Money: Planning For The End...And Beyond
Because 
wickedwords requested that I resume my money posts. And I was flattered to find that there were people reading them....
1. At Escapade there was a panel called: Planning For The End". I was not able to attend, but Elke wrote a brief summary of the panel. To which I add: Nolo Press is a publisher that offers software and print books to help average people set up simple wills and medical powers of attorney (living wills). I use them for my relatives and they come complete with all the forms (or in the case of the software - allow you to customize your own forms). I highly recommend.
2. "Financial Planning For Booms and Busts" is today's column in the New York Times. Among the advice that I had not seen before - how to prepare for the possible loss/reduction of Medicare and Social Security. Actual numbers and advice!
"....anyone under 50 should assume that Medicare will look nothing like it does now and examine private health insurance premiums for guidance as to what may need to be spent on health care in retirement. Meanwhile, the firm advises current retirees to assume a 20 percent cut in Social Security benefits at some point. "
3. Looking for a basic book to explain the assumptions behind today's rhetoric about consumer spending and the competing and sometimes schizo views we have of the poor? "In Cheap We Trust"by Lauren Weber. How can I not love a book that ties Benjamin Franklin into the massive monetary collapse that came out of deregulation?
Publisher's Weekly review: "Guilt-free consumption has always been a cherished American value, but this book explores its flip side: a historical engagement with thriftiness, starting in the pre-revolutionary days with Benjamin Franklin, championed by reformers Booker T. Washington and Lydia Marie Child, taken to absurd lengths by the 19th-century miserly millionaire Hetty Green, espoused by economist John Maynard Keynes and married to environmental concerns by contemporary conservationists. Journalist Weber's treatise begins with recollecting her father's conservative habits and ramifies into a far-ranging examination of social programs, alternative movements and mainstream institutions including savings banks, home economics, industrial efficiency experts, freegans, economists and war departments, all of which promote some form of frugality. .....she examines how thriftiness became a racist pejorative hurled at Jewish and Asian immigrants. While the rise of consumer culture and advertising undercut individual and social efforts to save, the author also finds structural reasons for our profligacy in growing financial illiteracy, wage stagnation and deregulated financial markets. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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wickedwords requested that I resume my money posts. And I was flattered to find that there were people reading them....
1. At Escapade there was a panel called: Planning For The End". I was not able to attend, but Elke wrote a brief summary of the panel. To which I add: Nolo Press is a publisher that offers software and print books to help average people set up simple wills and medical powers of attorney (living wills). I use them for my relatives and they come complete with all the forms (or in the case of the software - allow you to customize your own forms). I highly recommend.
2. "Financial Planning For Booms and Busts" is today's column in the New York Times. Among the advice that I had not seen before - how to prepare for the possible loss/reduction of Medicare and Social Security. Actual numbers and advice!
"....anyone under 50 should assume that Medicare will look nothing like it does now and examine private health insurance premiums for guidance as to what may need to be spent on health care in retirement. Meanwhile, the firm advises current retirees to assume a 20 percent cut in Social Security benefits at some point. "
3. Looking for a basic book to explain the assumptions behind today's rhetoric about consumer spending and the competing and sometimes schizo views we have of the poor? "In Cheap We Trust"by Lauren Weber. How can I not love a book that ties Benjamin Franklin into the massive monetary collapse that came out of deregulation?
Publisher's Weekly review: "Guilt-free consumption has always been a cherished American value, but this book explores its flip side: a historical engagement with thriftiness, starting in the pre-revolutionary days with Benjamin Franklin, championed by reformers Booker T. Washington and Lydia Marie Child, taken to absurd lengths by the 19th-century miserly millionaire Hetty Green, espoused by economist John Maynard Keynes and married to environmental concerns by contemporary conservationists. Journalist Weber's treatise begins with recollecting her father's conservative habits and ramifies into a far-ranging examination of social programs, alternative movements and mainstream institutions including savings banks, home economics, industrial efficiency experts, freegans, economists and war departments, all of which promote some form of frugality. .....she examines how thriftiness became a racist pejorative hurled at Jewish and Asian immigrants. While the rise of consumer culture and advertising undercut individual and social efforts to save, the author also finds structural reasons for our profligacy in growing financial illiteracy, wage stagnation and deregulated financial markets. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
[A Dreamwidth post with
comments | Post or read on Dreamwidth| How to use OpenID]