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Summer’s Biggest Payback
Sorry, nobody’s cutting down your $20,000+ school loan, but under the new income-based repayment program, you can substantially reduce your monthly payments. A single borrower earning $30,000 a year with $40,000 in federal education loans would pay $171.94 per month in an income-based plan versus $319.50 under an income-contingent repayment plan, according to Finaid.org’s loan…
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Working for The Man When You Are The Man
Recently, I was on a panel for black journalists discussing how to build a career as a self-employed journalist. When I did this same panel a few years ago, the attendance was sparse. This year, there was standing room only. As jobs dry up in newsrooms, more and more of my comrades are being forced…
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Talking the Talk About Money
I have spent a significant portion of my 15-year career as a financial journalist at the New York Stock Exchange. Whether I was working for Dow Jones, CBS or CNN, I put in a great deal of time reporting from the NYSE trenches. I learned to speak the language of money straight from the horse.…
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It’s Tax Day, Did You File for EITC?
I should have known better. At a table full of relatives for Easter dinner, I found myself actually getting into a conversation about the economy, big bad Wall Street, the evil government, and of course, clueless journalists. As a financial journalist, I get a front-row seat to see how frustrating the economy can be. I’ve…
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When Friends and Family Ask for Money
Your brother needs to borrow money to pay the mortgage on a house he could have never afforded in the first place. Your parents’ 401k has been decimated, and they need a little help. Your sister is drowning in credit card debt, and it is up to you to throw her a lifeline. Commercial lenders…
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A Lousy Time to be a Shopaholic
In the opening scene of Touchstone Pictures Confessions of a Shopaholic, financial journalist Rebecca Bloomwood has a flashback to an event in her childhood in which she is shopping for shoes with her mother. Her extremely frugal mom buys her what could only be described as a horrific-looking pair of shoes because they were on…
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Kids and the Money Crunch
A few days ago I was speaking to a group of parents and their children about managing money in a recession. I remembered speaking with this same group a few years ago, and I couldn’t help but notice how the young people’s attitudes have changed. A teenage girl in the group remarked about the “totally…
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Financially Illiterate No More
Spelman College sophomore Nakeita Danielle Steward didn’t have many good examples of how to handle money when she was growing up. “My father was in and out of our lives. My mother, a disabled veteran, struggled to make ends meet. She racked up a lot of debt,” she said. Nakeita, who majors in psychology and…
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Bailout for The Common Man
Every year, millions of Americans make well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions to get their money straight. “I’m going to get out of debt.” “I’m going to stick to a budget.” “I’m going to save more. Too bad many of those declarations are broken before the end of January. We have trouble keeping these promises because we…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
