Boston Gal's Open Wallet

On the plus side of being a, um . . . mature roommate: You've proven to anyone who cares to know — an old girlfriend, say, who shall remain nameless — that, yes, you can live with someone.

Indeed, after several years of living alone, you've discovered it can be kind of nice to share — even something as simple as a newspaper or a bag of cookies. And even with a relative stranger — someone who walks around in an open bathrobe practicing arias for his amateur opera club.

The main thing is, with the money I save on rent, I'm able to afford things I couldn't otherwise: better restaurants, a regular haircut, nicer clothes. In fact, I probably look more successful now than when I had my own apartment. As long as I'm not actually in my apartment.

CNN: How difficult was it to make the decision to switch from full-time attorney to fulltime LEGO artist?

SAWAYA: It wasn't very tough. I worked with great people at the law firm, but my passion was always for my art. As more and more people were commissioning pieces and collecting my artwork, it became clear to me that I should focus on my art full time.

New York corporate attorneys are known for working the long hours. I find myself working long hours now as well, but I'm doing something I love. ... The worst day in the art studio is still better than the best day in the law firm.

CNN: Has it been a challenge to make ends meet?

SAWAYA: I have had some great large-scale commissions that have kept me financially secure for the most part. Currently my pieces are selling for up to tens of thousands of dollars, so the future looks bright.

NeXus: is a new, one-of-a-kind resource center for sustainable design and green building innovation. Located in downtown Boston, NEXUS (pursuing LEED-CI) includes over 6,000 square feet of product and educational showrooms, a print and online samples and resource library and networking/event space. The center is staffed by green building experts and LEED accredited professionals. It is open to building owners, architects, engineers, designers, developers and the general public. Our resource center is FREE and OPEN to the public.

The Alternative Energy Store: In 2007 the Alternative Energy Store started up its regional series of workshops to provide in-depth seminars on renewable energy for the public. Taught by industry experts, these seminars range from the basics on what renewable energy is to the specifics on how to install solar electric, solar air heating, wind power and micro-hydroelectric systems as a professional or do-it-yourselfer.

Labels: Saving Energy

My first big gig was ArthurFest, a two-day music festival held in Los Angeles two years ago. More than 3,000 people attended, and it was just me standing on piles of empty cartons. I didn't stop working for 12 hours, serving a line of 40 customers the entire show.

Now I have three trucks and ten employees. We charge customers $350 to $3,000 an hour for us to be at an event; some clients, at after-hours parties and bar mitzvahs, buy out the truck's inventory.

They're called many things - "lazy", "unproductive", "lacking in ambition" - but late risers are starting to fight back. Long the butt of demeaning office jokes, sleepyheads are officially up in arms thanks to a Danish campaign to stop "the tyranny of early risers".
"The Owl has the right to say: 'Give me the late riser's rhythm at work, at home and in society,'" trumpets the B-Society website, a movement rallying against the Danish 8am to 4pm working culture. "Let me come to work at 11am and go home at 8pm. Let me have quiet mornings to read my newspaper and ease into the day gently and peacefully."

It may sound far-fetched, but the B-Society has packed quite a punch in Denmark, attracting around 4,800 members in only four months. Copenhagen city council is preparing jobs for "chronic late risers" and Carina Christensen, the Danish minister for family affairs, has thrown her weight behind the campaign, saying: "We all live better if our existence is not constantly dictated by an alarm clock."

"We've had tremendous success," agrees B-Society founder Camilla Kring, who has a PhD in work and life balance. "We now have a B-high school, with classes starting at noon. Sweden has its own movement, Finland and Norway should soon follow, and there's been huge global interest."

Labels: Funny Money

A year ago, Daniel Merkle and Sandra Bauman of Glen Rock, N.J., took roughly 20% of their retirement assets -- none of it coming from tax-deferred accounts like their IRAs or 401(k) plans -- and bought a cottage on a hill with 60 feet of lake frontage in Athens, N.Y., in the Catskill Mountains. "It was clear the money was better off in the index funds we owned," Mr. Merkle says. "But there are factors you can't see on a spreadsheet -- like the time we get with our kids building memories there," he says. "We wanted to get in while it was affordable." The trade-off is that the couple had to give up on the idea of retiring early. "But we realized you never know what is going to happen in 20 years, and it's better to enjoy it now," Mr. Merkle says.

