Four Financial Realities of Being in a Relationship

June 30th, 2011

One of the most common themes I see in questions I receive from readers is an uncomfortable sense of what financial roles are in a relationship. A person lives with someone/is engaged to someone/is married to someone and is unsure about how to handle their partner’s debt/spending/shared purchases. That sentence covers the core of a lot of the questions in the reader mailbag.

There are a few key elements that seem to often come up in my responses to these questions as well, and those elements really form a strong foundation of how people in relationships should think about and handle their money.

It really boils down to four key principles that really flow together.

Talking about money in a relationship is absolutely essential. When you’re in a relationship intense enough that you’re sharing many of the costs of life, you have to be able to communicate clearly about those costs, as well as the income you both have with which to cover them and the plans you each have for the future.

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Tags: Financial, Financial Realities

Your Take: Presidential $1 Dollar Coins

June 30th, 2011

The sad reality that about a billion dollars in dollar coins currently sits in Federal Reserve vaults has been circulating the last week or so, a staggering sum considering we keep producing them because of a Congressional mandate. The idea behind dollar coins is simple a coin lasts longer than a bill. Were supposed to save money by using coins except we didnt do away with the dollar bill. All things being equal, people are going to prefer a lighter, foldable bill to a heavier coin. A dollar bill fits in my wallet, a coin will not. If a dollar bill exists, I wont be using the coin. It seems like simple logic.

How often did you see the larger dollar coin with President Eisenhower?

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Tags: Coins, Dollar Coins

Quicken Loans Team Members Tee Off with the Midnight Golf Program

June 29th, 2011
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I was honored to be one of the four lucky Quicken Loans team members who got the chance to tee off at the 11th Annual Golf Outing on the Katke-Cousins Golf Course on the campus of Oakland University.  The event, which employed the theme “The Next Decade,” was held on Monday, June 23.

Created by The Midnight Golf Program more than 10 years ago, the event is designed for mentors to make a significant investment in the lives of outstanding young people by through fundraising and networking.

After arriving at 7:30 a.m. and

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Tags: Golf, Loans Team, Loans Team Members, Team Members

Raw deal: Why Groupon might be bad for business

June 28th, 2011

When Fan Bi wanted to get the word out about his new company, Blank Label, he instantly thought of popular daily-deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial. By offering a healthy discount for custom-designed dress shirts, “it wouldn’t cost us anything up-front, and we’d get all these new customers,” Bi remembers. “It sounded like a no-brainer.”

So he signed up with the deal site BuyWithMe, offering $100 gift certificates for $50. Only thing is, the discount worked a little too well. Almost 250 customers snapped them up, and after the deal site took its cut, “we were losing around six dollars a shirt,” he says. “If we’re losing

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Tags: Groupon, Groupon Might

ECB meeting: July hike overshadowed by Greece

June 28th, 2011

ECB hike rates in July

At today’s meeting Trichet signalled a July hike by using the phrase “strong vigilance”. This was in line with consensus expectations among analysts and market pricing. So we will get a July hike unless really bad things happen.

ECB staff projections revised up

The ECB staff inflation expectations were revised up to a mid-range expectation of 2.6% (up 0.3%) in 2011, while it was kept unchanged at 1.7% in 2012.Our expectation is for inflation of 2.7% in 2011E and 2.0% in 2012E.

The market reacted to the unchanged inflation projection for 2012 by sending rates down as the case for further ECB hikes after July appear to be dwindling. We al Read more…

Tags: Hike, July Hike

How does soil type effect water drainage?: Garden Soil

June 28th, 2011

How does soil type effect water drainage?: Garden Soil

How does soil type effect water drainage?: Garden Soil is categorized as life and leisure.

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Tags: Effect Water Drainage, Garden Soil, Soil, Water Drainage