Stay Informed!

By Sean Luechtefeld on 06/04/2012 @ 04:00 PM

You might think that when they leave the office each day, CFEDers’ attention turns away from asset building and toward simpler things like walking the dog or vacuuming the house. You might also think that at the end of the day, the last thing we want to think about is finances, since that’s how we spend 8 or more hours a day.

If these are things you think, consider yourself mistaken.

Take Inclusive Economy contributor and Savings & Financial Security Program Manager Stephanie Halligan, for example. Last week, Stephanie launched her own personal finance blog, aptly titled The Empowered Dollar.

The new site is premised on the idea that by empowering people to take control of their finances at a young age, they can avoid financial disaster and grow into successful and wealthy adults. Stephanie’s personal story – and the motivation for The Empowered Dollar – hits too close to home for too many of us. Plagued by student loan debt and making a mere $12,000 per year despite her college degree, Stephanie made money management and fiscal responsibility somewhat of a hobby. Now, just a few years later, she’s offering her insights to the public in an attractive and easy-to-navigate website.

The content of the site is organized into simple principles like “invest early,” “save often” and “stay out of debt.” The tools, tips and tricks offered are geared toward kids, teenagers and college students and their parents, but the lessons gleaned are almost universal. In a recent post on allowances, for example, Stephanie discusses the Entitlement Effect, which suggests that when paid for nothing, people will be disinterested in getting paid to do “crappy work.” This doesn’t just apply to kids’ allowances and the need to attach allowances to opportunities for money management; it also explains the common misconception that people on unemployment have no incentive to work. In actuality, they have incentive to work; they don’t, however, have incentive to do something that most people are unwilling to do for less money than it takes to pay rent, much less a mortgage payment or a tuition bill or anything else.

The site is still new, so I’ll be looking forward to what else The Empowered Dollar has to offer. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out the site and let Stephanie know what you think.

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