managing your personal finance

Before purchasing life insurance as an investment, a potential investor should understand a few things about the types of life insurance and how they work.  Basic life insurance can be broken down into two major categories, term insurance and whole life insurance.

Term insurance is insurance for which one makes annual premium payments in exchange for a death benefit. This is the least expensive type of life insurance and cannot be purchased as an investment. The death benefit is all that one receives from term life insurance, provided one passes away while the policy is active.

This type of insurance is ideal if you do not believe you will need life insurance in your later years; the older one becomes, the higher the premiums for term life insurance. The primary purpose of term life insurance is to protect those people who depend on you; as one gets older, most people accumulate retirement savings and/or their children become self sufficient, decreasing the need for term life insurance.

Whole life insurance, also known as permanent or cash value life insurance is the second type of life insurance and can be broken down into whole life, universal life, variable life, and variable universal. In general, cash value life insurance offers protection throughout one's entire life, and also includes an investment — the cash value. Only a portion of the premium payments on a cash value life insurance policy cover the actual insurance. With the other portion of the premium, the insurance company sets up an investment known as an accumulation account which is invested in interest-bearing securities.

The cash value reduces the amount at risk to the insurance company and thus, the insurance expense over time. The owner can access the money in the cash value through policy loans or other options which reduce the death benefit. Accordingly, premiums for such policies generally tend to be higher than those associated with term life insurance, at least in the earlier years.

In the digital age, nobody likes carrying a lot of cash around – I know I don’t, anyway. This can be especially frustrating when you go to keep track of your expenses, who you owe money to, who you lent some to and just where it all goes over the month.

As always, there are a lot of apps out there to help you do various things with your money. There are apps to figure out how to manage your money, oversee expenses, send money to people, keep track of who owes you, and more.

In this article, I’ll show you some of the applications you can take advantage of to do everything I’ve mentioned here, leaving you free to pick and choose the apps that will make your life easier.

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How to Manage Your Money

I’m beginning to learn just how difficult managing your expenses can be. For the most part, I use my debit card tied to my checking account to make purchases. I use it at the grocery store, when I go out to lunch with my coworkers and on the weekend when I’m out exploring the city.

At the end of the month, my bank statement looks pretty ridiculous. All of these small transactions make it difficult to sift through. I still know what everything is, but if I wanted to see where I could be saving some money I wouldn’t know the first place to look.

Sounds like you? Even if it doesn’t, you could still reap the benefits of visually being able to manage your money. These apps make the process a lot easier.

Mint

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Mint has been on our radar since back in 2007 when Karl wrote about it. Plain and simple, if there is one app I want you to keep in mind it’s this one.

Mint is a free personal finance application that can help you compare your bank accounts, credit cards, CDs, brokerage and 401(k) to the best products out there. It offers a visual representation of your finances and is very easy to set up. Use it to manage your budget, get credit card advice and understand investing.

Here’s a great video showcasing an overview of Mint’s features:

For some helpful tips on how to use Mint, check out Bakari’s article on How To Use Mint To Manage Your Budget & Spendings Online.

Thrive

Thrive (directory app) is also a great application if you’re looking for a simple way to keep track of your spending. With Thrive, you get an overall Financial Health score, which is one number that shows you how financially fit you are. It also shows you scores in other areas and offers you advice on how to make improvements.

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Thrive breaks down your spending for you and shows you where you can save. Compare your current budget to last month’s, as well as view a six month average and target budgets to follow.

Texthog

Looking for an even simpler way to track expenses? Texthog (directory app) lets you easily store, organize and access your receipts, expense reports and more via text message, the web, your email, iPhone and even Twitter.

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A Texthog free account gives one user the ability to track expenses, view unlimited reports and get budget/bill reminders. Take a photo of your receipts and utilize tags and categories to keep track of everything.

To check out Texthog on your iPhone, you can find the application on iTunes.

Venmo

Speaking of text messages, have you heard of Venmo? Venmo (directory app) is a nice little app that lets you pay and charge friends with your phone. Send and receive secure payments by linking your card to your account. This allows you to settle small loans you give/get by eliminating paper transactions for small amounts of money.

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To use Venmo, all you do is create an account. You can then send and receive money to other accounts simply by using text commands in SMS. Accept a “trust” request from your friends and make transactions without having to authorize them by texting a 3 digit code.

This is a pretty solid application that I have been using a lot lately with my friends/coworkers. It’s great for when a bunch of you are out to lunch and not everyone has cash on them. “I’ll just put it on my card and Venmo you all afterwards.”

Owe Me Cash

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Owe Me Cash is a nice app I found recently that is also very easy to use. If someone owes you money, you just sign into Owe Me Cash with your Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, or regular account and tell the app about the debt. The app will send automatic reminders to those that owe you money by phone, text and email, so you can get paid!

This app is more fun than serious, but it doubles as an easy way to keep track of who owes you what. Let the app bug your friends to pay you so you don’t have to do it yourself – it’s a win-win.

Conclusion

With these applications, your finances will never look better. Say goodbye to paper money and change.

What do you think of these money-managing applications? Will you be using any of them?

Image Credit: marema

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managing your personal finance

A lot of people are unemployed in this country, 14.9 million as of the latest BLS release a couple of days ago, and for some of those people, this has become what is coyly referred to as ‘the entrepreneurial moment’, the ‘ah-ha’ light-bulb realization that if they don’t create a job for themselves, there will be no job, no income, no mortgage payment, no groceries, no light, no heat, no gas for the car, nuthin’. Since 2008, over 5 million jobs have been lost, many of which will never, ever come back.

Welcome to Labor Day, 2010.

Some of these ‘lost’ jobs have been outsourced overseas. Some have just been cut. Some companies are using their cash to invest in technologies which will insure that they will never have to hire these folks back, at least not with the skills that they had when they were given a cardboard box and five minutes to empty their desks and get out the front door.

If there are people out there who have or are considering building their own ‘life raft’ it would surprise absolutely no one; though for some folks, entrepreneurship is so scary, they can’t imagine anything other than hiring on to someone else’s deal, no matter how horrible it is.

