Well, we have a President-Elect. And I have to admit, I’m glad the election is over. No more political ads everywhere you turn, no more anger about candidates and issues (well, at least less anger and hopefully fewer arguments).
But President-Elect Obama has a big job ahead of him with respect to the U.S. economy. Who would have guessed when he threw his hat in the ring two years ago that the biggest issue for voters this election would be the economy.
According to one source, Obama’s economic to-do list once he’s in office will likely include attempts to boost the economy, make the bank bailout work, get to the bottom of the housing problem, and reform financial regulation and oversight.
Pretty daunting tasks, if you ask me. But Obama does have the benefit of taking the time to find the best and the brightest to help him tackle these tasks. But he also has to wait before taking office, and given the changes that happened in October alone, who knows what the next few months will bring.
Unfortunately, from conversations I’ve overheard, a lot of people expect Obama to take office and immediately solve all of our economic woes. And that’s not something any President could do. Our economy didn’t get this way in a few weeks and it’s not going to recover in a few weeks. I hope that the slow speed of improvements doesn’t hurt public confidence even more. Because things will get better. They will. It just takes time.
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