“The No. 1 need that poor people have is a way to make more cash,” said Martin Fisher, an engineer who founded KickStart, an organization that says it has helped 230,000 people escape poverty. It sells human-powered pumps costing $35 to $95.

Pumping water can help a farmer grow grain in the dry season, when it fetches triple the normal price. Dr. Fisher described customers who had skipped meals for weeks to buy a pump and then earned $1,000 the next year selling vegetables.

Labels: Solutions

Mutual fund buyers typically choose from among what are known as A, B, or C shares. The underlying funds are identical, but the difference is how the mutual fund seller collects any costs or fees that are charged for making investments on the clients’ behalf.

Kevin is buying Class A shares of a mutual fund for his Roth IRA. The seller is charging a 5.75 percent commission, called a load. That means every month when Kevin contributes $75 to his account, the mutual fund company charges him about $4.31 and about $70.69 is invested for him.

Class B shares are a better deal for Keeton and most other small investors, Dunham said. There are no upfront commissions, so all the $75 Keeton invests goes to work for the family’s future. There is a potential back end commission to think about, called a contingent deferred sales charge. But mutual fund companies typically don’t charge those if investors wait about six to eight years before selling, so that isn’t a big issue for long-haul investors such as the Keetons.

Labels: Money Stories

Demand disclosure: All investment advisers are required to register, either with the state or -- if they're large enough -- with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Regulations say advisers must provide you with a copy of Part II of Form ADV, which outlines fees, services, and investment strategies. If they don't automatically provide one, ask. If they can't provide one, go elsewhere.

Create a closed system: This keeps other people from gaining access to your investment dollars. Start by ensuring your initial investment check is made out to an account in your name at the bank, mutual fund company, or brokerage where your funds are being deposited.

Make sure it's legit: Anyone with a computer can print up an account statement, so make sure that your custodian is a well-known and respected firm. National Association of Securities Dealers, which provides a broker search tool through its website at nasd.com under "Investor Information."

Limit access: Legitimate investment advisers or money managers never actually want to handle your money. They simply want the authority to trade your accounts. Set up the account so your adviser has a limited power of attorney that allows trades, but keeps him or her from ever taking money out of your account.

Confirm transactions: Faced with a worried client last week, financial adviser Robert E. Hurley of Stoddard Management Co. in Rockland urged the client to phone the custodian once the account was set up to make sure that the all funds were exactly where they were supposed to be.

"Bypass me," Hurley told the client. "Call and confirm." And he told the client he could do a similar check after any major transaction.

Compare statements: Prosecutors say Russo sent phony monthly statements to assure investors that they were earning healthy returns. Use of custodial accounts would make that kind of deception impossible since custodians are required to send their own statements directly to investors, said Kim Yoshida, senior vice president of fee-only Needham Advisory Corp. in North Andover.

"You can also access your account online," she said, recommending that investors take the time to compare activity on both sets of statements.

Instituting such checks and balances makes it tough for investment advisers to help themselves to your money. Still, these rules do nothing to protect you from damage caused by bad advice.

Labels: Solutions

Relying on Census Bureau figures, the study's authors found that after adjusting for inflation, men in their 30s in 2004 had a median income of about $35,000 per year, for a 12 percent drop compared with $40,000 per year for men in the same age group in 1974.

That stood in stark contrast to men in their 30s in 1994, who earned 5 percent more than their fathers did.

Frugality is a virtue. Tess Vigeland explores the wisdom of cutting your costs with the Economides, America's cheapest family (and yes, that's their real name).

Consumers watch the price of gasoline like no other product. As Valerie Folkes tells Robert Siegel, gas is unique. Folkes is a professor at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

BerkShares are legal tender, but only in one region of the Berkshire Mountains in Western Massachusetts, where local merchants, eager for local money to stay local, asked federal authorities and were granted a license to print money.

As Bill McKibben notes in his new book, "Deep Economy" ever since Richard Nixon took the us. off the gold standard in the early 1970s our money is no longer backed by anything of intrinsic worth. It's value rest only on the shared confidence of its users.

Here & Now's Kevin Donovan visited a small new England town where that trust is being put to a test with an experiment in an alternative economy.

