A solid financial foundation
The June 3 Journal article "Raising financial awareness" noted there is a real need in our community to provide access to high-quality financial education and counseling. Winston-Salem and Forsyth County leaders recently recognized the need to assess the impact of the economy and housing crisis on local residents and to identify services to help residents establish a solid financial foundation.
To address these concerns 24 organizations, including Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Forsyth County (CCCS), collaborated with the Corporation for Enterprise Development to create an Assets and Opportunity Profile: Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, which was released last month.
Consider these sobering statistics:
About 39 percent of households are "asset poor," meaning they have insufficient savings to provide for basic needs for more than three months, should they experience a job loss or medical emergency. About 28 percent of these asset-poor families earn between $45,655 and $70,014.
Financial education is not enough to help families disentangle complicated financial situations, which is why we combine financial education with coaching. As a United Way agency offering high-quality, no-fee services, CCCS is celebrating in 2012 a 40-year anniversary of working to help families with budgeting, debt management, credit rebuilding and asset protection/foreclosure prevention. We are grateful for the support that the city, county, partner agencies and stakeholders have given to our mission, "To provide professional consumer education and comprehensive financial and housing guidance to all members of the community."
MICHAEL WAID
BOARD CHAIR, CONSUMER CREDIT COUNSELING SERVICE OF FORSYTH INC.
PETER LAROCHE
PRESIDENT, CONSUMER CREDIT COUNSELING SERVICE OF FORSYTH INC.
Winston-Salem
A loud cry
Republican Gov. Scott Walker's win in the Wisconsin recall elections is a sign and loud cry from the public that they are tired of the unions sucking the state dry when the state was in a very crucial financial crisis.
What does it take for unions to realize that their importance in companies and government is not as needed as it once was? They don't care if the state of Wisconsin or any other state is going under.
I have seen people union themselves right out of jobs in Pennsylvania.
The people of Wisconsin have spoken. Hurrah for the guts Gov. Walker has shown.
REBECCA M. MOHLER
Kernersville
Sum It Up
Do you think voter fraud is a threat in the 2012 elections?
Correspondent of the Week: Old School
Old school
I actually Googled myself and discovered that I live with somebody named Matt and my house is located in a horse pasture. This got me thinking: Whatever happened to old-school methods?
New technology, that's what. Good or bad idea? People are losing the ability to choose old school.
Cellphones: Half the time all you hear is Charlie Brown's teacher: "Wock, wock," etc. Bluetooth: Are you talking to me or are you just crazy and talking to yourself? In regard to texting (what kind of language is that?): It's simply a shortcut version of words and symbols in the English language.
Applying for a job online? Where is the résumé actually going? You want all my information, but who are you? Oh, yeah, you're a ridiculous assortment of letters, dashes and numbers.
Why are people losing their jobs? New technology? Successful entrepreneurs use any type of technology to do the work of their employees and simply tack on extra fees to people. Smart? You better believe it. It's just at the expense of a human being trying to make a living.
Who's really to blame here? What does the future hold?
New technology is being thrown upon us. The new generation seems to think "old school" means having lived on Walton's Mountain. I simply have a concern that the future generation won't have a chance to survive in a "Jetson" world.
LISA HELTON
Winston-Salem
A solid financial foundation. Sounds like a needed service though it is odd that just a few decades ago, this would seem like an oddity. Maybe just listening to 6 months of Dave Ramsey on the radio would do just as well.
ReplyDeleteA loud cry. Wisconsin was indeed a message from taxpayers that they are now awake and understand. That is the very thing the Left and their union allies fear most and it is spreading across the country.
ReplyDeleteOld school. Did your horse pasture contain any horses? If so, watch where you step. Just think, when darkness falls across the land--or as I like to say- when the internet crashes, some of us will still be able to function and just take over.
ReplyDeleteWW, check this out:
ReplyDeleteCyber weapons
Stuxnet was child's play. I'm sure that people are working on much bigger cyber weapons.
There are already a number of botnets infecting millions of computers each, so 250,000 would be nothing. Internet Explorer's feeble security features would make it the ideal carrier.
Now that is chilling. It seems that the appeal of something "faster and better" is an open door for this type of attack. Maybe a partial solution could be found in older computers with out of date software to let us go "low tech-slow tech" right past these botnets without drawing any attention? I just don't know, but I plan to stay as low tech as I can for simplicity sake.
DeleteI have to assume the Pentagon "war games" these type of events like they do many others including financial/monetary attacks which the Pentagon has "gamed" with the help of ex Wall Street types about 3 years ago.
An interesting article though and thanks for sharing.
Unfortunately, that won't do any good.
DeleteThere are about a billion computers in use right now world wide. About 162 million have been sold this year so far. Projection is that the number will reach 2 billion by 2015. And all of those will be the "faster and better" variety.
That makes a pretty fertile recruiting pool for a botnet army. And if the web goes down, all go down.
