(photo credit: bredgur)

It’s not often that the Wall Street Journal writes for readers under 40, but they just published a really good article with financial advice for the pre-college population. Now, we’re not trying to get all parenty on you, but as pseudo-grownups we can assure you that a little planning goes a long way.* (And it really doesn’t take that much time out of your schedule.) Here are some of the points writer Zac Bissonnette makes:

• > Debt becomes part of your life once you take it on. If you’re planning to use student loans to pay for school, remember that paying back those loans after graduation means part of every paycheck will belong to the bank.
• > Speaking of paying for college, do you really need to pay for an ivy league degree? Success doesn’t depend on which school you go to – it depends on the effort you put in.
• > Don’t get sucked in by materialism. The vast majority of people are not rich but still perfectly happy. But there are a lot of forces around you conspiring to make you feel poor and deprived. Tell them to go away.

(TILE Fun Fact: A small amount of debt can actually help you, by rounding out your credit history and boosting your credit score. But ONLY if you use it responsibly – that means pay it off, and never miss a due date.)

The most important question you need to ask yourself is this: What is this college degree really going to cost me, in terms of my dreams? Maybe you’d like to travel the world after graduation, or take an entry-level job in the nonprofit sector, or buy your first house before you’re thirty. Massive debt can really screw up your plans, so plan accordingly.

* For example, if you chose to invest $1,000 at age 18 and earned a paltry 3% return, you could have $3,500 waiting for you when you’re 60. (And by the time you’re 60, 60 will be the new 30.) All that with absolutely no effort. Well, you do have to take an hour to invest that $1,000 when you’re 18. See what we mean about planning?

(credit: JASON ANFINSEN)

Going to Bonnaroo this year? Prepare to wear your credit card on your sleeve. Er, wrist. Concert producers have switched from a paper-based to a microchip-based ticketing system, which means you’ll be wearing your right to be there in a little plastic bracelet on your wrist.

But wait, there’s more! Concertgoers can also choose to embed their credit card information in their bracelets, so they’ll be able to pay for stuff without searching for their wallets. (We all know how much of a hassle that is, right?)

You’ve got to love how easy it’s becoming to spend money. Okay, maybe it’s not such a good thing for our budgets (or our souls) here in the U.S., but think about the implications for people who live in countries with developing economies… Technology like this could eliminate a lot of hurdles to economic participation – kind of like how the invention of the cell phone ended up democratizing long-distance communication in Africa. (In 2005, 1 in 11 Africans had a mobile plan; only 1 in 33 had a land line.)

Frank Murtha from MarketPsych returns with some insight about how that annoying habit from high school follows most people into their grown-up financial lives. If you’ve been jumping off bridges after your friends up until now, maybe this will convince you to stop:

© 1999-2011 Panera, LLC. All rights reserved

“The lesson here is most people are fundamentally good,” [Panera founder and Chairman Ronald] Shaich said. “People step up and they do the right thing.”

The “right thing,” in this case, is choosing to pay the full retail price (or more) for a bagel at one of Panera Bread’s pay-what-you-want restaurants. These locations are nonprofit, and “prices” are actually just suggested donations. Any money left over after paying the utility bills and workers’ salaries (i.e. overhead) goes to Panera’s charitable foundation.

This is genius for two reasons:

1. Amaaazing PR for Panera

2. Combining hunger and peer pressure to make people donate to your charity

Seems like it’s getting easier every day to spend money. Is this the new philanthropy? Are $10 text donations just the start? Anything that gets people to donate more money to good organizations is progress in our book.

You have to wonder, though. Is this kind of giving the way you really want to spend your donation dollars? Impulse giving is kind of like impulse shopping – it will probably make you feel good about yourself at the moment (especially if you just ate a delicious sandwich), but it doesn’t usually reflect who you are or where your values lie.

And it definitely goes against the sage advice to do your homework before you give someone your money.

(photo credit: BaronBrian)

Looks like wealthy Russians (and, yes, wealthy lunatics everywhere) are spending their nest eggs on underground apocalypse-proof nests. After all, the world is scheduled to be laid to waste on December 12, 2012. Or May 21, 2011. Depending on which irrefutable evidence you’re looking at.

But this seems like as good a time as ever to point out that basing your financial strategy on the ancient Mayan calendar is probably about as smart as trying to time the market. Base human emotions – fear, anxiety, and greed, for example – don’t mix well with financial transactions.

Wait… Can you time the market? Could we all be getting ridiculously rich quick before the end of days? Why didn’t we think of this before??

(photo credit: popofatticus)

Seems like the rash of recent economic disasters have woken America up to the fact that education in personal finance is practically non-existent in this country.

So financial educators are starting to pay more attention to the kids. (See, for example, SPEND.GROW.GIVE.) But there’s one little problem… For most kids, personal finance is, well, boring and irrelevant.

Sure, you can talk about it in an Elmo voice, but is that really going to make money matter to young children? And should personal finance education really start in preschool? Starting young probably can’t hurt, but you’ve also got to be smart about how you approach the topic.

What would be the best way for you to learn about personal finance?

(photo credit: banspy)

What happens when the two largest stock exchanges in the U.S. become one big mega-exchange? A monopoly, that’s what! In case you don’t remember from history or economics class (or the game Monopoly), a monopoly is when one company controls an entire market, making it hard or impossible for smaller companies to fairly compete. (The market, in this case, being the market of stock markets.)

That’s why anti-trust regulators at the Justice Department have shut down Nasdaq’s attempted hostile takeover of the New York Stock Exchange. The takeover is hostile because the NYSE already has a deal with German bank Deutsche Borse to be acquired for $10 billion, and it’s so not interested in starting a relationship with Nasdaq right now.

The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have been competing for years, which keeps them both in customer-pleasing, price-cutting mode. Without that competition, NYSEasdaq could charge whatever it wanted and still crush what little competition would be left.

It could even become… too big to fail!

Insurance is one of the least interesting things we can think of. We don’t even like typing the word. But you know what? There are some really good reasons why it’s really important.

Allow Jessica Serbin, Senior Vice President at Willis, to school you in less than two minutes:

>> TILE brings you exclusive opinions, explanations, and interviews from experts in every industry. Have a burning question or an expert you’d like to see interviewed? Just Ask TILE!

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New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg just announced a budget that will require 4,100 public school teachers to be laid off. That’s pretty tough news for a city with a challenging (to say the least) public school system. But what’s even tougher is the way those unlucky teachers will be chosen.

We’ve written before about the last-in-first-out rule (LIFO). In New York, the law says that teachers must be fired in reverse order of when they were hired. That means that an idealistic 24-year old with enough energy to start her career in an overcrowded, underfunded public school in the Bronx is more likely to be fired than an underperforming veteran.

What’s interesting is that many of the young teachers who are set to be laid off are actually participants in programs (like Teach for America and NYC Teaching Fellows) designed to bring new energy and drive INTO the public schools.

Well, there goes that idea. How do you think the public education system can be improved?

(credit: notsogoodphotography)

We read the Frugal Traveler section of the New York Times from time to time, though frugality is not something all our members are familiar with. But today’s article about spending a weekend in Rio de Janeiro for less than $100 sounded like a lot of fun. The kind of fun you might miss if you spent, say, $2,000 instead.

In this case, the writer has an amazing experience for less than a Benjamin because he’s open to new (and potentially uncomfortable) experiences. So why not make it a point to travel the road less recently paved now and then?

Think about what you really want. Is spending the only way to get it? Is brand-name really worth more to you than generic? Can you see as much of a new city from a high-rise as you can from the street?

Now take a look at your spending habits – what do you spend most of your money on? Is that what makes you happy?