April, 2009

A Budget Breakdown

More and more people are budgeting these days, and I’ve been getting lots of questions about where your money should be going each month – in other words, how much you should be spending on each area of your budget, from housing to entertainment to everything in between. The pie chart below – which we used on Oprah’s Debt Diet – outlines all the details:

Tips for New Parents

I was on Today this morning with some financial advice for surviving your baby’s first year as part of a segment with Mary Ann Zoellner and Alicia Ybarbo, authors of Today’s Moms, and Joy Bauer, Today’s nutritionist.  Check out the video below, as well as the behind-the-scenes picture after the jump!

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More About Making Home Affordable

On my post about the Making Home Affordable loan modifications, CMPIPE commented:  ”This site tells you if you may qualify, however, the mortgage lender can chose to not allow the modification – correct?” 

Yes, that is correct.  The site outlines the stipulations to make you eligible to apply for a loan modification from your lender; however, the program is voluntary and there is a chance your servicer isn’t participating (many are, though – and there are financial incentives for them to do so.  You can find a frequently-updated list of servicers who have signed on here.) More…

Women and Work

When I was pregnant with my first, an older relative asked me when I was planning to stop working.  Not if I was planning to stop working.  But when.  And when I told him I had no intention of stopping — in what may have been a snippy tone as I was put off by the question — he was surprised.   We were coming from totally different places.  Me, from one of working in a job I was really enjoying (I was at Smart Money at the time).  Him from watching every other young woman he knew — even some with law degrees and MBAs — quit work as they entered motherhood.   More…

MONEY 911

Today’s Money 911

Here’s the latest video, from our weekly segment this morning.  In it, we touch on loan modifications (which I just posted about here), where to stash your savings, and debt consolidation.