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Week of September 18 |
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Friday, September 22, 2006
Give & Take
American Express is making it easy to be
a philanthropist. Donate to the charity of your choice, using Am
Ex’s
GivingExpress Program, by setting up a dollar amount online
and charging it to your Am Ex account. You can even arrange for
recurring donations and donate membership reward points. Want
to give but not sure where? Access financial statements and Web site
links to more than a million charities and non-profits from the
GivingExpress site.
In return for your generosity, you’ll
earn one membership rewards point for each dollar donated, as long
as you use an eligible, enrolled card. You’ll get an e-mail
confirmation of your donation for your records, and you can access
your Giving History on the GivingExpress Web site anytime, making it
easy to claim a tax deduction come April. While we’re talking about
giving and getting, if you tithe at your church, don’t forget to ask
for an end-of-the-year statement of your contributions so that you
can claim them as a deduction, too. All those dollars dropped in
collection plates throughout the year add up, and they are a
commonly overlooked tax deduction.
We’ll end the week with a couple of
TOASTS: New York City’s Columbia University announced this week that
it would join a handful of other Ivy League universities that are
replacing loans with grants for low-income students. Starting with
the 2007-2008 academic year, undergraduates from families with
incomes of less than $50,000 a year will be eligible to receive
grants from Columbia. And Wal-Mart, which has had its share of bad
publicity this year for everything from stingy health benefits to
sexual discrimination suits, made up for it BIG time with its
announcement today of a test program to sell nearly 300 of the most
commonly used generic prescription drugs for as low as $4 a month.
The program will roll out in Tampa, Florida, and, depending on
response, may soon go nationwide
Our question: if Wal-Mart can find a way
to sell life-saving drugs at such a cost-savings, why can’t other
retailers? And why did it take so long?
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Thursday, September 21, 2006
Calling All Million-Dollar
Mamas
Heads Up: The deadline for entries to the
Make Mine a $Million Business Awards program—Sept. 29—is only eight
days away. Sponsored by Count Me In for Women’s Economic
Independence, the leading, national, not-for-profit provider of
online business loans and resources to help women entrepreneurs,
this award provides money, mentoring, marketing and technology
resources for women entrepreneurs who want to grow their businesses
to a million bucks and beyond. Twenty winners will receive financing
from Count Me In and American Express, business mentoring from a
“dream team” of experts, media opportunities to spotlight their
businesses, business software from Intuit, and marketing assistance
from QVC.
Complete the online application outlining
your business vision and business plan for a chance to be among the
moguls. For more information and to register for the Make Mine a
$Million Business happening, which takes place on October 24 in New
York City,
CLICK HERE. Even if you don’t throw your hat in the ring,
there’s lots to gain: listen to the elevator pitches of the award
finalists, attend business workshops, get some speed coaching and
hear special guest speaker Suze Orman—a business role model if there
ever was one. Can’t attend? Just visit the site, and register to win
a portable DVD player and a $250 QVC gift card. Hey, the holidays
aren’t that far off . . .
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Dubious Financial Achievement
Award
Good News: For the first time since 2004,
the United States has been bumped from first to second place in the
ranks of countries with the largest number of citizens living from
paycheck to paycheck, beaten out in a squeaker by Portugal, where 23
percent of people have no cash to spare after paying their bills, as
compared with 22 percent of Americans.
Other findings of the twice-yearly A. C.
Nielsen Online Consumer Confidence Study, designed to measure the
spending and saving patterns and major concerns of consumers in 40
countries: Paying off debts is our top use of spare cash (41
percent), with stashing it in savings following close behind (38
percent).
When we do spend our disposable income,
according to the study, we tend to drop it on entertainment (28
percent) and home improvements (27 percent). “Americans rank second
from last when it comes to spending their extra cash on new
technology, with only 17 percent saying that's where their money
goes. U.S. consumers also rank in the bottom 10 of all markets
surveyed when it comes to spending spare cash on new clothes (26
percent) and vacations (25 percent).”
If you’re stuck in this cycle, you know
how nerve-wracking living paycheck to paycheck can be. You’re also
not alone. A few years back Oppenheimer Funds conducted a survey of
single working women’s spending habits and found that 53 percent
live from paycheck to paycheck—and 54 percent are more likely to own
30 pairs of shoes than to have $30,000 saved up. Living on a
shoestring for your love of shoes—not
smart.
