There have been a lot of developments with Mint.com lately, the biggest of which was their acquisition by Intuit (the makers of Quicken software). Mint is known primarily for their free online budgeting tool, which we’ve enthusiastically recommended here; and if you haven’t had a chance to check them out yet, you may want to give them a try. They’ve vastly improved their software, web site, blog and overall content.

They’ve recently gone on the social media bandwagon and have leveraged the power of Twitter by developing what they call their “Money Tweets” feature, a section of their site that’s devoted to up-to-date, real time personal finance information. This is just one more handy way to organize financial content around the web in one place.

Mint’s Money Tweets Section

In this new section, you’ll find selected tweets covering various personal finance topics such as Saving, Investing, Budgeting, Loans and Retirement. There are additional tabs that share tweets that are “about Mint” and “from Mint” along with a Q & A tab, where you can tweet your answer to Mint’s Question of the Day.

And finally, there’s the cool tab that measures how certain financial topics are trending for the day: it’s a quick, visual way to see which money topics are picking up the daily buzz.

Mint’s Trending Financial Topics

If you haven’t checked out Mint yet, I’d encourage you to pay them a visit, not just for their popular and free online budgeting tool, but also for the rich multi-media content resource library they now offer for students of personal finance.

Now for additional financial resources, I’d also like to put in a word for this great Q & A resource called Cash Commons, which I just came across via Mighty Bargain Hunter. I’ve been spending some time perusing this site along with these excellent articles on finance:

Personal Finance Articles

• OneMint: List of Gold ETFs
• Brip Blap: Too Busy For Vacation
• Credit Karma: Paying Back Part of Making Work Pay Tax Credit
• Cheap, Healthy Good: 100+ Thanksgiving Recipes and Links (just wow!)
• Free Money Finance: How to Graduate from Harvard for $40k or Less
• Lazy Man and Money: Trade your CDs for an iPod or iPhone… legally?
• Million Dollar Journey: A Little Food Planning Goes a Long Way
• Monevator: The reality of making money from iPhone apps
• Personal Financier: How I Bought My Son $150 Worth of Cardboard Boxes
• Frugal Dad: Corporate Security Or Freelance Freedom?

Recent Carnivals

• Festival of Frugality: Awesome! Many thanks to the delicious blog called Cheap, Healthy, Good for selecting my post on how to lower credit card interest rates as an Editor’s Pick!
• Carnival of Debt Reduction: I’m glad I made it to John’s short list! Good list of debt management tips here.
• Festival of Stocks
• Carnival of Personal Finance

Mint.com’s Twitter Feature: Money Tweets!

YNAB Pro Giveaway Code: fibonacci

Some considerations before you decide to buy a foreclosure.

Not All Cheap Houses Are True Bargain Homes

A bargain is synonymous to a “great deal” — something that has value and has an ROI. The truth is, not all cheap houses are great deals; in fact, some are considered liabilities. But let’s not forget that liabilities can be found anywhere as well: for instance, I once discussed how some friends made a bad investment and lost a million dollars on a vacation rental they owned.

These days, cheap homes are everywhere, especially in certain residential communities that have fallen into foreclosure. I still can’t seem to wrap my head around how Detroit houses can be purchased for a third of the money you’d need to spend for a new car. That’s also because that same $7,000 house in Detroit would probably fetch several hundred thousand dollars if it were located here in San Francisco: I can’t find any homes here that will go for less than $100,000.

With these fire sale prices around the nation, people are flocking to buy foreclosures and hoping to pluck some distressed properties off the market. Before you indulge your dream of finally becoming an absentee landlord, check out these lessons on real estate investing that I picked up from CNN Money:

Lesson 1: Forget about flipping. The days of fast appreciation in home prices are now over. So if you’re going to invest in real estate, you’ll want to make money the way it’s traditionally done: through rental income and cash flow.

Lesson 2: Realize that the property’s purchase cost is just the start. With any piece of property bought, there’s always going to be ongoing upkeep, along with taxes (depending on where you live). But the crappier the house you buy, the more money you should expect to spend on fixing it up to be ready for use. So just keep in mind that even with a super cheap house, your costs can balloon after all is said and done.

