One of the challenges during this economic crisis is budgeting. As much as we hear about the housing collapse or the stock market seesawing like a playground, we rarely get a glimpse into the actual budget of real live Americans. Sure we know housing is expensive. We all intuitively knew that $147 a barrel oil [...]
Governor Palin fiercely expressed how she and Todd had always been middle class and understood what the average working folk in America are going through. Now excuse me if I'm wrong or go to far out on a limb by saying.....BEING WORTH $1.2 MILLION IS FAR FROM MIDDLE CLASS!
John McCain's economic plan is designed from the ground up to raise incomes and create jobs for Americans - especially middle-class Americans - and get our economy moving again. It is in sharp contrast to Barack Obama's plan, which does...
A recent BBC News report highlights the alarming trend in people sleeping in their cars as a result of being made homeless after the collapse of the housing market and credit crunch.
BBC Reporter Rajesh Mirchandani describes the depressing scene of a typical car park in Santa Barbara in which a car park across the street from luxury mansions sees the arrival of few cars that take up spaces in diff
Government Minister Ivan Lewis believes that Britain should tax the wealthy more, and spend that money to “help hard-pressed middle-class families” who are suffering in the credit crunch.
It is strange to hear a Labour minister talking about taxing the rich and using the money to help the middle classes rather than wasting it on more [...]
Olson Home’s Cypress Walk in Pacifica, is the cure for what is being called an exodus of San Francisco’s middle class. Olson Homes is feeding the much needed affordable housing alternative in the neighboring areas close to the San Francisco Bay area.
New Homes shoppers have found a great many housing choices abound in this current [...]
Product Details Paperback: 207 pagesPublisher: Business Plus; 1 edition (April 1, 2000)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 0446677450ISBN-13: 978-0446677455 Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)Order Now!!Customer ReviewsHow the rich become rich, May 25, 2003 By Carl Matthews (Traveling The USA) - See all my
Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!Author:Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. LechterFormat:PDF 2.3MBPublisher: Business Plus Number Of Pages: 207 Publication Date: 2000-04-01 ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0446677450 ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780446677455 Personal-finance author and lecturer Robert Kiyosaki developed his unique economic perspective th
Book Description
ISBN-0446677450
Rich Dad, Poor Dad chronicles the story of the authors two dads, his own father, who wa the superintendent of education in Hawaii and who ended up dying penniless and his best friends father who dropped out of school at age 13 and went on to become one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii.
Kiyosaki [...]
Country House -- Blur
The posts we do on over-the-top HELOC abuse are gripping because the dollar amounts are so large. However, focusing only on the extreme cases gives the impression of HELOC abuse is an unusual behavior of a few spectacular cases. HELOC abuse is not unusual or uncommon: it is widespread, and it is going to pummel the middle class.
What possesses peo
Many of middle-class families in OC are still stinging from being excluded from Bush's tax rebate program. While many of our friends got checks of up to $1,200, we got nothing. The reason? We made a bit too much money to be included and were summarily "phased out" of that particular gravy train.Guess what? You're about to be "phased out" again.Yesterday, the House passed HR 3221 aka the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 on May 8, 2008. This piece of homedebtor rescue legislation spends billions helping those folks in trouble keep their homes, to refinance existing mortgages, for cities buy blighted properties and so on. So, if you're were unfortunate enough to have bought a house that you couldn't afford, the taxpayers are here to bail you out.You're welcome.Th
Cheap Car Insurance : A Service Cut Out For Middle ClassBy: Allan ElvinOne of the vehicles that is liked world ever are cars. Those supremely useful machines that prove their utility on not one but several fronts. For starters they relieve one from the troubles of commuting. Once you own a car you get rid of the irritation of waiting long hours for bus or a taxi. The jostling that you have to do with fellow passengers for seat also becomes a thing of history. The cars also contribute hugely in elevating one's status in society immensely. However, there is one dark side of cars as well, their price. Indeed, for a majority part of society cars are still a commodity that can only be purchased after taking loans. Imaging the plight of all such people who have to shell out an exorbitant amount
Mrs Micah asked what’s wrong with being middle class focusing on not working enjoyable but not too stressful jobs and still having the time and money to live comfortably. Lazyman talked about the upper limit of trading time for money and made some comments about the poor choice of working overtime just to buy unsatisfying [...]
Recently Barack Obama gave a speech in which he talked about the concerns of middle class citizens. He talked about job losses and the home mortgage crisis.