Sometimes, though, you don’t have any choice. One thing to remember, is that many of the most successful entrepreneurs in this country have not invented fuel cells, high tech photovoltaic films, high speed transit, a cure for cancer (or the common cold), or the answer for peace in our time. They are cleaning houses, making pizza, fixing computers/ipods/iphones/cars/furnaces/plumbing/household electric, managing other people’s systems, giving advice, making clothing for people who are outside the common size ranges in the stores.

Not exactly operating a basement boiler room financial situation, doing crazy financial stuff, or stirring up the pot on international finance.

At its most basic, it’s local; at its most interesting, it might even be regional. But it is still person to person; it’s still me doing business with you. Face to face. My hands and brain doing stuff to help you. Some of this is amazingly low tech – some of it is almost medieval.

This week’s fascinating story comes from the New York Times about a family of knife sharpeners who have thrown a new curve on this ancient of trades by providing two sets of knives to butchers, restaurants, food services (in Yankee Stadium, for heaven’s sake), and calling on a weekly basis to pick up the used set and providing the newly sharpened set.

Anyone who does any real work in a kitchen at all knows that your most important tools are a good set of knives and a good frying and sauce pan. With those three things, you can do almost anything (and yes, I have made cookies in the bottom of a frying pan; thank you for asking), but if your knives are dull, cutting anything becomes horrible work and you can injure yourself badly. “Every week, the company visits more than 800 clients and collects more than 8,000 knives to be replaced with freshly sharpened blades. The service costs $2.50 to $3.50 per knife.

The business started servicing mainly butchers and meatpackers, in territories handed down from father to son. To preserve the business for his children, Mr. Ambrosi expanded it to restaurants and even Yankee Stadium, in some cases deviating from long-held tradition. Many cooks and chefs take personal pride in their knives and their ability to maintain them, and would hesitate to release them to anyone else’s care. But sharpening a knife takes time and skill — and not every chef has both.”

Having a skill and honing (sorry) that so that you can provide something that someone else can not (or will not) do, whether it is being an electrician, a plumber, a welder, a knife sharpener, a shoe repair shop, a hair dresser, whatever it is – can make the difference in today’s international economy between being able to make a living for your family and holding your head in your hands. One of America’s biggest mistakes as far as education is concerned (and others might just argue with me) is that we “jumped the shark” in terms of absorbing people coming out of colleges.

Since the 1980s, kids coming out of college have had fewer and lower level opportunities. Jobs which absorbed high schoolers, now require a 2 or 4 year degree; job that required a college degree started to require a masters degree; some jobs which required a college degree and some internal training, now require advanced degrees – I even know of jobs that now require a legal degree to be hired which 30 years ago required a college degree and passing a test. So much emphasis was placed on going to college – and vocational training and the trades were so downgraded and derided that any family with a kid with two brain cells to rub together would not even THINK of encouraging that kid to go into the trades, unless the family was already in the business.

We’re now at a situation where companies, which shot themselves in the foot by sending skilled jobs overseas and now want to bring them back because costs overseas have risen and/or they are tired of their intellectual property being stolen and sold to others, can’t find the skills they want. Not to put too fine a point on this – those same companies have not done any training themselves; nor are they willing to do so. They got into the habit a long time ago of pushing the investment in training off on others. The government for one.

The other, which has willingly and consistently provided training in the trades for years are the unions. Organized labor. The Great Satan of the industrial world. The guys everyone loves to hate. The organizations which, according to many employers, stand in their way of succeeding in business.

But still, the organization which has kept skills alive in this country despite outsourcing, overseas sourcing, attacks from business and government, and general antipathy from great swaths of the American population in certain parts of the country.

So. On this frankly very sad Labor Day, 2010, I’d like to thank the American Labor Movement for remembering what America and Americans do best and what we need to do on an increasing basis if we are to put people back to work – or if we are to have businesses to call our own: Do stuff with our hands.

Thanks folks. You’re not perfection, but you’re willing to invest in Americans.

Happy Labor Day

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how to manage personal finances

From Hotline (HT: Mataconis):

O'Donnell, a perennial conservative candidate in Delaware, is challenging moderate Rep. Mike Castle (R), the clear favorite of the GOP establishment. But she has come under fire recently for her personal financial problems. Reports have surfaced that she owed $10K in back taxes, defaulted on her mortgage and holds outstanding campaign debt.

Levi Russell, a spokesman for the group, told Hotline On Call that the group was not aware of O'Donnell's personal financial problems before it endorsed her.

"We don't know the exact situation," he said.

When asked if the group discussed the issues with O'Donnell, Russell responded: "No we haven't. We don't really have any contact with the campaign or the candidate."

We have blogged before reasons why we support Mike Castle over O'Donnell. But this report raises even more questions, such as:

1. If the Tea Party really stands for fiscal conservatism, why would they endorse somebody who can't even manage her personal finances?


2. Does it give you confidence in the Tea Party that they go around endorsing people without having any contact with the candidate? How do they know that this female version of Harold Stassen is really worthy of such an endorsement?


3. Christine O'Donnell has run for office 4 times. Her sole victory was an uncontested Republican primary.


4. In 2008, O'Donnell lost the Delaware senate race to Joe Biden by 65-35. She later falsely claimed to have won two counties in that race. Biden's percentage of the vote in 2008 was the largest of any of his senatorial campaigns.


5. In 2008, one of the great Democratic landslides, Mike Castle beat his Democratic challenger for Delaware's sole Congressional seat by 23 points. Castle has won 13 consecutive state-wide races as a candidate either for Governor or Congressman. He's way ahead of the Democrat in the polls while O'Donnell trails the Democrat by 10 points.

As a student of Delaware corporate governance, I am firmly convinced that Delaware needs quality representation in Congress if it is to fend off the creeping federalization of corporate law. As a big tent Republican, I'm inclined to support smart, electable, centrists like Mike Castle over someone like O'Donnell. The perfect must not be allowed to become the enemy of the good. Especially when the supposed perfect candidate is pretty seriously flawed and probably unelectable.