Lesson 3: You’ll need cash. With the tough credit environment, it’s much harder to get the financing you’ll need from banks to bankroll your real estate investment plans. Those with cash will have an advantage in this market.

Lesson 4: Know the neighborhood. While it used to be just “buy, flip and profit” some years ago, these days it’s all about finding the diamond in the rough. With so many cheap houses vying for your attention now (who knew that a buyer’s market could be such a hassle!), you’ll need to do some due diligence. You can’t buy blindly like real estate investors of years past were wont to do — or you’d risk making an erroneous investment decision.

Lesson 5: Know and screen your tenants. With the economy in the tank, you can bet that it’s probably going to be more of a challenge to find good, reliable tenants. Aspiring landlords will be facing more work and spending more time screening for the right people to rent out to.

Thoughts On Real Estate Investing

I’ll admit that when the real estate market was soaring, I too, fell under the spell of wanting to be a landlady one day. I had this interest (”dream” is too strong a word) to try out rentals as an investment. Now that the market has crumbled, I’m no longer as interested in this endeavor, and have discovered that this is really not my “thing”. You see, if you are truly a landlord at heart, you’d stick to your calling through thick and thin. When you evaluate the things you’d like to spend your time doing, you’ll know that something is “in your blood” if you’re willing to do it even with much less money involved.

On that note, I’ve decided that real estate investing for me will be relegated to REIT investing. And for cash flow, I’ve instead decided to stick to investing in “virtual” real estate, or web properties, if you will. I think I’ve established that this is how far I’m willing to stretch beyond my comfort zone.

Personal Finance Articles

Special read for the week:

Econobusters is a new site I came across that’s all about frugal tips, tutorials, home management and recipes. Molly Green’s site is listed in my frugal hacks blogroll so I thought to give her a shout out. She covers the gamut of topics ranging from frugal shopping, decorating and cooking to thrifty finds, freebies and special deals. Here’s a taste of what she loves to write about:

• Tackle The Shopping List
  
• How To Set An Attractive Table
• How To Be Content

Oh and you can also sign up for a newsletter when you visit her site!

And here are more articles I enjoyed reading this week:

• Len Penzo: Price Comparison of 10 Sandwiches
• WeSeed: Learning About the Market in School
• Money Magazine: Economists do poor job of job forecasting
• Monevator: Think long term
• Lazy Man and Money: Adventures in Dallas (and how we saved money there)
• Mighty Bargain Hunter: Where Is The Extra French Hen?
• Almost Frugal: Have I Changed That Much?
• The Financial Blogger: Alternative Ways to Make an Extra Buck
• Money Smart Life: Open Enrollment Deadlines

Recent Carnivals

• Carnival of Debt Reduction
• Carnival of Personal Finance
• Carnival of Money Stories
• Festival of Frugality

Not All Cheap Houses Are True Bargain Homes

YNAB Pro Giveaway Code: fibonacci

I’ve discussed how to avoid foreclosure and how to avoid bankruptcy in the past, but in some cases, things don’t work out too well, and there are people who end up becoming casualties of the real estate bust, credit crisis and weak job market.

Lots of people have been forced into homelessness due to a variety of reasons. Many cases of homelessness are because of mistakes and choices people make in their lives. There are those who fall into substance abuse and become stuck in this kind of existence. But there are other cases — particularly in recent years — that are not from bad choices. In some situations, it may be due to poor planning.

But this is not the entire story because there are those who fall into homelessness even with reasonable planning. Sometimes, even when you think you’re sufficiently ready for any kind of emergency, the sky does fall on you and you find yourself reeling from an unrecoverable financial predicament. Bad health can do it. Extended job loss can do it as well. Sheer bad luck and misfortune can just be in the cards for a while.

I used to think that with enough savings and preparation, nothing is insurmountable. Well, I’m halfway through my life now and I’ve seen enough to think otherwise. Sometimes, it’s about crossing your fingers too, and hoping that you never have to face a financial tsunami in your lifetime.

