How do we enlighten our concrete-thinking kiddies to the fact that — despite popular playground belief — money doesn\’t grow in ATM machines? With the Spend/Save/Tzedakah plan, of course!
Israel\’s Finance Ministry is proposing substantial cuts to Ethiopian immigration next year.
Affairs of the heart are a big investment for this conservative, long-term investor.
Families are feeling the squeeze of the upward crawl of day school tuition over the last several years, which has brought the average tuition for elementary and middle school to about $12,600 and for high school to as much as $20,000. Those numbers are about 30 percent above what a year of schooling cost four years ago and nearly double 10 years ago.
Warren Buffett is not a Jew; in fact, he describes himself as an agnostic. Still, the billionaire investment guru, who made big news in May when his Berkshire Hathaway corporation bought an 80 percent share in the Israeli metalworks conglomerate, Iscar, for $4 billion, for years has been making his mark on the U.S. Jewish community back home — although sometimes in a roundabout way.
Susie Tiffany of Beverly Hills suffers from a rare blood disorder and needs monthly infusions of blood components, which her insurance company ultimately declined to cover. She hoped the government\’s new prescription drug benefit would help her out because, despite her ZIP code, she\’s a low-income senior. But the possibilities, were baffling: an array of private insurance plans that covered different things, explanations on the Internet that included terms she never had to know before, additional complexities depending on a person\’s income and a confusing interplay of state and federal agencies. However, Tiffany was able to find assistance in her case from Jewish Family Service. A social worker helped get Tiffany\’s treatment covered by new state funds intended to help seniors with the transition to the new federal system.
Suppose you determine that you need a financial planner, where in this great, big American landscape would you find a good one?
Rabbi Benjamin Blech, author of \”Taking Stock: A Spiritual Guide to Rising Above Life\’s Financial Ups and Downs\” (AMACOM, 2003), wonders mostly how he ever got so frenzied about money — both its gain, and its loss. Of course, he is not alone. Perhaps you didn\’t sink your nest egg into dot-com stocks, but chances are very good that money — or lack of it — sometimes throws you off kilter.
Getting kids involved with giving isn\’t just for wealthy families. On the contrary, middle-class kids tend to have much more than they need — and can benefit from the values and insights they will get from charitable activities. It\’s up to parents to get them going, and to figure out the best structure for the entire family\’s charitable activities
Online auctions have gone from an Internet curiosity to a multibillion-dollar enterprise in less than a decade. The phenomenon has changed how we buy and sell, and deal with the junk in our attic.
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