ROE INTENSE

Marketplace - a finance-based radio presence on American Public Media (think NPR) - and Edison Research collaborated on a financial metric. They call it the Anxiety Index . It’s brand new, born circa fall 2015. So how does it work? The Anxiety Index is based on mind-numbing poll questions about personal finance. What did it most recently find? Economic stress didn’t move beyond or below 31 across a range of demographics. Anxiety is measured on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the more stressed. Per the Marketplace website: Why didn't the number budge? Because Americans continue to feel anxious about their economic situation and feel worried about meeting monthly expenses.     The folks on the radio were much more specific. The question they touched on was 26A from the poll: Suppose you were faced with an unexpected expense of one thousand dollars , how difficult would it be to pay that expense? Would it be…?  (emphasis added) Of 1,012 people polled, 58% of

 

It’s been 24 days since my last blog post.     It’s a sad pun, but I mean it. It has been a daze. It has been cuh-razy. Such is life. Speaking of life: Amazewife and I are pregnant. “But RI, how could you possibly have another baby while you’re trying to get out of debt?” said none of my readers, ever. Really. Ever. I have not heard that question a single time. I hear so little from the people who read my blog that I have to make up questions while I’m writing it. Like the one just before this paragraph. But that one was silly. This one is more like it: “RI, what do you do with your debt snowball now that you have a baby on the way?” Now THAT is a quality question, fictitious-reader-in-my-head. There are hundreds and thousands of singles and couples, young and old, that are sick of being in debt. They are sick of having an axe made out of credit card bills and car loan payment booklets hanging over their necks. Every day, more and more of them change directions like Meredit