On that note, I’d like to share this CNN video that I found quite surprising in many ways. It’s about “tunnel dwellers” in Las Vegas; not everything is what it seems…

Steve Dommer and his girlfriend, Kathryn, live in the depths below the Vegas Strip. They created an elaborate 400-square-foot space, complete with a living room, bedroom, kitchen and workshop to fix bicycles. Everything is elevated off the floor with wooden pallets or milk crates because of potential flooding.

The guy in the video does not look homeless, yet he is. He’s coping, somehow. I guess this is the type of story that reminds us that homelessness can befall anyone, and why public awareness of programs like Help USA is important.

Personal Finance Articles

• Credit Karma Blog: Annoyed By Ridiculous Overdraft Fees?
• Free Money Finance: Ten Ways to Make Your Boss Love You
• Bargaineering: Will Your Recession Changes Stick?
• One Mint: What is an ETF?
• Plugged In Finance: On No/Low Cost DRIPs
• Gen X Finance: The Good, The Bad, And Ugly of Annuities
• Lazy Man and Money: Amazon Friday Sale: L.A. Clippers For the Win Edition
• Gather Little By Little: Are you preparing for the worst?
• Budgets Are Sexy: Try Working On Finances When You’re In The Mood
• Sun’s Financial Diary: October 2009 Score Card — Part I: Net Worth
• Brip Blap: How Working Overseas Helps Your Career
• Financial Samurai: Never Call In Sick On Friday, Slacker!
• Million Dollar Journey: Why Canadians Don’t Redeem Coupons

Recent Carnivals

• Carnival of Personal Finance
• Carnival of Debt Reduction

How One Homeless Person Lives: Coping With Homelessness

YNAB Pro Giveaway Code: fibonacci

Musings on stock market investing.

I was indulging my regular surfing habit and came upon yet another insightful observation by Monevator, this time, on the (de)merits of technical analysis. I’ve found that many bloggers and investors of my persuasion are usually critical of technical analysis, especially as we’ve embraced index investing, asset allocation and passive or long term investing as the prudent ways to invest. But since I’ve begun blogging about personal finance, and have the opportunity to read countless financial and investment articles and posts on a daily basis, I’ve come to relax many of my opinions and views about finance. In the case of investing, as with many other topics, I’ve begun keeping a more open mind.

Image from Free Forex Signals

Monevator is of the camp (along with one of my all time favorite bloggers, Golbguru, who’s been sadly quiet of late) who thinks that technical analysis is a bunch of mumbo jumbo, or as one of them says, “a load of bull and bear crap”. I suppose it’s because it seems much like reading tea leaves: check out a bunch of charts and wield a ruler and voila, you’ve got some answers! Seems a bit far-fetched maybe?

Thoughts On Technical Analysis of the Investment Markets

For me, the jury for this kind of investing analysis is still out. I may want to expound on this another day, but for now, I’ll say that I like to “dabble” in it and haven’t particularly discounted this form of analysis completely. In fact, I’ve been studying it for the sake of seeing a different perspective on investing, and have picked it up to try to understand current and past market behavior. As far as trying to predict the future based on the past? It’s all guesswork of course, but both stock market technical analysis and fundamental analysis attempt to provide perspective about what may potentially happen down the road with a given market or security.

I actually lean on both approaches (with varying degrees of confidence) along with a whole lot more (intuition included) in order to determine my next moves for my investments. And while I don’t rely on technical analysis exclusively as a way to make money off the markets, I believe I’ve become a better investor and have learned a lot more about how any market works, thanks to getting a little bit more educated in the concepts used by short term traders and active investors.

The point here for me is whether technical analysis can “help me with my game”. I think it has, but not in the way you’d think, since I don’t trade that much. I’ll just have to say “it works for me” in so far as providing me additional knowledge about how the various investment markets work and how investors and traders “play” in this universe. I pretty much use it for the educational value. I just view it as a way to get a big picture read on investments and a nice way to try to gauge market sentiment.

Anyway, enough ramble. Here were some of the bloggers I caught up with this week. There’s more food for thought here!

