay three separate nannies working eight-hour shifts.

The numbers evoked incredulity among some lawyers.

“It’s an unheard-of number,” said Mr. Cohen. “I don’t know the facts but it would be extraordinary. Lawyers push the edges of the envelope, that’s sort of our job, but this push is beyond anything that the courts in our state have ever done.”

There have been high-profile awards in the past. In 2001, a judge awarded Patricia Duff $12,825 in monthly child support in her case against Ronald Perelman. Mr. Perelman was also responsible for all of their daughter’s educational, medical, extracurricular and camp costs, according to court documents.

In 2006, an appellate court overturned a child support award of $35,000 levied against Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, reducing it to just over $19,000. Mr. Combs was also responsible for additional expenses, including for tuition, health, summer camp and security, according to court documents.

Ample proof must be offered to convince a judge of such significant expenses, many lawyers said, including detailed records of past payments, documentation of death threats, and even expert testimony regarding the appropriate standard of living.

In New York, it can add up quickly, some said.

“If you take two kids living in a $30,000 a month apartment with $50,000 in school tuition for each one, suddenly you’re up to $460,000 and you haven’t had a bite to eat,” said lawyer Peter Bronstein, who has represented Barbara Hearst and director Guy Ritchie. “It’s incredible how wealthy some people are.”

Write to Sophia Hollander at sophia.hollander@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 3, 2012, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Looking to Raise a Child on $47,000 a Month.

If it weren’t already obvious, it ought to be now: The No. 1 rule with Carlos Beltran is to bat him No. 2.

So far this season, the 35-year-old outfielder has an outrageous 1.155 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) while hitting second for the Cardinals. Since 1974, Beltran’s career .938 OPS while batting No. 2 is the third-best mark among those with at least 1,000 plate appearances—and almost 100 points better than what he has amassed in all of the other lineup spots (.849).

It isn’t like Beltran’s affinity for the No. 2 spot in the lineup has been a secret. He had one of the greatest postseasons ever batting second for the Astros in 2004, clubbing eight homers in 12 games.

His dominance resulted in a seven-year, $119 million contract from the Mets—who then proceeded to mess with success. Determined to make Beltran a heart-of-the-order hitter, New York never hit Beltran No. 2. Well, not quite never: In 6½ years with the Mets, he got 45 at-bats there.

Associated Press

Carlos Beltran

This year for St. Louis, Beltran batted second in five of the Cardinals’ first six games. He finished that stretch with a 1.073 OPS. But manager Mike Matheny opted to bat him elsewhere until recently, when he started five of six games there. Beltran responded in typical fashion—by winning the National League Player of the Week award.

—Michael Salfino

By MARC MYERS

New York

Rocking back in his office chair several weeks ago, Jack Azizo seemed stunned. “That was done here?” asked the 57-year-old co-owner of Jimmy Sales Corp., a men’s-accessories company based in Manhattan. Mr. Azizo had just been told that the very first jazz phonograph record was made in his company’s 12th-floor office space on Feb. 26, 1917. “I can’t believe this—I love jazz,” he said.

If New Orleans is the cradle of jazz, then New York’s Garment District is where jazz spoke its first words. Ninety-five years ago, members of the Original Dixieland Jass Band (ODJB) boarded the freight elevator at 46 W. 38th St. and rode to the top floor. When the five musicians arrived at the new studio of Victor Talking Machine Co., the quintet set up their instruments and recorded two songs—”Dixieland Jass Band One-Step” and “Livery Stable Blues.”

Released weeks later, the 78-rpm record became an overnight sensation—and a fitting start to jazz’s future. On one side was a blues and on the other a dance number—two forms that jazz would rely on for decades to come.

“These songs by the ODJB were terrific, expressive tunes that changed popular music overnight,” said Dan Morgenstern, a jazz historian and author of “Living With Jazz.” “The impact of their syncopated approach can only be compared to records by Elvis Presley in the mid-1950s. Everything changed after their release.”

Despite the band’s boastful name, the Original Dixieland Jass Band wasn’t quite as original as it claimed. “Black musicians in New Orleans had been playing the music that would come to be called jazz as early as 1906,” said Bruce Raeburn, curator of Tulane University’s Hogan Jazz Archive. “The idea to form a group and take the show on the road wasn’t really theirs either.”

That honor belongs to a Northern promoter, who in 1916 convinced several white musicians from New Orleans to form a pre-ODJB band and relocate to Chicago. Another New Orleans dance band—Tom Brown’s Band From Dixieland—had already had success playing there at local restaurants. Shortly after the musicians arrived, they were renamed the ODJB and met Max Hart, Al Jolson’s agent. He booked them into a New York restaurant near Columbus Circle in January 1917.

