“Canadian personal finance sites MoneySense.ca and ... - CNW Group” plus 3 more

Canadian personal finance sites MoneySense.ca and ... - CNW Group
Personal Finance 101 - The Epoch Times
Shadowing a Delegate - Virginia Connection Newspapers
Sander Levin sets tone as new chairman of powerful ... - Detroit News

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Canadian personal finance sites MoneySense.ca and ... - CNW Group

Posted: 17 Mar 2010 09:43 AM PDT

MoneySense.ca and CanadianCapitalist.com unite their personal finance communities.

TORONTO, March 17 /CNW/ - MoneySense.ca, the digital home of Canada's best-selling personal finance magazine, has entered into an exclusive content partnership with one of Canada's preeminent personal finance bloggers, the Canadian Capitalist, to bring its trusted advisory resources on financial planning, investing, retirement, real estate and more, to a wider online audience.

Ram Balakrishnan, the Canadian Capitalist, has been blogging since 2004, posting almost-daily advice. Over the years, he has built up a large and loyal community of like-minded Canadians interested in expanding their personal financial knowledge. Like CanadianCapitalist.com, MoneySense.ca is focused on thoughtful financial advice for and by Canadians. Bringing the two communities together not only makes sense for the brands, but also for Canadians interested in managing their wealth.

"We are excited to partner with the Canadian Capitalist because of Ram's intelligent take on Canadian investing and for the loyal readership he's cultivated," says Claude Galipeau, SVP and GM, Digital Media, Rogers Media. "Our partnership with the Canadian Capitalist is part of an ongoing strategy to showcase and distribute quality content for our business brands, as well as bring new premium opportunities to our ad clients."

As a long-time fan of Balakrishnan's writing, MoneySense Editor Duncan Hood, is thrilled to have Canadian Capitalist join the MoneySense.ca family. "Since MoneySense magazine launched over a decade ago, we have maintained the high quality of our advice by enlisting some of the best personal finance writers Canada has to offer," says Hood. "CanadianCapitalist.com is one of the best Canadian personal finance blogs on the web, and I have personally enjoyed following it for years. We're looking forward to a long partnership together, and we are excited that our respective communities can also benefit from their own knowledge sharing."

"I'm very excited about partnering with MoneySense, the finest personal finance magazine in Canada," notes Balakrishnan. "MoneySense has long been an advocate of sensible financial planning and investing-themes that are also the focus of my own writing. I am convinced that the partnership will benefit all our readers."

Please visit and bookmark www.moneysense.ca and www.canadiancapitalist.com. While you're at it, join the fan page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/moneysensemagazine and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/moneysensemag

About MoneySense.ca

MoneySense.ca is full of exclusive features, smart advice, quick tips, personal stories, tools, bloggers, and much more. As the digital extension of MoneySense, Canada's personal finance and lifestyle magazine, the web site offers an interactive community where Canadians can come together. Packed with smart features, practical advice and easy-to-follow financial tips on everything from home improvement to mutual funds, an average MoneySense issue attracts 892,000 Canadians on the lookout for new ways to save, invest and spend. Since its launch in December of 2009, MoneySense.ca extends that coverage on a daily basis, with original content, including features, tools and blogs. It is part of the CanadianBusiness.com Online Network.

For further information: Jan Innes, Vice President, Public Affairs, Rogers Communications Inc., (416) 935-3525, Jan.innes@rci.rogers.com

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Personal Finance 101 - The Epoch Times

Posted: 17 Mar 2010 05:11 AM PDT

The subject of personal finance is very broad, but as a beginning, consider the foundations of personal finance: security, stability, growth, protection, and management.

Security

Security means being prepared for the "hit by a bus" scenario.

I have life insurance to provide for my wife and children. Health, disability, auto, and home insurance policies also provide additional protection in each respective area. I also have a list of where these policies are, who my agents are, phone numbers, and basic policy information (numbers, amounts, costs, and so on). I keep this information both in a file at my house and in a safety deposit box at the bank. My wife, and my brother and sister-in-law, who live nearby, also know where these things are.

I also try to maintain an emergency fund of cash in a bank account or money market account, with checks, so that I am prepared for a financial disaster, layoff, or natural disaster. It took several years to build up this cash fund.

I started with a goal to have enough cash for six months of my normal financial needs, such as mortgage, food, insurance, transportation costs, and so on. Now I am trying for 12 months' worth. I do this by saving a little each month and "investing" a portion of all "found" money such as gifts, inheritances, tax returns, and any additional unexpected income.

I have a will and update it each year around January to reflect any changes in my life during the past year, such as new children, a new home or business, and so on. Most people don't need an extensive will; the forms you buy at your office supply store will do. But in some states if you die without one, watch out: What happens to your money and even your children could be entirely determined by some state- or court-appointed official.

