Financial Announcements

Charles Schwab’s 2010 Families and Money Survey

Charles Schwab’s 2010 Families & Money Survey was released in April. This year’s survey explored the relationship “sandwich generation” parents have with their young adult children, and it found the road to financial independence is longer than ever for 20-somethings. A few highlights:

• 41% of “sandwich generation” parents continue to provide financial support to their adult children (ages 23-28).
• Parents whose children regularly did more household chores growing up were more likely to view their young adult children as “very financially responsible” compared to those whose children did fewer chores.
• 69% of parents express a strong preference for their kids to choose a profession they love even if it means they’ll have difficulty paying the bills, over choosing a profession they don’t love but that pays them well (31%).
• Saving for retirement and helping their children financially are near-equivalent priorities for these parents.

You may find the full survey here.

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BookSaleManager celebrating one year

In celebration of our 1 year anniversary, the team at BookSaleManager.com is proud to introduce our newly redesigned site to help you find your money saving used booksales in your area. This latest version is packed with exciting new features that will let users find, share, and save booksales like never before.

Here are some of the exciting new features:

• New Design: We have completely redesigned the look and feel of our site. Over the past year we have received a lot of wonderful feedback from many of the 17,000 unique visitors that came to our site. We have taken that feedback to heart and redesigned the site to have a better look and feel. This redesign represents our commitment to listen to our users. We hope you like it, and if you don’t, let us know why.
• New Account Options: We have implemented two new account features that many users requested.
  • Outlook Support: You can now export sales to your Microsoft Outlook calendar. We are also looking to add other calendar support in the near future.
  • GPS Support: You can now export our database of sales to your GPS devise so you can find sales while on the road.
• New Sharing Options: Find a sale you want your friends to know about? Now you can easily share any sales with your friends on Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. You can also easily tag sales with Digg, Delicious, and a host of other sites.
• Google Map and Directions: Every sale listed on our site will now be fully integrated with Google maps and directions. All listings will show the location of the sale via Google maps directly within the page. Also, below the address for each sale is the option to quickly and easily get step by step directions from any location.

During our first year of operation our site has seen tremendous growth. We listed over 11,000 sales and received over 17,000 unique visitors. With our new design, are building on this strong foundation. In the coming year, we plan to introduce even more exciting new features in our never ending quest to provide the preeminent booksale search experience on the internet.

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Counseling for troubled Freddie Mac borrowers

Freddie Mac and 13 local and national non-profit organizations announced a pilot effort to convince delinquent borrowers to pursue mortgage workouts that can save their houses and steer clear of foreclosure.

Freddie Mac’s new Borrower Help Centers in Chicago, Phoenix, San Bernardino and Washington, DC provide free, confidential one-on-one “holistic” mortgage counseling to delinquent Freddie Mac borrowers. The company is also launching a
separate Borrower Help Network offering similar counseling over the phone to targeted Freddie Mac borrowers.

Both efforts rely on non-profit organizations with strong reputations to contact and work with Freddie Mac borrowers who may be eligible for a modification but never called their lender, or became uncertain of the process and gave up trying.

To view more about this program, please visit here.

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Sustainable Family Finances: The story of a family creating an abundant and sustainable life.

About Green Mama: I’m a 30-something middle-class working mom with two young kids: my four year old son (often referred to as BigGuy) and my one year old daughter (referred to as Girly). I also have two more guys in my life, my life partner of 10-plus years (referred to as Hubby) and a big black Lab (referred to as Doggy). We live in the Pacific Northwest, although we hope to connect with people from across the globe through this blog.

Beyond balancing our family budget, I try to balance my life. My family literally requires a lot of “care and feeding,” which means
that I have to be strategic to get any “me” time. I work full time in a community-oriented position, which is both challenging and
satisfying. I work hard, but also prioritize play time. I love the outdoors, gardening and any sport that gets me in the water. I’ve
always enjoyed writing and believe that this blog will help me get beyond the daily family juggle to see a bigger picture view of how we are interconnected. I hope you will share this journey with me.