Within weeks of the ODJB’s engagement, Columbia Graphophone Co. executives caught wind of the uptown excitement and invited the band down to its Woolworth Building recording studio. “But when they performed there on Jan. 31, the wailing music was either too difficult to record or the executives didn’t care much for what they heard,” Mr. Raeburn said.

Paid for their time, the musicians left dejected but not discouraged. They quickly approached Victor, which had just moved to 46 W. 38th St. The record company jumped at the chance to best Columbia.

When the ODJB musicians set up their instruments on Feb. 26, Victor engineers placed the musicians at different distances from the large conical horn that served as a microphone in those days. The engineers made test pressings and even strung wires near the ceiling to absorb the sonic overtones.

At the end of the recording session, band cornetist and leader Nick LaRocca told Victor engineers that the name of his blues number was “Livery Stable Blues.” But after the band left, Victor executives gave the song the more playful title “Barnyard Blues.” And that’s when trouble began.

Sensing an opportunity, agent Hart rushed out to copyright the new Victor title and song—but under his own name. Accidentally left out of the name-change loop, Victor’s pressing plant attached “Livery Stable Blues” labels to the records instead.

Months later in Chicago, Alcide Nuñez, the ODJB’s former clarinetist, who had left the band in 1916 after clashes with leader LaRocca, heard the record. But when Nuñez tried to purchase the song’s arrangements for his own band, he discovered that “Livery Stable Blues” had never been copyrighted.

So Nuñez went to a Chicago publisher and secured credit for the song title. When sheet music began appearing, LaRocca halted its sale with an injunction, and a lawsuit followed. The judge hearing the case eventually ruled that neither LaRocca nor Nuñez would be granted a copyright. Doubts were raised about LaRocca’s own originality as well as the practicality of trying to copyright a blues.

With a bang of the gavel, “Livery Stable Blues”—the B-side of jazz’s first record—passed into the public domain, free for all to record. By 1920 the ODJB’s popularity began to wane, and in 1925 the group disbanded.

Several weeks ago, Mr. Azizo was asked if his office had a CD player. It did, and he put on the disc that this writer provided. As the ODJB’s frantic music played, Mr. Azizo shook his head. “Can you imagine if these walls could talk?” he said. “The last time this music was heard up here was probably when these guys were standing around playing it.”

Mr. Myers writes about jazz, R&B and rock daily at JazzWax.com.

A version of this article appeared February 21, 2012, on page D7 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Start Spreadin’ the Blues.

By TERI EVANS

When Andrew Schuman bought Hammond’s Candies in 2007, the nearly 90-year-old candy company was operating in the red. Mr. Schuman, who says he knew nothing about the candy business, soon learned that an assembly-line worker, rather than an executive, had dreamed up the design of the company’s popular ribbon snowflake candy.

It was an “aha” moment, he says. “I thought, ‘wow, we have a lot of smart people back here, and we’re not tapping their knowledge.’ “

So last year Mr. Schuman decided to offer a $50 bonus to assembly-line workers who came up with successful ideas to cut manufacturing costs.

“They’re the ones making and packing the candy, so I thought they probably know how to do things better and more efficiently,” says Mr. Schuman, president of the Denver, Colo., company, which has about 90 employees.

The informal idea program, which is open to all Hammond’s Candies workers, has handed out more than $500 in employee bonuses since it began last year. One worker suggested a tweak in a machine gear that reduced workers needed on an assembly line to four from five.

Another employee devised a new way to protect candy canes while en route to stores, which resulted in a 4% reduction in breakage. “It’s these little tiny things that someone notices that help us in the long run,” says Mr. Schuman, who adds that the company was able to earn a profit this year.

Mike Hall

As more entrepreneurs turn to employees for innovation to gain even the slightest advantage in a still-sluggish economy, many are discovering the usefulness of cash incentives or other rewards to encourage workers to come forward with ideas. Particularly for small businesses with limited resources, it’s a relatively cheap way to gather “lots of ideas and get people proactively thinking about what would make the product, service or company better,” says David Hsu, entrepreneurship professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Mike Hall, chief executive of Borrego Solar Systems in San Diego, introduced two quarterly employee contests this year, each with a $500 prize. Beyond the competition, the company’s 55 employees are rated on innovation in their annual reviews.

One contest seeks the best business innovation, which Mr. Hall says must be formalized on paper to include the problem the idea solves, as well as its costs, risks and benefits.