This post is from staff writer Sierra Black. Sierra writes about frugality, sustainable living, and getting her kids to eat kale at Childwild.com. This post is part of Book Week at Get Rich Slowly.

Since my twin victories of paying off our last credit card and funding a summer of travel, my husband has begun to show interest in personal finance.

It’s not that he wasn’t supportive of my efforts before — he just preferred to support them from a safe, ignorant distance. A distance from which I handed him an envelope of cash each week to do the grocery shopping, he didn’t ask too many questions, and somehow we were climbing out of debt. He was more than happy to adopt any frugal-living strategy I suggested, as long as he didn’t have to think about the Big Picture.

That system worked, but I longed for more active participation from him. Not only because I wanted us to share equally in the journey toward financial freedom — I do want that — but also for a selfish reason. I wanted him to participate because he’s better at this stuff than I am. He’s a whiz at spreadsheets. The man has a Ph.d in Physical Chemistry. You don’t get one of those without doing a few math problems.

Lately, I’ve been getting my wish. My husband has been talking with a financial advisor at the university he works for, and having clear, honest conversations with me about our money.

This seemed like the perfect time for me to read Mary Hunt’s How to Debt-Proof Your Marriage.

Relationship first

Hunt’s book covers the basics of personal finance and debt destruction, with a special focus on doing it as a couple. Before she even begins talking about financial management, Hunt talks about strengthening the foundations of your marriage. You can’t have financial harmony without emotional intimacy, she says.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s clear in my own marriage that spending time relaxing together on vacation helped my husband and me both chill out and have better conversations during our family finance meetings too.

Hunt and I part ways in the chapters about how to achieve that emotional intimacy, though. She bases her prescription for marital bliss on traditional gender roles. She includes chapters for each sex on how to make deposits in the other’s Love Bank — a metaphorical bank of goodwill made of small, loving gestures.

The Love Bank is an adorable idea, one I’m tempted to put into practice here in my own home. I’m pretty sure I won’t be making my deposits to my husband’s Love Bank by biting my tongue when I disagree with him, though. Likewise, I don’t expect him to express his love for me by bringing me flowers and handling all the tough decisions for me like the natural leader of our family should.

Hunt is a generation (or two) older than I am, and what works for her marriage is so foreign to my young, feminist mind that it was actually a little hard to read. But leaving aside the details of how you get to an intimate marriage, though, she and I agree wholeheartedly that it’s important to get your emotional needs met before you can effectively work together with your spouse to manage your finances.

Money second

The personal-finance half of the book will be familiar to most GRS readers. Hunt advocates an approach similar to Your Money or Your Life and Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover, one that begins with calculating your net worth and tracking your expenses. From there, she covers the basics of setting up an emergency fund, creating a spending plan, and starting a debt snowball (though she uses different terms for these steps).

Like her ideal of a healthy relationship, Hunt’s financial advice seems a little dated in places. A lot of it has to do with how to organize your three-ring binders, or how to painstakingly accomplish by-hand calculations that Mint can do for you in a few minutes. If you’re a devotee of the pen-and-paper approach, though, her chapters on how to track and plan your spending are rock solid and detailed enough to easily follow.

The one thing in this book that made me want to put it down, run to my office, and implement it on the spot was, in fact, her filing system. Hunt takes a few pages to go over exactly what personal records you should be keeping, and outlines an elegant effective way to organize them. I spent an hour tearing apart my filing cabinet yesterday as soon as I read those pages. I may not want my marriage to look much like hers, but I’m delighted to have made over my filing cabinet in Mary Hunt’s image.

Different views

There are a few areas where Mary’s financial advice deviates from the usual Get Rich Slowly formula. One is the matter of the debt snowball. She encourages readers to start saving 10% of their income towards an emergency fund immediately, while still paying the minimums on their credit cards. Only after saving up a fully funded six-month emergency fund would Hunt advise you to roll those savings into your credit card payments.

Given the relative interest rates on credit cards and savings accounts, this approach will almost certainly cost you money. If it works for you psychologically, though, by all means pursue it. No matter what order you do them in, the key steps of tracking your spending, creating an emergency fund, and snowballing your debt payments will lead you to financial security.

Another place where she breaks with conventional wisdom is in her savings and spending ratios. GRS readers are familiar with the Balanced Money Formula that encourages us to use 50% of our money for living expenses, 30% for fun and 20% for savings. Hunt advises 10% for giving, 10% for saving and 80% for spending.

The order of those percentages is vital to her. A devout Christian, Hunt feels that all the money that comes into your life is a blessing from God, and promptly giving 10% of it back to God shows you can be trusted with this blessing, and more of it will come your way.

I’m not a Christian, but I admire Mary’s faith and devotion to charitable giving. It’s a goal of mine to give 10% of my income. I’ve written about that here before, and readers made a persuasive case for waiting until my debts were paid before giving so much away. For now, I give a modest amount and look forward to giving more in the future.

I think that for Hunt, the psychological benefits of giving 10% and saving 10% before you make any spending decisions at all outweigh the financial benefits of paying off your debts as fast as possible and then beginning to accumulate and donate wealth.

It’s an interesting approach, and one that might work for a lot of people. Particularly if you’re a devoted Christian and looking for a personal-finance book that reflects your values, you’ll find a lot of good in How to Debt-Proof Your Marriage. If you’re looking for a book that’s totally focused on financial savvy and relationship skills, though, this might not be your best bet.

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Use Prepaid Travel Cards to Budget Travel Expenses

Vacation is a time to let loose and have a little fun. It's all too easy, however, to let having a little fun turn into spending way too much. Use prepaid travel cards to keep spending contained, secure, and in budget.

Photo by eliazar.

Finance and frugality blog WiseBread shares a set of tips on using prepaid travel cards for safe, secure, and budget-friendly travel spending.