Stability

The next level of personal finance is stability.

Stability means that first of all I live within my means. I don't spend more than I earn. Otherwise I am spending my savings, investments, emergency money, or getting into debt. I try to avoid credit card debt and purchase everything with money I already have. I don't buy things expecting that next month I will have more money or I will get a big raise or promotion. You can't sell me a car based on a monthly payment amount; I want to know the final price!

In order to make sure I am living within my means, I created a simple budget, and I track my expenses using Simple Joe's Expense Tracker. By tracking, I can tell how much I have spent in each budget category. I know when to keep a closer eye on certain types of expenses, or when and where I can cut expenses, and what I can live without in order to stay within my budget. Counting pennies is pretty tedious, but tracking where the dollars go can be eye-opening.

Another aspect of stability is avoiding or eliminating debt. Some recent reports show that the average American is $7,000–$20,000 in debt. Most of it is consumer debt: credit cards, store accounts, rent-to-own, auto loans, and so on. And those types of consumer debt usually charge a higher interest rate than any savings account, CD, or money market account, even more than most high-flying risky investments.

This means that $1,000 in debt at 18 percent is costing you nine times what your $1,000 savings account at 2 percent is producing. Consumer debt is a dangerous spiral that is very hard to get out of.

The first problem, as mentioned before, is not living within your means. Don't get further into debt to support an extravagant lifestyle. Or even if you are frugal, if you are using credit cards and debt to finance your purchases, you either need to stop purchasing luxury items or find a way to increase your income to support these purchases and payments.

You may even have to lower your standard of living because you have racked up considerable debt and need to free up some money to pay it down. But don't wait to start. Those minimum payments are often designed to keep you paying 18 percent interest for 40 years! That's longer than most home loans. You could even end up paying more than 10 times the original cost of the item just in interest payments.

A third aspect, which starts in the stability category and transcends to the next personal finance level, growth, is the concept of investing in yourself. By this I mean spending time educating yourself in personal finance matters, as you are doing right now, and spending time gaining more knowledge, improving your skills, or even developing new ones.

As an employee, this can have a direct relation to who gets laid off during the next round of cutbacks. If you have some skills or have demonstrated abilities that are not possessed by your co-workers, and these skills make you a more valuable employee, you are less likely to get the pink slip.

While you are making yourself more valuable to your current employer, you are also making yourself worth more to future employers. It is much easier to land a job if you have some special skills that are in high demand, or even if you bring special knowledge or experience that your fellow job seekers may have overlooked or failed to invest in.

Being in the computer industry, I have to spend hours each week reading trade magazines, exploring Web sites, and reading e-mailed newsletters to keep abreast of what is new in my field. If I had stopped learning years ago, I would have missed out on the Internet revolution, e-mail, Web sites, and the majority of the income I now enjoy.

Keeping informed and up-to-date takes time and resources, but it helps me protect my current income and expand my skills to help me earn income in other areas. This increases my stability by allowing me to not have to rely on one client, one employer, or one source of income. A chair with four legs will always be more stable than a stool with only three.

Growth

The next level of personal finance is growth.

Once you are secure and stable, you can begin to think about building your wealth. Not that you have to figure out how to become the next Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. But you have to start building the "nest egg" that you will rely on when you retire.

And don't think that Social Security has you covered, or that your 401k will grow back to what it was a couple of years ago. Or that your current employer is going to reinstitute the generous pension plans of yesteryear. 401ks are much cheaper to administer and you, the employee, take the hit when the market goes down, not the employer.

My father is nearing retirement age and I think he has a good plan. He has done some research and estimated what his expenses are going to be when he is retired. He then took a look at his potential sources of income during his retirement.

He figured that Social Security would cover about one-third of what he wanted to live on. Only a third! And he has worked his entire life. Would you like to instantly have to live on only one-third of what you currently make? Retirement is supposed to be the golden years, so where's the gold?

Luckily throughout his career, my father has worked for companies that have had pension plans, and he had worked long enough at each company to be eligible for some pension money. This is rare these days because today, average workers will change jobs and companies at least five times during their careers. Also, as I mentioned before, companies are switching to lower-cost 401k plans that do not guarantee you any fixed payments.

In my father's situation, his pension money would cover another third of the retirement income he wanted. So now he had to either figure out where the last third was going to come from or start cutting out expenses during retirement, like not visiting his children so much. None of us liked the sound of that.

So my father started learning about the stock market and investing in stocks and mutual funds. He made a plan for growing his wealth and then educated himself as to how he could accomplish his plan. I wish I could say that he is doing better than he is, but luckily he still has some time to put his plan into action and ride out any market downturns. He can do this because he has the security of insurance and emergency money and the stability of low debt and a strong set of skills.

By learning about how stocks, bonds, mutual funds, index funds, options, futures, commodities, real estate, and other financial tools work, you lay the foundation for growing your wealth. You may start with just $100 in a bank CD, but as you learn more and become more sophisticated, you can invest in more and more opportunities.

For those who are just starting out in the growth phase or who want to dabble a bit before completing the other levels of personal finance, my suggestion would be to look into index mutual funds, especially no-load index funds, which typically don't require an initial sales fee.

These funds are made up of the same stocks that make up the popular market indexes like the Dow Jones, S&P, and NASDAQ 100. The costs are low because management is simple, and as a mutual fund, you can invest a little at a time. Also, they are easy to follow since you see them on all the news shows and in the newspaper.

Protection and Management

The final level of personal finance is the protection and management of your wealth. Most people never develop enough wealth to need this level. But some of the concepts can be applied to any amount of wealth you possess, whether that is $10,000 or $10,000,000.

Part of the protection harks back to your will, as we discussed in the first personal finance level: security.

With any significant wealth or valuable asset, you will want some way of disposing that asset upon your death. Whether it is to go to your family, favorite charity, or local church, if no one knows about it, it won't happen.

As you start to accumulate wealth in excess of $350,000, you may want to consult an attorney about creating a trust. A trust is an entity that can own property and pass that property to anyone you name in your will. Usually the trust is designed to provide income to children from the assets that are placed in the trust.

The trust can survive you, so that your assets and income may be passed on to your children or next of kin without excessive taxation and legal entanglements. Some states will take up to 55 percent of your assets as taxes when you pass away.

Protection also relates back to insurance. Now may be the time to look at a multimillion dollar umbrella policy, which will protect you from lawsuits designed to part you from your wealth. You may now be a bigger target, so purchase a suit of armor.

The management aspect comes into play when you start to concern yourself with taxation, ownership, distribution of income, and possibly endowments to charities or other nonprofit institutions.

You may hire a person or company to manage your wealth, or you may choose to do it yourself. Most people who have earned their wealth through the "sweat of their brow" have already become adept at managing their assets. Some continue to personally manage their wealth because of the enjoyment or challenge it gives them.

Others are ready to turn it over to a trustworthy manager and travel the world or sit on a beach and count the waves.

Whatever your dreams for retirement, understanding the different levels of personal finance and spending the time and resources to educate yourself will pay off whether you live next to Bill Gates or Homer Simpson.

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Shadowing a Delegate - Virginia Connection Newspapers

Posted: 17 Mar 2010 09:29 AM PDT

Sander Levin sets tone as new chairman of powerful ... - Detroit News

Posted: 17 Mar 2010 11:52 AM PDT

Nathan Hurst / Detroit News Washington Bureau

Washington --It was a decidedly no-fuss, head first dive for Michigan's Rep. Sander Levin as he today took the reins of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

The 78-year-old Democrat from Royal Oak banged the gavel for the first time shortly after 10 a.m. to begin a markup session for House Bill No. 4849, dubbed the "Small Business and Infrastructure Jobs Tax Act of 2010."

Levin, who took over as committee chairman after Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., stepped aside while the House ethics committee continues a probe into the bow-tied congressman's business and personal finance dealings, kept the political pleasantries brief, setting forth the day's agenda.

Rangel sat next to Levin sipping ice water as the Michigan congressman got things going.

Rep. Dave Camp of Midland, the committee's ranking Republican member, congratulated Levin on his chairmanship and said he looked forward to continuing a "good working relationship" with his Democratic counterpart. Camp also recognized Rangel, who will continue to serve on the committee while the ethics investigation continues.

Noticeably absent was Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who ranks just ahead of Levin in seniority among Democrats on the committee. After Rangel stepped aside from the chairmanship in February, Stark was appointed the temporary chairman of the committee.

But in less than 24 hours, Democratic leaders replaced him with Levin, who was seen as a more level-headed leader for Ways and Means, the committee that oversees critical revenue-raising legislation and tax law.

Rangel was recognized after Camp's introductory remarks by Levin, who referred to him as his "colleague and close friend."

The usually soft-spoken Levin didn't pull any punches in his command of the committee hearing. In a particularly lively exchange with Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., R-La., regarding closing tax loopholes for corporations, the Michigan congressman scolded his Southern colleague to keep his comments focused on the jobs bill.

"If you're going to bring up the tax haven issue with no clear connection to jobs ... we're never going to get anything done," Levin said sternly.

nhurst@detnews.com (202) 662-8738

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Personal Finance

Wednesday, March 17, 2010