I think this is a pretty good article on credit unions. It’s written by a Director of a credit union so it’s obviously biased but it does speak to the excesses of major commercial financial institutions and discusses the desire to profit as much as possible off of their customers. Credit unions, on the other hand, are more devoted to their members and have used
I was reading MadameX’s post at My Open Wallet on the fact that she’s resorted to eating stale crackers with hummus in an attempt to get her food budget back in line. As I read that, it occurred to me that she’s probably not the only one doing this. I know that we are also cracking down on our food budget, and now that I’m
I’ve been sitting on the sideline when it comes to signing up for an online tool that allows me to get a consolidated view of all my investment and bank accounts. The main reason is that I didn’t want to offer up my account logins for fear of creating extra drama in my life. I finally bit the bullet yesterday and am somewhat surprised at
This is pretty interesting to watch. Peter Schiff gave this at a mortgage bankers conference in Las Vegas. The funny thing is that everything he says is pretty darned basic. Well worth watching: A couple interesting points: It was easier to get a house than it was to rent because the landlords actually checked your credit and income for a rental Home prices have traditionally
Okay, so the title is probably a little bit inflammatory. I’ve heard more than a few people talking about what they should do with their money during an economic downturn. Of course there probably isn’t any one answer to this depending on your circumstances but I am doing a couple things to give myself some peace of mind. Step 1: We keep about $1000 in
Okay, now this just pisses me off: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5973452&page=1 I hope it’s not true, but I suspect that it is. $440,000 retreat? Incredible.
Wow. That’s about all I can say when I watch this video. Boston Gal has a video on her site of a home being "trashed out" in California. Trash out is when a company comes in and removes all of the stuff that was left when a family has to leave their home due to foreclosure. I was shocked to see what people left behind.
Okay, I know. That’s a little harsh. I’m trying very hard not to be bitter about having to spend upwards of $1 trillion dollars to rescue our economy. As hard as I try not to be a little bitter about it, I’m not having a lot of luck. Maybe it’s because I’m not confident that this "rescue" will really save anything. Regardless of whether they
My wife, daughter and I were sitting at the breakfast table this morning when my daughter, who’s 5, randomly told my wife, "There are a lot of advertisements that are just trying to take our money." Over the last year or so when we are reading the paper and looking at advertisements I’ve tried to make a point to our daughter that sometimes you can
