Our economy will survive.  Despite the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about our future, we will be fine.  It will just take time.  The devil is in the details with our recovery though.  Do we let the market sort it out, or have our government try to save us.  The consequences of either situation can [...]

If you’ve been reading the blog since the beginning, you’ll know I have a beef with Social Security.
Think about it, its the 1930’s, you haven’t worked in 18 months, your savings is gone, you have 3 hungry children and a wife, and the president just suggested a program to get you money that blurs the [...]

Smartmoney.com thought they’d be clever and write a better post on some things your bank won’t tell you.  So maybe they didn’t copy me, probably because they’ve never heard of me.  But that’s okay.  You’ve heard of me and that’s all that matters.  Actually that’s a lie, I want more people to have heard of [...]

If I can ever give up cable one of the shows I’ll miss most is Cops.  Sure it comes on Fox once a week but other stations play multiple episodes daily; I can’t get enough of it.  Aside from the “That’s not mine, I don’t know how it got there” moments my favorite segments [...]

While sitting in my office I come across all sorts of problems with the banking industry.  I’ve stated one of my goals is to play a part in making banks and financial services less like the “Big Oil” corporate perception and more like the small town image they used to have.  We all walk around [...]

Last weekend I was going over my finances and noticed I don’t buy many small items (food excluded).  I’m pretty good at turning down impulse purchases and have set aside money for more expensive purchases (like a video game or new cell phone).  But then again, I’ve always been like this.  With that in mind [...]

Is Star Wars just a fantasy world or can we learn some things about personal finance too? As a young lad I was exposed to the original trilogy, watching the movies with every sick day I could force out. Many of the broader subjects, like government corruption escaped my youthful imagination. However in a recent [...]

I spent a lot of time in the car on my vacation. The most depressing part was driving through a town with two major employers: an old steel mill and a paper mill. This town was a pile of junk, littered with liqueur stores, bad housing, and the types of shops we’re about [...]