“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years [...]
~Snooper~The Leftinistra are truly pathetic and anyone that supports such a group of chronic liars, fools and ignorant tarts, they are far worse that their leadership.I was going to write a post on the WaPo article about how "strapped" the middle class is in the USA until I saw that Rep Boehner already did one.Middle Class Families Deserve Tax Relief, Not Tax HikesTAX INCREASES FROM DEMOCRATS WOULD CRIPPLE U.S. ECONOMY, RAISE COSTS OF LIVING EVEN MORE Bingo...go read the article.Democrats...BAH!
Marketwatch.com had an interesting article today on the views of America’s “Middle Class Millionaires” (MCM) - Those with net worth of $1 million to $10 million.What was striking to me was that these MCM’s thought that you need $13 million plus to be considered rich! I would think $4 - $5 million would put you in the rich category – but then again I am not a MCM.Here are some the findings from the Prince and Schiff report:- 7.6% of American households, or 8.4 million households are middle-class millionaires- The average middle-class millionaire works 70 hours per week- Middle-class millionaires are five times more likely than the average worker to say they are always available for work- 89% believes that anyone can attain wealth through hard work- 62% believes that networking, or
I am frankly fed up with the accusations that the middle class is better off financially today than 20 years ago. Where are these so called experts finding out their info? I bet none of them actually are middle class, they are either upper class (read "rich") or upper middle class (read "well off"). The wages over the past 20 years have NOT kept up with inflation. I for one have a wage almost 1/2
The above image is how the average Indian has been and will be spending his money. As per McKinsey, the average middle class indian wants to spend money on better living standards. They say that "Even India’s most affluent consumers will outnumber not only the comparable segment in China but also the entire current population of Australia" They go on to say that "Above all, consumers will
Today, U.S. Senator John Cornyn voted against legislation that would have provided tax relief for nearly two million middle class families in Texas.
The legislation would have prevented about $1.5 million Texans from paying the Alternative Minimum Tax. The legislation Cornyn voted against included tax credits for college tuition, tax relief for members of the armed forces, and tax deductions for school teachers buying supplies for their classrooms out of their own pockets.
State Rep. Rick Noriega (D-Houston), who is running against Cornyn, decried Cornyn’s vote.
“Once again, this demonstrates that John Cornyn is out of touch with regular Texans and Texas values,” said State Representative Rick Noriega, who on Monday officially filed as a candidate for Senator Cornyn’s seat.
At this point, some background on the AMT is necessary. It was introduced by the Tax Reform Act of 1969. It was intended to target a very small amount of high-income households that had been
State Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford) has evidently decided to make it his personal crusade to destroy public education and turn the screws to the poor and middle class families in Texas:
State Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford) wants a constitutional ban on the use of property taxes to fund public schools in Texas.
"I am absolutely convinced that my constituents, and frankly, the voters across Texas would rather pay a sales tax when they purchase something than a property tax for the rest of their life,†King said speaking by phone Wednesday.
Oh, Rep. King. You are deliberately trying to get sent home by the voters, aren’t you?
I don’t quite know how Rep. King has become “convinced” of this fact, but I suspect the anti-tax wingnuts have had his ear.
The problem with this is that the sales tax is one of the most regressive taxes out there. It has a disproportionate negative impact on the poor and middle class.
