April 15 is the deadline for filing a federal tax return. But not everybody can meet that deadline. If you need more time to get your paperwork in, make sure you file a Form 4868, Automatic Extension of Time to File, with the IRS by the April 15 deadline and you’ll get an automatic six-month [...]

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Happy to say my Scholarship Search Secrets eBook was profiled on WCVB Boston 5 on the 6 o’clock news. That eBook, now in its fourth iteration, is one of the products of the Financial Aid Podcast - doing daily scholarship searches for 3 years makes you good at finding scholarships!

Original blog post and eBook download [...]

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Here is a dead simple solution for foreclosed houses: offer these at cut rate auctions to affordable housing developers like CASCAP in Cambridge, MA. These agencies can use the properties, otherwise fated to decay, for affordable housing for the poor and homeless.
Why we won’t embrace this solution:
Few businesses understand the sunk cost fallacy. Banks and [...]

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Give people about a month after their subprime mortgage payment balloons to obscene proportions and it’s not hard to guess that in some cases, that will lead to divorce and broken homes. The next big wave of resets begins in March 2008, based on the CSFB data in the chart above.
Buckle your seatbelts and unplug [...]

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Valentine’s Day doesn’t rank highly on my list of important days. As CC Chapman said, if you need a holiday to show someone you love that you care, you have serious issues you need to address in your relationship.
Combine that with crass commercialism and an attempt to raid your wallet through your heart by major [...]

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I’ve got a post on the work blog about beer money, and would LOVE your thoughts and comments on it:
Financial Aid Podcast Community Question: Where do you get your beer money?
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Take a look at these Google search trends for the word recession.

And for just 2007:

You don’t Google it if it’s not on your mind.
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Prospering in the downturn
It’s absolutely no secret that the US economy is headed to hell in a handbag, and honestly, it’s overdue. We’ve spent the last 20 years inflating one bubble after another - defense in the 80s, tech in the 90s, real estate in this decade - and the time for another correction has [...]

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Money is based only on faith
I had the terrific experience of speaking in front of high school students today, and the part that I think disturbed them most was the opening discussion about money and where it comes from. It’s unsettling to a lot of people to realize that money - currency - has no [...]

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Scratch troubled, we are screwed as a country
I read with great alarm on CFO.com that as the housing and mortgage crisis deepens, people are dipping into or even cashing out retirement funds.
“In the last four or five months we have seen an absolute onslaught of people trying to do hardship withdrawals and loans out of [...]

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