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Dear Dave, We’ve read about your plan, and we’re in pretty good shape financially, but we don’t know what to do next. We have $400,000 in a 401(k) for retirement, but we don’t have an emergency fund or any other savings. The only debt we have is our house. What should we do about Baby Steps 4 and 6?MaryDear Mary,You guys have done a great job of saving for retirement and staying out of debt. Let’s go over the Baby Steps you mentioned. Baby Step 4 is putting 15 percent of your income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement plans....

Here’s a brief overview of some of the most popular tools for managing personal finances. **** 1. Some of the most popular buzzwords in recent years have been “Dave Ramsey” and “Financial Peace University.” Ramsey’s program is a 13-week course (usually two classes a week) that claims families pay off an average of $5300 in debt and save $2700 in the course of those three months. The classes are typically around $100 and are offered in multiple locations, led by “Financial Counselors” who have gone through a training course within the program. Visit www.daveramsey.com for more information. 2. Other families...

Dear Dave, My husband is a landscaper who works for the state. He has his technical license and wants to start a business doing private work as well. What advice would you give to someone just starting out in this field?AmyDear Amy,First, I’d check to see if there are any additional licenses required for doing that kind of work in your state and the cities in which you’ll be operating. You want to make sure you’re starting off on the right foot with any authorities or governing boards.The next thing I’d advise is to keep it simple. There’s no reason...

Dear Carrie: I'm about to get married for the second time. I have two kids, 8 and 10, and my fiancee has two teenagers. Everyone gets along well, but my husband-to-be is a lot wealthier than I, and his kids have been raised with very different financial expectations. It's not that I necessarily expect him to now pay for everything for my kids, but at the same time, I don't want them to feel like they get less because they're less worthy. What's fair in a situation like this? --A Reader Dear Reader: Even the most compatible couple can have...

Dear Dave, I’ve noticed that lots of people get defensive when it comes to talking about money and living on a plan. Why is this?TonyaDear Tonya,I think it’s because there seem to be two negative emotions connected to people who have failed with money: guilt and cynicism. They feel guilty because they’re terrible when it comes to handling money, and they don’t want to talk about it.Cynicism may be more prevalent in people who feel like they’ve been messed over by some “money expert” out there. Maybe they got caught up in a deal that went bad, or they lost...

The fact that same-sex marriage has not yet been legalized at a federal level in the United States is an embarrassment to our system of government. The argument in favor of allowing loving couples equitable rights should be easily affirmed by the human struggle faced by the gay community. However, if the dialogue of "rights" and "equality" is still insufficient to drown out the unbearably staunch position held by religious objectors, perhaps economics can rationalize the debate. Same-sex couples, as they are barred from marriage in many states, face disadvantages from the current federal tax codes by being unable to...

Last year, as a debate over the runaway national debt gathered steam in Washington, Social Security passed a treacherous milestone. It went “cash negative.” For most of its 75-year history, the program had paid its own way through a dedicated stream of payroll taxes, even generating huge surpluses for the past two decades. But in 2010, under the strain of a recession that caused tax revenue to plummet, the cost of benefits outstripped tax collections for the first time since the early 1980s. Now, Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury. This year, it will add a projected...

Who'd a thunk that the path to popularity among liberals was so easy. Hey, the Church hasn't exactly been asked to sign everyone's yearbook recently. The Church hasn't been in the cool crowd for decades and doesn't get invited to the cool parties. But suddenly the cool crowd that for so long mocked the Church is now macking the Church. Big time. They've developed a newfound respect for the deep thinking of the Vatican. It's kinda' like that moment in the movies when the geeky girl loses the glasses and pops open a few buttons and everyone all of a...

REALITY CHECK: Would you hire this candidate to balance your own checkbook? SPENDAHOLIC Obama has added tens of thousands of debt dollars to your balance sheet in under three years! Can you afford to support any of the various DEBT GREED candidates running for FEUDAL LORD of The Beltway? Forget about the MSM pleas about THEIR ideas about "Who is electable?" and vote to protect YOUR checkbook!