Do you think voter fraud is a threat in the 2012 elections?
ReplyDelete__________
Absolutely.......! The State of Florida alone has identified some 100,000 people that probably don't have the right to vote, but the Obama Administration won't let it purge them from its voter rolls.
This is only ONE state.
The Obama Administration just made an immigration change that will allow over 800,000 illegal immigrants to stay in this country. This allows them to get driver's license that they might not been able to get. How many of these people, through motor-voter-laws, will illegally register to vote, and then vote? And who will they vote for? You guess it. Obama-their sugar-daddy.
People, such as former Acorn members are still out there, doing the same old stuff by illegally registering people that aren't qualified to vote.
The Obama Campaign Committee recently had a campaign fund raiser. It required that all people entering the facility of the event to present I.D. Yet, Obama's Justice Department is fighting voter I.D. laws across the country.
There is no question that there will be voter fraud in the next election, all encouraged and sanctioned by the Obama Administration.
The era of big government and Chicago style corruption is upon us.
This week election officials in the state of Washington announced that a referendum seeking to nullify the recently passed law legalizing same-sex marriage has qualified for the November ballot.
ReplyDelete________
Some states are already trying to correct laws that were poorly thought out.
The sad part of this whole equation is that Washington is part of the ninth circuit. That is the same district where the gay San Francisco judge wanted to get married, so he ruled the California marriage prohibition law unconstitional. That ruling is still pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme.
The gay judge's ruling is likely to be overruled based on the past history of the ninth circuit's judgments, and the state's rights clause in the Constitution.
Kind of a weak crop of letters today.
ReplyDeleteTrue.
DeleteI am told that CCCS does a great job, but only a tiny fraction of people take advantage of their services. We hear a lot about the national debt, by which we mean public debt, but economists also look at private debt, both corporate and household. When the private debt exceeds the public debt by too much, as it has in the US, there is cause for great concern.
The good news is that since January, 2009, as of mid-year 2011, US corporate debt had fallen by over 20% while household debt fell by $584 billion to $13.2 trillion, a 4% reduction. The overall effect for public and private debt was a 16% reduction.
That left the combined debt at 279% of the US economy, on par with Germany and Australia, although much higher than the Scandinavian countries. Compare to Japan at 512% and the UK at 507%.
Sweden's public debt level is ~35% of GDP. And Germany's social programs are far more generous than ours.
DeleteErgo, the European welfare state is completely unsustainable because...because WE SAY SO!
I have many friends in northern and western Europe. They all say the same thing:
Delete"The US is a nice place to visit..."
I agree. It used to be a great place to live. But that went down the tubes with the implementation of many of the ill-conceived ideas of liberal politicians. We now try to be all things to all people. And as such, our country is on the verge of collapse. We can't feed the world's hungry. The Swiss figured that out a long time ago.
DeleteThe Swiss are far better educated than Americans. They have compulsory education and training programs…truancy is not permitted…and the burden of enforcing all of this is not dumped on the schools themselves, as it is in the US, but is shared by the entire community.
DeleteBut here is the kicker. The Swiss also have a compulsory social insurance program that covers everything…retirement benefits, health, accident, disability and survivors insurance, and unemployment compensation.
Every worker is required to buy a policy…exactly the part of the Affordable Health Care act that the simple-minded go foaming at the mouth about.
With a population so dense in morons, it is surprising that the USA still exists.
They also have strict immigration laws, and they enforce them.
DeleteSince your world consists of like-minded, moronic, liberal friends, I can see why you think the USA is full of morons.
Rodney King is dead. His claim to fame was that he got beat-up by a group of policemen while he was on PCP. Stardom is not that difficult to obtain in America.
ReplyDeleteHe died in his swimming pool, while under the influence of.......
Liberal women have been trying to emasculate men (especially white ones) for years. But now that they've accomplished it, they're not happy.
ReplyDeleteThey even mention affirmative action as a cure for the ills that have surfaced. But oh no, they're not ready for THAT!
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57454755/as-gender-roles-change-are-men-out-of-step/?tag=stack
Amusing article...and right on target.
Delete"Boys think that academic disengagement is a sign of masculinity," said Kimmel. "The less you can do in school, the less connected you are, the less interested you are, the more manly you are."
Just like Buck boy, who is always denigrating Forsyth Tech and those on this forum who are far better educated than he is.
"And those men who most strongly subscribe to it are those men who are going to be left behind."
Just like Buck boy, who already has been left in the dust.
As always...I won't even say it...that would be beating a dead horse.
Yeah, I always think about how I've been left in the dust when I'm having a drink in places like the Plaza Mayor, and in the ABC Islands.
DeleteHee...Hee...liberals. They're always trying to take you down to their disgusting level.
"What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter and Me"
ReplyDeleteRielle Hunter
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I'll bet LaSombra buys this book.
I'll bet LaSombra buys this book.