A prepaid travel card is generally usable in the place of a debit or credit card. You can withdraw cash at an ATM, pay for purchases, and make travel reservations. And as the name suggests, you prepay these expenses by loading money onto the card.

It is just as secure as a debit or credit card, since the prepaid travel card is protected by a PIN and/or signature. In fact, some would say that prepaid travel cards are even more secure, since the money is not linked to your bank account and has a limited balance (which limits your exposure).

It can also be a handy tool for budgeting, since you would load only the money you plan on spending for the trip onto the card, which helps you stick to your travel budget.

Check out the full article at the link below for additional tips and tricks including what to look for when shopping for a card like avoiding cards with a cash-out fee. Have your own tips for keeping your money secure and sticking to a budget while traveling? Let's hear about it in the comments.

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TV <b>News</b>, Talk Shows Using Skype

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99-cent iTunes TV rentals hinging on <b>News</b> Corp.? | iLounge <b>News</b>

iLounge news discussing the 99-cent iTunes TV rentals hinging on News Corp.?. Find more iTunes news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.

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Use Prepaid Travel Cards to Budget Travel Expenses

Vacation is a time to let loose and have a little fun. It's all too easy, however, to let having a little fun turn into spending way too much. Use prepaid travel cards to keep spending contained, secure, and in budget.

Photo by eliazar.

Finance and frugality blog WiseBread shares a set of tips on using prepaid travel cards for safe, secure, and budget-friendly travel spending.

A prepaid travel card is generally usable in the place of a debit or credit card. You can withdraw cash at an ATM, pay for purchases, and make travel reservations. And as the name suggests, you prepay these expenses by loading money onto the card.

It is just as secure as a debit or credit card, since the prepaid travel card is protected by a PIN and/or signature. In fact, some would say that prepaid travel cards are even more secure, since the money is not linked to your bank account and has a limited balance (which limits your exposure).

It can also be a handy tool for budgeting, since you would load only the money you plan on spending for the trip onto the card, which helps you stick to your travel budget.

Check out the full article at the link below for additional tips and tricks including what to look for when shopping for a card like avoiding cards with a cash-out fee. Have your own tips for keeping your money secure and sticking to a budget while traveling? Let's hear about it in the comments.

BillFloat Pays Your Bills When You Can't

If money's tight and you need a little extra time to cover a bill, service BillFloat can take care of it for you and you can pay them back later.

After entering the company you need to pay, you give BillFloat the amount of the bill and your account number. It'll let you know how many days it'll float the bill (a maximum of 30) and how much you'll owe BillFloat—which is generally $5, but decreases with the number of bills you pay. BillFloat will collect a little more information about you, like how you're going to pay them back, and then you'll be all set. Just make sure you'll have the money in a month, since BillFloat won't float its own bills.

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Two newly discovered planetary systems shed light on odds of forming terrestrial planets.

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Would you like to have these great bargains delivered right to your inbox? Join over 57,000 fellow deal seekers and subscribe to Deal Seeking Mom. Also become a fan of Deal Seeking Mom on Facebook for more conversation, additional deals and a peek at the freebies I receive in the mail. Thanks for visiting!

Freebie Friday is provided by Wendi, who blogs at TheFreebieBlogger, where she finds you 100% free items each and every day.

• Logical Nutrition is offering a FREE Revitalize Health Supplement sample. Just put "sample request" and you mailing address in the "How Can We Help?" box.

• Request a FREE Pregnancy Planner that helps prepare you for each trimester and for when baby comes home. It includes a 10-month calendar section to record checkups and other notes.

• Sign up to receive two FREE Wysong Epigen Cat or Dog Food Samples. You can choose from chicken, fish or venison.

• Walmart is offering a FREE two-day Prevacid 24HR sample for the treatment of heartburn to those who qualify.

• Those with children can sign up with Publix Preschool Pals to receive freebies, coupons and more. This offer is available to select states.

• Mercury Magazines is offering a FREE Forbes Investors’ Guide to those who qualify. This guide offers tips on investing and financial planning during volatile times.

• Kids ages 8 to 18 years old can get a FREE Young Eagles Flight and become one of over a million Young Eagles. Be sure to find a volunteer in your area.

• Sun Laboratories is offering a FREE self-tanning product samples. They do not mention which product you will receive.

• If you love Taylor Swift, you can download three of her songs for FREE: Love Story, Fifteen and You’re Not Sorry.

• Stand Up For The Troops is offering a FREE comedy CD download to those with a valid military ID number. Comics include Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Jeff Foxworthy and Kevin James.

• PracticalMoneySkills.com offers many FREE materials including a Practical Money Skills CD ROM, Financial Soccer & Financial Football CD Roms (to teach students personal finance skills) and more.

• Astroglide is offering a FREE Natural Personal Lubricant sample for a limited time.

See the previous freebie roundups for more free sample offers that are still available!

As always, make sure you’re protecting your personal information when you’re signing up for freebies.

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Every Friday I’ll start a new post with a Mr. Linky for you all to share your fabulous freebie finds with Deal Seeking Mom readers! If you have a freebie you’d like to list, just leave your link below.

To keep it neat, I suggest that you list your blog name and then the freebie you've found in parentheses, ex. Deal Seeking Mom (Free Toilet Paper Sample). The only requirement is that you link directly to your post on the freebie. Links directly to your homepage will be deleted.

Personal finance site for women LearnVest has had a big year. Launched last fall at TechCrunch50, the startup raised its first round of funding from Accel Partners and seed investors a few months ago ($4.5 million to be exact).

LearnVest has a simple goal: to help women organize their finances and learn how to become financially savvy. It’s kind of like an online version of financial planner Suze Orman blended with personal finance site Mint.com.

Today, the startup is launching three online programs, called ‘bootcamps,’ to educate women on various financial subjects, including a Financial Basics Bootcamp, Cut Your Costs Bootcamp, and Investing Bootcamp. Instead of creating a book-like online experience, LearnVest is making email newsletters the foundation of the educational sessions.

