Easy Change

Everyone who has been paying attention is aware that the economy is in dire straits. From the serious tumble that the stock market took, to the completely tanking housing market, it is easy to see examples nearly everywhere that things are going badly. Fortunately though, the chances are, that if you're reading this, that you're in relatively good health. This is something that has the kind of value that doesn't have a price tag. There, I said it. Now think about it for a minute; you're good health is priceless. Recently I had someone close to me undergo a serious surgery. This has given me a new perspective on my health and also made me realize how important it is that everyone, no matter what their situation, do what they can to stay healthy. When you go to the doctor, you may be told to change your lifestyle, quit smoking, stop eating bad foods, etc. When you go to the dentist you may be told to brush better, or floss more. Regardless of what these professionals are ...

This week on Meet the Press, an contributor to Vanity Fair was one guest and she asked this very question. The concept is rather simple, it asks the question why America has become so content to spread the risk around? That is, if we fundamentally think that people who make bad decisions should bear the consequences of those decisions, then we must consider bailouts which significantly reduce and/or eliminate those risks to be a problem. Moral hazard is the term applied to such an event. Indeed, this is a fair question. Listening to broadcasts from the fall of 2008 would bring you to the same question when there was a workout for Bear Sterns. Some felt that any type of intervention, even in the form of a deal, was a bad idea. But others felt like this type of government assistance was a bad idea and was a moral hazard. This was a backlash which might have contributed to the U.S. government allowing Lehman to fail. Regardless of the whys and the hows, the question is now: why has the ...

This week has been quite a ride already and we're not even half done. Lehman Brothers is bankrupt , B of A buying Merrill Lynch , and AIG not looking so hot, searching for some emergency money ..... One of the most important things you can have in this kind of uncertain time is an emergency fund. Not only should you have it, it should be big. The next best thing you can do is cut expenses and do all that you can to shore up your financial footing because who knows where the financial axe is coming from? I know that for many people out there, it is simply too late to do much in the short term about their emergency fund and way too difficult to figure out what to do to move their money around in any significant way. There are 3 things small things you should consider doing though, right now, before the summer ends in order to start picking up some stability in these uncertain times: 1. Make sure that your "safe" money is really safe. If its safe money, it is in an account t...

I read this article about inflation recently. In a nutshell, inflation is a serious concern at this point. And we're not talking about that wonderful 'special' inflation that excludes the cost of food and energy. This type of inflation is absolutely ridiculous because for most families, the inflation on those two items alone is what is effecting their heating, transportation, and food costs. This is not an article about inflation measurement. I think that everyone needs to accept the fact that prices have gone up significantly in a short period of time for the average US citizen. For the average person, this can be a difficult situation to deal with. So, I'd like to describe some anti-inflation strategies. Some of these were talked about this morning on Consuelo Mack: Wealthtrack as a means to describe anti-risk investments. The first basic idea is simple: If you know that the value of the dollar is declining and/or prices are rising, spend the dollars quickly before t...

This weekend was quite nice for me. I was able to wrap up several projects and get some plans made for new ideas that I am working on. My goal is to generate enough extra income to get my loan (see my NCN chart on the right) down enough to be paid off around tax return time 2008. I reread Rich Dad last week and again, I found it inspiring. I think it is a great book for people who are looking for inspiration to be entrepreneurial. I'm not particularly fond of the real estate ideas in the book, though. But I think that is more of a personal preference than a statement about the ideas themselves. I started exercising again and I am happy to be able to return to that. If I can avoid straining any muscles like that ever again, I will be happy. The upside of not exercising was that I was able to catch up on my reading and I've been tearing through the Harry Potter books in anticipation of the movies. I am curious to see how they try to capture so much detail and action into a short...

From reading various comments, I've decided that it is time to put together a list of reasons that Yahoo! Finance is somewhat annoying to many pf bloggers and other readers out there. With any luck, this will help to improve the finance writing that is being produced. I find it quite annoying actually that many of the ideas and comments go ignored and unanswered by the people in charge over at Yahoo Finance and the authors. These are not all my opinions, they are pretty much gathered from the various comments for the articles. 1. There's nothing new . -- This is by far the complaint that seems to top the comments list. I see some variation of this complaint on almost every single article that is written. This is something that I absolutely have to agree with. What is most interesting about this complaint is that very few of the writers really make an effort to develop original advice content. Most of the writers who are developing new content are using their personal experience...

This morning I was flipping through the channels and saw MTV had a marathon of Super Sweet Sixteen on. For those of you who don't know what this show is, it is a reality show where the star is a fifteen year old girl who is planning her sweet sixteen party. Of course, the do tons of little segments with the girls asking for various gifts and different entertainment for the party etc. And I've seen the show before and although it is something that seemed a little ridiculous, I always just figured that was how the "other half" lived. This morning, however, was the topper for me. ::climbs on to soapbox:: It was a girl named stephanie who came across as an absolute spoiled brat. Who knows if that is really her personality or if that was just selective editing and the stress of the situation. But, even assuming that it was not all her fault, the situation just seemed absurd. She had an "invitation" party where she had a special costume and performers etc just to...