Plus, getting rid of property taxes to fund schoo
The casualties of the housing market are hitting Southern California even in middle class neighborhoods. Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo is pushing for Fannie and Freddie to raise their caps to $625,000, in a push to socialize the housing bubble. This is on the back of a previous request of raising rates to $850,000. As you will see in today’s Real Home of Genius, we are starting to see decent homes in middle class areas reaching caps that are already in place. There is no need to push for higher caps. If you haven’t noticed unscrupulous lenders will push buyers into the maximum loan caps and buyers will not read their contract and take on whatever debt is put in front of them. The caps are there for a reason and right now isn’t exactly the best time to be asking Freddie and Fannie to take on more responsibility considering they are still trying to shore up liquidity to remain stable. Raising caps by 50 percent isn’t exactly the best thing to do. Keep in mind that a recen
Some wag once remarked, “I’d smoke while I sleep, if I could only find someone to hold my cigarette’. Express such a sentiment these days and you'll get not only a raising of a fire marshal’s scorched eyebrow but a wag of the finger by the growing glee club of killjoys hell-bent on having you mirror their chaste, dull lives. Now while your rejoinder might include a different finger, you can’t help but notice flipping through the channels that the phrase ‘hazardous to your health’ is increasingly cropping up in the evening news—likely referencing some snack or indulgence you’ve been shoving into your gullet for years that will be soon be handled solely with tongs and a biohazard suit-- and'llshave more months off your life than that cul de sac condo with a power lines panorama. A health agency in the UK who we’ve chosen not to name here, not because we think it’s bad form to take swipes at some do-gooder NPO, but because its acronym wasn’t nearly catchy enough
The President was right to veto the SCHIP expansion recently passed by congress. To put it simply all the grandstanding from lying Democrats and quisling Republicans that Bush is somehow denying health care to children is absurd. The facts about SCHIP simply do not support this notion. Under SCHIP, taxpayers pay for the health coverage of children in families of four earning as much as $72,000 per year. Democrats in Congress seek to open the program to families of four earning $83,000 per year or more. The President has made it clearthat he is open to expanding the program but not to cover well-off families before States enroll 95 percent of those lower-income children first.The foundation of SCHIP is utterly implausible in the first place. It assumes the efficient transfer of funds from taxpayers to the needy as their tax dollars go from their pockets to Washington and then back to state governments and ultimately back to the people who "need it." Like it uglier older sister, Medic
The emerging middle class,the big spenders,the ones who have arrived,the rising middle class....STOP!!! Have heard enough, have had enough media attention on the 250 million people who would fall into this category!The trend now is to try an associate oneself as much close to middle class, if unable to unearth middle class upbringings(media stereotyped!),the way they went to school in an rickshaw,how their parents tried to make both the ends meet,how a teacher who punished him now is showering praises(what is the middle class connection?) ...typical stories, nothing short of being called cliches.....Indian cricketers have joined the gang of middle class wannabes,(or wannabes from middle class). Be it a Dhoni, Harbhajan, or a Sreesanth and a lot of others, the story they try weaving and sel
The US middle class is shrinking and people know it, feel it.
Here is an interesting blog on the subject Whatever happened to sharing the pie of prosperity?
Some highlights:
Last week, a friend in his 30s prodded me to explain how my generation, the boomers, had botched so many things. While not exactly conceding that we had, I said that the one thing none of us had anticipated was that America would cease to be a land of broadly shared prosperity.
Median family income over the past quarter-century has stagnated. The economic rewards from increased productivity, which went to working-class as well as wealthy Americans from the 1940s to the ’70s, now go exclusively to the rich. The manufacturing jobs that anchored our prosperity were offshored, automated, or deunionized; lower-paying service-sector jobs took their place.
… a poll released this month by the Pew Research Center reveals a transformation of Americans’ sense of their country and themselves that is startl
Alan Greenspan’s solution to economic inequality in the United States is to turn all Americans into 3rd world serfs. He also thinks Americans really do not need middle class incomes, nope, we all just greedy little chickens pecking out power for power’s sake.
We pay the highest skilled labor wages in the world.
We need to supress the [...]
Soon every homeowner in New York State will receive a mailing from the New York State Department of Taxation and Financing about the new Middle Class STAR which our new Governor, Elliot Spitzer initiated when he took office. The deadline for application is 11/30/07.You must wait for the letter from the State to arrive before you can apply.In Westchester County you can call 2-1-1 for further information and applications. If they answer the phone United Way you have not dialed the wrong number.New York State Department of Taxation and Finanace 877-6-STARNY.Middle Class STARFind Out if You QualifyNY State Individual Taxpayer Answer Center
Human psychology is both tremendously fascinating, and mind numbingly scary. Although, there are probably a million different examples that would illustrate the fascinating delusions of the human psyche there is one in particular that I’d like to talk about…the risk vs. reward calculation that goes on (consciously or unconsciously) in the human mind when they purchase a lottery ticket. Ok… let me set the scene; the average lotto 6/49 payout is about 3 million dollars, a single ticket costs $2 and the odds of winning are 1 in 14 million. Just to put this into perspective your chances of being hit by lightening in Canada are 1 in 2.5 million. So, if you believe you’re going to win the lottery than you must also be darn sure that you’re going to be struck by lightening at least five times in your life. However, the human psyche doesn’t work like that and despite the overwhelming odds 3 million dollars is a lot of money to most people, and because the tickets are only $2 peopl
When the Civil War ended in the spring of 1865, approximately four million blacks were emancipated to fend for themselves. Seeking to address their ignorance and illiteracy, a group of ministers congregated at Louisville's Fifth Street Baptist Church in August of that same year to form an association of black Baptists in Kentucky, the need to make education available to the masses being prime on the agenda. All of the 12 messengers gathered there to form the State Convention of Colored Baptists in Kentucky -- among them Henry Adams, Elisha W. Green, and George Dupree -- had been enslaved prior to the Civil War and they deeply felt the urgency to establish a school to help both the formerly enslaved and future generations extricate themselves from generations of illiteracy and ignorance. ...a stance of self-sufficiency, though under white supervision, already had been modeled by Louisville's First Baptist Church (now Walnut Street) in 1828 when the congregation dismissed 18 enslaved b
Book Description
ISBN-0446677450 Rich Dad, Poor Dad chronicles the story of the authors two dads, his own father, who wa the superintendent of education in Hawaii and who ended up dying penniless and his best friends father who dropped out of school at age 13 and went on to become one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii. Kiyosaki uses the story of these two men and their varying financial strategies
With the new minimum wage increase almost guaranteed to pass, there are many people in America who feel as though this a victory for everyone. Liberals, especially, believe that this is a great change. The problem is that minimum wage increases hurt more people than they help. In fact, only 4% of America’s workers are [...]