For example, the Investing Bootcamp, which costs users $7.99, teaches women how to make smart investing decisions and properly allocate their portfolios. For three weeks, women will receive daily emails with advice and actionable items that they can perform on LearnVest, making the newsletter interactive. For example, for the Financial Basics bootcamp, one of the daily actionable items is ‘Get Your Credit Score.’ Cut Your Costs Bootcamp topic range from Bootcamp topics range from ways to save on energy bills to exactly how to negotiate a lower cable bill. Learnvest will incorporate all of the information users complete and input in bootcamps into their LearnVest account.

Alexa von Tobel, LearnVest’s CEO and founder, tells me that the idea is to encourage women to not only learn, but also motivate them to make actionable decisions about their accounts and finances at the same time. She chose a newsletter format because the ‘LearnVest woman’ simply doesn’t have time to read the same information in a book. Women are more inclined to read a daily tidbit in an email vs. sitting down with a book, says von Tobel.

LearnVest held a pilot bootcamp in January and saw impressive results—8,000 people signed up for the basic financial bootcamp. With the new additions LearnVest expects to sign up a total of 40,000 participants. LearnVest plans to launch additional bootcamps in the future, including sessions realted to how to get a mortgage for a home.

The integration between the bootcamp educational sessions and the user’s LearnVest profile is key to the success of the initiative. As we wrote in our initial review of LearnVest, the site will ask you a series of questions about your financial health (i.e. how much credit card debt do you have), you life stages (i.e. do you rent, are you planning a family soon, do you own a house) and your financial education level and will diagnose your financial health and give you a snapshot of what you need to learn and improve. LearnVest will create customized plans for you, depending on your goals, and allow you to chart off your improvements and achievements.

Von Tobel says that LearnVest is steadily adding more female users flock to its site and is currently seeing 500K uniques per month. The next step is to take the site mobile, says von Tobel, and help women access LearnVest on the go.

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Business <b>News</b> You Need Today: Aug. 25, 2010 - DailyFinance

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Tracking your spendings online with web apps is very convenient since they offer the power of monitoring your expenses in detail without the clunky interface found in desktop apps. If you are looking for alternatives to popular personal finance apps, then you should check out Accpal. This Silverlight-based money management tool allows you to track your accounts with extra features such as multi-level tagging, comprehensive reports, and one-click transactions.

To use Accpal, simply add your new account and currency. After which, you can start adding individual transactions. You can add multiple transactions by clicking “Add & New” while adding an entry. Inputting data feels like working with a spreadsheet which is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, many will find this a nice surprise since you can see your income and expenses in one glance.

The highlight of this app is the multi-level tagging feature. With multi-level tagging, you can break down your transaction into a single tag nested under a broader tag. For example, you can click coffee as a tag under “food”, and you can even go deeper and tag “espresso”, under coffee. This gives you an idea of what exactly you are spending on. This differs from other web apps that lets you tag as much as you like, leaving you to organize the transactions yourself.

Accpal is a nifty website for anyone who needs a better-organized online money management tool.

Features

• Track your expenses online.


• Free of charge.


• Requires Silverlight 4.


• Tag your transactions – multi-level tagging.


• Comprehensive reporting.


• Export to Excel.


• Shortcuts allow for one click reporting and transactions.


• Similar Tools: BudgetTracker, BudgetPulse, Thrive, and BillFloat .

Check out Accpal @ www.accpal.com

Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint.com (2008), sold his company to Intuit for $170 million and has been ensconced as Vice President and General Manager of Intuit Personal Finance Group. But he hasn't forgotten his entrepreneurial roots. He's using that stack of cash from Intuit to make some angel investments of his own, including a stake in Jack Abraham's Milo.com, which is on this year's list. And he's also an informal advisor to Anapata's Ooshma Garg.

When he appeared on the 30 Under 30 list in 2008, Etsy founder Rob Kalin had just hired a professional CEO and given up day-to-day management responsibilities. But last December, Kalin retook the reins. Etsy has thrived since--the company is profitable and has been posting double-digit monthly sales gains. In his spare time, Kalin is working on a second company, Parachutes.org, an online education start-up.

Chaim Indig and Evan Roberts, the founders of Phreesia (2008), closed a $16 million Series D investment from Ascension Health Ventures in May. Phreesia, a self-service patient check-in company that makes electronic tablets for use in doctors' offices, will use the investment to expand its nationwide presence.

Involver founders Rahim Fazal and Noah Horton (2008), have added Facebook, the White House, and Sony Music to their client list. Involver, which helps companies and organizations build their video presence across social networking platforms, now supports more than 80,000 brands.

It's been a big year for Ben Lerer and Adam Rich and their company Thrillist (2009). Early in 2010, Lerer and his father Ken, co-founder of The Huffington Post, launched the New York City-based angel fund Lerer Media Ventures. And in the spring, Thrillist made its first acquisition, expanding into the e-commerce space with the purchase of Jack Threads, a flash-sale site for men's streetwear that works similarly to Gilt.com. With the deal, Thrillist diversifies its business, which was heavily dependent on advertising revenue, while Jack Threads will get its name in front of Thrillist's nearly 2 million e-mail subscribers.  "We have the e-mail list and they have the vendor relationships," Lerer says. "The case we made is that it would be just so much easier for them if they didn't have to worry about building the audience."

Box.net's (2008) Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith grew their company more than 535 percent in 2009 and tripled revenue in the first half of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009.  Box.net allows users to share, store, and access any type of digital file from anywhere at anytime, and now has more than 4 million users, ranging from SMBs to giants like Volvo, Audi and Coca Cola. The company launched one of the first customized business applications for the iPad, developed mobile applications for the iPhone and Blackberry, and also integrated with other mobile productivity applications. Last April, the founders landed $15M in Series C financing, led by Scale Venture Partners, bringing Box.net's total venture funding to $29.5M.  Levie and Smith plan to invest aggressively in R&D and will add a significant number of employees.

