June 2011 Archives

Dominique Strauss-Kahn recently stepped down from his position as the managing director of the International Monetary Fund due to alleged misconduct and pending legal proceedings. On Tuesday, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde was named his successor. According to Reuters, Lagarde is the first woman to head the IMF. Greece is currently undergoing a financial crisis, and everyone seems to be optimistic that she can help prevent the country from defaulting.

I love hearing that the IMF put a woman in charge for the first time. I hope that women are able to continue breaking down these barriers and prove that we are just as capable as men when it comes to handling finances, business and politics. Speaking of financial savvy, read on for my list of my 10 favorite personal finance blog posts from the past week for some great advice and tips.

What is the value of good credit? If you're like the majority of Americans who rely on having good credit scores to help smooth the way when you buy a car, get a mortgage or apply for other types of loans, a high credit score is vitally important.

A conversation with someone at a dinner party over the weekend and recent comments from a friend makes me wonder whether the number of people who don't value good credit is growing.

For a small and maybe growing number of people like him, maintaining good credit does not make good sense.

I told him I thought he was definitely in the minority in the country because the rest of us (me included) want to be able to borrow if we need it. Since I'm not independently wealthy with my own unlimited stash of cash, I have to rely on banks to finance big-ticket items. Those banks use credit ratings to weed out the good versus bad credit risks among us. I don't make the rules, but I'm forced to play by them because I'm not wealthy.

You know that saying about the cobbler's family going without shoes? The same goes for the personal finance writer who never follows her own advice.

Just last week, I put the finishing touches on an article for CreditCards.com about avoiding credit card mistakes while you're traveling. All the experts agreed: Since credit cards do occasionally get stolen, write down all your card numbers, along with issuer phone numbers, and store them in a safe place. "Ooh, smart advice!" I remember thinking.

That's why I was pretty quick to recognize the irony when that very afternoon, my purse, including my wallet full of credit cards, was stolen from my car at the neighborhood pool. And no, I didn't have my credit card numbers written down.

This week, the Food and Drug Administration revealed the new graphic warning labels that will be slapped on cigarettes by next year. These nine grisly images depict things such as a man smoking through a tracheotomy and a corpse of someone who smoked. Other images include a smoker's rotting teeth, smoke surrounding a baby, and lungs charred by cigarettes.

I wonder what the world would be like if more things came with scary warning labels. What if payday loan stores had a large window decal that said, "May keep you in debt forever!" Or if mortgage companies had to put "Danger of foreclosure if you take out more than you can pay!" on its paperwork.

What do you think--are warning labels the answer for cigarettes? Or risky personal finance tools? Warning labels aren't as important when you already have a solid education about those things. Increase your personal finance smarts by reading my following 10 favorite blog posts from the past week.

Like many personal finance writers and editors, I enjoy reading the latest studies on consumer spending to see if my behavior correlates with recent research.

According to a monthly survey compiled by Sentient Decision Science Inc., called the First Command Financial Behaviors Index, I'm right there with middle-class Americans who are simultaneously paying down old debt while taking on new loans.

Father's Day is on Sunday, and it has me thinking about how I owe so much in my life to my dad. I could devote a whole post about that, but instead, I will just stick with saying I am thankful that he has passed down many important money lessons to me throughout my life.

Did your dad or other fatherly figure pass along any lasting money lessons to you? Read on for more great money lessons below in some of my favorite personal finance blog posts from the past week, several of which talk about passing money lessons on to kids.

I never thought that learning what saute meant and how to do it would keep both me and my wallet from going hungry.

When paying my most recent credit card bills, I happily discovered I saved $30 in the past month alone by preparing a majority of meals at home rather than eating out. At this rate, I stand to save $360 per year if I keep clear of restaurants and continue to cook.

Maybe because of the $100,000 albatross (law school loans) I am about to hang from my neck, in the past month I've decided to try out thriftiness. And you know, I'm kind of liking it. Here's how it's going.

Facing 25 online personal finance journalists, President Obama got personal, giving a glimpse into his own financial history -- including the money advice his grandmother gave him and why the $125,000 in student loans he and his wife Michelle racked up was a good investment.

The president was an unscheduled drop-in guest at the Personal Finance Online Summit, an event held Wednesday at the White House. During it, high-level administration economic officials gave an afternoon of on- and off-the-record briefings to an assorted group of online personal finance editors, myself included. The idea for the summit came because, presidential message adviser Stephanie Cutter said, "Americans are looking to take charge of their personal finance issues ... and they're looking to online sources to get it done."

No major news was broken, which is why I'm writing a blog item rather than a news story, but the event had some fascinating moments, leading off with the president's salute to his grandmother's common-sense money advice -- and why in one case it was smart to ignore it.

One of my favorite sources for financial news, CNN Money, recently featured a piece on America's "Lost Decade." It referenced Japan's "Lost Decade" -- a period of similar economic crisis that began in the 1990s when their own real estate bubble burst. The author, Chris Isidore, says that private household debt in America is actually a much bigger problem than the government's monstrous debt. With high unemployment and slow growth still plaguing us, it's likely that things will continue to be this way for another six or seven years. We are "in for a long and painful adjustment period," he says.

Learn more about achieving personal finance success with the following roundup of my favorite personal finance blog posts from the past week.

It's already been a year of extreme weather with raging wildfires and massive flooding, but Mother Nature just unleashed an army of tornadoes.

Last August, I blogged about hurricane season and offered some advice on emergency preparedness. I just read in Newsweek that due to climate change, "freak storms are the new normal." With the recent spate of tornadoes and upcoming hurricane season (which will be nasty, according to Time), I wanted to distribute the information again. Please read on for it and more great personal finance and credit tips in my weekly roundup.

Just when I thought I knew everything about my credit card, I went to Norway.