I'll say it right here: This is definitely not a game the typical consumer should play, since there are too many traps for the unwary. Use the wrong offer and you can get slapped with fat fees or a much higher interest rate than you expect, wiping out any benefit. Miss a payment and you get the same result: higher interest rates and fees that cost you money, rather than making it.

You need good credit to get these offers, and high credit limits to make much money. But chasing these offers can dent that good credit, as dancinmama learned. She was turned down for a Discover card because of the high balances on her other cards. (Maxing out your credit cards for any reason -- even if you can pay off the balance on a moment's notice -- can seriously ding your credit scores.)

That said, there's no denying that smart, careful, savvy consumers have been making money using credit card arbitrage. (Arbitrage is simply exploiting a difference in interest rates, by borrowing at the lower rate and investing at a higher one.)

Labels: Making Money

The neighborhood had been one where working-class homeowners were building wealth. Home prices along the leafy, tree-lined streets near downtown had climbed in the last decade to as much as $180,000. Now, vacant and foreclosed houses are being offered for $60,000 or less.

"The longer you're here, the more you're seeing boarded-up houses and your neighbors moving away," says Kim Vaye, who's been trying to sell the three-bedroom home she owns with her husband since October. They've already dropped the price by $10,000. But during two open houses, only two people showed up to look.

"It's hard to sell a house at full price when you have all these houses that the banks own or that people are trying to get rid of at super-low prices. So you're kind of competing against that, which is really unfortunate," Vaye says.

It's sometimes assumed that wealthier people are somewhat sheltered from risk of foreclosure or bankruptcy. But just because the numbers may be bigger doesn't mean the financial circumstance may be better.

HSBC found that 49% of respondents with at least $250,000 in income aren't saving more because they simply "want some spending money." In 28% of the cases for those who earn between $100,000 and $250,000 they do not save more because "something unforeseen always comes up." And in nearly one in 10 situations, people who earn $250,000 or more say they aren't even earning "enough to make ends meet as it is."

Labels: Saving Money

Extreme workers are defined in part as working 60 hours or more a week and have characteristics such as an unpredictable work flow, fast-paced work under a tight deadline, responsibility for profit and loss, a large number of subordinates and a lot of travel.

They found the behaviors distributed across the economy, in large manufacturing companies, Wall Street, entertainment and media, and law and consulting. Workaholics typically are men who endure large amounts of travel and have responsibility for profits and losses.

The survey of U.S. workers targeted the top 6% of earners and garnered responses from 1,564 full-time employees. Higher earners include workers ages 25 to 34 who earned $75,000 and up, and those 35 and older who earned $100,000 or more.

There is a downside to extreme work behavior. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents say they'd be healthier if they worked less, and more than half believe work gets in the way of strong relationships with their children.

"I can't even fathom having a boyfriend. I couldn't do that. The only relationship I have is really with my BlackBerry," says Domesek, in New York. "I tend to be a people pleaser. I put a lot of pressure on myself. I have to deliver. I use work as an excuse. A lot of my friends are in a great relationship. I do want that."

Anxiety can get the best of her, and she can get so stressed, she doesn't sleep and feels nauseated on the job. "Yesterday, I spent a long time looking at the menu" at lunch, she says. "I couldn't order lunch because I was so nauseous."

Mr. Jordan grew up one of seven children in a San Francisco family that didn’t own a dishwashing machine. His father thought he should finish college, and for a while couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge his son’s profession, which in an opinion survey of job desirability, Mr. Jordan points out, then ranked 735th out of 740. Only envelope stuffer, prostitute, drug dealer, fortuneteller and beggar were lower.

Mr. Jordan got into dishwashing for the same reason so many others have: because he was broke and because it was an easy job to get. He quickly decided, though, that washing dishes was a more dignified calling than waiting on tables, which he recently called “panhandling for tips.”

He also liked the free food (courtesy of what he calls the Bus Tub Buffet — leftovers from people’s plates, in other words), the occasional free drink and the freedom afforded by a discovery he made at the end of his first week: “Upon awakening on a morning that I was due at work, I rolled over on the couch and went back to sleep. That was that.” The longest he ever stayed on a job was six months, and that was in a vain effort to prove himself mortgage-worthy; the shortest was 45 minutes.