Ben Kaufman (2007) sold Mophie in August of 2007 and began developing Kluster, a platform designed for group decision making and measuring influence. It's Kluster that drives Quirky, the social product development company that Kaufman launched in June 2009.  Quirky develops one new product a week and shares the revenue with the influencers who helped develop each product. Since launch, Quirky has collaboratively developed 46 new products, hit threshold on 16 (the trigger that sends a product into production) and raised $6 million dollars in series A financing led by RRE (also an investor in Venmo, on this year's list.)

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Tracking your spendings online with web apps is very convenient since they offer the power of monitoring your expenses in detail without the clunky interface found in desktop apps. If you are looking for alternatives to popular personal finance apps, then you should check out Accpal. This Silverlight-based money management tool allows you to track your accounts with extra features such as multi-level tagging, comprehensive reports, and one-click transactions.

To use Accpal, simply add your new account and currency. After which, you can start adding individual transactions. You can add multiple transactions by clicking “Add & New” while adding an entry. Inputting data feels like working with a spreadsheet which is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, many will find this a nice surprise since you can see your income and expenses in one glance.

The highlight of this app is the multi-level tagging feature. With multi-level tagging, you can break down your transaction into a single tag nested under a broader tag. For example, you can click coffee as a tag under “food”, and you can even go deeper and tag “espresso”, under coffee. This gives you an idea of what exactly you are spending on. This differs from other web apps that lets you tag as much as you like, leaving you to organize the transactions yourself.

Accpal is a nifty website for anyone who needs a better-organized online money management tool.

Features

• Track your expenses online.


• Free of charge.


• Requires Silverlight 4.


• Tag your transactions – multi-level tagging.


• Comprehensive reporting.


• Export to Excel.


• Shortcuts allow for one click reporting and transactions.


• Similar Tools: BudgetTracker, BudgetPulse, Thrive, and BillFloat .

Check out Accpal @ www.accpal.com

Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint.com (2008), sold his company to Intuit for $170 million and has been ensconced as Vice President and General Manager of Intuit Personal Finance Group. But he hasn't forgotten his entrepreneurial roots. He's using that stack of cash from Intuit to make some angel investments of his own, including a stake in Jack Abraham's Milo.com, which is on this year's list. And he's also an informal advisor to Anapata's Ooshma Garg.

When he appeared on the 30 Under 30 list in 2008, Etsy founder Rob Kalin had just hired a professional CEO and given up day-to-day management responsibilities. But last December, Kalin retook the reins. Etsy has thrived since--the company is profitable and has been posting double-digit monthly sales gains. In his spare time, Kalin is working on a second company, Parachutes.org, an online education start-up.

Chaim Indig and Evan Roberts, the founders of Phreesia (2008), closed a $16 million Series D investment from Ascension Health Ventures in May. Phreesia, a self-service patient check-in company that makes electronic tablets for use in doctors' offices, will use the investment to expand its nationwide presence.

Involver founders Rahim Fazal and Noah Horton (2008), have added Facebook, the White House, and Sony Music to their client list. Involver, which helps companies and organizations build their video presence across social networking platforms, now supports more than 80,000 brands.

It's been a big year for Ben Lerer and Adam Rich and their company Thrillist (2009). Early in 2010, Lerer and his father Ken, co-founder of The Huffington Post, launched the New York City-based angel fund Lerer Media Ventures. And in the spring, Thrillist made its first acquisition, expanding into the e-commerce space with the purchase of Jack Threads, a flash-sale site for men's streetwear that works similarly to Gilt.com. With the deal, Thrillist diversifies its business, which was heavily dependent on advertising revenue, while Jack Threads will get its name in front of Thrillist's nearly 2 million e-mail subscribers.  "We have the e-mail list and they have the vendor relationships," Lerer says. "The case we made is that it would be just so much easier for them if they didn't have to worry about building the audience."

Box.net's (2008) Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith grew their company more than 535 percent in 2009 and tripled revenue in the first half of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009.  Box.net allows users to share, store, and access any type of digital file from anywhere at anytime, and now has more than 4 million users, ranging from SMBs to giants like Volvo, Audi and Coca Cola. The company launched one of the first customized business applications for the iPad, developed mobile applications for the iPhone and Blackberry, and also integrated with other mobile productivity applications. Last April, the founders landed $15M in Series C financing, led by Scale Venture Partners, bringing Box.net's total venture funding to $29.5M.  Levie and Smith plan to invest aggressively in R&D and will add a significant number of employees.

Ben Kaufman (2007) sold Mophie in August of 2007 and began developing Kluster, a platform designed for group decision making and measuring influence. It's Kluster that drives Quirky, the social product development company that Kaufman launched in June 2009.  Quirky develops one new product a week and shares the revenue with the influencers who helped develop each product. Since launch, Quirky has collaboratively developed 46 new products, hit threshold on 16 (the trigger that sends a product into production) and raised $6 million dollars in series A financing led by RRE (also an investor in Venmo, on this year's list.)

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Exclusive: Fujifilm&#39;s phase detection system explained: Digital <b>...</b>

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Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock dated <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

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I sought government assistance ONE time.  I mean actively go and get it, had a lawyer and everything and I got it. 

It was the TOUGHEST decision I ever made because I hated, I mean HATED the idea of relying on governmental help because I was raised to be independent but I had to do it.  I had to do it because I made a mistake unwittingly years ago (follies of youth) and I had to pay the piper as it were because it caught up with me and it was a bit of an act of desperation and had very little choice.  (bankruptcy)

I was taught not to look to the government for more than the execution of righteous laws, including and especially the Constitution, and its military defense of the country.   So this was little more than a handout from the government and because it bothered me so much, I actually went to therapy for a short while.  Things are fine now, as I said, this was years ago.

Because of the way I was brought up, and the way I am, I don't see how people can seek government help without trying other avenues first?  And I mean really trying.  Yeah, there are some legit cases, but then you know there are the loafers out there too, and this business of the unemployment benefits has been abused in recent times, especially since it has been certified that the Obeyme administration truly is anti-business and places to work at don't want to hire people in that kind of climate.  So you got two big problems here, the people taking advantage of a situation and the current government taking advantage of a situation and NEITHER one benefits in the end....except the government has tighter control.

