Archive for 'General Personal Finance' Category
Economic Literacy Problems With Journalists
28 August 2006I occasionally harp on how various people need to educate themselves about personal finance. One of the things many people don’t know, however, is that the people you’re reading advice from often have no clue themselves. It’s very hard to separate the wheat from the chaff – and that can have big impacts on people making [...]
When Kids End Up Financially Supporting Their Parents
28 August 2006There have been a lot of stories recently about 35 year old men still mooching off their parents and living in the basement. But it turns out the reverse can be true just as often, according to this MSN Money article on whether you should bail out your parents financially. Many baby boomers just aren’t [...]
Young Women Spending Beyond Their Means
25 August 2006In keeping with the earlier post on a survey showing many women feeling both financially insecure and financially uneducated, here’s a story on young British women who have been caught up in financial problems trying to imitate wealthy girlfriends of sports stars who are glorified on British television. My sense is that this is a [...]
Survey: Women Don’t Know Enough About Personal Finance
25 August 2006The Washington Times has this article out on how many women, even in high income brackets, fear that they’ll end up as a “bag lady” – poor, lonely, and wandering around with no money. The numbers are suprisingly large: Almost half are troubled by a “tremendous fear of becoming a bag lady” — 46 percent [...]
Family Member Exploitation of the Elderly
24 August 2006It’s a common occurance, and the Christian Science Monitor has an article inspired by the famous Astor family case that’s been in the papers recently about how family members who are deadbeats have a tendency to “take care of” elderly family members who have some money – and end up skimming off some for themselves [...]
Come Into Some Money? Expect Constant Phone Calls
23 August 2006Apparently, there’s a new trend of various kinds of financial advisors, stock brokers, and other salesmen monitoring a variety of different kinds of press releases and news sources to try to find people who’ve suddenly earned a whole bunch of money. Stacey Bradford at SmartMoney points to a guy who sold his company for $20 [...]
The Basics of Negotiating
22 August 2006Business Week has a good article that hits all the basic points needed to turn someone from a complete novice to at least a decent negotiator. It’s suprisingly uncommon as a skill these days – and if you think you’re not good at negotiation, you need to read up. You might think, “Well, why would [...]
Even Celebrities Have Financial Problems…
20 August 2006Dual Income No Kids blogged about the problems so many celebrities seem to have with their money. James points out that the problems usually stem from either spending way too much money or not paying any attention at all to the finances or what is going on. It’s really not that suprising that a celebrity [...]
Increasing Rates on Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs)
18 August 2006Everybody Loves Your Money has a good post on how the people who’ve been getting adjustable rate mortgages over the last few years are facing a financial disaster in many cases: I keep reading about all the people that are one step from doomsday. Most of these people are dealing with adjustable rate mortgage increases. [...]
Live in a Hurricane Zone? Make a Financial Evacuation Kit
16 August 2006From Sharon Harvey Rosenberg over at The Frugal Duchess comes a list of tips on how to create an evacuation kit for your personal financial information. The best of these seem to be to move everything that you can over to electronic banking and bill pay so that you don’t lose your information, to keep [...]