Personal Finance Articles

• Free Money Finance: How to Be Financially Comfortable
• Lazy Man and Money: What if You were Required to Share your Finances?
• Gen X Finance: How to Save Money for Christmas in a Short Amount of Time
• Credit Karma: The Ups and Downs of the Housing Market
• Money Smart Life: Outsourcing Your Investing Decisions
• Frugal Dad: The End of Universal Default
• One Mint: Tap tap tap

Recent Carnivals

• Carnival of Pecuniary Delights
• Festival of Frugality
• Carnival of Personal Finance

Thoughts On Technical Analysis of the Investment Markets

YNAB Pro Giveaway Code: fibonacci

Still keeping an eye on unemployment numbers: watching this is like rubbernecking at a train wreck.

Wonder what this stock market is rejoicing about. No, I’m not at all grumpy that it seems to defy logic but as I mentioned earlier, with the underlying threat of a double dip recession permeating our economy, I’m clearly flummoxed about the Dow still breaching 10,000.

Also, I am not really griping — I can’t complain since I’m more of a long term investor and the welcome rise I’m seeing in my retirement funds makes me “relax” a little. But only a little, since the behavior in the markets doesn’t seem all too logical (since when did it make sense…), prompting me to believe that this uptrend is being built up to eventually result in a nasty correction. What’s that saying again? The higher it rises, the harder it falls.

National Unemployment Statistics: Job Losses At Record Highs

Here’s what I mean: it just doesn’t look good out there. The Calculated Risk blog points out that the latest unemployment figures (for last September) were very dismal for many states, with the following info from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (click to enlarge):

Visit Calculated Risk for the bigger picture.

Michigan again recorded the highest unemployment rate among the states, 15.3 percent, in September. The states with the next highest rates were Nevada, 13.3 percent; Rhode Island, 13.0 percent; and California, 12.2 percent. The rates in Nevada and Rhode Island set new series highs. Florida, at 11.0 percent, also posted a series high.

Here’s another look at this through the eyes of Google. Check out the interactive graph for the whole scoop:

Let’s see: since I live here in California, how about I dwell on this a little. I’ve been following California’s unemployment rate for a while now, and it’s ugly. From what I hear and read, it’s dreadful. And from what I know, the numbers don’t tell the full story either: a local radio station here reported a state unemployment rate of around 20% if you count discouraged workers or those who’ve given up on unemployment benefits. This MSNBC article discusses just how underestimated and under-reported the job numbers are:

Counting people who are no longer collecting unemployment, never received unemployment because they didn’t qualify or people who are working part time just to have a little income – [the unemployment rate is] more like 19-22 percent.

My personal vantage point also coincides with these findings: for instance, at least one family member and one good friend are struggling with work issues right now, taking on jobs that aren’t really along their lines of work because there’s nothing else available. Call after call to headhunters aren’t yielding results, with interviews not really amounting to much at this time. I’m not participating in this job market right now, but I can feel the discouragement, frustration and pain from those around me. It’s contagious.

Oh yeah, there’s also the latest news bomb that Sun is slashing 3,000 employees from its workforce while waiting for Oracle to take on the reins (recall that Oracle is absorbing Sun). That’s 10% of Sun’s workforce, and another 3,000 more technologists, engineers and other personnel who will be competing with the unemployed, here in the Valley.

These days, I’m just urging and advising those around me to go after any job that catches their eye. Cast a wide net and take a job — any job. At this point, any kind of paid work is a good thing.

That was my piece. Now if you’re in the mood for a good rant, see how the Monevator goes off on bankers! For more on finance around the net, check out the articles below.

Personal Finance Articles

• One Mint: Why DCA Does Not Work For Me. Manshu’s analysis and arguments consistently fascinate me, and this is just one more example of his work.
• Smart Spending: On other news, MSN Money’s Smart Spending blog featured my guest post: Close Encounters With ID Theft. Thanks to Karen Datko for the coverage.
• Free Money Finance: The Power of Good Enough
• Ask Mr. Credit Card: First Credit Card
• Million Dollar Journey: Who Pays? The Delicate Balance of Dating and Money
• My Two Dollars: How To Bring Back Prosperity…Tomorrow.
• Lazy Man and Money: Save Money with an iPhone/Palm Pre?
• Money Smart Life: What Was the Best $100 You’ve Ever Spent?
• Intelligent Speculator: Huge Earnings For Golf Champ
• Money Under 30: Radically Re-Thinking Credit Cards
• Frugal Dad: 5 Reasons To Dump Your Strict Budget
• Brip Blap: Everyone Is Special and Unique

Recent Carnivals

• Carnival of Personal Finance
• Carnival of Money Stories

National Unemployment Statistics: Job Losses At Record Highs

YNAB Pro Giveaway Code: fibonacci

Is the bull back?!

