Posts filed as “US personal finance”

Internships: why paying for experience is bad business

It's no longer enough to be willing to work for free – now you need to pay for the privilege of working for no salary

Psst. Want a job working for Miami Heat basketball star LeBron James? There's a nice internship in online marketing and another in content development currently being advertised on his website. If you are interested, you best get on it quick. Applications are due Tuesday.

Salary? Funny you...Read more.

Hormones don’t hurt female investors – inequality does

Thoughts about sex and stocks have a long lineage on Wall Street, and they're not meant to be helpful to women

If a gaffe, in the famous formulation of journalist Michael Kinsley, can be best described as when someone accidentally admits the truth, then hedge fund star Paul Tudor Jones made a doozy of one at an off-the-record chat hosted by the University of Virginia last month.

"You will never see...Read more.

Homeward bound: why leaning into the past is not what women need

Generation Y's retreat into domestic bliss is all well and good – but it's only an individual solution to a systemic problem

It's a truth universally acknowledged that most women will eventually find the work world overwhelming. Perhaps the final straw will come when the boss is less than understanding when the kid is sick and needs to stay home from school. Maybe it will come when you realize everyone in...Read more.

Payday loans: Washington needs to step in and regulate the industry

A bill to reduce Alabama's 456%-high interest rate failed this week, further proof that Washington needs to step in now

The latest evidence that we need Washington to step in and provide comprehensive reform of the payday loan industry came this weekend courtesy of the state of Alabama, where legislation that would have capped such loans at a 36% interest rate died in the final hours of the state legislative session.

Even...Read more.

Boston highlights healthcare’s lost promise: it’s charity now, policy later

Charitable donations have been rolling in fast for Boston victims – but wouldn't better healthcare policies help them more?

It's a little more than a week since the bombing of the Boston Marathon, and the charitable donations are rolling in fast.

"Our hearts are broken, we are outraged, and we are looking for connection and meaning," says Richard Audsley, a former United Way official who has worked with fundraising efforts to assist victims...Read more.

Social security payments: grandma and grandpa need a raise

Traditional retirement savings strategies are fast becoming a thing of the past – social security is just about all we've got

It's time to discuss raising social security payments.

What? Aren't the talking heads in Washington trying to cut social security?

Right you are. Their idea is that social security is running out of money, and that unless we raise the age of eligibility, cut benefits, or preferably both, the system will collapse on...Read more.

If you have to celebrate National Princess Week, don’t buy the goods

Disney princesses are a $4bn industry – but parents, hold onto your wallets and read your kids a book on Elizabeth I instead

National Princess Week is just about upon us. Parents, hold on to your wallets.

No, National Princess Week is not a celebration of the former Kate Middleton, with London tourist shops holding giveaway sales on leftover wedding memorabilia, in order to clear it out in time for the...Read more.

Why ‘financial literacy’ is a bunch of hooey – and why the banks promote it | Helaine Olen

Companies and colleges say that if we all understand our finances, financial crises won't happen. This is simply untrue

April is National Financial Capability Month. You know what that means. We will be subject to many a tedious lecture, telling us how the financial crisis would not have happened if only those darn, irresponsible Americans knew how to handle their funds. And, of course, we'll believe it.

Almost all of us are...Read more.

Why you don’t need life insurance to protect against your child’s debt

It's easy to tell someone to save for their children's college, but higher education costs more than double since the 1980s

These articles … they are all the same. They open with bereaved parents, moms and dads dealing with the death of a young adult child. There is Angela Smith, whose son Donte Newsome, 25, was murdered in 2008. Or David and Rose Prior, whose son Andrew, 23, died after getting...Read more.

Missing jobs create a hole in the lives of the unemployed

Long-term consequences of unemployment will have a ripple effect, causing income and net worth loss decades in the future

Since the start of the Great Recession in December 2007, the American economy has lost 8.7m jobs. While economic growth has resulted in the creation of more than five million new positions, that's still almost three million short of the number of jobs needed.

All those missing jobs didn't belong to numbers,...Read more.