I’m writing this roundup as I listen to the best *cough* and the brightest *cough* we have to offer, our distinguished senators, trying to discuss the debt ceiling in what is now the proverbial eleventh hour. To any non-US reader, Yes, we’re all embarrassed, but your money is safe, this is all showmanship. Nothing more.
Let’s start this week with Neal Frankle’s Do High Unemployment Rates Spell Stock Market disaster? An interesting discussion with a surprising answer.
Next, Ashley makes a compelling Argument for Privatizing Social Security. I’ll be blunt here, When I look at the 13% per year put in to Social Security (half from my employer, which they’d otherwise put into my pension) and add to that the near 20% my wife and I try to save each year, we’re pushing 1/3 of our income as savings. We should have been able to retire long ago. Crazy that when planning retirement, I can’t take our Social Security payments to be guaranteed. Privatize? How about just cutting me loose? Keep my deposits, but set me free to keep my 13% till we retire.
At Darwin’s Money, the question – Pre-Paying your Mortgage, Obsessive or Responsible? All finance issues are a trade off, no? A dollar spent on a magazine can’t buy a soda. One can put extra funds toward a mortgage, or pay so much to the mortgage that it’s impacting the rest of your budget. That’s where Darwin’s friend goes overboard, nice article.
Hank Coleman discussed The Pros and Cons of a Roth IRA Conversion. Too many unknowns to make the conversion decision black and white. Hank walks you through the decision process.
At Stupid Cents, Briana wrote a very clever Personal Finance Lessons From Harry Potter. One important lesson from each of the Harry Potter novels. I’m feeling the urge to write my own “Finance Lessons from Star Trek,” perhaps starting with “Don’t invest all your money in a single solar system, you never know when its sun with go supernova.” Something like that.
And last this week, Kristina at Dinks Finance wrote Money Dilemma or moral Dilemma, a post alluding to the recent Rupert Murdoch scandal and asking her readers how far they would go in pursuit of money.