Stretches of “Dishwasher” read like a slacker’s idyll. Mr. Jordan is seldom without a girlfriend, and there are countless couches where he is welcome to crash. But some of his slackerdom is notional, even though to this day he claims, “I obviously would prefer not to work, and I think I proved that on plenty of occasions.”

Civilian jobs pay out about 67% in cash and the rest in benefits; the military pays just 49% in cash -- most of your compensation is in benefits. So, while you'll be grateful when you're 40 that you had the GI Bill while your colleague in the next cubicle is paying off a $30,000 student loan, while you're in active duty, you'll be out of luck if you want to, oh, pay the baby sitter or buy a house -- the kinds of things your civilian friends are doing.

The armed services may eventually be the last employer left to pay an old-fashioned retirement pension, the kind where you get a guaranteed monthly payment after retirement until you die. But you've got to stay in at least 20 years. Only 15% ever see that pension; most never see a dime and wind up years behind civilians their same age whose employers have been matching their retirement contributions in a 401(k).

Although service members can contribute to the Thrift Savings Plan, the government's version of a 401(k), participation is low.

"Their basic pay is so small that even that if they wanted to participate they just don't have a lot of disposable income to do that," Stewart says. The law allows it but so far none of the armed services makes employer contributions.

To supplement their retirement savings of $260,000, they figured they'd buy fixer-upper homes to renovate, then sell at a profit in the state's hot housing market. "We thought we'd make $100,000 without batting an eye," says Carol.

But when the housing bubble burst, so did their dreams of a real-estate funded retirement. The properties have been on the market for nine months without a serious offer, and the carrying costs are killer: The Daimlers pay more than $65,000 a year on their mortgages (including loans for their primary residence and a vacation house in North Carolina), plus tens of thousands more for property taxes, insurance and maintenance.

The couple are pulling out $15,000 a month from savings to cover their expenses, and they've already run through more than half of their nest egg. The irony: On paper they seem to be in great shape, with a net worth of $1.6 million. But since most of that money is tied up in real estate - assets they can't easily sell - it doesn't ease their current cash crunch.

Labels: Money Stories

I confirmed Jesse's off-the-cuff economic assessment by consulting Clean Power Research, whose online Estimator (clean-power.com/nyserdaweb) told me that installing a $22,350 ($14,793 after state and federal rebates), 2.5-kilowatt system would save me $246 to $504 on electricity costs per year. Simple division told me that it would take at least 29 years to break even. With electricity rate increases, it would probably be more like 20.

Labels: Saving Energy

"It's easy," said Ryan Elkins, a 26-year-old disabled Iraq war veteran who makes $55 a week for three hours of "sitting still." It's boring, he said, and he'd rather be back on explosives duty. But it helps buy the groceries for his family as he begins taxidermy school in Spokane, Wash.

Labels: Making Money

The Smiths have a couple of things working in their favor: no credit-card debt and a healthy income. Steve, who spent 12 years in the Navy, makes about $100,000 as an engineer at a firm that makes semiconductors. Lori, an occupational therapist, now works sporadically.

But later this year, Lori's mother plans to move into their five-bedroom home, which will provide the couple with child-care help and allow Lori to earn an expected $1,200 a month. The couple also have a big chunk of cash in the bank, thanks to an $18,000 tax refund (they got an $11,000 credit for adopting a child last year).

Retirement is another story. Steve will get a $2,800 monthly Navy pension when he turns 60, but the couple have just $96,000 in retirement accounts. And, of course, they'll be shouldering the cost of iPods, summer camps, clothing and toys for almost two decades to come.

Labels: Money Stories

So, as Isabella points out, after seven years of marriage she and Sam have "no house, no garden, no children, no money... just a book."

Labels: Frugal Females

Framingham-based Staples today planned to announce the expansion of a four-year-old program allowing customers to drop off smaller devices such as cellphones, pagers, and digital cameras for free, regardless of the brand or whether the device was bought at Staples.

Free recycling for those devices will continue at Staples' US and Canadian stores. Desktop and laptop computers and monitors of any make will also be accepted at Staples' customer service desks during store hours, but for a $10 fee for each large item.

While many adults are intimidated to start a business of their own, the teenager said she wasn't aware of the risk factors. "I was just so enthusiastic about getting my products out there and having people realize that natural products were the way to go," said Lawrence, "that I was just blinded to all the negative and all I could see was positive."