Now that the stock market has hit the magic Dow Jones 10,000 mark, it sure feels like a hard fought climb up to that milestone. It’s still a ways away from 14,000 for the DJIA, which was once achieved in 2007, but as some of you may think — “we’re getting there.”

Image from the NY Times

Double Dip Recession: Why Dow 10,000 May Not Last

But here’s the thing: like many other market followers, I am quite nervous about this development in the equity market. Sure, we’re supposedly in an economic recovery right now, but many people are still feeling the pinch of lost jobs, no jobs or upside down mortgages, as far as I’ve noticed. As I’ve discussed before, we’re far from celebrating here in the SF Bay Area: the California unemployment rate is stuck above 12%, and as this interactive graph shows, it’s only gotten worse over time.

What’s more concerning to me is this thing that some economists are warning about: the risk of a double dip recession for our economy. For instance, I heard about how Carl Icahn (a billionaire investor) has been addressing the possibility of a double dip recession due to continued rising unemployment, which could very well impact the coming retail season as people put a cap on their spending. According to him, “we’re right on the precipice” of another economic contraction (quoted from this Bloomberg article). Here are some interesting points on this:

Yahoo Finance chart of the Dow Jones over the last 5 years.

The stock market going to 10,000 could simply be caused by investors realizing that we aren’t really going to the doghouse as badly as we initially thought. Good to know that so far, we’ve established the 6,000 level as “the bottom”. But really, is the Dow at 10,000 (or even 9,000) justified right now? I’m definitely in the camp that doesn’t think so.

As I review the fundamentals, I feel uncertain about this upward march in stock prices.

• We’re supposed to be recovering from the worst recession since the 1930s. Somehow, I expect it to take more work for us to pull out of the depths of this hole.
• In September of 2009, unemployment went up to 9.8% nationally, the highest levels since 1983.
• Can inflation be around the corner?
• What’s fueling the market’s rise? Improved earnings reports, apparently, but these are a result of business cut backs and company layoffs, rather than real growth.

So what do you think. How long will this mini-bubble last? Is anyone optimistic?

Personal Finance Articles

On to other exciting things: let’s check out what’s going on elsewhere!

• Her Every Cent Counts: Woohoo! I made it to this great list of female bloggers in finance! Definitely a nice resource for those of you who want to meet female money writers.
• One Mint: Africa ETF List
• The Simple Dollar: When One Partner Is Self-Employed
• Take Charge: ‘Bailout’ blues falling on deaf ears
• Credit Karma: 7 Ways To Get Rich Slowly
• Gen X Finance: Take Time to Learn About Your Benefits During Open Enrollment
• Lazy Man and Money: Ask The Readers: Should Pottery Barn Give Us a Refund?
• Political Calculations: Implicit Taxation By Design
• Master Your Card: Nickled and Dimed: The High Cost of Banking While Poor
• Brip Blap: 7 Ways To Build and Maintain a Personal Network That Works For You
• Plugged In Finance: Consider All Taxes When Figuring Out Savings
• Monevator: Think you’ve spread your risk? Think again

Recent Carnivals

• Carnival of Debt Reduction
• Best of Money Carnival: I made it to the number 2 slot for my post about measuring job satisfaction. Thanks Stretchy Dollar!
• Money Hacks Carnival

Double Dip Recession: Why Dow 10,000 May Not Last

YNAB Pro Giveaway Code: fibonacci

If you’re a regular here, you would be aware of my interest in fun interactive tools and web sites on the subject of personal finance and money management. I’ve already showcased quite a few interesting tools here.

