Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Street Smarts

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Street Smarts: Beyond the Diploma
By: Jim Randel

Often, when we’ve “grown up” and graduated college, we all move on to our new lives as adults with the expectation that our schooling has given us everything we’ll need to be prepared for the wide world ahead of us.  And, just as often, we are disappointed.  While school has the advantage of preparing us for the work part of the world; we can all read, write, and do most arithmetic; we are usually very unprepared for the subtle nuances that take place that will give us a step up on the ladder of success.

Jim Randel, if you’re unfamiliar with him, is the author of the Skinny On series.  I’ve reviewed a few of those here before, which, I would guess, is why his company sent me a copy of this book.  (That’s my disclosure, folks.  I was sent a free copy of the book.)  What he’s done with both the Skinny On series and this new book, Street Smarts, is to take some very complex issues, and simplify them enough that you can get the basics without having to knock your head against the wall trying to understand them.  Street Smarts holds 125 lessons on how to better succeed in the real world.  Each lesson is short, to the point, and valuable.  There’s very little chaff to sort through, and it’s an easy and fast read with some rereading value.

One thing you won’t find inside it’s pages is explicit detail.  There is not, for instance, 20 pages on the mathematics behind the rule of 72.  There also is not 100 pages or more on the workings of a mortgage loan.  Each is it’s own lesson, and is two pages.  You’re not going to learn everything there is to know about any of the topics by reading this book.  What you will get is the highlights that will allow you to safely navigate the topic without causing yourself too much trouble.

The book is also paired with a website where they’ve been putting up regular fresh content.  It’s already got quite the archives of good tips and information.  You can visit it at TheStreetSmartBook.com.

This book would make a great gift for a newly graduated senior, of high school or college.

Your Credit Score Now Available on Kindle

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The Beating Broke Guide to Your Credit Score is a guide that I wrote a while back, that has been available as a download here on the site as a .pdf document for some time.  With the recent rise in usage for ebook readers, I thought it was time that it got converted over and presented as a kindle ebook.  So, that’s exactly what I did last weekend.  It’s now available in the Kindle store on Amazon for only $0.99.  It’s still available as a pdf download here for free, if that’s what you want, but I know some would rather have it directly on their reader.  It’s also been made available in the epub format (free) on Smashwords.

Debt Ceiling Crisis?

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If you’re even slightly interested in the US economy, and, let’s face it, most of the world is, then you’ve likely been at least marginally following the last few weeks worth of debt ceiling news.  The quick and dirty of it is that the US government has a debt ceiling that puts a cap on how much debt the US federal government can carry.  If they reach that cap, they can no longer issue treasury bonds and the like to raise money to pay for things.  Based on what I’ve read, everyone would like us to believe that it’s a major crisis, and the world will end if we don’t raise that debt ceiling and allow for more debt.  But, is it really a crisis?

Let’s think about this just a little bit.  Replace “U.S. Government” with John Doe in everything I’ve just said, and all the news you’ve read.  If we were talking about an individual, we wouldn’t be talking about how the world would end if they weren’t allowed to accumulate more debt.  We’d be talking about how they need to radically cut costs, increase income, pay off debt until they can get their finances in order.  Would  it be called a crisis?  Maybe on a personal level, John Doe would believe it was a crisis.  But, it certainly wouldn’t be world ending.

Bus1I’ll admit that it is a bit different when it’s a government entity that we’re talking about.  If the US government goes bankrupt, there will be some pretty serious problems with the economy for a while.  Which brings up another issue altogether.  The US economy needs some diversification of it’s revenue streams.  Way too much of the economy balances on how much money the US government sinks into it each month.

It’s time we start asking the same questions of the US government that we would be asking of John Doe.  Do you really need that expenditure?  That service?  All three cars?  The McMansion?  Unfortunately, those that are in charge in Washington are playing political ball instead of really trying to solve the problem.  They think way to hard about what programs they can cut that won’t lose them votes in the next cycle, or how much they can raise taxes without losing votes, when, instead, they should be looking to make the US government financially solvent and stabilizing it’s fiscal situation.  You or I would start with a balanced budget, I don’t see any reason why the government shouldn’t do the same.

What do you think?  I don’t think I’m being to idealistic in asking that they carry a balanced budget each year.  Or that they cut costs until they can do that.  Yes, they’ll likely have to raise taxes some to pay off what they’ve got for debt, but if it doesn’t come with some pretty significant cost cutting, they’ll all be looking for new jobs in 2012 anyways.

photo credit: Public Notice Media