And positive it has been. Lawrence is garnering the attention most adult entrepreneurs only dream of -- from being nominated "Teenpreneur of the Year" by Black Enterprise Magazine to couch time with Oprah.

"The day the show aired the orders started coming in," she said. "One hundred orders, 200, 300, 1,000, 2,000. It was crazy. I didn't expect it at all."

Labels: Saving Energy, Saving Money

She soon met her future husband on a blind date, and he joined her in the one-bedroom. With one son, they were fine. With two, they began feeling the pinch. With three, they started hunting for a bigger place to buy. They couldn’t commit, though they considered several rambling Upper West Side co-ops. “The inability to buy was symptomatic of other problems in the marriage,” Ms. Rodgers said. She and her husband split in 1999.

She was eager to flee the apartment, which was not just crowded but falling apart. She had become a fixture in the neighborhood, always pushing a baby stroller, drinking coffee at Starbucks, dining at Docks Oyster Bar or rushing to move her car.

Her youngest sons, Matthew Rosenthal, now 17, and Gideon Rosenthal, now 13, slept on bunk beds in the dining room. Daniel Rosenthal, 21, now a senior at McGill University, had half the living room. The only counter space was atop the dishwasher. Bicycles and sports gear were stuffed where they fit. The windows wouldn’t close. “It needed structural change down to the very bones of the place,” Ms. Rodgers said. “I was becoming more and more aware of something grievously wrong. There was a rank unhappiness about the apartment.”

Their credit card debt came to $22,228, including $380 in monthly finance charges. Interest varied from 12.1 percent to 32.24 percent. The Moellerings also have a mortgage of $93,000 and a home equity loan balance of $68,574, at 8 percent interest.

“We have friends in the same position,” said Ms. Moellering, who earns $30,000 a year as an administrative assistant. “One was off his insurance for a couple weeks and he broke his arm, and they’re out 25 or 30 thousand. We’ve talked to them about it. It doesn’t matter what you do, you always have that credit card debt.”

Labels: Money Stories

The road to financial security, however, was not always easy. After splitting with her husband nearly four years ago, Courts had to juggle a career, a mortgage, and her then-3-year-old son, Carlito. It didn’t help that she was thousands of miles from her family in Puerto Rico. “I had to believe in myself that I could do this,” she says.

She’s looked for - and found - opportunities to minimize her expenses, such as buying clothes in the off season, bringing her lunch to work every day and buying everyday household items by the car load. Courts also puts pretax dollars into her flexible spending account to cover day-care costs, rides the bus to work from Bristow and takes advantage of free activities like going to the park or a museum.

She’s also made an effort to put away as much as she can in her government Thrift Savings Plan, a federal employee’s equivalent of a 401(k). Courts is debt free and has $6,000 in her Roth IRA account and $10,000 in her ING Direct online savings account, which is earmarked for her son’s college education.

Labels: Money Stories

But along with the claims of big savings, DirectBuy does not reveal the big investment customers have to make to get those savings. The membership price is around $5,000.

And if that's not enough of a shocker, customers have to make a decision to join on the spot before they leave the showroom.

"[The salespeople] come back in and you have to decide -- yes or no," Stone said.

Labels: Free Sample

STEPHEN BEARD: A newspaper in Birmingham reprinted a 25-year-old copy of their newspaper to commemorate the 25th anniversary of a famous victory by their local soccer team, Aston Villa. Now in this 25-year-old newspaper there was an ad for a very nice four-bedroom property selling for £53,000, that's about $100,000. Well dozens of readers who spotted the ad were so carried away by the price, that they inundated the property with phone calls. The phone number listed was the same as for the property today. What had changed of course was price.

At the center of the dispute is a small patch of beach on the southeast corner of the island known as Siasconset, or Sconset for short. Some of Nantucket's wealthiest residents -- including cable-TV billionaire Amos Hostetter Jr., businessman Paul Soros (brother of George) and commodities trader Helmut Weymar -- have stately summer homes on a bluff overlooking the beach. But with erosion eating away at the shore, some of the houses are in danger of falling into the ocean.To solve the problem, Mr. Hostetter, Mr. Weymar and others have pooled $23 million of their own money to rebuild the beach. Yet local fishermen are fighting the project, saying it will ruin one of their prime fishing spots. They say the beach should be left alone, and that nature should trump money.

