(no subject)
Thirty percent of companies plan to drop health insurance once the new laws are fully in effect. Among companies whom the surveyors considered better informed, that number is (not shockingly) higher, rising to about 50%.
Interesting.
***
I've been realizing how little I actually know about money and financial planning and insurance and etc. and trying to fix that. I had David Ramsey's work recommended to me, so I've been reading through that - and it's as interesting a study in his intended audience as it is in actual information about money.
Ramsey forgoes mathematical efficiency in a lot of places in favor of psychological effect; he recommends, for instance, paying off your debts in order of size rather than in order of interest rate, so that early quick victories will spur one on to keep going. The book pauses about every other page to offer either a testimonial or an urging to battle debt as though your life was on the line - which, while it gets old pretty fast, suggests that the folks he's primarily writing to need that kind of encouragement in order to believe they can pay it all off.
Which is all a little foreign to me - I've been fortunate and never had to deal with debt. And while I can't shake the feeling that he could fit all of his actual ideas into a one-page tract, it's hard to argue with the mathematics of the basic premise of, "Get out of debt, stay out of debt, and pay cash for everything," as a way to go.
He's also the only explicitly Christian author I've read to exhort people with the promise of driving a "$50,000 car" and wearing a "$30,000 watch," instead of holding those up as shameful excesses that could be given to the needy instead. I haven't entirely sorted through how I feel about that yet.
My mom, on hearing that I'd finished this, gave me her old Financial Planning textbook. We'll see how that goes.
Interesting.
***
I've been realizing how little I actually know about money and financial planning and insurance and etc. and trying to fix that. I had David Ramsey's work recommended to me, so I've been reading through that - and it's as interesting a study in his intended audience as it is in actual information about money.
Ramsey forgoes mathematical efficiency in a lot of places in favor of psychological effect; he recommends, for instance, paying off your debts in order of size rather than in order of interest rate, so that early quick victories will spur one on to keep going. The book pauses about every other page to offer either a testimonial or an urging to battle debt as though your life was on the line - which, while it gets old pretty fast, suggests that the folks he's primarily writing to need that kind of encouragement in order to believe they can pay it all off.
Which is all a little foreign to me - I've been fortunate and never had to deal with debt. And while I can't shake the feeling that he could fit all of his actual ideas into a one-page tract, it's hard to argue with the mathematics of the basic premise of, "Get out of debt, stay out of debt, and pay cash for everything," as a way to go.
He's also the only explicitly Christian author I've read to exhort people with the promise of driving a "$50,000 car" and wearing a "$30,000 watch," instead of holding those up as shameful excesses that could be given to the needy instead. I haven't entirely sorted through how I feel about that yet.
My mom, on hearing that I'd finished this, gave me her old Financial Planning textbook. We'll see how that goes.