“The end of Personal Finance - msnbc.com” plus 3 more |
- The end of Personal Finance - msnbc.com
- Personal finance: keeping track of spending - The Christian Science Monitor
- Business, Personal Finance, Technology, Employment news ... - Austin American-Statesman
- Closing the Female Financial Knowledge Gap - Huffingtonpost.com
| The end of Personal Finance - msnbc.com Posted: 18 Mar 2010 09:28 AM PDT Years ago, when I wrote a popular financial makeover feature for a major national newspaper, one of our subjects asked if he should be plowing his more than $50,000 in savings into gold. It was 1997 and gold was trading at a little more than $300 an ounce. The financial planner assisting with the piece laughed dismissively, and the question never made it into the final write-up. Well, my bad. As I write, gold is hovering around $900 an ounce. For more than two decades, as income inequality increased and job security decreased, Americans lapped up personal finance columns, books, and television shows. We thrilled to stock tips and swooned at sensible strategies for using dollar-cost averaging to invest in no-load index funds. Buy and hold, my friends! The annualized gain for the S&P 500 stock index over time is more than 10 percent! You, too, can turn into the millionaire next door. Carpe diem, folks! Seize the financial day! The advice proffered by the vast majority of analysts, would-be gurus, and television pundits came down to one word: stocks. Some, like CNBC's infamous Jim Cramer, advocated stock-picking strategies. Others encouraged mutual funds. But very few — at least of those that could get publicity via mainstream outlets — doubted the efficacy of the market. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal. CNBC is a division of NBC Universal.) That our personal finances weren't fully ours to seize didn't seem to occur to many of us until recently, when the stock market plunged almost 40 percent in a mere year, housing went into free fall, and the unemployment rate began to climb perilously toward double digits. All these facts suddenly left the personal finance industry facing a conundrum of its own making. The backbone of the self-help complex is the idea that you can do it. You. Singular. But what happens when you lose your job and can't find a new one before your six months of recommended emergency savings runs out? Or a good chunk of your retirement income is in the form of a pension from your former employer — and that employer is named Chrysler? What then? "Personal finance has come to substitute for the role government should play for people," observes Nan Mooney, author of (Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents. "In the past 20 years the myth of the person succeeding on their own has gotten bigger and bigger. This myth is dangerous. It tells you if you can't balance everything and you are in debt, it is your fault." Sounds harsh, but if you are laid off and at the end of your resources, what other message can you take away from people like mega-personal finance guru Suze Orman, who continues to argue that people's main problem with money is ... emotional. (Orman also urges people to invest for retirement in the stock market, while admitting the bulk of her savings is in municipal bonds.) Or Jean Chatzky of everywhere from NBC's Today show to Oprah's couch, who helpfully tells people in her latest book, The Difference: How Anyone Can Prosper in Even the Toughest Times, "Overspending is the key reason that people slip from a position of financial security into a paycheck-to-paycheck existence." (Note: Italics original to Chatzky.) Chatzky forgets to mention that studies have demonstrated the problem most likely to land one in bankruptcy court isn't an addiction to designer clothes but, instead, overwhelming health care expenses. All in all, these might not be the right messages just now. While Orman's book, no doubt propelled by her continuing celebrity and television show, remains at the top of the New York Times best-seller list, Chatzky's book is languishing listless, a very different fate than the one met by her last book, which was released in a different era — 2006, to be precise. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Personal finance: keeping track of spending - The Christian Science Monitor Posted: 18 Mar 2010 09:56 AM PDT Kimberly writes in: Skip to next paragraph Trent Hamm The Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds – we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money. Recent posts