"These people have enough money to move their houses or buy another one," says Josh Eldridge, a lifelong Nantucketer who owns a charter fishing business. "If I lose my fishing business, I lose my house and it's my only house. Unlike these other people, I don't have a ski chalet in Aspen or a place in Palm Beach."

Tell Me More, May 14, 2007 · In this week's Next Big Thing, more people are turning to the Internet to earn extra cash. Salon.com writer Katharine Mieszkowski explains the phenomenon and how listeners can get with the program.

Your 401(k) money isn't a windfall to be blown on vacations or cars or anything else that will be long forgotten by the time you're 65. This money may be all you have to live on. So treat it with some respect, people.

What seemed to help everyone stay on track, Paterson adds, were the discussions people had about not reverting to old financial bad habits when life went sour. "There are so many external factors when it comes to your finances. A lot of the posts had to do with how you, as an individual, can isolate your accomplishments from the things that are bringing you down."

A collective win
To everyone's jubilation, the combined force of community and camaraderie paid off. After just seven months, right around tax time, the Racers achieved a major victory: Together, the group had paid off $250,000 of debt.

And the battle continues. Now eight months along, the mighty Racers have paid down just more than $300,000.

Two people have paid their debts in full ($7,000 and $5,200).

The top two Racers have paid $22,000 and $16,000, respectively, toward their debts.

The average amount paid is nearly $4,000.

The woman with the largest amount of debt, some $45,000, has paid down $7,000 of it.

Although the Racers rely on the honor system, it seems only three people have backslid -- and by a paltry $1,016 in total.

At age 60, the couple's retirement savings would be $840,000, assuming annual returns of 8% on their investments and subtracting projected taxes and fees. But Duane would not yet be eligible for Social Security payments. Moreover, his company — which capped his pension plan — could not immediately say what his monthly pension payment would be if he retired then.

What is clear, however, is that if he waited until age 65, his pension and Social Security payments would be higher — an estimated $25,000 a year in pension payments and $36,000 annually from the government.

The extra five years of work would enable the couple to amass $1.4 million in savings, which should allow them to continue spending at their current level until Duane is 100, and possibly beyond, even accounting for projected inflation of 3.6%.

Labels: Money Stories

Those with more education are in jobs that offer a greater variety of financial-planning and retirement-preparation opportunities and incentives, the poll indicates. For example, 33% of employed respondents who are college graduates said their employer matches contributions to a 401(k) plan, compared with 16% of those with high-school education or less. And a quarter of college grads are invited to financial or retirement-planning workshops, versus 8% of those with less education.

Labels: Making Money

Research is being conducted to come up with an Elder Economic Security Index for each state to reflect what retirees need to meet basic needs. In Massachusetts researchers found that to afford housing, food, health care, transport and personal items, a person would need income equal to 150 percent to 300 percent of poverty level, which is $10,210 for individuals and $13,690 for couples.

With an expected swell in benefit-eligible retirees in the next 20 years, increased life expectancy, and a Social Security trust fund the government may have to go into debt to repay, actuaries and pension experts have been calling for changes to bolster the system's long-term funding. It's a debate that has been put on hold for now.

For those in their 20's, 30's and 40's, you can bank on this: whatever changes are decided, you'll either end up paying more for the benefits promised or you'll receive less of them, or, possibly, both.

These are the things a job can give you that matter. Wyeth Windham grew up in Montana. His dad was gone and his mom cleaned houses. He was bored in school and hung around with kids who did poorly. He had little future. In his junior year of high school, he started volunteer work with a group that funded youth programs. Six months later, while Windham was involved in his daily work, his friends robbed two restaurants. It was a turning point. Windham saw, maybe unconsciously, a literal example of how work can save you. He was the youngest member of the board at his local Boys and Girls Club. And an Oprah Winfrey fund recognized his achievement and sent him to college on a scholarship.

Now that Russo's alleged scam has collapsed, many of his clients -- often regular working people from places like Danvers, Everett, Lynnfield, and Malden who placed their trust in a local, Harvard-educated man they'd known since childhood -- find themselves financially ruined.

