Friday, July 16, 2010

Personal finances on the slide despite national upturn?

The CFP (Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc.) just lately conducted a survey in which they found the majority of American consumers are expecting the U.S. economy to improve within six months. But as Bloomberg indicates, the bad news is that these very same Americans lack faith in their own personal finances. Savings, college and retirement are hot button issues that have The United States seeing red.

Personal finances do not light up the headlines like recession busting

The CFP found that 44 percent of people expect the U.S. economy to rise before their personal finances discover relief, while 28 percent have a doom and gloom outlook. Robert Glovsky of the CFP told Bloomberg that “Americans are typically hopeful, and much of the economic news leads us to conclude that we are out of the recession, and a double dip is unlikely”.

Yet this hope doesn’t appear to apply to personal finances at all. Consumer confidence may be up while the declared unemployment rate was down .2 percentage points from May 2010 to June 2010 (it was 9.5 percent in June), but the CFP survey indicates that nearly two-thirds of Americans (65 percent) indicate that their worries over basic matters of long-term personal finance have grown substantially since the beginning of the recession. Individuals know they’re in need of cash until payday, but often find themselves on the outside looking in when it comes to a bank loan. They may have found that a poor credit personal cash loan is a viable way out of the problem, but this doesn’t bode well if there is no future plan to deal with emergencies that prey upon personal finances.

A three-fold path to bad-time personal finances

CFP survey findings from the 1,000-member sample group (aged 18 and over) showed that most feared whether they’d be able to save money, pay for college and prepare for a financially stable retirement. In addition, 80 percent of the CFP survey respondents were of a mind that Congress has done a less than stellar job of trying to regulate financial markets. Fortunately, the upcoming financial reform bill may address the problem.

Discover more about this topic here

bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-13/americans-are-more-optimistic-about-economy-than-own-finances-survey-says.html

cfp.net/media/release.asp?id=253



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