Web Wealth: Money troubles
Heading for a financial fall? How would you know? To keep money troubles from your future, or to begin recovery now, check out these sites.
Heading for a financial fall? How would you know? To keep money troubles from your future, or to begin recovery now, check out these sites.
Eight warning signs given at Bankrate.com could telegraph that "you're flirting with financial ruin." Are you paying late fees while you juggle bills? Making financial plans based on a hoped-for windfall such as the death of a rich relative? Spending retirement savings and treating your home like an equity piggy bank? Heads up.
A path to low-cost counseling is mapped by the nonprofit National Foundation for Credit Counseling. You can even use this site to begin one-on-one online counseling for your issues with debt, budget, bankruptcy, and housing. You'll have to get your creditor statements, collection notices, and pay stubs together and fill out the registration form. The left side of the home page lists links for getting podcasts, calculators, and financial-education resources.
Avoiding financial ruin during unemployment is the subject of this CNN Help Desk segment, via YouTube.
The Millionaire Money Habits blog, despite its title, lists a few financial habits "that will leave you broke." Most aren't hard to guess, but reviewing can't hurt. Spending too much on credit and emotional purchases can be your undoing. This post notes some less obvious problem behavior, too, such as carrying around too much cash - because it's so easy to spend - and making personal loans to friends and family. Human nature being what it is, that is one of the least likely ways to get your money back.
Tongue-in-cheek advice from Esquire magazine on how to "avoid financial ruin, Hollywood style," looks at the very bad money habits of Britney Spears, Nicolas Cage, and other celebrities to find the smart-money alternative that they somehow overlooked. http://is.gd/vSawRn