So what are people to do?  The options are getting more and more limited these days.

-Jon

LearnVest founder and CEO Alexa von Tobel turned down Harvard and a life on Wall Street to make personal finance education accessible to women, and she has no intention of failing.

She thinks learning how to manage your money should be simpler, a passionate belief which comes from her personal need for her New York-based company’s product, a series of online tutorials on personal finance which have led some to dub her “Suze Orman 2.0.” On Tuesday, LearnVest announced the launch of three new on-demand, online Bootcamps covering basic personal finance, cutting costs, and investing. These products are just the latest iteration in von Tobel’s quest.

The 26-year-old von Tobel got the idea for LearnVest while working at Morgan Stanley, realizing that she had no idea how to manage her own finances.

“Here I was responsible for millions and millions of dollars and I didn’t know the first thing about getting a credit card or insurance,” von Tobel said. “I needed tools like these.”

Instead of attending Harvard Business School, von Tobel put all the money she’d earned after college into building LearnVest. Since then, the company has raised over $5.5 million in financing, most recently closing a $4.5 million round led by Accel Partners in April.

The LearnVest  CEO has been spending a great deal of time in the media spotlight recently. She was recently named to Inc.’s 30 Under 30 list of young entrepreneurs and has received media coverage from a number of local and national outlets including BusinessWeek and the New York Times. The ‘Suze Orman 2.0’ moniker first came from a Fox reporter.

But behind the media attention that even has the attractive blonde’s coworkers teasingly calling her ‘Finance Barbie’ is an entrepreneur possessed. Her self-deprecating humor and amiable demeanor are genuine, but von Tobel is shrewedly packaging herself and LearnVest as an accessible and fun medium for learning about personal finance. And she’s doing it from a cubicle alongside her employees in Learnvest’s cozy New York office.

Usage statistics suggest it’s beginning to work, with Learnvest receiving about 360,000 unique visitors in the U.S. per month according to Quantcast, a Web-traffic-measurement service..

While von Tobel is certainly passionate about giving women unbiased advice on their personal finances, she is also keeping her eye on earning money to repay her investors.

And that’s where LearnVest’s latest product, the online bootcamps, come in. The three-week programs consist of daily emails with information and easy to do items that take minutes, according to von Tobel.  The investing bootcamp is LearnVest’s first paid offering, costing users $7.99.

“It’s cheaper than ‘Personal Finance for Dummies’ and easier to understand and accomplish,” von Tobel said. “We don’t want users to be overwhelmed.”

LearnVest’s content also provides affiliate marketing opportunities for the New York startup, where LearnVest earns money by suggesting personal finance products like credit cards.

Besides affiliate fees, LearnVest also sells advertising, in the hope that financial services firms and other brand advertisers will pay a premium for female users taking advantage of LearnVest’s educational content over what they’d pay for such users on general-interest websites.

Next Story: Your mobile app is spying on you Previous Story: Dark Roast Media integrates Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes into its social game

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AMD tops Nvidia in graphics chip shipments | Nanotech - The <b>...</b>

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Fox <b>News</b> - Shirley Sherrod | Coverage | Myth - Resigned | Mediaite

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Hitting a wall of bipartisan opposition to placing a price on carbon, even if just in the utility.

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Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

Web technology has revolutionized finance by making it easier than ever to monitor cash flow and track trends in your spending. Mint.com has been a leader in this realm for personal finance: its technology helps you track multiple accounts, analyze spending trends, and manage financial goals.

There isn’t a clear counterpart to class='blippr-nobr'>Mintclass="blippr-nobr">Mint for businesses, though. That’s where inDinero, a Y-Combinator-funded startup, comes in.

inDinero, which launches today, is a web-based financial dashboard for small businesses. Like Mint, it aggregates financial data from bank accounts, investments, and other sources and places them in a simple, easy-to-navigate interface where you can quickly see your income, spending, recent activity, and your financial runway.

The app is divided into five parts: Dashboard, Income, Spending, Planning and Trends. Dashboard provides an overview of your business finances, Income provides detailed information about your income streams, Spending breaks down your different costs, Planning helps you set goals for your business, and Trends analyzes and graphs out spending and income trends in order to provide useful insights.

Businesses need this type of information in order to minimize costs while maximizing revenues. While solutions such as Mint also aggregate financial information and analyze it, they are not focused on small businesses. We look forward to seeing inDinero’s business toolset grow and evolve.

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, jwohlfeil

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To hear Sarah Palin tell it, she and her mama grizzlies are people-powered, grassroots examples of how Americans can get involved in politics. But a close look at SarahPAC's campaign finance report shows she spends her donations on the same old, standard consultants as every other politician. And like many others, she still finds ways to keep her inner circle in the money.

She pulled in just shy of $866,000 in donations from people hailing from Kissimmee, Florida to Rancho Palos Verdes, California. But Marylander Laurie Beitman's $35 and the bulk of Palin's small-dollar donations is going to more than Republican candidates the former Alaska governor wants to see win this fall. By our count, Palin spent nearly $400,000 on consultants, lobbying firms and the standard direct mail and fundraising firms politicians frequently use. (The AP had a stricter consulting tally, $210,000.) Just about the only maverick-style item she purchased was $4,000 worth of sausage.

Palin spent $30,000 on "consulting, national and international issues" with Randy Scheunemann's Orion Strategies, a lobbying firm representing foreign governments.

Then there's Rebecca Mansour's Aries Petra Consulting, which Palin paid $22,000 for "internet messaging" to write those infamous Palin Facebook messages. Politico describes Mansour as a "Los Angeles screenwriter and political neophyte whose creation of the popular cheerleading blog Conservatives4Palin endeared her to Palin's inner circle."

She paid NorthStar Strategies, the firm owned by her campaign body man and former Bush administration alum Jason Recher $36,000 for "logistics political consulting."

Former press aide Meg Stapleton's IzzyLene Consulting received $2,500 for media consulting.

