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• Does Your Family Live on Main Street or Wall Street?

  By Jolie Solomon | Nov 3, 2009 | 0 comments

  Yes, it’s a loaded question. Wall Street these days is wall-to-wall Gordon Gekko, Dick Fuld, and UAW freeloaders. In other words: greed, avarice, incompetence, highly compensated incompetence, and other supposedly un-American activities. Main Street, of course, is none of these things. It may be harder to pinpoint the right adjectives (shuttered? underfunded? doomed?). But Main Street [...]

• Showdown in Chicago: When the Personal (Finance) Gets Political

  By Jolie Solomon | Oct 26, 2009 | 0 comments

  Is your Fidelity relationship manager a Ditto head? Does your accountant have a crush on Rachel Maddow? Will the BankAmerica call-center staffer vote Republican? These may not be top-of-mind questions for the average American citizen busy feeding her 401 (k) statements into a shredder. But protestors on the streets of Chicago today are demonstrating a [...]

• Organize Your Finances: You May Find Hidden Money

  By Jolie Solomon | Oct 22, 2009 | 0 comments

  If you’re one of those efficient, organized, motivated people with a pristine credit rating and no real skill set in procrastination, stop reading now. (And don’t expect me to go drinking with you, either.) This is for the rest of us. We who have piles of financial paper cluttering up the horizontal surfaces in our homes: [...]

• What “The Good Wife” Can Teach Us About the New Normal

  By Jolie Solomon | Oct 19, 2009 | 4 comments

  If the recession is over, we want to know, what do we call this? Economists have an answer: “The New Normal.” At first glance, it’s almost reassuring. New has that nice, shiny, fresh-from-the-package lilt. Normal is good, right? It’s not abnormal… Then you get it. The “New Normal” is ominous. It’s the “jobless recovery” — on a [...]

• OMG! Teens Are Not Spending!

  By Jolie Solomon | Oct 16, 2009 | 2 comments

  You know the economy’s still rotten when the sales clerks at Aeropostale are smiling at you, the Mom or Dad. Not long ago, a parent was persona non grata at stores like this. You could practically feel the force field at the entrance to Hollister. But the decline in teen spending is so alarming retailers, reports [...]

• Nesting: Proper Estate Planning Takes Time

  By Stacey Bradford | Sep 29, 2009 | 1 comment

  Here I am two days past my due date and my baby has yet to arrive. As I look over my official "to-do" list, I'm annoyed that I still haven't managed to complete every task. Despite my best efforts, my husband's life insurance and life insurance trust are still not in place.

• Health Care Reform: Premiums Are Still Too High

  By Stacey Bradford | Sep 23, 2009 | 0 comments

  Don't thank Senator Max Baucus for tweaking his proposed health care plan and lowering premiums for moderate income households. According to my math, the price tag is still far more than most of those family budgets can handle.

• Health Care Reform: Do You Know What’s Going On?

  By Stacey Bradford | Sep 21, 2009 | 0 comments

  Over the weekend, I participated in a lively debate about health care reform. What I found so striking was that the conversation didn't focus on liberal versus conservative agendas. Instead, the group found itself arguing over where legislation stood today and which proposals were still on the table. Although we were all convinced that we were well versed on the issue, the reality is that we are all probably a bit misinformed.

• Health Insurance: What Families Can Expect Next Year

  By Stacey Bradford | Sep 18, 2009 | 0 comments

  In yesterday's post, I outlined the health insurance changes that await you for 2010, including higher out-of-pocket costs and fewer plan options to choose from. Today, I'd like to focus more attention on some of the strategies employers are using to save money on family coverage. To get a better handle on the issue and how it could affect your bottom line, I spoke with Tom Billet, a senior consultant with benefits consulting firm Watson Wyatt.

• Prepare to Pay More for Health Insurance in 2010

  By Stacey Bradford | Sep 17, 2009 | 1 comment

  Forget health care reform. If you really want to know what will affect your health related dollars in 2010 -- and you're lucky enough to have employer-sponsored insurance -- you're better off paying attention to the materials your human resources department hands out during open enrollment season. (Most firms do this in the Fall.) Inside the package, your company will outline the various plan options for next year and any changes -- read price hikes -- you can expect with your existing coverage. Unfortunately, it looks like you could be in for some unwelcome news.

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