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WalletPop:

Filed under: Budgets, Cards, Debt

As we were kicking around favorite grocery store peeves, I realized one of mine is the person in front of me at the register that carefully enters his/her check info in the check register and calculates his/her new balance. I also realized that I’m an idiot. This person should be held up as a paragon of wise personal finance.

Why? Because this person knows how much money he has. The credit/debit card industry has grown fat partly because most of us don’t keep a running tab of our charges. Most people, like me, jam receipts in their wallet to balance at the end of the month (if then). All too frequently, I’m abashed at the result, and I’m not alone. U.S. credit card debt is on track to soon surpass $1 trillion.

If you want to keep track of your expenses, the first step toward taking control is to adopt the habit of the check writer. Carry your credit and debit cards in a checkbook or similar case, one that has a register for each . There are also credit card tracker forms you can download and print to carry with you.

Cultivate the habit of keeping your credit card/debit card receipts there, and write each transaction in the register and update your balance immediately after each purchase. We know that the act of writing is a valuable mnemonic tool, and the act of recording each expense will cause you to consider your balance. That’s one…

WalletPop:

Filed under: Debt, Health, Bankruptcy

The hospital where I gave birth to my two daughters — one less than six months ago — is shutting its obstetrics practice, selling two of their main buildings and reducing the number of overall beds in the hospital to just half of the official capacity. This glorious institution is not a post-Katrina victim or anything of the like. It’s a major urban hospital: the Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn Heights. And it owes $170 million to creditors.

This being Brooklyn, there are other hospitals in the area — even within walking distance. But there is something of a Starbucks mentality of real estate here, meaning that you could have a hospital on every corner and you’d find enough sick people for each one. Even Starbucks is keeping most of its New York outposts open during its closing spree of 600 stores.

So why close a hospital? The powers that be at LICH cite malpractice insurance and other costs of delivering babies as the major reason for closing that division. My OB actually left the hospital a few months ago because she didn’t like the office staff she had to share, and internal politics made it impossible for her to do anything about it. So maybe there’s a little tension behind the scenes that we don’t know about.

The ward where I gave birth, and subsequently paid $250 a night for a private room, is headed toward condos, it seems, and nearly 3,000 babies…

WalletPop:

Filed under: Debt, Real Estate, Recession

It seems like we’re going to see a lot more headlines like the one yesterday on one of the homes fixed up on Extreme Makeover ending up at a foreclosure auction (dramatically on the steps of the local courthouse in Georgia). Maybe it’s only logical, given the mission of the show to fix up houses for those who can’t afford to do so on their own. Many of these people are going to end up in further trouble, unable to afford their up-sized dreams.

Free Money Finance is hot on the trial of two more houses featured on the show that may be in trouble: one in Maryland and one in Oregon. In both cases, the families just had too much house to maintain and couldn’t keep up. Being on the show may have actually exacerbated their problems. But isn’t that the whole gist of the mortgage crisis right now? Banks extended pie-in-the-sky loans to people they know couldn’t afford them, then jacked up the rates after they sucked the people into buying houses.

Continue reading More foreclosures coming from “Extreme Makeover”?

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WalletPop:

Filed under: Banks, Budgets, Debt, Saving, Simplification

Wesabe is an amazing useful personal finance site which provides access to all of your checking and savings accounts under one site in order to better track your finances. I had a chance to chat with Marc Hedlund, the CEO of Wesabe about security, user rights, features, upcoming and the community focus of this excellent site. This article is longer than our normal fare but stick with it if you want to get to know your money using a cool online tool.

The first thing you’ll want to know before handing over your banking information to a company is how secure they are. Wesabe provides its users with industry standard encryption to protect your financial data. Unlike their competitor, Mint who uses a third party to handle security and data Wesabe has taken the processes in house and developed their own system. The decision is actually a great one when it comes to security and the rights you have over your data. Marc shared with me that one of the main reasons they built their own system was to be able to offer users a Data Bill of Rights, allowing you to completely delete your data at any time, something third party vendors would have kept. Aside from keeping your passwords and financial information from a company you don’t have a business relationship with the Wesabe system also has the ability to get updates about your transactions as often as your bank provides updates…