Monday, May 18, 2009

Monday evening roundup

Highly contrasting personal finance sagas from the Times and the Post. The Times piece is fascinating, the Post one annoying. There are definitely huge financial disadvantages to being poor (in addition to practical disadvantages), I do not dispute that, but the article doesn't seriously address those. And I'm sorry--I'm hardly a welfare-basher, but I do want to slap the woman who complains about how the state gives her canned tuna and mac and cheese. Like the non-poor have sirloin every day.

If only we'd planned the trip to China for this year, we could have visited this.

Rahm Emanuel continues to amuse:
Mr. Emanuel could not help mocking the interest in the lack of public fighting so far. “The New York Times is like a Jewish mother,” he said. “When it’s acrimonious, you guys whine. When it’s not acrimonious, you say how come it isn’t?”

1 comment:

etc at Fierce and Nerdy said...

I've been talking about that Times piece ALL weekend. My father was like this growing up, and that's why I remain pretty rabid about living below my means.

Did you think it was interesting that the only time he talked about bad spending habits was in ref to his wife buying new clothes and the like for him and the kids?

I found it suspicious that he didn't seem to think that he had bad spending habits himself. And I wondered if it was either a glaring omission or yet another example of men blaming their wives for their bad financial position.

I thought the stuff about the mortgages was abs fascinating. When I was younger, I wondered how so many people at my income level were able to afford houses when I was living paycheck to paycheck and these tales of mortgage trickery completely explains it.

Still, I love that he was willing to come forward like this, b/c I feel this article will help a lot of people who are just too ashamed to get help w/ their finances.