Let’s start this week with some history. Anyone remember the Glass-Steagall Act? I’ll admit, I’m too young, and I bet you are too, but if you studied finance at all, you know what it is, the law passed in 1933 that separated commercial banking from investment banking. Earlier this week, an excellent post from one of my favorite writers (but no byline at the site), titled Do We Need to Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act? Perhaps, because whatever is happening now doesn’t seem to be working.
Next, at My Broken Coin, Aloysa explains Why I Took Out a 401K Loan. She offers some good logic and acknowledges that it’s not recommended by most advisors. Me, I think they need to fix the 401(k) loan once and for all. Finance is pretty convoluted in the first place, the crazy rules of what happens if you leave your company while a loan is in place doesn’t help matters. Nor doesn’t owing money at 18% when you can borrow at 4%.
The Wealthy Turtle shared 5 Money Leaks That Are Draining Your Wallet. It’s actually a rebuttal to Farnoosh Torabi’s 5 messy money mistakes, in which Mike agrees with a couple of her points, and disagrees with others. The key thing is – What are your money leaks?
Canadian Finance Blog posted Income Inequality and Financial Engineers, a nice piece on the increasing imbalance of wealth.
And last, before the Memorial Day Barbeque has to get fired up, Robb Engen explains Why tracking your spending makes sense. I’m a believer in Robb’s approach. Tracking spending to the penny for a period of time (I suggest a year) will help you understand where you spend, but more important, where you spend too much. For some, that one year is enough to get on track, for others, this exercise is one to keep up indefinitely.
Safe and Healthy Memorial Day to all.
Thanks for mentioning my article, I appreciate it!