My job as critic of personal finance advice is made a lot easier if other writers concisely summarize their points of view in easy to digest and refute bullet points. It gets even better if the other writer is argumentative, taking a neatly delineated position on a question which I can contradict.
So when I saw that Free Money Finance yesterday posted a list of Money Myths, my heart leapt. And I was not disappointed. There were eight myths listed, with bullet point explanations and links to fuller arguments from previous posts. What could be easier?
By my scoring, one of the myths really is untrue, two are so subjective that it could go either way based on interpretation, and five are not myths.
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Today I am going to write about The New York Times again.
I know. I know. I shouldn’t. I promised to stop taking the Times seriously a while back. But I just can’t stay away. Including the Thursday re-run I wrote about it twice last week. I just can’t help it. Moths and flames.
On Wednesday last the Times published Looking Ahead to the Spend-Down Years. I am honestly not sure how to characterize the topic of the article, other than to say it had to do with retirement and money and cited the work of several clueless academics with evidently too much time on their hands.
The piece was illustrated with creepy but eye-catching computer generated images of a man’s head as he aged. This was explained in the first few paragraphs.
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This is actually two questions in one. There is the personal finance version: Is owning a house a shrewd move for a consumer? And there is the broader policy one: Is home ownership something that the government should be 
encouraging as much as it does?
Both are good questions. The first is of great practical importance to many people. But the second is probably more interesting. And it is nearly impossible to discuss one without the other.
Brett Arends at the Wall Street Journal gives it a good try in his latest column, taking as inspiration a recent Time cover story that is entirely on the policy question, to write on the personal finance version.
He starts out by making the point that a Time cover reading “Rethinking Homeownership” is as good a sign as any that the real estate market is bottoming out. He shows us a 2005 Time cover reading “Home $weet Home” that was, in hindsight, a clear indication that the market was then about to peak. I do not disagree, but I would have been much more impressed with Arends if I hadn’t read this blog post at The Big Picture two days earlier that made the same point with pictures of the same two Time covers.
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[This Thursday re-run first appeared September 30, 2009.]
Yesterday’s New York Times carried a column worth reading by David Brooks. It is a little confused, even by the standards of Times columns, but the 
gist of it is a call to arms for a brand new culture war, this one over money.
I’m all for that.
Brooks starts out by recalling a centuries old idea.
The theory was that great nations start out tough-minded and energetic. Toughness and energy lead to wealth and power. Wealth and power lead to affluence and luxury. Affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline.
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Time to circle back and discuss the cards, credit and debit, again.
If you are just joining us, I will recap. Debit card transactions now outnumber
credit card transactions in America. Frank doesn’t get it. He has used a debit card maybe three or four times in his life. Although he can imagine several special cases in which a debit card would be preferable to a credit card for a person, he can’t wrap his head around the idea that the majority of people fall into those categories.
Wise Bread today ran a feature comparison of credit versus debit cards. Debit cards did not fare well in the head-to-head, besting credit only on the “Which is better for avoiding credit card debt?” criterion.
This, by far, is the strongest argument in favor of the debit card. If it helps you control your spending and helps you avoid credit card debt, then that one feature alone is as precious as gold. If you currently have credit card debt or are trying to get out of credit card debt, then cutting up the credit card and using a debt card is probably one of the smartest decisions you can make.
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My job as critic of personal finance advice is made a lot easier if other writers concisely summarize their points of view in easy to digest and refute bullet points. It gets even better if the other writer is argumentative, taking a neatly delineated position on a question which I can contradict.
Investing, PF Blogs, The Big Picture | Frank Curmudgeon | 
September 21, 2010 2:59 pm | 
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