Comments on: Recently Married or Have a Few Children? Money Magazine Wants to Give you a Money Makeover

By: Lis

Lis — Fri, 21 May 2010 19:13:47 +0000

I found a simple way to manage our finances. It doesn’t matter what you are going to spend the money with (grocery shopping, buying a car, mortgage, or your telephone expenses), there are ways to save money. For example, I use coupons to reduce my grocery bill nearly in half. http://moneysavingexperttips.matsolver.com/
And recently I refinanced without any points or origination fees, to get 3.8APR), which reduced our monthly payment in hundreds. If you really do your homework, you can live debt free no matter how little you earn : )

By: Trees Full of Money

Trees Full of Money — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:59:40 +0000

Very similar to our situation although we’ve been married for 6 years now (married young).

My wife and I recently made the decision to have her stay at home with our baby daughter. I break down the cost had she continued working in my most recent blog article, and the results SHOCKED US!

We caluculated her $40k income would be reduced to $13k once expenses were calucated in!

By: MoneyNing

MoneyNing — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:20:50 +0000

I got all excited until I figured that there’s probably no giveaways right?

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:16:43 +0000

I agree with you, Wayne, and I think it would be refreshing to give a makeover to a family earning under $100k/year, a pile of debt, and only able to make minimum contributions to savings. But like Meg pointed out, these aren’t the typical people who read the magazine, so that story would have little interest.

By: wayne

wayne — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:03:12 +0000

Good Points, I was looking at the story through the lense of a preconcieved notion based on my perceptions of who needs a makover. I guess I figured if you have made it to that level, you had a pretty clear undestanding of most things finance. I know this stuff and I don’t have a use for the knowledge yet. ;-P

By: Meg

Meg — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:19:18 +0000

You have to consider the demographic of Money readers and what kind of advice they’re looking for. Readers are generally people with higher incomes (and houses and spending patterns to match). But that doesn’t mean they don’t need advice.

They don’t need advice on how to make ends meet; they need advice on how to manage/grow their money. How to structure their accounts, what kind of insurance to get, what asset allocation to shoot for, how to save for college/provide for aging parents, etc.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:28:30 +0000

From the 2006 example, I don’t see anything that was suggesting they “can’t manage.” While they may be well-off, they still had some changes to take care of during the transition from single to married life.

Too many individual accounts, nearly 100k in cash, and a portfolio that wasn’t allocated appropriately for their age and time horizon.

I don’t know if this upcoming special is going to focus on those who have fewer assets than others in the past, but just because a couple actually has money doesn’t mean nothing could be improved upon.

By: wayne

wayne — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:01:18 +0000

I took a peak at the 2006 makeover, and if they can’t manage on a combined 140k per year, they need to be publicly ridiculed. My wife and I have 2 kids, and our combined income is about 60K. We live in Dallas and we are struggling. The most common advice is to move to a different neighborhood because my mortgage eats up 1300/month. Moving is horrible advice. We don’t want to live in dangerous neighborhoods (we both grew up in them), and a 135K house is the bare minimum if you want a safe neighborhood and decent (not great) schools. These “makeover” specials are just laughable because they can’t help someone that might legitimately need help.