For the whole article, visit me at collegecritic.net!
Here is my submissions for the Canadian Tour of Personal Finance Blogs:There are many posts out there on the high commissions/fees charged by both financial advisors and mutual fund companies. Almost all of these posts slam the high fees charged with no mention of the benefits that financial advisors do offer for some. Personally, I have mixed feelings on the compensation of financial advisors. For knowledgeable amateur investors like you and me their fees do seem ridiculous. Many amateur investors (myself included) shudder at the thought of paying 2% annually to a financial advisor or mutual fund manager. However, I would argue that isn’t the case for the majority of society. We shudder at the 2% fees in the same way a plumber would shudder at paying $80 an hour for someone to replace his faucets. There are many, many people out there who have absolutely no interest in finance or investing and as a result don’t find 2% to be an unreasonable fee to pay for advice on a subject that
Well it’s about time for another one of my rants...credit card debt. There are a number of shows out there now ie - “Till Debt Do Us Part” that profile a couple or family with debt issues and provide them with debt counseling, if they listen to the counselor they receive some cash to put towards their debts. I’ve painfully watched a few shows, not because they were so good, but because it was so pathetic that I just couldn’t look away…In each show a middle class couple with decent jobs ended up racking up so much credit card debt that they had trouble paying the interest each month. The stupidity of this blows my mind. If people are using their credit card to buy food, shelter, emergency medical treatment etc... than that would be just sad…but if it’s being used to buy consumer items (wants instead of needs) than that’s just stupid. Although I don’t personally know anyone who’s gone bankrupt (except the person I bought my house from) I do have lots of friends a
Amazon.com
Personal-finance author and lecturer Robert Kiyosaki developed his unique economic perspective through exposure to a pair of disparate influences: his own highly educated but fiscally unstable father, and the multimillionaire eighth-grade dropout father of his closest friend. The lifelong monetary problems experienced by his "poor dad" (whose weekly paychecks, while respectable, were
If you think the Democrats represent the middle class think again. You might want to read this. The Democrats manage to make people believe they are for working families, but is is simply not true. They are the party of entitlements. While you and your spouse go to work every day and work hard to support your family, the Democrats are giving many capable people a free ride. If you have a job, you are rich, that’s how they feel. They are going to take your money and give it away to people who could work if only the government didn’t pay them so well to stay home.
Here comes the largest tax hike in history, and it hits middle America pretty damned hard.
Our middle class has suffered in silence for far too long, and it cannot afford to suffer or be silent much longer. Hardworking Americans have not spoken out about their increasingly marginalized role in this society, and as a consequence they've all but lost their voice. Without that strong, clear and vibrant voice, all the major decisions about America and our future will be made by the elites of government, big business and the dominant special interests. Those elites treasure your silence, as it enables them to claim America's future for their own. I'm stupid enough to be absolutely sincere in the hope that middle- class America will awake soon and take action. "It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid." George Bernard Shaw NEW YORK (CNN) -- I don't know about you, but I can't take seriously anyone who takes either the Republican Party or Democratic Party seriously -- in part because neither party takes you and me seriously; in part because b