How do your spending and saving habits
compare?
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Tuesday, September 19, 2006
A Plan for Avoiding Future
Shock
Americans’ savings rate is in the toilet, and America’s budget
deficit is at near record highs. It may be a good time to look at
the big picture: how should we be reacting to those two facts to
protect ourselves from future shock? For starters, save more, of
course. But where? Conventional wisdom is changing with the times.
While in the past, financial gurus advised stashing savings in a
traditional IRA, which shelters your money from taxation until you
withdraw it, that wisdom is beginning to shift a bit. Terry Savage,
writing in her column
“Roths Worth Another Look” on
www.thestreet.com, suggests that, particularly for those just
starting out, saving money in a Roth IRA, which doesn’t have an
upfront tax advantage but protects earnings and withdrawals from
taxes down the line, might be the smart thing to do.
Her
reasoning: taxes are bound to rise to help the country cope with
current trends. As proof, she points to the latest bulletin from the
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which concludes that 18-year-old
workers today could face marginal net tax rates as high as 80
percent, when you factor in all taxes. Better to pay taxes on that
money now than later. Conveniently, the new Pension Protection Act
makes that easier, encouraging companies to offer Roth IRA’s among
their retirement savings options.
CLICK HERE for a calculator that crunches the numbers to
help you figure out what flavor IRA is right for you.
Take-home tip: Sure, some of this is pretty dry stuff, but knowledge
is power. It allows you to take advantage of opportunities and avoid
financial potholes. So keep abreast of economic trends,
developments, options and consequences by paying a visit to your
favorite personal-finance site at least once a week. Don’t have a
favorite? Start shopping around for one. Besides TheStreet.com,
check out
www.motleyfool.com.
www.womenandco.com, www.wfn.com,
www.businessweek.com,
www.cnnmoney.com, and
www.smartmoney.com. If you’ve got a favorite financial site,
drop me a note and I’ll post it here.
I
can’t let this week go by without mentioning the passing of former
Texas governor Ann Richards last week. A role model for all women
aspiring to own their rightful piece of the power pie, in her
keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention she famously
pointed out that “Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire
did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” Leaving office
in 1995, she wrote her own epitaph: “I did not want my tombstone to
read: ‘She kept a really clean house.’ I think I’d like them to
remember me by saying, ‘She opened government to everyone’.”
R.I.P. Ann Richards.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Monday, September 18, 2006
Giving ZEBO a Zero
Shopping magazine Shop, Etc. just folded. Now, filling the
void comes
www.zebo.com. Billing itself as “the world’s largest repository
of what people own,” kind of a MySpace social network for
shopaholics, this wolf in sheep’s clothing is at heart a shopping
site, geared to encourage materialism for the sake of materialism.
“You are known by what you own, so list your best stuff,” the site
says, encouraging members to create pages bragging about their
possessions. They can also create wish lists, seek shopping advice
from others on the site, blog about their shopping experiences, and
even—surprise!—purchase products.
Sociologists (and advertisers) will have
a field day here, using ZEBO as a window on the soul of its mostly
young members, which number about four million so far, most of them
16 to 25, according to its founder, marketing expert Roy de Souza.
Not all things posted on the site’s wish
lists—“to be young” and “a girl friend,” for instance—can be bought.
But watch for its signature question: “Hi, what do you own?” to
replace “Hi, what’s your sign?” as the new pick-up line if Zebo
catches on.
When members fill out their profiles,
they are asked to describe their “celebrity style.” The thing that
fans too often miss about their favorite celebrities is what brought
them fame: things like talent, hard work, determination and, often,
good marketing and business skills. When was the last time someone
asked Lindsay Lohan or Justin Timberlake how they invest their
money?
If ZEBO’s members come to learn that
financial products like mutual funds, IRA’s, exchange traded funds,
and certificates of deposit are possessions worth owning and
bragging about, too, then they’ll be onto something.
Speaking of celebrities, a TOAST to pop
singer Jewel’s campaign to encourage the medical establishment to
give women who’ve just had mastectomies, currently too often treated
as outpatient surgery, sufficient hospital recovery time.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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If you like the blog, you’ll love the book.
For more savvy
finance advice, buy
“Making Bread: The
Ultimate Financial Guide for Women Who Need Dough,”
by Gail Harlow and Elizabeth Lewin, available on
Amazon.com and at your local bookstore |
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