All of us have a distinct financial personality or what we call our “Money Pulse”, that is probably different than anyone else’s. What you do or don’t do with your money in tough times says a lot about your core financial beliefs. Often we get caught up in a herd mentality and we gravitate toward what others are doing. Consider Bernie Madoff and the famous people who invested millions without asking fundamental questions. An economic crisis is not a time to follow the crowd…it’s a time to know yourself extremely well.
Tag Archive for 'Financial Wellness'
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According to the 2008 American Psychological Association’s Stress in America survey, money is often on the minds of most Americans. In fact, the results revealed that money and the state of the economy are two of the top sources of stress for 80 percent of Americans. And symptomatically, one third of Americans reported losing sleep over the economy and personal finance concerns, according to a recent poll by the National Sleep Foundation.
Know that we have a problem and understanding what to do about it are miles apart… and even further removed can be actually changing our behavior.
Turns out April is “Financial Literacy Month” and the National Foundation for Credit Counseling is weighing in by releasing the initial results of their third annual Financial Literacy survey. As this is currently a hot topic nationally, Congress will be briefed with the full report later this month. They will hear, among other alarming statistics, that fully 41% of respondents gave themselves a grade of either “C, D or F” when it comes to understanding money and/or making good money decisions. We are definitely not making the Dean’s List here.
Last week, I mentioned that two of the clear differences between our current economic crisis and the Great Depression are the interactive ways we now communicate and the staggering amount of data that is literally at our fingertips via the Web. Collectively these phenomena contribute to what I termed the, “data invasion”, meaning that, unless we have a way to filter, simplify, and personalize financial information we will probably not be much better off than they were in the 30′s… sort of dazed and confused.
Seems like a repeat question that keeps coming up in my financial wellness sessions is, “what was different about the Great Depression than what we are experiencing now?” How about for a start…communication and data!
On January 27th, 1927, two years before the US economy fell off a cliff, inventor Philo T. Farnsworth applied for a patent that is now considered the official birth date of the television. Because this medium was still in its infancy in 1929, radio and newspapers were the only tools with the ability to reach the masses. But as we know, all of these mediums are only good for moving information one way.
This week the government announced a new plan to rid the financial system of so-called “toxic assets”, a general term for assets that have exposed their holders to large losses. It is these assets that have paralyzed both the credit markets and the investor community from moving forward because, to date, no one has been able to determine the extent of their poisonous reach. So to restore some semblance of confidence, the government is proposing to build an entity to capture, hold and somehow try to sell these blemished instruments.
They are telling us that, after months of horrendous news, hints of a return to economic stability created sustained euphoria during last week’s market run-up. The word sustained is used loosely here…it means more than one day. Some large and previously battered financial companies, namely Citibank, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase reported that were profitable during the first two months of the year. And, investors all over the globe, who are still licking their wounds after being pummeled by the same market that ruthlessly hacked their personal wealth, now want to quickly make up their losses by getting back on the same airplane that essentially crashed in stormy weather.
These days as I slog through my daily Wall Street Journal, by the time I get to the lone cartoon buried somewhere in the back of the paper, I feel like I have been mauled by dozens of bears. What’s scary is that I am now almost numb to the pain because the daily mauling has been going on for well over a year. The Wall Street whispers of, “stay the course” and “invest for the long term” are ingrained in my thinking but it’s hard not to feel that what is going on now is different than the downturns of the past.
GuideSpark announced today a new financial coaching service, the latest offering from their Financial Wellness Center solution.
Customers of the GuideSpark Financial Wellness Center can now provide employees with online and telephone access to personal financial coaches. These financial coaches have extensive financial backgrounds to help users through a variety of situations, whether it’s creating a new financial plan or helping solve an urgent financial issue.
This new coaching service extends GuideSpark’s comprehensive financial wellness solution beyond education, tools and information to include personalized support for employees. Personalized support is an important step for putting individuals on the path to improved financial health.
In all my years of being hanging around with professionals that consider themselves to be financial experts, I’ve never found anyone who could provide a logical explanation for how and why markets move in one direction or another? But it seems that either a general climate of confidence or fear are certainly leading indicators.
For example, it is interesting that the markets pay close attention to a concept that is anything but logical or analytical. It’s called “consumer confidence.” Webster’s dictionary tells us that confidence is “a state of confident hopefulness that events will be favorable.”
