Personal Finance
Best columns: Value surfing, Retirement trust
Calling “the bottom in a stock market crash is a fool’s game,” says Brett Arends in The Wall Street Journal, but there’s “value out there in the market” now. I bet you’re relieved that Lehman Brothers and the other “financial wizards of Wall Street” aren’t handling your Social Security, says Chris Farrell in BusinessWeek online.
Best columns: Cool-hand Hank, Holding fast
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson “knows when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em,” says Steven Pearlstein in The Washington Post. “When an institution of Lehman’s size and clout goes under,” says Jonathan Burton in MarketWatch, “it’s understandable to wonder if your money is safe.”
Best columns: Un-free market, Buying time
Whatever happened to “self-reliance,” “individual responsibility,” and “a faith in free markets”? says Steven Pearlstein in The Washington Post. “One of the many paradoxes of the stock market,” says Brett Arends in The Wall Street Journal, “is that the worse it gets, the better it gets—at least, for those still able to invest.”
Best columns: Playing CDs, Parking cash
Lots of banks are struggling through the credit crunch, says Joan Goldwasser in Kiplinger’s, but “their pain is your gain.” Here’s where to park your cash, says Eric Dash in The New York Times, now that it’s no longer “the most boring of assets.”
Best columns: Web wars, Working rich
The growing battle to sign up new Internet customers, says Vishesh Kumar in The Wall Street Journal, means “fresh opportunities for consumers to cut their bills.” The chances are that you didn’t go into the office on Labor Day, says Dalton Conley in The New York Times, but it’s just as likely that many of you were unable to turn off your BlackBerrys.
Best columns: Recession blahs, Mileage malaise
Are we in a recession? Who cares, says Paul La Monica in CNNMoney.com. Those frequent-flier miles you’ve earned on your credit card “aren’t worth nearly what they were a few years ago,” says Jeffrey Strain in TheStreet.com.
Best columns: Reversing mortgages, Giving credit
“The reverse mortgage sounds like a pretty sweet deal,” says Fortune’s Eugenia Levenson in CNNMoney.com, but it has some steep costs. Credit unions have “a kind of sleepy, backwater image,” says Brett Arends in The Wall Street Journal, but they offer “some surprisingly good deals.”
Best columns: Hi inflation, Traveling online
Double-digit inflation is back for the first time since the “bad old days of 1981,” says Irwin Kellner in MarketWatch, so “why are most pundits silent?” Consumers can still find online travel deals, says Sarah Nassauer in The Wall Street Journal, “if they are willing to spend the time looking.”
Best columns: Fake prosperity, Credit-crunch ubiquity
With easy credit drying up, we may be nearing the end of “the standard-of-living bubble,” says Fortune’s Geoff Colvin in CNNMoney.com. “The credit crunch is the one area that many consumers think they can sidestep,” says Chuck Jaffe in MarketWatch, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Best columns: Fund hints, Dollar delirium
There’s no reliable scorecard for choosing mutual funds, says Jonathan Burton in MarketWatch, but there are some helpful strategies. The U.S. dollar’s spectacular surge is making bulls happy, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, but they’re misplacing their optimism.
Best columns: Rethinking synergy, Terminal fees
UBS is abandoning its “universal banking” model, says Barbara Kiviat in Time.com, and it’s not alone in its thinking. The era where wireless customers are hostage to “exorbitant early termination charges” may be nearing an end, says Lisa Scherzer in SmartMoney.com.
Best columns: Beating inflation, Overestimating gas
After a 30-year hiatus, says Dave Kansas in The Wall Street Journal, it looks like the “once-tamed inflation beast” might “still have some bite.” Gas prices hit record highs this summer, say Indur M. Goklany and Jerry Taylor in the Los Angeles Times, but fuel “is more affordable” than at many points in recent history.
Best columns: Fund finding, Offshore misadventures
When you’re in the market for a mutual fund, says Marshall Loeb in MarketWatch, how do you choose the right one? “It has become received wisdom,” says Floyd Norris in The New York Times, that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has driven U.S. companies overseas, but it’s not true.
Best columns: Pensions resurgent, 401(k) advice
West Virginia school teachers returned to a pension system, from an unhappy 401(k) period, says Jennifer Levitz in The Wall Street Journal, in “a cautionary tale” for all of us. Part of the problem with 401(k)s, says Money’s Walter Updegrave in CNNMoney.com, is that 21 percent of Americans “turn to friends and relatives for advice.”
