It’s tougher than ever to plan your finances. But it’s also easier than ever to find help on the cheap.
There are a host of Web sites that help you lay out a budget and track your spending and investments. Some let you set up a plan for a long-term goal, like college or retirement, and others offer advice about where to put your money. And many of these services are free of charge.
Billeo is one of the best sites and offers a Bill Pay Assistant, A Shopping Assistant and a Password Assistant.
Dear Professor, thanks for your post. Your “initial” take is very valuable. I have been trying to understand what would be the macroeconomic effects of a GM bankruptcy, so thanks.
Here’s my follow-up question to your post: The possibility of a double-digit unemployment rate you wrote of implies, I believe, that another 5 million or so people will be out of a job if GM goes bankrupt. Each worker has her own investment potential, meaning she can use her skills to generate more value. When people become unemployed, do they not soon become positive contributors to the economy again? Is there a metric for this?
Just to give you a firm example, I was talking with someone earlier this week who managed a mortgage company. Just his advertising budget alone was $100 million. Thousands of people worked for him. The venture fell on hard times, like so many other mortgage ventures, and he found himself thrown out. He looked for a job for a while, but couldn’t find one. He needed to work so he did what knew he could do: he become a mortgage broker. So this person went from managing a vast company to brokering a loan or two a month. Yet, he is now positively contributing to the U.S. economy, albeit not as substantially as he did before. Is this not an economic dynamic that will play out should another 5 million people become unemployed? Will they not in relatively short order (my friend was unemployed for a few months) begin creating new value for the economy? How can the net effect of their unemployment be truly measured to account for subsequent economic activity?