Covering personal finance is part journalism and part counseling. Pamela Yip, reporter and columnist for the Dallas Morning News, is here to make sure you don't go into it unarmed.
Wedding season is arriving in many locales. It’s a nice opportunity to get some picturesque small business profiles, personal finance and hospitality stories onto the business pages. And with weddings being among the biggest-ticket items most families spend on, you might find among nuptial trends some interesting economic indicators and other cues to your region’s [...]
With stock market indices topping records and hitting psychological milestones like “Dow 15,000,” your audiences probably are wondering if it’s finally safe to peek at their 401(k) statements, and what else this bull run means for them. And more to the point, “Can it last?” As CNBC reports, major indices are up by double-digits so far [...]
May is one of those months bursting with seasonal topics that make for interesting and informative local business stories, especially small business and entrepreneur profiles. Taking it from the top: Cinco de Mayo. Time is tight but if you are feeling energetic today, it’s an increasingly celebrated festival not only in Hispanic neighborhoods but at [...]
It’s probably time for another look at the effects of the federal budget sequester on businesses and consumers. Here’s an eye-opening concept that is ripe for localizing: Banks and credit unions are offering “furlough loans” as relief to workers forced to take unpaid leave from government agencies. According to that Credit Union Times report, one [...]
In our final Finance Friday, an April round-up of tips and resources for personal finance angles in honor of National Financial Literacy Month, I wanted to offer some additional ideas for writing about children and financial skills. Many money missteps by adults might be averted if kids and teens had more exposure to personal finance lessons. [...]
Wednesday’s report on payday loans by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a good prompt for a look at a variety of lending products that serve the subprime market, those consumers with poor credit. Another news peg: California lawmakers just last week defeated proposed reining-in of payday loans, which the American Banker online publication says is [...]
The Senate was expected to vote Monday on the Marketplace Fairness Act, or MFA, a bill that would require online sellers to collect state and local sales taxes just like their brick-and-mortar counterparts do. For the past decade or so, traditional merchants have opined that e-commerce sites like Amazon.com have a pricing advantage because (at [...]
April being National Financial Literacy Month, we’ve instituted Finance Friday, and between now and the end of the month we’ll share resources for producing basic personal finance stories that will help your audience with the fundamentals of their household money matters. Pay yourself first. Put your money to work for you. If you can’t afford [...]
Last week’s Employment Situation report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics got the predictable amount of attention, especially since it showed no real improvement in the nation’s 7.6 percent unemployment rate. Analysts have been parsing the meaning of this report, especially the decline in workforce participation (meaning that fewer people say they are looking [...]
