Posted November 11, 2008 - 04:23 by Philip Brewer
If there are two pieces of financial advice that get hammered more often than any others, they're "Get out of debt" and "Put enough in your 401(k) to get any corporate match." With times getting tough--making both debt reduction and saving seem more urgent than ever--how do you balance those two choices?
Posted September 30, 2008 - 13:15 by Philip Brewer
Anybody--but especially frugal people--can be excused for thinking that the whole credit crisis thing is being overblown. After all, we get along without debt. In fact, we strongly recommend that others do so as well. If getting along without debt is the way to go, why make such a big deal over a credit crunch?
Posted September 19, 2008 - 01:13 by Philip Brewer
Is there a limit to how much Americans can spend? Clearly there is: All they earn, minus savings and service on their existing debt, plus new borrowing. Since the Bureau of Economic Analysis puts numbers on those very items, it's possible to see just how close we are to the edge. In a fascinating paper, Ron Laszewski does exactly that. The results are rather depressing.
Posted September 8, 2008 - 14:52 by Xin Lu
Yesterday Henry Paulson decided to use the power given to him by the housing bailout bill to officially take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is a decision that has a huge impact on global financial markets. So how does this change affect you? Here is a list of the winners and losers in this situation.
Posted August 18, 2008 - 16:52 by Xin Lu
Today my friend sent me an article titled "We Have Met the Enemy" by Knight Kiplinger, the Editor in Chief of Kiplinger publications. It is a blunt article pointing out that America's current economic woes are caused by none other than the American people and its elected government.
Posted July 16, 2008 - 14:57 by Andrea Dickson
They don't call it "retail therapy" for nothing. Uncontrolled, emotional spending has a lot in common with other addicitons and eating disorders. One of these shared traits is the emotional trigger - something that causes you to react in a way that is self-defeating and/or dangerous. Do you know what your bad-spending trigger is?
Posted July 2, 2008 - 12:38 by Andrea Dickson
Have good credit? A low APR on your credit cards? Always pay your bills on time? That's not going to stop your credit card company from jacking up your rate whenever they feel like it.
Posted May 28, 2008 - 00:18 by Xin Lu
In the past few decades the Ad Council has been running an ad with the tag line "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk". This ad campaign has been instrumental in decreasing drunk driving fatalities and almost every American has heard it at one time or another. What if this ad were applied to mistakes people make in personal finance? Here are some possibilities...
Posted May 14, 2008 - 10:28 by Philip Brewer
Self-sufficiency is producing the actual stuff you use--your own food, your own clothes, etc. It's not a common lifestyle. Most people chose instead to follow the path of self-reliance. Rather than directly producing the things they use, they produce something they can sell for money, or else they work for someone who will pay them money, aiming to earn enough to buy what they use.
Posted April 8, 2008 - 12:43 by Philip Brewer
One of the bugaboos of the financial doom-and-gloom crowd is the worry that foreigners (China in particular, but also oil exporting countries in the Middle-East, and others) might quit buying so many US Treasury securities. If that happened, they say, the value of the dollar would plummet, interest rates would soar, and the US economy would be in terrible trouble. I say: Bring it on!
Have more to say? Join the discussions at Wise Bread's Finance and Frugality Forums.
© 2009
Wise Bread |
About |
Advertise |
Contact |
Forums | Financial Blogs | Login |
Subscribe
User Agreement |
Privacy Policy |
Copyright
A Killer Aces Media FairBlog™
Subscribe to all Wise Bread articles
All comments