Some have been forced to sell their homes. Others have fallen behind on mortgage and car payments. College and retirement accounts have vanished. Nest eggs are gone. Profits from family businesses have evaporated.

The same fate could befall anyone, several of them say; their only mistake was relying on a trusted financial adviser .

"One of the things we do as human beings is trust others," said Vincent Ragucci Jr. of Everett, whose family, including his wife, parents, in-laws, and children, collectively invested nearly $700,000 with Russo. Like most of Russo's victims, he does not expect that even a portion of that money will be recovered.

Q: My daughter got a credit card while in college, ran it up, and then failed to pay. The bank wrote it off and sold the debt. She has now received an offer to settle the bill for much less from a company that is not the original creditor. A letter says it will alert the credit bureaus of the agreement and consider the debt settled. Should she repay this debt this way?

S.K.W., via e-mail

A: It won't do a huge amount of good to repay a charged-off account unless it's done at the time it's charged off, according to Bryan Beatty, a certified financial planner in Vienna, Va.

His reasoning is that once the account is written off, the reporting activity stops, and a clock begins to tick, and your score will begin to improve (slowly, but it does). If you were to then negotiate to pay it off after that charge off, that money-due clock will start ticking all over again.

By resurrecting a charged-off debt, you may relieve any guilt of having walked away from an account. But you have reopened a wound on your credit report, Mr. Beatty says, and it takes seven years for old information to disappear from a credit report.

It works for the Sislers, who began driving in 1998 after moving from California to Montana to help their son build a house. With that project finished, Jim looked for work, alarmed his wife by enrolling in truck-driver training often a three- to six-week course and suggested she do the same.

"I said, 'You can do this, too, darlin. You can be a truck driver,'" he said.

When Jim drove urban buses in California and Eva was a homemaker, both knew they'd be home every night. Now they sleep mostly in a truck, usually one of them in the cab's bed while the other drives. Home is a place in Big Arm, along sprawling Flathead Lake in northwestern Montana. Paid by the mile, the Sislers together earned more than $100,000 last year as drivers for Watkins & Shepard Trucking Co. and have built a retirement account.

There is a similar effect for those who choose to stop working at 62, but don’t tap Social Security until later. Instead of payments of $15,888, the retiree who waits until 66 receives $21,181 a year in benefits and one who delays until 70 receives a $28,821 annual stipend, or 81 percent more, the Fidelity Research Institute said. There is no additional financial benefit to delaying past 70.

So why don’t more people delay taking their Social Security? Some may not know how benefits accrue. It is also possible that they figure they will die in only a few years. If that is the case, grabbing benefits early makes sense, but study after study shows Americans tend to underestimate their longevity — one reason financial planners urge people to save more.

Since last summer, the Standard & Poor's 500 index is up about 20 percent. Meanwhile, real estate, especially housing, has been flat or falling in much of the country.

In Portsmouth, N.H., Chris Adams began to rethink his real estate investments last year. The software engineering manager and his wife had bought a couple of condos in 2000 for their retirement nest egg.

But maintaining the condos turned out to be more trouble than they wanted, especially after their son was born. And Adams worried about resale value.

"Prices seemed to be going down a bit on the condos," he says. So we were starting to get concerned that maybe there would be too many units down the road for us and we wouldn't be able to sell."

Luckily, the Adamses found a buyer for one of their condos and put the proceeds into stock mutual funds.

High Net Worth shows the percentage of population in a region with a net worth greater than $250,000. Net worth is loosely defined as how much cash you would have if you sold everything and paid back all your debts. Setting the bar as to what constitutes "high" is subjective, and many instantly think of the popular "millionaire" status. We set our bar at $250,000 because this is where most people began to adopt a different lifestyle and live at a higher comfort level. - Neighboroo High Net Worth feature

Ryan Mulvoy is shopping for a new condo, but may not have much money left over from the sale of his current Quincy one-bedroom unit after he pays off a few bills. He was able to buy that first condo with just 5 percent down; now, anticipating he might need 100 percent financing, his agent, Joe Clancy Jr. of Century 21 Tullish & Clancy in Weymouth, said Mulvoy might have a harder time getting a loan.

The Warren Group, a Boston real estate research and publishing firm, estimated that roughly 30 percent of Massachusetts home buyers last year bought houses with little or no down payment. "A deferral of home purchases by even 10 percent" of buyers, said Warren chief executive Timothy Warren, "would mean fewer sales and further pressure on prices."

