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Theres been this fear in recent years that the U.S. government is a completely mismanaged mess. To some extent, that fear is warranted. After all:

- Our budget deficit is over a trillion dollars. – Our total debt is over $14 trillion dollars. – Our political leaders would rather hold the line than look for real solutions. – Our GDP growth is smaller than hoped for coming out of the recession, at 2%.

we do have some very real problems.

As weve struggled theres been a lot of mention about Chinas economic vitality. Chinas GDP growth has hovered around 10% for many years and sits at 9.1% in the latest data release. There is talk about all of the debt and how the Chinese should be seen as a real threat to surpass the U.S. as the worlds economic leader.

And thats why the following video on Chinese Ghost Towns so intriguing. It was from an Australian news outfit, SBS Dateline. Read more…

I receive a number of emails each week from readers and I try to answer all of them the best I can, but occasionally I get questions from multiple people that ask the same thing. In those situations I like to address the question as a post which can hopefully help others who probably have the same question but just haven’t asked.

That’s what I’m going to do today. Many of the questions in recent months have been some form of:

I’m still relatively young and actively saving for retirement primarily in stocks, but the last few years have been rough. I’ve lost thousands of dollars and it hurts to see my money continuing to decline or remain flat. I’m concerned that the market may never recover and I’ve considered taking my money out of the market completely and investing it somewhere safe such as bonds, CDs, or gold. What do you think?

Understand Your True Time Horizon

So, should you get out of the market? That’s the mi

Read more…

College students around the nation know the importance of living within their means.  Often given a tight budget to work with, young men and women must consciously account for every cost or sacrifice the time that could be spent studying working a full or part-time job. Think back to your college days. How did you save money and get by on such a limited budget? As long as you weren’t living off of credit cards you probably make sure to stretch every penny as far as possible without even realizing how frugal you were being.

Although it may have been years since you doctored up a package of ramen noodles, there are lessons to be learned from living on a student budget.

Here is some food for thought:

• College students are creative.