I'm going to assume Kimberly is single. If she's not single, the first thing she needs to do is sit down with her partner along with a copy of all of their bills and the suggestions in this post and come up with a game plan they can approach together. First of all, it's absolutely the right move to sit down at the end of the month and review your spending. Simply knowing where your money goes can help you figure out some very simple things to do to improve your personal finance situation. That being said, I think Kimberly's problem could be a very common one. It's due to the fact that the statement at the end of the month can only provide so much data. Take ATM use, for example. If you stop by an ATM and withdraw some cash, you're suddenly finding yourself with money that can be spent without any real paper trail. If you want to keep track of what you spent that money on at the end of the month, you have to keep the record. Your bank statement won't be able to help you a bit. Counter withdrawals from a bank have the same problem, as does "extra" cash taken off of your debit card when you make a purchase with it. To put it simply, whenever you spend cash, there is no paper trail unless you create that trail yourself. Your bank and credit card statements can't keep track of your cash for you – and if you use cash quite often, you'll find such statement use pretty much impossible. You have two choices here. On one hand, you can change your habits and stop using cash. If you rely on your bank card for most of your purchases, your statement becomes your paper trail for you. It will identify, at the very least, where all of your purchases took place, which, for me, is usually good enough. On the other hand, you can start keeping a money diary. Just pick up a small notebook and keep it on hand. Whenever you spend money for any reason, jot down the date, the amount, and what it was in your pocket notebook. This might not catch everything (you might just forget about it sometimes), but if you have most of your spending in there as an entry, it can often create the picture you need if used hand-in-hand with your statements. Which solution is better? It really depends on your comfort level. Try the one that seems the most appealing to you and see if it works. If it doesn't, try the other one. Another problem that might be causing this is poorly-worded entries on the bank statement and/or the credit card statement. If Kimberly can't decipher what some of the entries mean, the data is useless. If you find yourself with a lot of entries that should have meaning, but do not, you may want to seek assistance with reading your statement. If you still have trouble, you should consider seeking another financial institution. Such entries will always cause you trouble – and they certainly don't need to be vague or unclear. Good luck! You're on the right path to taking control of your finances. Don't let this little road bump deter you! Add/view comments on this post. ------------------------------ The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Business, Personal Finance, Technology, Employment news ... - Austin American-Statesman Posted: 18 Mar 2010 08:30 AM PDT Home > The Real Deal > Archives > 2010 > March > 18 > Entry Austin area home sales up 3.5 percent in FebruaryAustin area existing home sales rose 3.5 percent last month from a year earlier, the sixth year-over-year increase in a row. The Austin Board of Realtors said 1,145 single-family homes were sold last month. The median price was $189,500, unchanged from a year earlier. There were 1,738 sales in the pipeline to close in March, 24 percent more than a year earlier. In Central Texas and across the country, home sales have received a boost from a federal tax credit that include $8,000 for first-time buyers and $6,500 for others, with certain income limits. To qualify, the house must be under contract by the end of April and the closing must occur by the end of June. Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment Categories: Residential Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Closing the Female Financial Knowledge Gap - Huffingtonpost.com Posted: 18 Mar 2010 08:45 AM PDT Every day, we make financial decisions that ultimately affect whether or not we will be able to live independently and retire comfortably. Do we opt for the Starbucks Caramel Latte or the Dunkin' Donuts regular coffee? Do we hop on the subway or hail a taxi for the morning commute? Do we negotiate with our landlord to lower the rent or do we avoid the conflict? Do we splurge on the Fendi bag we saw in the window shop or pay our credit card bill on time? We may opt for Starbucks or a taxi, but the decisions we make on a day-to-day basis can negatively impact our spending, our savings, our debt and, ultimately, our long-term financial health. But, how can we navigate through these financial decisions and plan wisely for the future if we have never been taught about personal finance in school? The majority of young Americans are not as savvy about their financial decisions as they should be. This gap in knowledge inspired me to start LearnVest, a personal finance resource for women. As I was preparing to graduate from college, I heading off to a job at a bank... but I had never been taught a thing about personal finance. Many high school and college students do not know how to balance a checkbook, invest in long-term stocks and bonds, or plan for retirement. They know that "credit debt" is a huge concern but don't have the tools to avoid it. This lack of empowerment doesn't end in adulthood. Studies show that women feel particularly insecure about managing their money: 99% of women couldn't give themselves an "A" in personal finance, 67% of single women do not have a retirement account, and 70% of women say they are carrying so much debt that it is making their life unhappy. On average, Americans under 35 years old spend 16% more than they earn. The average credit card debt for a college senior with at least one card is $4,138, up from $2,169 in 2004. This is addition to student loan debt. But