But this time around, I thought to show you this CNN Money graphic that gauges your financial health. If you enter your age and income, it will let you know how your family finances are doing along several tracks, based on conventional financial principles and recommendations. After I answered the questions, I only got a grade of “B”. Well, let’s take a look at where I need some improvement — I’ll go through the various financial categories to discuss the results I got for each:

Click the image to try out the tool!

My Family Finances

Our Housing Payment: I’ve got to be careful here because my family spends too much on housing. So currently, we spend more than 28% of our gross income on housing related expenses and that’s a no-no. But we have a few good excuses for this: first, we live in an area where the cost of living and real estate costs are considered insane. Second, we have a 15 year fixed mortgage which will be paid off fairly soon. So the money we’re putting towards our home isn’t as bad as it seems since most of it is now going to principal. Third, we can try to do more to increase our income, which we believe we can do over time.

Our Debt Profile: Again, our debt picture looks cloudy on account of our mortgage, but only if you don’t see the big picture. However, our mortgage is the only real debt we carry and I’ve justified its existence. Good debt should be fine, right? Plus, this mortgage won’t be hanging around for too long.

Our Emergency Savings: We’ve got ample funds in high interest savings accounts and other safe, liquid investments, so we scored well here.

Our Asset Allocation: Apparently, we’re not aggressive enough. The “120 minus Your Age” rule was used to point out that we’ve been too conservative with our investment portfolio. According to this investment rule, we should have 80% of our portfolio in the stock market (120 – our average age). Eh, I’d say we should consider our risk profile here as well, and by taking that into account, we feel perfectly fine with our asset allocation at this time.

Our Company Stock: The tool suggests that we keep our company stock ownership to 10% at most. We’re way below that.

Our Life Insurance: The rule here is to have enough life insurance to replace at least 5 years of your salary (or up to 10 years if you’ve got dependents). If you have no dependents, life insurance is optional. We also scored well here.

Our Retirement Savings: The tool complained that we should beef up our retirement savings a bit more. A couple of things about this: perhaps we don’t plan to retire in the traditional sense — I see ourselves continuing to work on things (perhaps on income generating projects) that we enjoy, well into our golden years. The worst case scenario? Sell the house and move somewhere cheaper!

So how about you, care to try this out and tell us your score?

For more personal finance, do check out my suggested readings below!

Personal Financial Articles

• Free Money Finance: What Made You Care About Money?
• Wise Bread: 15 Ways To Manage Risk In Your Financial Life
• Len Penzo: A Layman’s Guide to Mortgage Application Junk Fees
• One Money Design: Values and Personal Finance: Letting Values Determine Goals
• Lazy Man and Money: Amazon Friday Sale – Health Edition
• Pinoy Smart Life: Tracking My Daily Expenses
• Bad Money Advice: Why Go to College?
• Dividend Tree: Clarcor and ConAgra can Sustain Dividends
• Cash Money Life: Top 10 Consumer Complaints And How to Protect Yourself
• Darwin’s Finance: Why Verizon FIOS is WAY more Expensive than you Think
• Brip Blap: Leaving The NorthEast, A Retrospective
• Intelligent Speculator: Apple-AAPL-A Stock To Buy?

Recent Carnivals

• Carnival of Personal Finance: I am thankful to Studenomics for selecting my post on fast cash loans as an Editor’s Pick! It’s been a while since I’ve received such a special mention, so I’m pretty happy.
• Money Hacks Carnival
• Carnival of Financial Planning

Family Finances: How Is Your Financial Status?

YNAB Pro Giveaway Code: fibonacci

Have you seen what Bernie Madoff has been up to lately? Apparently on the wrong end of a bull! Got this from the BBC News where it describes this photo as follows:

Chinese artist Chen Wenling critiques the global financial crisis in What You See Might Not Be Real, on display at a Beijing gallery. The bull is said to represent Wall Street, while the man pinned to the wall represents jailed financier Bernard Madoff.

Is it bad to feel strangely gratified by this scene? Well, if you’ve been on the wrong end of a Ponzi scheme before, who can blame you?

Now let’s shift gears: I’m going out of town this week so I figured to put together my reading list a little earlier than usual. I’m also a bit distracted given what’s been going on with my family elsewhere, so I’ll leave you with this week’s financial roundup for now. Here’s what I’ve been reading lately!