Palin paid $35,000 to Grey Strategies, a Columbus firm that helped her with media, logistics and political consulting. It appears to now be a newly merged firm called Grey Shockley, run by lobbyists Doug McMarlin and Leslie Beyer. According to Hotline on Call, McMarlin also travels with Palin.

True North L'Attitudes, a consulting firm created in February by an Anchorage woman named Robyn Engibous, got more than $10,000 for scheduling. Engibous, a former staffer for Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), also got almost $1,400 in reimbursements for office supplies and mileage.

Palin has made much of her personal wealth in speaking fees, which reportedly run up to $100,000 per speech. For speechwriting services this past quarter, her PAC paid $3,700 to Lindsay Hayes. Hayes wrote speeches for Palin during the presidential campaign; she also was a speechwriter for Sen. Stevens for several years.

SarahPAC gave another $5,000 for "clerical" work to Ivy Frye, a close confidant of Palin's who has been with her since her campaign for governor and who Palin hired as an aide in the governor's office. In addition to the $5,000, SarahPAC gave Frye almost $1,500 to reimburse her for postage and copies. In the first quarter of 2010, she paid Frye $15,000 for clerical work and more than $3,000 in reimbursement for printing and shipping costs.

The PAC also pays a $10,000 monthly legal retainer, totaling $30,000 for the quarter, to the Palin family lawyer, Thomas Van Flein. Van Flein was Palin's personal lawyer while she was governor, defending her against ethics complaints. He also represented Palin's daughter, Bristol Palin, when she tried to get child support from Levi Johnston earlier this year.

Check out our past coverage of Palin's "brain trust" of advisers here.

Why is Mint.com Citing a Racist Website in an Immigration Blog Post?

Mint.com, the free personal finance site, put up a weirdly strident anti-immigration post on its Mintlife blog on Wednesday. Turns out, it's not just tacky, it's poorly-sourced—down to a citation for the openly racist anti-immigration site VDare.com.

Timothy Lee, writing on Megan McArdle's blog at the Atlantic website, flagged the bizarre Mintlife post, which is credited to Ross Crooks. Why bizarre? Well, as Lee points out, it's odd that a service site like Mint would take such a stridently anti-immigration stance. But worse, the chart is flat-out wrong—and peculiarly sourced:

The most jarring name on this list is the openly racist vdare.com. The rest of the list is a mix of official government sources, non-profits, and blogs. The sources skew heavily in an anti-immigrant direction, although at least one is a pro-immigrant source (fiscalpolicy.org). While none of the other anti-immigrant sources is as offensive as vdare, few (if any) of them could be considered credible sources for statistics about immigration.

Lee goes on to run down the problems with the infographic's statistics—which are many. You can check out the post here.

Mint was bought by software makers Intuit—the company behind the Quicken finance software—last fall. It seems pretty unlikely that a big company like Intuit is looking to piss off costumers who (having paid attention in economics class) believe that immigration improves, rather than harms, a country's economy. So what happened here? Is Crooks an anti-immigrant true believer who got carried away, or just a guy who didn't know much about the issue and doesn't have a great eye for credible sources? Or is "immigration is bad" official Mint.com policy now? Any way you slice it, Mint doesn't look good.

Update: MintLife Editor Lee Sherman responded to us with an apology:

At MintLife, our mission is to give users and visitors the financial information they need to save and do more with their money. Topics range from personal finance advice, to analysis of macroeconomic trends and the fiscal impacts of news of the day. We publish content from a variety of contributors and sources, and the opinions expressed don't necessarily reflect those ofMint.com or of Intuit.

It's true that the tone is often provocative, seeking to engage readers in dialogue around important topics, but the recent blog post "The Economic Impact of Immigration" went too far, cited polarized sources and did not receive the editorial judgment and oversight it deserved.

We regret it. It is completely unacceptable and won't happen again. Our intention was not to further the agenda of any of the sources from which data was pulled, and the post has been removed.

- Lee Sherman, Editor of MintLife

[Mint.com; The Atlantic]

Send an email to Max Read, the author of this post, at max@gawker.com.

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Dave Ramsey has had a great amount of success with his radio show that teaches good old fashioned common sense financial advice. He is certainly not without his detractors though. There are a lot of people who describe his advice as out of the main stream and mathematically incorrect. Both of these statements are true, but that is precisely why he has gotten so popular. Ramsey has made an observation that very few people have. Personal finance is much more about personal behavior than it is knowledge about money itself.

Ramsey is often criticized for teaching people to do things which technically defy mathematics. Recently one blog called Territory Michigan attacked Ramsey for suggesting that people pay off all their debt. The blogger gives an example in which a person with a low interest rate student loan can make more money in a money market and pocket the difference then pay the loan off payment by payment over the next decade.

This is where this blogger and many other of Ramsey's critics get it wrong. Ramsey often makes the statement on his show that, "If we were doing mathematics, you wouldn't have borrowed money in the first place!" Often people will ask him if they should pay off their debt largest interest rate to smallest, but he teaches that you should pay off your debts smallest principal balance to largest. The reason he teaches this is because personal finance is much more about behavior than any knowledge you know about finance. Paying off a few small debts first will give you some easy wins, making you feel that, hey, this plan really works, and will encourage you to continue!

People who criticize him often aren't thinking straight, because they do not factor in risk which is a needed part to any financial calculation. You could go to Vegas and put all of your money on 28 black, but you know you wouldn't do this because there's so much risk of not winning, even though the rate of return would be enormous! Whenever you borrow money, there's risk involved that somehow you will get behind because of a financial problem, or that the company will mess with you financially (it does happen!).

These critics often also use very unrealistic examples. The blogger at Territory Michigan uses an example of a 3% student loan, which almost no one has! Dave Ramsey's mathematics may be incorrect, but they actually work! He has over 3 million listeners and is a multi-millionaire. His teachings have gotten hundreds of thousands of people out of debt, they work! Who are you going to listen to, a critic with a Weblog, or a guy with a lot of money and thousands of success stories?





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