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Bottom Line
"If you're a first-time home buyer, I would not recommend auction for you," Hobson said. "I think that gets too tricky. There are too many risks."

Hobson recommends sticking with the pre-foreclosure sale property where the seller is very motivated to sell, or try the real estate-owned property that's owned by the lender.

Today Jim Carrey commands as much as $20 million per film. But when he was a 15, his father lost his job. Carrey took after-school jobs as a security guard and janitor at a tire factory outside Toronto to help his family get by. Times got so tough that his family lived in a Volkswagon camper for almost a year. His relief? Visiting local comedy clubs. "My mother dressed me in a polyester suit and I got booed off the stage, and I didn't go back for two years. But then when I went back, I was gangbusters," he told Larry King in 2001.

It was four years ago that I discovered Pareto's law. Thanks to his ideas, I now work four hours a week and project $1.2 million in sales at my business for the next fiscal year. (For more on my techniques, see 4hourworkweek.com.) I've had time to set a world record in tango, pursue my passion for martial arts, and learn surfing on the beaches of Brazil. I have the freedom to enjoy a millionaire's lifestyle without waiting for retirement.

In retrospect, I didn't retire. I'm working harder than ever and living with more financial anxiety. And yet, I'm enjoying life more. Apparently, my decision to retire early was prompted more by a desire to choose how I want to work, not to slow down.

For me, I've learned, the value of independence can't be overestimated. I'm stimulated by the challenge of trying to make everything I do be a money-maker. I've always believed in the concept of having diverse streams of income and now I'm putting that theory into practice. "If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves..." Thomas Edison said. I've astounded myself this past year by learning I'm more capable than I knew.

Labels: Money Stories

We finally were able to save a bit of money with Verizon, our home-phone provider. We had been paying $56 for unlimited local, regional and long distance service, plus home voicemail. But we saw an offer on Verizon's Web site for a similar package that was cheaper and included additional services. We called and the saleswoman offered us the same plan we had, plus home voicemail, call waiting and caller ID for $40. Plus, the new plan would allow us to store three times as many voicemails. Getting more and paying less easily made it worth the single phone call.

Labels: Saving Money

It isn't only the poor; middle-income families are struggling, too. In Gentilly, La., the windows on Karen Durand's brick home have been boarded up and the house gutted. The three-bedroom home — on a street where just six of 24 homeowners have returned — was damaged by Katrina's wind, then flooded, says Durand, 44. She bought a house in nearby LaPlace and charged about $35,000 on credit cards to furnish it.

"It was like starting over," says Durand.

Some homeowners have been upset by their lenders' unwillingness to work with them once a payment moratorium has ended.

"They didn't realize that they were behind a year, and then they'd have to pay a year's worth of premiums" at one time, says Charleen Webb of the Biloxi office of Consumer Credit Counseling.

For example, in February the couple went on vacation in Miami after Sullivan found a deal on tickets. "It was beautiful and sunny," Weber recalls, "but every time I turned around somebody was reaching out for money -- $14 for a cocktail!

"I feel like such a jerk. I mean what kind of jerk can't live on $85,000 a year?" he said.

Plenty, it turns out. "It is really hard for a couple to live in Boston for less than $100,000, so it is not surprising to me you're struggling," Levit said. With the rent on their apartment at $1,250 a month, the couple spends 43 percent of their budget on housing -- above conventional amounts.

Labels: Money Stories

talk to you a bit about your lemon tree experience -- why you ordered one, why you enjoy it and why it's gratifying to grow a citrus tree indoors.

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When buying clothes for her 'tween daughter one day at Limited 2, she spotted some nifty boots marked down to buy one, get two free. Originally priced around $50, they had been reduced to $9.99. A 20% off coupon brought the total down to around $8 for three pairs of boots. On her way home, Coulombe stopped at a resale shop and sold the three pairs of boots for $20 apiece, netting $52 for about 90 minutes' work. Knowing they would sell, she went back and bought out the store's entire stock of 30 pairs, which she plans to sell a few at a time through resale shops in her area. Even if you don't plan on buying in bulk, you can split one of these purchases with a friend or sell one of the items to defray the costs of your purchase.

Labels: Making Money