Dear Dave, I’ve heard you tell people that having $90,000 to $100,000 saved up for retirement isn’t enough. That’s what I’ve got set aside right now, and I’m pretty sure it’s all I’ll ever need. Why do you think everyone should have a million or two saved up?TomDear Tom,The amount you’re talking about isn’t enough to retire on with any kind of dignity. If you make 10 percent off your money over time it means you’re living on just $10,000 a year. That’s below the poverty level.Don’t misunderstand my message. I’m not about being greedy, and money is not the...

Osama Bin Laden spent his final months in hiding worrying about the future of Al Qaeda, emails recovered from computers in his hideout reveal. The terror leader was spending as much of his time dealing with concerns about funding and the toil being taken by CIA drone explosions as he was plotting attacks, according to U.S. intelligence officers. Officials said the emails depict an organisation beset by mounting problems as its leader remained obsessed on a follow up attack to September 11.

Why Sweden survived and America didn't.. A banking system in crisis after the collapse of a housing bubble. An economy hemorrhaging jobs. A market-oriented government struggling to stem the panic. Sound familiar? Skip to next paragraph. Swedish National Debt Office.. Bo Lundgren, minister for fiscal and financial affairs during the 1992 crisis. Add to Portfolio Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) Freddie Mac American International Group Go to your Portfolio » It does to Sweden. The country was so far in the hole in 1992 — after years of imprudent regulation, short-sighted economic policy and the end of its property...

Nearly half of Americans say that they definitely or probably couldn’t come up with $2,000 in 30 days, according to new research, raising concerns about the financial fragility of many households. In a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Annamaria Lusardi of the George Washington School of Business, Daniel J. Schneider of Princeton University and Peter Tufano of Harvard Business School used data from the 2009 TNS Global Economic Crisis survey to document widespread financial weakness in the U.S. and other countries. The survey asked a simple question, “If you were to face a $2,000 unexpected expense...

The US ranks near the bottom of developed global economies in terms of financial stability and will stay there unless it addresses its burgeoning debt problems, a new study has found. In the Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility Index, the Comeback America Initiative ranked 34 countries according to their ability to meet their financial challenges, and the US finished 28th, said David Walker, head of the organization and former US comptroller general.

New York – A government report suggests that "outside forces" may have triggered the 2008 economic meltdown. So... it wasn't our fault after all? It turns out that the devastating 2008 financial collapse wasn't caused by our over-leveraged borrowing and ballooning real estate prices, but rather "financial terrorism" from "outside sources," at least according to a newly uncovered 2009 report commissioned by the U.S. Defense Department. Financial analyst Kevin Freeman, the Pentagon contractor who wrote the report, claims that coordinated financial attacks on the U.S. from unknown "financial enemies" turned a normal downturn into an economic catastrophe that drained $50...

It's one of the richest counties in the country with one of the highest tax rates for residents and they still can't find enough money to make one and one add up to two.New York Times: A state oversight board on Wednesday seized control of Nassau County's finances, saying the county, one of the nation's wealthiest and most heavily taxed, had nonetheless failed to balance its $2.7 billion budget. Many hard-hit local governments have flirted with insolvency because of revenue shortfalls caused by the recession, but the financial problems of Nassau, on Long Island, owed more to a failure by...

Featured Term (selected at random):QUADRAGESIMO ANNO The encyclical of Pope Pius XI, dated May 13, 1931, published on the fortieth anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum. Its theme is a strong condemnation of the control of international finance and credit by a small number of financiers who thus supply "so to speak, the life blood to the entire economic body . . . so that no one can breathe against their will." As a result the State "has become a slave, bound over to the service of human passion and greed." All items in this dictionary are from Fr....

On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.

So now it transpires that a key money- man behind the proposed Ground Zero mosque is a one-time supporter of a group shut down by the feds because it was a front for Hamas. No wonder the mosque's principal imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, refuses to discuss the project's finances. Or, for that matter, refuses to speak harshly of Hamas -- an Iranian cat's-paw that's long been one of the deadliest Islamist terrorist organizations operating in the Mideast. It was reported last night that Hisham Elzanaty -- an Egyptian-born businessman from Long Island -- provided a big chunk of the $4.8...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama says he can relate to the plight of Americans striving in the struggling economy to pay bills while saving for their kids' education. He says he and first lady Michelle Obama took a hit like everybody else when the economy nearly collapsed, telling ABC that a college fund for daughters Malia and Sasha has gone "up and down" with the stock market.