Savings Account News for June 26, 2009

Here's a round-up of some interesting recent articles involving savings accounts from the past few days.

The Examiner lays it all out for people of every economic stripe with this article:

You are not too poor for a Financial Plan.

But most people are richer than they know. When we get them to look at valuable things that can be sold or converted to money, you can see the Financial Planning light go on. Your car, the grandfather clock in the corner, the books in your library, and even the clothes in your dresser should be thought of as "money", and be considered in your Financial Plan. Think about replacing these items if your house burned down and you did not have the properly designed home owners insurance. You'll need cold, hard cash for that new underwear. Sadly, people fail to see the value in everyday items until they need to replaced.

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Sudeep Reddy goes over the Obama administration's effort to protect the personal finances of Americans and what it means for most people's savings:

The Obama budget proposal includes plans to require employers who don't offer a 401(k) or similar retirement savings account to automatically enroll workers in individual retirement accounts, siphoning deposits directly from their paychecks. The program is aimed at the half of all working Americans -- roughly 75 million people -- who don't have a retirement plan other than Social Security.

Speaking of the Obama admistration, CNN Money has an article about how the recent stimulus package has affected personal income, spending and saving:

Taking inflation into account, the spending rate rose by 0.2%. This so-called PCE Core was higher than the 0.1% rate that economists were expecting.

Even as consumers spent some of their extra dollars, they were more interested in socking away cash than they have been in more than a decade.