(photo credit: southerntabitha)

We’ve written before about how to give smart in the wake of a disaster, and unfortunately the situation just keeps coming up. While not as devastating as the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in April, the string of tornadoes that tore up the American South last week has left hundreds dead and thousands homeless.

One of the pieces of advice we passed on is to stay thoughtful when you’re practicing “crisis philanthropy.” One way to do that is to focus your giving on organizations with a local presence in the affected area. But what if there are none left?

That isn’t exactly the situation in Tuscaloosa, but the Salvation Army – a local charity giant – lost two buildings in the tornado, both of which could have really helped with relief efforts. We thought this might be a good time to point out the differences between program costs and operational costs, which are the two types of expenses you’re funding when you write a check to your favorite charity.

• - Program costs refer to money spent on the projects you hear about during fundraisers – feeding the poor, building temporary housing for flood victims. The exciting stuff.
• - Operational costs (sometimes called overhead) refer to more boring stuff – the electric bill, the salary of the person who answers the phone, the new office downtown.

People tend to want their money to go to program costs because it makes them feel good about themselves. But in most cases, paying for operational costs is just as important. Who will administer lifesaving vaccinations if an organization can’t afford to pay clinic staff? And who knows how much more prepared local organizations could have been had they had the extra cash to spend on additional locations or a disaster preparedness program?

Welcome to our new series, showing you how the changes you want to see in the world actually happen!

(credit: scui3asteveo)

Q. What’s the difference between defaulting on your student loans and defaulting on your credit card debt?

A. If you fall into a hopeless debt spiral because you can’t pay back your credit card company or your mortgage, you can declare bankruptcy and get a clean credit slate after a few years. If you default on your student loans, you can never escape. Ever.

Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of college grads are about to find themselves with a black mark on their permanent records. Your credit history, unlike that mythical permanent record your teachers threatened you with in 4th grade, can really affect your opportunities in life. It can determine whether or not you get a credit card, a school or car loan, or a mortgage on a new home. Some employers even check credit reports to get the dirt on potential new hires.

Check out this article on good.is for more fun details and a glance at the ever-increasing Student Loan Debt Clock!

See also: this depressing article on “mal-employed” college grads.

Also see also: this list of the “20 most useless college majors,” which shows the limited mid-career earning potential for chemistry majors, among other obvious low-paying career tracks (hello, art history scholars!) Of course, being “useless” financially doesn’t mean your degree of choice won’t make your heart soar like an eagle. We recommend you use your own criteria for success when making major career choices. And don’t default on your student loans.

(credit: Mike Weston)

According to the International Energy Agency, cutting carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2050 will require almost half the world’s energy to come from sustainable sources (like sun and wind, instead of oil and coal).

These alternative energy sources are getting cheaper and more popular in the U.S., but the New York Times has just revealed a little-known fact about the solar and wind energy we’re learning to love: it’s backed up by coal power.

That’s right. Because the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing, energy from clean sources can’t consistently meet the needs of our power-hungry populace. So when output dips on the wind farms, it has to be supplemented by old-fashioned power sources.

And the power plants of yesteryear just aren’t built for that kind of one-and-off output. The bottom line: Either alternative energy has to advance to the point of not needing supplementation, or traditional power plants need to spend a lot of money updating their equipment.

We wonder… could there be some financial incentive that would get the old energy companies to play nice with the new ones?

(credit: REUTERS/ Shannon Stapleton)

Ah, spring! Baby birds stretch their wings, trees release deadly spores, and Wall Street awakens from its long post-Ponzi slumber. You know, Ponzi. Scheme. Ponzi scheme. Madoff?

This guy.

But we digress. Today’s news is about Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of a successful hedge fund called Galleon Group. He’s been accused of insider trading – this is, unfairly using information from outside sources in order to make a big profit for his company (and himself).