About our Family Finances: We are a dual income family, yet we spend more than ever before. I’ve always been pretty responsible with my money, but “life” can easily distract me from making it a top priority. Due to an almost $2k monthly child care bill, we truly need to balance the budget each month. Otherwise, we are starting in a pretty good place: we are able to pay the mortgage on our “dream home” (a 1904 Victorian), our only other debt is my college and graduate school loans, we have a small emergency fund, and a modest retirement fund. Financially, our short term goals are to track our family budget better, spend with our values in mind, and increase our emergency fund. Our long term goals are to retire well, save for college, travel as a family, and share the wealth. As a busy working family, our first dilemma is how to streamline our finances and keep our eye on our short and long term financial goals.

My Partner in Inspiration: As mentioned in my very first post, my twin sister was my inspiration for starting this blog. She has been very successful with the DINKs Finance blog that she has been co-writing and administering for the past four years. She has agreed to be my partner, and share her blog savvy to make this the successful entrepreneurial venture we hope it will become.

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Office Depot is on Facebook

It’s a new year, and many people are back at work setting themselves up for a successful 2010. In a recent survey by Office Depot, more than half of office workers surveyed (57%) said reducing or eliminating piles on their desks is a top priority for them in the coming year.

It was recently National Clean Up Your Desk Day, and Office Depot is launching the “Take Back Your Desk” campaign with the National Association of Professional Organizers. As part of this campaign, we’re providing customers with a 10% discount on organization products that they can download from our Facebook page. Visitors can download and sign a “Take Back Your Desk” pledge (under the “Get Organized” tab) and bring it to their local Office Depot retail location for a discount on organization products. The Facebook page also offers resources, tips and promotions for business professionals to get off to a smart start in the New Year.

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Get your Dutch auction on

Pricefalls.com uses a descending or ‘Dutch Auction’ pricing model. Unlike such auction sites as eBay, where bidding drives up the prices of items for sale, prices on Pricefalls decrease as the auction progresses.

Using this model, items up for auction start at a predetermined price ceiling and drop throughout the bidding period. This can help your readers, and merchants in general, get more for each item they sell – any items sold through the site are never sold below a predetermined price floor.

Merchants using the site can also easily and quickly relist any unsold items, communicate with customers and edit their online store, and more.

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Get to that magic $25 Amazon order

FillerItemFinder.com is a helpful web application geared toward bargain shoppers and the online shopping community.

It’s good for finding those little items that help you get free super-saver shipping on Amazon. The site also features an Amazon Gold Box Deals feed and deals of the day in popular departments on Amazon.

Check it out!

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Save Every Way

Save more money using the SaveEveryWay reminder service – It’s Free!

Inspired by a recent study completed by a quartet of Ivy League economists including Jonathan Zinman of Dartmouth, Sendhil Mullainathan and Margaret McConnell of Harvard and Dean Karlan of Yale showed people receiving daily reminders via text message increased their savings rate by as much as 16%.

Their findings showed that simply keeping people aware of their spending and saving habits on a daily basis made a difference. To capitalize on this finding, SaveEveryWay has been set up to accomplish the same result.

SaveEveryWay will not be selling you anything, will not be sending advertisements and will not be marketing for any paid product or service! All expenses are paid for by donation only.

If you would like to receive a daily reminder, quote or suggestion on saving money every day, please follow us on Twitter @saveeveryway, sign up for a text message using the form on our home page, click on our link for RSS or provide your email address. You can unsubscribe at anytime.

Subscription is simple and free!

www.SaveEveryWay.com

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Don’t Be A Mule!

From David Bakke, author of the new book Don’t Be A Mule:

I’d like to announce the release of my first published work. It is a down-to-earth comon-sense advice book on the topic of personal finance.

It is called “Don’t Be A Mule: A Common-sense Guide to Saving More, Spending Less, and Generating Extra Income in Your Everyday Life.” It’s currently on sale at Amazon.com.

There you can read more about me and even look inside the book. You can also find out more by visiting my blog, Your Finances 101.

The book was written based on the personal experiences of my escape from financial debt and the fair successes that I enjoy today. I think it can add value to the life of just about anyone, regardless of age, gender, etc.

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Embrace your inner Price Yeti

PriceYeti is a new site that gives you a watch list to track your items across all online retail sites and then sends you notifications when their price drops. Great for discount deals. It’s also very clean and usable.

We’re running a $300 launch promotional where we’re giving away a tracked item for free, 2 weeks before Christmas.  Check out the blog for details!

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