I can balance my checkbook and maintain a budget and generally understand what happens to my money when I put in the bank. Generally. Maybe they taught all the crazy stock market, FED rate type stuff in college economics. I myself was too busy partying and taking classes like “The Alexander Technique” and “Documentarians and Their Work” to bother with practical stuff like Economics.
I mean no offense to the 1 in 1,000,000th person who’s heard of the Alexander Technique and reads my blog. Honestly, I learned a lot from that class and am still trying to improve my posture with it. I’ve also made a delightful past time of watching documentaries. What I’m saying here is that there is a reason I had to go to grad school. My liberal arts education where they allowed me to run my own show at 20 meant that I got a very expensive piece of paper and no additional marketable skills or competencies. Except writing, and please do not judge my writing by this blog.
Anyhoo, I find the whole of this current economic crisis a tad…okay, a ton baffling. All I see are meaningless number jumping up and down and big, BIG companies falling down. I mean, I don’t know what all AIG does, but they used to handle my retirement account until I rolled it over a few years ago. That makes me nervous, because I have no way of knowing if the people who are currently handling my money are about to pack it in. And banks are no better, TD Banknorth now owes the state of Vermont a tidy bit of cash for doing shady stuff. Makes me want to just take all my money out of everywhere and stick it in a jar. But then, if we all did that, we’d have a depression. Oh…wait…
So, thank goodness someone can explain stuff to me like I’m in high school again. I have love affair with the blog I’ve Paid for this Twice Already… and she pulled together a nice list of other people’s blog posts that explain some of the crap we’re seeing in the news. Here’s a link to the Sunday Link Love – Holy Economy Edition
Good luck to everyone who’s just trying to get through it. I know I am!
23 September 2008 at 9:29 am
Yeah, Helen I’m with you. I understand money on a one-to-one basis, but when you get to the grand scale I get lost. When I see video of the stock market floor, I am totally baffled how anyone can make any sense out of that melee. It’s like a giant rave but with money instead of music as the background. I like I’ve paid for this twice, too. I can get my head around that a bit better.
23 September 2008 at 10:07 am
Personal finance is a huge enough hurdle that I really just want to bury my head in the sand about the rest of it!
5 November 2008 at 3:23 pm
Hi Helen – I started the “Save $1000 in 30 days challenge”. Thanks for sharing that, I’m hoping it spurs me on to do some things I have been vaguely thinking I should do for awhile but haven’t gotten around to. Now I have told another friend, too, one of the steps! Have a great day! Rhonda
5 November 2008 at 3:29 pm
That’s awesome! I haven’t even read through the post yet, or started. Geez. I’m hoping it’s something my fella and I can do together to put some more seed money in the house down payment fund, now I’ll have to read up tonight. You’ve inspired me to get going!
19 November 2008 at 3:58 pm
Hi Helen – Have you ever used Mint? I’ve been thinking about trying it, actually even registered but haven’t entered any info yet. It seems like an interesting idea and good way to keep track of financial stuff kind of automatically, but I’m still a bit hesitant. Rhonda
19 November 2008 at 5:51 pm
I absolutely LOVE Mint. I’m not even using it to its fullest potential because I haven’t completely learned the software yet, and I still just can’t imagine life without it. Basically, it took me 10 years to create and fine tune in an Excel spreadsheet what Mint does with my budget and better. It has pie charts.
20 November 2008 at 3:09 pm
I know it’s probably a generational thing, but I’m still a little nervous about the online financial thing. I think it is probably kind of like comparing air travel with car travel. Lots more people die over a year’s time in car accidents, but when a plane crashes several hundred people may die at once and it’s bigger news, even though the total spread over a year doesn’t compare to the car statistics. I’m sure lots of fraud and identity theft happens whether or not you are doing your financial stuff online, but if someone happens to hack the online thing it could affect millions of users in one fell swoop. So you are pretty comfortable with the security part? I understand it is read only, and they say they don’t store the account numbers and such.
20 November 2008 at 7:05 pm
I was just having this conversation with a coworker today. Basically, this is how I look at it. In my lifetime, I have known 5 people who were victims of identity theft, all of which were perpetrated in in person credit card transactions or by family. Totally jives with the stat that something like 85% of identity theft is still perpetrated by friends and family. Also, I figure if Amazon and Ebay and JcPenney and so and so on all have my financials saved in my account, then I’m already out there. Finally, the amazing things I can do with Mint make the benefits so much greater than the risk. So there’s how I justify it. Try looking at some of the comparison stuff at gizmodo.com they do things on Mint from time to time, and other tools. Try just doing a search for Mint and see what they have to say, I’m sure they did something on the security issue once.