Here’s what you need to know about Bernie and Raj:

• 1. Madoff has already been tried, convicted, and sent to prison for 150 years. Raj is just on trial – and he’s still innocent until proven guilty. If he is proven guilty, though, he’ll be in the clink with Bernard for up to 25 years.
• 2. Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme, in which he collected money from new investors and handed much of it over to existing investors, calling it a return on their investment. In other words, he just moved the money around instead of investing it. It involved a huge network of people, funds, customers, billions of dollars, and many, many handshakes.
• Galleon Group is accused of insider trading by using a small network of tipsters from different companies. These tipsters [allegedly] shared valuable corporate secrets with Galleon, and Galleon [allegedly] used that information to make a killing on the trading floor. All very fine line behavior.

Now you know. Stay tuned!

Check out this inspiring new video by our friends at charity: water!

Is Earth Day your favorite day of the year? Do you care more about the sky or the trees, or the people who rely on them? Does it matter? Get out there and do something about it!

p.s. There’s an awesome fundraising contest going on right now – if you can pull together the most money for charity: water, you get to go to Africa with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett.

Bienvenidos a Malawi! (Gettin’ filtered with it? The Fresh Prince of Fresh Water??) The current leader has raised less than $12,000. You can beat that, right?

Bruce Sellery is cleaning up Canada, one bumbling financial amateur after another. He’s a journalist, an author, a public speaker, and a consultant. His “thing” is figuring out what you really need and want in order to set up your financial life in the best way possible. (Sound familiar?)

Please enjoy this Skypetastic interview, beamed to us LIVE from Bruce’s HQ in Canadia:

>> 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!

[annoying voice] Hi, I’m Elmo! I know more about personal finance than most Americans, and I’m a 3-year-old puppet!

At least, that’s the premise. The hope is that this cuddly little red carpet sample will start American kids early on the path to having the first clue about managing their money.

If you consider your financial life to be on par with a 3-year-old’s, or you’re having a really hard time saving up for that stupendous ball, you should definitely watch Elmo’s new spending, saving and sharing video series. But let’s get real: you should also be reading this blog a lot more.

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ELMO’S CELEBRITY SCRAPBOOK

With friends like these, you must have your life in order…

(photo credit: ezioman)

Let’s see if we can explain this one:

- The laws of supply and demand say that when supply of a particular product is low, its price goes up. And when consumer demand for that product is high, prices also go up.

- The opposite is also true: low demand = low prices; high supply = low prices.

- So when the oil minister of Saudi Arabia says that OPEC is cutting down on oil production because there’s too much supply in the market, you would think that oil is pretty cheap right now.

Nope. The price of oil is actually higher than it’s been in two and a half years. But it’s not high because of strong consumer demand (apparently demand is quite low since no one can afford it), and it’s not because of low supply (the minister says the market is actually “oversupplied” with barrels and barrels of black gold).

The price of oil is high because of the investors trading it on commodity markets. Because of all the civil unrest/ revolutions/ humanitarian disasters in North Africa and the Middle East right now, they’re worried about whether oil will become harder to get in the future.

So in this case, the price of oil has nothing to do with present-day supply and demand. It’s about a bunch of analysts who think that if a lot of oil-rich governments collapse, tomorrow’s supply might not meet tomorrow’s demand. (Dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnnn!)

This is a pretty neat Eyebeam/ Google project. They offered money and fame (okay, just money) to the person who could come up with the best way to help you understand where your tax dollars are going, and then had a jury full of design types choose the best.

Click here to play with the “Grand Award Winner” of the interactive visualization competition, and see the rest of the winners and finalists here.

You just enter your approximate yearly income and your filing status, and the site estimates how much federal tax you’ll pay based on what tax bracket you’re in. Then it breaks down where all of that tax money you pay during the course of a year actually goes. For example, do you know how much of your paycheck goes toward funding the Department of Agriculture?

Do you even know what tax bracket you’re in? (If you don’t, you can find out here.)