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Posted
Mar 12 2008, 08:38 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Abby Freedman, a freelance writer and daughter of Smart Spending blogger Donna Freedman.
Thanks to a few hefty medical bills, my fiancé's tax refund was going to be sizable, too: $2,380. We had big plans for the money.
Note my use of the past tense.
In late January I sent in the forms. (Please don't ask why I didn't e-file. There's no good answer.) A few weeks later I checked the IRS Web site's handy "Where’s my refund?" feature and found that the money would be deposited on Feb. 29.
According to MSN Money's Liz Pulliam Weston, my fiancé was entitled to spend 10% of the refund however his little heart desired. Given that we'd been assured a deposit was imminent, I suggested he take $238 out of the paycheck he'd just received. He did, and spent it on hobby supplies.
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Posted
Aug 28 2009, 08:57 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Some people are talking about a federal bailout for former college students. Forgive student loan debt, they say, and the economy will be instantly energized.
The Baltimore Sun's Eileen Ambrose polled readers of Consuming Interests about this, and, last we checked, readers were hugely in favor -- even though her post presented a solid argument about why it wouldn't work as advertised.
We voted no. "JLP" at All Financial Matters, who directed his readers to the poll, also said no. "Actually, I say HELL NO!" he wrote.
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Posted
Dec 09 2008, 06:48 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
He's no stranger to controversy, that "Mr. ToughMoneyLove." Whether it's help for homeowners in default -- he called that post "Homeowner bailouts destined to fail" -- or sympathy for a particular 54-year-old GM retiree -- "It's second-career time, my friend, and quit the whining," he said -- he's never shy with his opinions. Recently, he blamed free-spending universities for teaching impressionable minds that it's OK to carry huge debt. Try this quote on for size, from his post "The college student debt machine: A national disgrace" at Tough Money Love.
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Posted
Jul 20 2009, 11:11 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from "vh" at Funny about Money.
Tina, my associate editor on the day job and my moonlight business partner, sent a link to this interesting discussion. The main post itself has several links to relevant, equally interesting posts and conversations.
Given the astonishing burden of student loans that too many young people are saddled with -- my son's roommate's girlfriend, for example, remarked that she will graduate from a top-quality institution with a master's degree in international business and $1,400-a-month student loan payments -- assessing the "value" of graduate education is not a crass or pointless exercise.
It's well and good to love learning for learning's sake and so to feel that the graduate school experience is irrelevant to one's vocational prospects. However, once that graduate school experience ends, you still have to pay for it. You still have to keep a roof over your head, put food on your table, and foot the considerable cost of raising a family. When young people are saddled with five- and six-figure student loan debt, they should reasonably expect the financial investment in graduate education to pay off with jobs that will support them.
That, unfortunately, is too often not the case.
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Posted
Oct 31 2007, 10:51 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Frugal people sleep better.
That’s a recurring theme in a Smart Spending message board thread called "Why are you frugal?" Readers say it’s hard to beat the contentment of a good night’s slumber, untroubled by debt.
Some readers say they're frugal because they love finding great deals, but most have more complex reasons. They're thrifty now to meet future goals: a car, a house, a family. They've chosen to reject hyperconsumerism. They're called to careers (e.g. the arts) that are fulfilling but require careful money management. Or they simply enjoy the peace of mind that comes with having an emergency fund.
Frugality begets options. “I try to save money on things that don’t matter, so I can have choices on things that do,” wrote a reader posting as “SC CDF.”
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Posted
Jan 17 2008, 07:04 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Filed under: college, debt, marriage, The Dough Roller, student loans, children, getting started, stocks, mutual funds, frugal, cars
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller. The best thing about being 40 is having survived your 20s and 30s. And at 40, I'm considered an old-timer in the personal-finance blogging community. Reflecting back on the past 20 years, I realize that I've learned a thing or two that I wish (oh, how I wish) I had known when I was 20. Here they are, in no particular order: School loans are like a bad date -- easy to get, but hard to get rid of. At 40, I still have more than $20,000 in school loans. Education is important, but I spent far more money during school than I needed to spend. Compounding, like the 1970s Big Red Machine, is pure magic. Assuming you retire at 65 and earn a 10% return on your investments, $1 invested when you're 20 will be worth 2.5 times more than $1 invested when you're 30, 6.5 times more than $1 invested when you're 40, and 18 times more than $1 invested when you're 50.
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Posted
Aug 27 2008, 09:28 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
It's tough to be frugal in your 20s, according to a Smart Spending message board reader posting as "byebyestudentloans." Your peers seem to spend most of their time in malls, restaurants and nightclubs. And you?
"I'm brown-bagging my lunch, limiting my driving, work a full-time and part-time job," says the reader, who contributes to a 401(k) and has two other financial goals: pay off student loans and save to build a home. And all in the next two years.
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Posted
Apr 27 2009, 05:37 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from Mr. ToughMoneyLove at Tough Money Love.
The federal government has been subsidizing student loans made by private lenders since 1965. This must end and, to his credit, that is what President Obama wants to do.
Much of the student-loan industry is a racket that exploits college students who ignorantly and naively embrace the concept that piles of student-loan debt are part of life. That's what all of the colleges have been telling them. Many parents have joined the "borrow your way through college" crusade, as part of their own "borrow your way through life" mentality.
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Posted
Jun 24 2008, 05:45 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog Blueprint for Financial Prosperity: Do you want to know how I shaved nearly 13% off my college costs? I took Advanced Placement classes. I graduated college a semester early in part because I had loaded up on AP classes while I was in high school. Someone got it into my head that I could take AP classes for free (not counting the nominal fee for the exam) and get college credit for getting high marks on the AP tests. At the time, my brain wasn't thinking, "Oh, I can save money on college," but rather, "I can spend time now and have it count twice -- once in high school and once in college," so it was in part the bit of hustle inside of me that spurred me to action.
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Posted
Jul 07 2009, 12:57 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
What can you expect to earn after graduating with a bachelor's degree in history from Podunk U? Would that income increase if you had the same degree from an Ivy League school? How about if you had a journalism or engineering degree?
A peer-to-peer private student loan service called People Capital has devised a way of estimating the earning potential of college graduates based on a number of variables, like major, college or university attended, and academic performance. The result, called the Human Capital Score, is presented as an alternative to the FICO score for people who haven't used credit long enough to have a meaningful credit history.
Even if you're not in the market for student loans, this could make for interesting conversation -- particularly if you get a good score. So let's try this out.
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