Dual Income No Kids posted this video about ongoing legislation that would work to rein in credit card companies. You might think that because I manage a blog carnival on debt reduction that I’d be all for something like this. After all, it would help people get out of debt faster if there were more … Read more
Sun’s Financial Diary posted a graph on the uptick in the US national personal savings rate. It’s reached a 7-year high, breaking 3%. This is a far cry from the 1970s and 1980, when the savings rate was north of 10% of disposable income. Over the past fifty years we really haven’t excelled at saving, … Read more
Larry Winget, in his new book People Are Idiots and I Can Prove It! said that the easiest action plan of all is to do this: Do anything that’s different from the way you have been doing it. If things are not going the way you want, heading in a different direction can’t hurt. I … Read more
They’re not good places for buying much of anything else, though. I stopped in a Sheetz on the way home tonight. (Somehow I managed to need exactly 8.000 gallons in my car, but that’s another story.) Their subs are good; I’ll take their subs or Subway’s equally. Made-to-order food is the one exception: this is … Read more
The “Big Three” automakers Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, and the United Auto Workers union, traveled to Washington today to ask for a bailout. They asked collectively for $34 billion, but some estimates suggest that they would actually need almost four times that. Let’s just say that the banking committee wasn’t whipping out its checkbook. … Read more
Early retirement is a dream of many Americans — one that can be achieved by sacrificing early in one’s life to tuck away enough of a nest egg that the possibility of outliving one’s money is remote, or at least easily fixed. This is a good think to achieve, right? Charles Yarrow, vice president of … Read more
One of my colleagues is turning 50 on Monday. Two of her group members plastered a big "Over the Hill" sign across her door with a big 5-0 above it. She has to either duck under the sign, or take the sign down, to get into her office. She won’t be able to ignore the … Read more
With $4 gas nicely entrenched now in the US — and higher fear premiums brought on by recent Iranian missile tests — driving around is starting to suck. (Well, at least the filling-up part.) Ah well, just get a gas guzzler with a guarantee of $2.99 gas and you’re all set, right? Probably not, according … Read more