Personal Finance Articles

• Free Money Finance: Five Ways to Make Your Nest Egg Last a Lifetime
• The Wallet: Simple Truths That Help You Save — and Make — Money
• Five Cent Nickel: Create Your Own “Extended Warranty Fund”
• Money Smart Life: Life is Short: Save & Spend Wisely for Those Left Behind
• Bargain Babe: Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel
• Lazy Man and Money: Reviewing my Necessary Expenses
• One Mint: Traits of early retirees
• All Financial Matters: 2009 Personal Finance “How To” Roundup
• Million Dollar Journey: None of My Business
• Dividend Tree: Emerson Electric Company – Priced for Long Term Buy
• The Financial Blogger: Going Back to the Basics of Personal Finance
• Brip Blap: How To Market Contract Consulting Services
• My Dollar Plan: Give Yourself an Allowance to Control Spending and Save Money

Recent Carnivals

• Best of Money Carnival: Made it to Pinyo’s list this week with my post entitled Your Kid’s Allowance! Awesome! Thanks for a great carnival Mr. Moolanomy!
• Carnival of Personal Finance
• Your Pet Monthly

Bernard Madoff and The Bull, A Sculpture

YNAB Pro Giveaway Code: fibonacci

There’s this lady who decides to revolt and bail out on her debts. If her information is accurate, her reasons seem justified (though some will be compelled to criticize her actions):

The summary: this very courageous (or foolish? you decide) Bank of America customer gets peeved over the hike in her credit card rates to 30% even though she is a good customer. She calls BofA to try to negotiate her rates and instead, they refer her to a debt counseling and consolidation service (the problem is not with her budget). Hmmmm…..

So now she’s fed up and decides to send a message to the “banking elite” through YouTube: She’s going to halt her payments and won’t be paying off her credit card debt until she gets her original rate back or unless the bank decides to give her a too-good-to-pass pay off offer. “Stick that in your bailout pipe and smoke it,” she tells them.

Hearing her outcry and call to action, would you be willing to sacrifice your credit score to make such a statement?

It seems that the banks and card companies do their bullying in the hopes that most of their customers would just roll over and pay up. But there will be customers who aren’t going to take it — these are the people that card issuers should be listening to and negotiating with. These customers are willing to keep paying off their debt at reasonable rates but by pushing them over the edge, card issuers are leaving them no choice. So the harried card holders are going to do the drastic thing and bail out on their debts. I think it’s pretty stupid for these financial institutions NOT to realize this.

Can’t BofA see that their customers just want some fair and reasonable treatment? Oh I forgot, all that went out the window with the subprime meltdown. Apparently, taxpayer bailouts haven’t been enough. Banks have to put the squeeze on their customers too.

So who’s going to blink first? Well, who’s got more to lose?

Lazy Man’s Plight

All this reminds me of the story of a friend of mine: someone else who’s fighting the good fight is my buddy Lazy Man. If you haven’t heard his story yet, it hasn’t been a bed of roses for him recently. He’s been slapped with a cease and desist order from a big corporation (MonaVie of Acai Berry fame) for alleged trademark infringement, but really, they just don’t like the “negative publicity” that Lazy Man has heaped upon them with his writeups. If these were glowing reports from a blogger, they would never make such a stink.

I wish Lazy Man all the luck on this one. You can check out his update on the case: MonaVie Sends A Second Cease & Desist, as well as the original MonaVie article that started it all. It would be great if you can stop by at Lazy Man’s site to share your support.

Personal Finance Articles

• Len Penzo: My Kids’ Loan Interview with the Bank of Dad
• Bargain Babe: Is Buying Art Financially Savvy? Heck No.
• The Sun’s Financial Diary: Financial Impact of Moving from New Jersey to Virginia
• My Two Dollars: Credit Is A Tool Not To Be Scared Of
• Almost Frugal: Paying For Activities
• Brip Blap: Time To Read The Writing On The Wall
• Good Financial Cents: One Year Ago and What it Means Now
• Gen X Finance: Brush Up on Your Job Skills and Performance
• Million Dollar Journey: 8 Ways to Simplify Christmas
• Money Smart Life: Being Smart With Your Money and Launching A Business
• Managing Money God’s Way: Life After Debt
• Wealth Pilgrim: A Legacy From Mom