The adventures this weekend started with a couple of seeds, but it really just shows that it was a pretty green weekend. First there was the trip to the local home improvement store (shhh don't tell HD, but I didn't go there for my stuff, even though I own their stock yipe!). Anyway, it was a pretty good trip and about 200 dollars later I had enough supplies to nicely redo the landscaping in front of the condo. It was a good feeling once it was all done, even though it was a lot of work. The total savings by doing it by hand over hiring someone was probably easily several hundred dollars. In addition, planted some vegetable seeds and I'm hoping that they grow nicely. My neighbor is also going to plant some vegetables so we can swap back and forth. This will hopefully save some money on salads this summer/fall. We'll see. If things go really well this year, I will probably increase my efforts next year. I also managed to get one of the old computers in my basement worki...

This go around, I submitted my recent post on moving back home to the carnival of personal finance: http://firefinance.blogspot.com/2007/05/101st-edition-of-carnival-of-personal.html But I was amazed at how many great articles and posts there were in this edition. My Two Dollars wrote a post on bundled phone/cable packages that hit me squarely in the face since I had the cable guy over yesterday to fix something and he was trying to give me the sales-pitch. http://www.mytwodollars.com/2007/05/17/does-bundling-your-cable-phone-internet-save-any-money/ I also liked this introspective post over at my wealth builder; it seems to speak directly to all of those killjoys at yahoo finance that expect their finance gurus to strike gold with some amazing new idea in every column they write. http://my-wealth-builder.blogspot.com/2007/05/is-anything-really-new-in-personal.html Let me know if there were any articles in this addition that you really liked.

I remember when I used to work at a job where I was paid bi-weekly instead of semi-monthly. For those of you who are not payroll nerds like I am, bi-weekly is when you are paid every other week. Semi-monthly means you are paid twice per month. People generally think of them the same way, but they aren't. The semi-monthly people are the ones who get the short end of the stick, in my opinion. If you are paid semi monthly, most often it is on the (1st and 15th) or the (15th and last day of the month). This means that you need to make your money last for that period of fifteen days and cover all of the bills for the next period with that paycheck. Personally, I've found that the best way to do this is using excel. Setup a spreadsheet in excel (or any other spreadsheet application) with a column for the title of your bill. The next column will be for the date your bill is due each month. The third column is how much the bill is for. Obviously, this is just an estimate since you are...

I had a moment around lunchtime today so I figured I'd check out Casey Serin's blog. Casey Serin. You know, that guy who bought like 7 properties using shady (if not completely fake) information to get the loans and is now stuck between a rock and proverbial hard place when it comes to moving forward financially.?. Anyway, he writes on his blog that he is going to be getting some help from Suze Orman. I watch Suze's show though and I didn't see him on there so I must have missed the episode he was on. But in regard to the meetup of these two personalities, one commenter on Casey's blog seemed quite concise. A commenter named Segfault writes -- "Her financial advice is not always top-tier, but I'd rate her far above Robert Kiyosaki. I'd rate her below John Bogle, Ben Stein, and William Bernstein. That said, and not even having heard her specific advice to you, I think you should take her advice, because it will probably be the best you've gotten so ...

Google has introduced a brand new feature. They are allowing all of their users to actually print out all of their emails AND photos and have them shipped via regular post to you for no charge. Of course, the downside is that they need to make the money for this service to operate so they have decided to sell advertising on the "backside" of the documents and photos that are printed. But considering how cool this feature is, I am really excited to get my first photos. Using gmail paper is very easy. Once you go to check your gmail, you will see advertising for it. Then you can learn more about it. But once you have signed in to your email, you must enable options under settings in order to get it to work. Obviously, the main thing that they need is your physical address so that they can send you the stuff. All in all, seems like a great service. (btw, this is all a joke; it is google's April Fools Day Joke. If you want to read more, check this link: ) http://mail.google.c...

Not long ago, I read this article about personal finance bloggers. One item that I have been noticing lately is that there are more and more financial bloggers. The fact that there was this article is an indication that I was not imagining this phenomena. I think that this is quite exciting because it indicates that there has actually become a very useful function of the internet and blogging. That is, to provide information about money in a person-to-person manner so that people can become more educated and handle some of these more complicated financial issues themselves. This got me thinking though. What does all of this mean though? What are some of the ideas that might come out as a result? Here's what I think could happen I think that we will begin, probably by Generation Z, to start seeing most kids graduate from high school and college with a thorough understanding of their own finances. This implies that they will understand how to save money, why they should, how to plan...

Even though we hear over and over in the media, we, as Americans are still charging up a storm. According to a recent Federal Reserve survey, the median balance on Credit Cards in 2004 was 2400 dollars. This does not bode well. This means that many people are losing 240 dollars or more annually, just on credit card interest payments. There are some bright sides to the survey though. Only 3% of all debt is Credit Card debt. This means that what is often termed good debt: mortgages and college, are much larger amounts. This is important because mortgages are debts that have an a tangible asset associated with them: real estate. In the event that these debts cannot be repaid, at least there is an asset that is available. Although the increase is somewhat concerning, it is not quite so large when you consider inflation and the fact that over 20% of credit card users pay off their bill each month. This means that many people are using their cards responsibly. The key to keeping our national...