how are young people, women, or anyone for that matter, expected to make the right decisions and plan for the future without a proper education in the fundamentals of personal finance? It's time our school system gives them the knowledge they need to use it. Just as reading, arithmetic, and writing are integral parts of one's education, personal finance should be, too. Most Americans recognize the need for personal finance education in the American school system. A poll on the subject revealed that 90% of respondents believe that personal finance should be incorporated into every child's education. This notion is gaining traction. Forty states have begun to offer some form of financial-literacy instruction or set personal finance standards in elementary and high school classes. Missouri, Utah and Tennessee now require a financial literacy program as a requisite for high-school graduation. Despite these efforts, states have failed to make the necessary monetary investments for real change. As a result, we have a long way to go in regard to personal finance education. While some students in grades K-12 are starting to learn about the value of cash, savings, money management and investing, the majority of high school and college curricula fail to offer personal finance courses. Many students graduate financially illiterate and unaware of the implications; they know their team's latest football score better than their credit score. For women and personal finance, financial literacy is the first step to ensuring financial independence. It is crucial that women understand money management and long-term financial planning early on, so that they can make the right financial decisions at different stages in life. 90% of women will be responsible for their own finances at some point in their lives. Plus, women account for 80% of all spending by U.S. households. The decisions that women have to make are not just whether or not to go to Starbucks in the morning, but how to pay down college loans, how to plan for a wedding, marriage or kids, and how to approach retirement planning. With every stage in life, there are new choices that people must face. Once married, we must decide whether or not to combine our checking accounts with our spouse's. We need to figure out the right time to start saving for a baby, and then when to save for that child's future college expenses. We need to understand the changes in insurance that come with having a family. According to an Allianz Insurance survey, women reported that knowledge, not time, was the greatest barrier to co-managing their household finances. Laura Carroll, a LearnVest supporter, recently commented, "As part of early education, students should not only get the basics on managing one's money, but also be exposed to the idea of co-handling the finances as part of a successful marriage." I couldn't agree more. If we can bring personal finance to the classroom and educate our youth on money management, savings, and long-term investing, then future generations will be more frugal in their spending, wiser with their long-term planning, and more financially independent. Follow Alexa von Tobel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/alexavontobel Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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Comments
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By Sid Delicious
March 18, 2010 11:04 AM | Link to this
Since actual median price is unchanged from a year ago, that should limit tax appraisal increases to 30-40%.
By MECO CARES
March 18, 2010 11:44 AM | Link to this
Schools need the $$.Gubment should tax more for the benefit of Billy who cant read.
By avatar
March 18, 2010 12:05 PM | Link to this
cant wait to see the effects of no more obama stimulus cash, and the fed stops buying MBS. i think we will see 7% making a comeback, and another 15-20% drop in home values due to deflation and lack of buyer interest. Speculators, that bag you are holding is going to get really heavy :)
By Say what what ??
March 18, 2010 1:12 PM | Link to this
Avatar is right! Imagine what this would look like if we didn't have the incentive for new buyers. We forced those on the fence to hurry up and buy and realized future sales now. Oh well- I don't even care 'cause I'm going to buy me a $4 million dollar, 1200 SF condo with one parking space and enjoy the convenience of downtown street closures and having to drive to the 'burbs to go to Target!!
By W
March 18, 2010 1:17 PM | Link to this
How black does a heart have to be to see this story in a negative light? The people who hate the government and want to harm seem to be in abundance. Faux News, you're doing a heckava job there brownie.
By Brian
March 18, 2010 1:21 PM | Link to this
That "median" price needs to be discounted for the immediate value of income tax credits allowable. Anyone got that aggregate figure? A real newspaper would have it. Bigger point is that TCAD needs to take it into account in generating 2010 res prop "market values". $189K is only $181K when ObamaNation will be giving me $8K.
By Robert
March 18, 2010 2:19 PM | Link to this
Man when I read the article on the Statesman, now i just scroll down to see the real story from your comments. THANKS FELLOW TAXPAYERS!!!!
FOX NEWS RULES BY THE WAY