Recent Carnivals

• Festival of Frugality: Many thanks to The Good Life On A Budget for hosting a great edition and for selecting my article on savings account rates as an Editor’s Pick!
• Carnival of Personal Finance
• Carnival of Money Hackers
• Carnival of Money Stories
• Carnival of Pecuniary Delights

How One Debtor Resolves Her Credit Card Problems

YNAB Pro Giveaway Code: fibonacci

What would you like to do when you grow up? That’s the standard question we all ask our kids at one point or another, when dreams are sweet and fertile and options are limitless. When I was a kid, I wanted to become a professional tennis player and a horse trainer, and at one point, I even wanted to be a nun or a priest (can’t tell you why but I remember this phase).

Anyway, now that I’ve reached the halfway point of my existence, the question I ask myself today is: what would I like to do when I retire? I pretty much know what I’d like to do…. I’m going to be completely unexciting and tell you that at this point, I only want to keep doing the same thing I’m doing now, because in a way, I feel like I’ve already “retired” — at least from the 9 to 5 workforce. You may or may not remember the following posts I had written some time ago, when all I aimed for was a flexible schedule.

• Ready To Retire Right Now? Find Out If It’s Time To Quit The Rat Race
• Why I Want To Retire Early, Change Roles and Live On One Income
• Quitting My Job, Retiring Early: 5 Steps To Lifestyle Change

So What’s Your Retirement Plan?

The term “retire” really is a misnomer of course. All it means is that you’ve entered a phase in your life where you’re doing what you want to do — on your own terms — whatever it is. I believe that retiring simply means having enough time in our hands to do whatever it is that we want to do, to know what it is that we’d like to do, and finally, to actually enjoy those activities that we now have time to pursue. In my mind, I would say that you’ve retired if there’s no other place you’d rather be, than where you are right now.

So what is your picture of retirement? I know lots of people who enjoy traveling, though I did find it interesting that the survey I featured in my post called “Time Is Money” showed that many senior citizens (and I suppose, retirees) don’t spend as much time on travel as younger people do. Do you think you’d fall in this boat? Have you considered thinking about the activities you’d like to pursue as a retiree?

I will say that I feel quite inspired by this one fellow I found on CNN: he’s a 93 year old stock broker who’s been trading and investing for over the last 74 years. To watch the video about this gent, click this link or the image below.

He wakes up at 7 AM, works till 4 PM and pretty much defines his days around the financial markets. After trading, he even manages to have the energy to visit his trainer for some weight training sessions. Plus, I’m impressed by just how computer savvy he is: he keeps one computer screen on the markets, one on clients and one for all other miscellaneous computer activities. He’s the man! Now you may say that he’s decided to never retire, but I’ll argue that he’s been in retirement for a while now!

I’d love to be just like this guy if I’m ever fortunate enough to get to such a ripe old age.

That’s my inspiring financial story for today. So what other cool financial stories are out there? Let’s see what the PF community has to say this week:

Personal Finance Articles

• Wise Bread: Make Your Computer Faster
• Free Money Finance: Is Speaking More the Way to Grow Your Career?
• Five Pence Piece: My Financial Meltdown: Part 3
• Lazy Man and Money: Make Money Without Another Job
• Brip Blap: Take Small Risks
• Dividend Tree: Start Running Only After Knowing the Finishing Line
• One Mint: Bing Cashback!
• The Financial Blogger: 6 Killer Questions To Ask HR About Your Pension Plan
• Gen X Finance: Add More Tools to Your Financial Toolbox to Solve Money Problems
• My Dollar Plan: When Saying Goodbye to $1030 is a Good Idea
• Frugal Dad: Five Lessons I Learned From My Own Frugal Dad

Recent Carnivals

• Best of Money Carnival: If there’s any carnival I always hope to make — I cross my fingers each week — it’s this one. I’m very grateful to the Studenomist for this honor: thanks for selecting my post on how to get promoted at work for this week’s edition!

My Retirement Plan Or What I Plan To Do When I Retire

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