“Surf city: Personal finance blogs - Baltimore Sun” plus 2 more |
- Surf city: Personal finance blogs - Baltimore Sun
- Teaching of finances is lacking - Record
- Are Teachers Making the Grade in Personal Finance Education? - PRWeb
| Surf city: Personal finance blogs - Baltimore Sun Posted: 11 May 2010 07:01 PM PDT The World Wide Web is host to hundreds of financial bloggers, who provide everything from solid counsel to something of a support group for the budget-challenged. The advice you get in the blogosphere is different from what you see in the newspaper for a variety of reasons. It's sometimes profane and often on a single topic — such things as student debt or frugal living. And the bulk of bloggers base their advice on experience, rather than straight reporting. You've got to be careful, because some bloggers make money by promoting products. That said, much of it is wonderful, helpful, encouraging and uniquely well suited to the just-graduated set, who are still trying to get a toehold on their financial lives. If you haven't stepped into the Web's wonderful world of money blogs, here's a guide to some of the best — and often largely unknown — sites: pffirewall.com
Jesse Michelsen is a 22-year-old computer programmer from Utah who writes a blog called the Personal Finance Firewall. Recently out of college and helping support his wife through graduate school, Michelson has written one of the clearest explanations about how to use the government's income-based repayment plan to pay your student loans. thesimpledollar.com Trent Hamm grew up certain that the only thing to do with money was to spend it for immediate gratification — such as a video game or a giant television. This led to economic ruin and subsequent revival as a born-again budgeter. His financial Armageddon became a cautionary tale for his blog, showing where he went wrong and what he'd do differently. enemyofdebt.com Brad Chaffee aims to promote financial responsibility and, not surprisingly, the importance of paying off debt. Among his more engaging posts is "How I Lost $60 in Three Seconds," which explains why you ought to have an emergency fund — even when you're broke. budgetsaresexy.com The consistently delightful blog is written by 20-something J. Money (his pen name), who recently had a funny post about the intricacies of real estate pricing. In short: He hopes some "spendthrift" will pay an exorbitant price for his neighbor's home, which could save home values in the neighborhood. frugaldad.com For Facebook fans, there's the Frugal Dad for words of wisdom, such as, "If you need the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit to afford a home, you can't afford a home." The $8,000 will be gone in a flash, he says. But the mortgage will last 30 years. Even better is his recent post explaining the mental process you ought to go through before buying more stuff.
Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| Teaching of finances is lacking - Record Posted: 11 May 2010 11:54 PM PDT The financial teaching grade is in for teachers - and it's not good. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison surveyed K-12 educators, and, not surprisingly - or at least it wasn't a shocker for me - most instructors don't think they are suitably trained to teach their students the basics of personal finance. The study, "Teachers' Background & Capacity to Teach Personal Finance," was funded by the National Endowment for Financial Education, or NEFE. The teachers were asked to self-assess their instructional competency in six personal finance areas: income and careers; planning and money management; credit and debt; financial responsibility and decision-making; saving and investing; and risk management and insurance. Fewer than 20 percent of the surveyed educators felt they were "very competent" in any of the six areas. No wonder: Barely one-third of them had taken a college course that included personal finance content, the researchers found. Increasingly, states are pushing economic education. The number of states that require students to take a personal finance course or such instruction as part of an economics classes increased from seven in 2007 to 13 in 2009, according to the Council for Economic Education. Although states are setting up financial education guidelines, an overwhelming majority of teachers who participated in the NEFE survey said they didn't feel qualified to offer instruction at the level of the standard set by their states, the researchers said. The survey is being used to show that if we teach the teachers, we have a better chance of educating our children in the area of personal finance. This is a worthy goal. It's vital that we teach children to be better stewards of their money. If we do, they will become better money managers as adults. College students shouldn't be handed a degree without having taken personal finance classes - and yes, they should take more than one. For example, graduates should know how to create a budget based on their expected salary. Because of the recession, we have a keener understanding that many folks lack the decision-making training to make good financial choices. We may not be able to teach people common sense, but we sure can do a better job of teaching basic money management, such as not spending more than 36 percent of your net monthly pay on housing. But the agenda to educate the educators and mandate that schools add money management to their basic curriculum must acknowledge that we also need to teach the people who are parenting the K-12 children. Since parents are urged to attend school meetings, sports programs, concerts, plays and other activities, school districts could press them to sit alongside their kids for a money management session. Contact Michelle Singletary, a personal finance columnist at The Washington Post, at singletarym@washpost.com. Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| Are Teachers Making the Grade in Personal Finance Education? - PRWeb Posted: 06 May 2010 12:08 AM PDT | New Study Reveals Need for Greater Focus on Teacher Training Denver, CO (Vocus/PRWEB ) May 6, 2010 -- While 89 percent of K-12 teachers agree that students should take a financial education course or pass a competency test for high school graduation, relatively few teachers believe they are adequately prepared to teach personal finance topics. University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers Wendy Way, Ph.D., and Karen Holden, Ph.D., recently surveyed more than 1,200 K-12 teachers, students currently enrolled in teacher education programs, and university teacher education faculty to better understand their training and education in personal finance and their capacity to teach these topics. The new study was funded by the National Endowment for Financial Education® (NEFE®). "This study reinforces the need to incorporate money management topics into educational opportunities for teachers and those studying to become teachers," says Ted Beck, president and CEO of NEFE. "We have an opportunity to dramatically affect the quality of K-12 financial education by providing teachers with the subject matter expertise they need." Teachers' Background Because a certification or specific training to teach financial education currently does not exist in most regions, teachers of family living, business education, and social studies, (where personal finance traditionally is taught) are the ones most commonly teaching it today. However, math teachers, who are less likely than teachers in these fields to have taken personal finance courses, are also incorporating financial examples in their teaching. Most teachers engaged in providing financial education report that they integrate financial education topics into regularly offered credit courses, rather than offering separate, stand-alone courses. The study showed that K-12 teachers and prospective teachers are acquiring very little additional formal education in personal finance, either through credit-based courses or non-credit offerings. In addition, only a few teachers and a handful of prospective teachers had completed any formal course work in educational methods for teaching financial education. Only 11 percent of K-12 teachers had taken a workshop on teaching personal finance. "Our research shows that teachers are open to integrating financial education into their curriculum. But they need help with tailoring the content to their discipline," says Holden. "Helping teachers learn how to include financial literacy concepts into other disciplines—such as math, consumer education, or language arts—is a way to expand financial education throughout the curriculum." State Standards However, the study found no influence of state mandates on whether a teacher had taken a course in personal finance, taught a course, or felt competent to teach a course. In fact, over 60 percent of teachers and prospective teachers said they do not feel qualified to teach their state's financial education standards. And teacher education faculty in those states were no more familiar with state financial education standards than K-12 teachers themselves. "This lack of influence of state mandates on teacher education implies that there are a lot of opportunities for improvement in the financial education we provide both pre-service and in-service teachers to meet their personal and professional needs," says Way. As states increasingly call for more attention to curricula and/or testing in personal finance, the data suggest that much work needs to be done to ensure that these standards are incorporated into the curriculum for prospective teachers and that K-12 teachers get the training they need to use the standards. For an executive summary or to read the complete Teachers' Background & Capacity to Teach Personal Finance study, click here. The National Endowment for Financial Education is an independent nonprofit organization committed to educating Americans about personal finance and empowering them to make positive and sound decisions to reach financial goals. For more information, visit www.nefe.org. Wendy Way, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Karen Holden, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin-Madison) ### Bookmark - Del.icio.us | Furl It | Technorati | Ask | MyWeb | Propeller | Live Bookmarks | Newsvine | TailRank | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Stumbleupon | Google Bookmarks | Sphere | Blink It | Spurl Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Personal-Finance - Bing News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment