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• 'Financial I Never': The personal-finance drinking game

  Posted Apr 09 2008, 03:45 PM by Karen Datko
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  Filed under: housing, spending, credit, Karen Datko
  Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money

  Do not -- we repeat, do not -- try the drinking game created by "Finance Girl" if you've made a mess of your finances. (Actually, in the name of responsible consumption, you probably shouldn't try it at all.)

  But Finance Girl's post at Finance Gets Personal about her game -- which she calls "Financial I Never" -- makes solid points about money management in a roundabout way. Plus, her running commentary as she pretends to play (we're actually guessing that she's pretending) is pretty funny.

  To play this game, all you have to do is down a shot every time you've done one of the things on her "I never" list. The first question is: "I've never bounced a check."   Read More...

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• Economy drives younger people out of new-car market

  Posted Jan 22 2008, 05:38 PM by Karen Datko
  Filed under: debt, housing, spending, credit
  Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money

  As if we needed another indication that the U.S. economy is stressed, car-buyer blog KickingTires reports that the average age of people buying new cars has gone up significantly in the last year. It was 43 at the beginning of 2007. It's now 48. "Buyer age rose because young consumers were forced to the sidelines by having to make mortgage and credit card payments at the expense of car installments," KickingTires says. This post also shares some noteworthy statistics about the car preferences of different age groups.   Read More...

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• 10 surefire ways to spend more than you make

  Posted Dec 19 2007, 06:12 AM by Karen Datko
  Filed under: debt, housing, spending, credit
  Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money

  This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller.

  Are you struggling to spend all of your money each month? Do you get to the end of the month, only to learn that cash is just sitting there in your checking account? Well, if you've got this problem -- and who doesn't? -- here are 10 surefire solutions:

  Stop tracking your spending. When I see a family with excess cash each month, nine times out of 10, the problem is they're keeping track of what they spend. So turn off that spreadsheet and uninstall Quicken. And while you're at it, go ahead and disable the check- engine light in your car.

  Buy more house than you need. Buying a monster house and financing 100% of the purchase with a first mortgage and one or two equity lines of credit is a great way to rid your bank account of all that excess cash. Oh, and make sure the loan comes with a variable interest rate and interest-only payments. You may spend less at first, but don't worry, in a few years money will by flying out of your checking account like chili out of a drunken sailor.   Read More...

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• American dream or American delusion?

  Posted Dec 03 2007, 12:42 PM by Karen Datko
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  Filed under: debt, housing, spending, credit
  Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money

  How did the concept of the American dream devolve into the American nightmare? The concept started out as a noble one, writes The Baglady, who traced it to "The Epic of America" by James Truslow Adams. The historian wrote: "But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement." How the heck did this ideal become the sales pitch for buying oversized homes with no money down? asks The Baglady, who discards the term "home buyer" in favor of "home debtor."    Read More...

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• A 'slow fade' into a financial nightmare

  Posted Nov 27 2007, 01:48 PM by Karen Datko
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  Filed under: debt, housing, spending, credit
  Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
  You don't get deeply into debt overnight. Glblguy at Gather Little by Little , quoting from a song by Casting Crown, calls the process a "slow fade." It took considerable guts for him to tell the story of his fade; he made a multitude of bad financial decisions. It began with his first credit card and slid downhill from there: more credit cards , bigger balances and minimum payments; a car purchased with no down payment; a house with only 5% down . "The only good decision we made here was getting a 30-year fixed-rate loan," he writes. At one point he used retirement savings to pay off the credit card debt, only to allow it to balloon again. The next sentence will sound chillingly familiar to many: "Our path to financial problems started with a $500 credit card when I was 18 and snowballed into a sizable chunk of debt across more than four credit cards, a camper, two new cars and a mortgage." The slow fade has stopped, and glblguy has seen the light of financial responsibility. He warns   Read More...
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