Third World America - Arianna Huffington [77]
Another good online tool is Mint.com, a free service that allows you to securely link all of your credit card, loan, bank, and retirement accounts for a great overview of your finances.102 The site also helps you to budget your spending with tools that easily divide your expenditures into a variety of categories, helps you plan the optimal repayment of your debts, and can send you alerts when accounts get low or when certain bills need to be paid.
If you are getting a tax refund at the end of the year, you might want to consider having less money withheld from your paycheck and using the additional cash to pay off debts rather than let the government hold on to it without paying you interest. And it’s important to keep track of your credit report and credit score, which can determine what type of interest rate you are eligible for.103 Also, start making saving a habit—even if you can only save a little each month.
In April 2010, President Obama issued a proclamation for National Financial Literacy Month.104 “While our government has a critical role to play in protecting consumers and promoting financial literacy,” the proclamation read, “we are each responsible for understanding basic concepts: how to balance a checkbook, save for a child’s education, steer clear of deceptive financial products and practices, plan for retirement, and avoid accumulating excessive debts.”
On top of this practical caveat emptor advice, perhaps the proclamation should have added “And remember: The people you think of as ‘service providers’ are actually out to get you. They may appear friendly, but they’re not your friends. They’re hoping to hook you and your family into a vicious cycle of debt. This is financial combat. If you want you and your family to survive, you’d better learn how to spot the financial land mines buried in your mortgage and credit card contracts, and keep yourself out of harm’s way.”
I GET KNOCKED DOWN … BUT I GET UP AGAIN
Earlier this year, I was reading Consumer Reports and came across an article offering “10 New Rules for a New Economy.”105 The first seven rules touched on the kind of personal finance tips you’d expect, things such as “assess risk” and “control spending.” But the last three rules caught me by surprise. They were:
8. “Stay healthy. The best investment tip of all is to invest in your health.”
9. “Don’t stress. Forget about your ‘relationship’ with money. It’s just a tool.”
10. “Move on … consider only what you can make or lose going forward, not how much you have lost.”
Or, as Suze Orman puts it, “No Blame, No Shame.…106 The first, and most difficult, step is to absolve yourself and your spouse or partner of any guilt.… Whatever mistakes you feel you have made with money, whatever moves you wish you had or hadn’t made, are irrelevant.” That’s not the kind of counsel you’d normally get from a financial adviser—but it is spot-on. Focusing on the deeply personal aspects of “personal finance” is essential if we are going to effectively navigate these challenging times.
Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté, authors of The Resilience Factor, have identified resilience as the key to how we deal with what life brings us: “Where you fall on the resilience curve—your natural reserves of resilience—affects your performance in school and at work, your physical health, your mental health, and the quality of your relationships.…107 We all know resilient people. They inspire us. They seem to soar in spite of the hardship and trauma they face.… Resilient people understand that failures are not an end point. They do not feel shame when they don’t succeed. Instead, resilient people are able to derive meaning from failure, and they use this knowledge to climb higher than they otherwise would.
“Resilient people,” they continue, “have found a system—and it is a system—for galvanizing themselves and tackling problems thoughtfully, thoroughly, and energetically. Resilient people, like all of us, feel anxious and have doubts, but they have learned how to stop their anxiety and doubts