The other competition rewards the best “knowledge brief,” which requires employees to share valuable information that can benefit the company as a whole. For example, one worker won for creating a glossary of acronyms in the solar industry.

“It accentuates the importance of disseminating knowledge and trying not to hold it in silos,” Mr. Hall says. Winners are determined by a companywide secret ballot.

Prof. Hsu says finding unique ways to reward employees for their ideas is a way to foster esprit de corps. “It’s why a lot of people work for small businesses in the first place; there’s a closer connection in the effort they put forward and the final product,” Prof. Hsu says.

Jared Heyman, founder of Infosurv, a market-research firm in Atlanta, says his company has long turned to employees for business ideas. “In every industry, as soon as one company creates an innovation everyone else is then playing catchup,” he says.

Five years ago, Mr. Heyman began awarding a $150 restaurant gift card every quarter to the employee with the best business idea. One employee won for developing a technology innovation that helped the company retain a major client that was about to jump ship.

“The [ideas] program has paid for itself a thousand times over,” Mr. Heyman says. “In terms of cost savings, revenue enhancement and efficiencies, it’s certainly in the six-figure range.”

This year, he upped the ante with a second contest, 100 Days of Innovation, in which the company’s 15 employees have to come up with a total of 100 innovative ideas by year’s end in order to each receive a $100 reward. Employees write their ideas on post-it notes and stick them on the “Innovation Board,” created to provide a visual reminder.

“I think a lot of folks are motivated by the fact that if we fall short nobody wins anything,” Mr. Heyman says. “It reminds everybody that we work together and we’ll succeed or fail together.”

By TAMER EL-GHOBASHY and PERVAIZ SHALLWANI

A New York City police officer was arrested Tuesday after he allegedly used his police department-issued credentials to gain access to sensitive computer records and pass them on to a convicted drug dealer.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Federal Court in Brooklyn, Officer Devon Daniels’s alleged involvement with a heroin dealer was uncovered during a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation that utilized wire taps.

Mr. Daniels on numerous occasions between April 2010 and April 2011 allegedly used an NYPD database to look up license-plate numbers to help locate the owners of vehicles for the leader of a heroin ring based in Jamaica, Queens, and to check the status of criminal warrants related to associates of the ring, the complaint stated.

It is alleged that the 30-year-old officer, who was based out of the 111th Precinct in Queens, gained access to the information from a computer in his squad car while using his password and that of his partner.

Mr. Daniels is believed to have used his partner’s password without that officer’s knowledge. His partner is not a suspect in the case.

On the wiretaps, Mr. Daniels is allegedly heard having telephone conversations with Guy Curtis, the drug dealer, during which the officer asks for money, “any working revolver” and permission to borrow Mr. Curtis’s vehicles.

On an occasion when Mr. Daniels was driving one of those cars, he stopped at the scene of an arrest during which an associate of Mr. Curtis was being apprehended, according to the criminal complaint.

The officer quizzed his colleagues at the scene and then “immediately reported that information to Guy Curtis,” according to the criminal complaint.

Mr. Curtis, who pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute heroin, also allegedly made use of Mr. Daniels’s privileges and expertise as a police officer.

The drug dealer was provided an NYPD parking placard by Mr. Daniels and once asked the officer how to get “gun shot residue off your hands,” the complaint says.

In another instance, he instructed Mr. Daniels to arrest a felon who was known for “always carrying a gun.”

It was not clear whether the police officer followed that order.

The criminal complaint also alleges that Mr. Daniels helped Mr. Curtis launder money associated with a drug deal.

A drug distributer in Kansas once deposited $3,500 from a drug transaction into Mr. Daniels’s bank account. Mr. Daniels then allegedly withdrew the money and gave it to Mr. Curtis.

On Tuesday, Mr. Daniels appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann and was informed of the charges against him.

He did not enter a plea and was released on a $150,000 bond and placed under electronic monitoring. He was also ordered to surrender his NYPD-issued handgun.

The officer’s attorney, Devian Daniels, who is also his sister, declined to comment after the court proceeding. In court, other family members said Mr. Daniels is the father of “several” children.

Mr. Daniels joined the police department in 2007 and was assigned to a housing unit in Brooklyn at the time of his arrest, police said.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau had identified Mr. Daniels based on the wiretapped information and assisted in his arrest.

The officer has been suspended without pay and could face departmental sanctions, including termination, regardless of the outcome of the federal case against him, Mr. Browne said.

Formal charges have not yet been filed in the case.

Write to Tamer El-Ghobashy at tamer.el-ghobashy@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 16, 2012, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Police Officer Arrested.