FixThePig
Fixing Broke America - Financial Opinion, Tips, & Review

How many times have you heard someone say, “If only I could win the lottery.” I’ve often found myself dreaming about how great it would be to hit a massive lottery jackpot. Countless times with friends and family we’ve played out the scenario of who gets money and what we’d buy. Recently all of the exposure in the news about corporate CEO’s and their compensation packages has got me second guessing my desire to win the lottery. Today I’d much rather win a job as CEO of a major US corporation.

Clearly the biggest benefit of winning the lottery is the massive lump of cash dropped into your lap. There is no doubt that a 50 million dollar cash option would be great, but what if you were to get paid 10 million a year over the next 5 years instead as CEO. Even better you could make a whopping $354 million; over the last 5 years Richard Fuld Jr. the CEO of troubled financial firm Lehman Brothers did according to Read More

Two of my greatest passions in life are finance and sports.  Both present great competition, winning and losing, physical and mental strength, and finally a ton of fun.  Recently it seems that there has been a lot more losses occurring in the financial world then wins and I hope that it doesn’t have a trickle down affect to losses in the sports industry as well.  We’ve all seen the drama surrounding the economy in recent weeks and one of the first things that popped into my mind was how this financial stress would affect ticket prices and sports team in general.

As it stands right now, I think that ticket prices are simply outrageous.  For me to bring my family of four to Read More

What a whirlwind roller coaster the last couple of weeks have been in our economy.  We’ve basically seen a free fall of our stock market, a complete lack of confidence within the banking system, and our government playing janitor cleaning up the mess.  Home prices continue to fall, consumer and business credit is frozen, and the malls are starting to look like ghost towns.  At what point do we say enough is enough and the worst is now behind us?  America’s icon and financial guru Warren Buffet came out today and said it’s a great time to start buying stocks;  is his crystal ball much clearer then the economic outlook or is it simply a call to boost confidence.

I have no idea if this is the bottom of our economic struggles, if I could predict the future I’d own an island down in the Caribbean and spend my days milking the stock market for millions, however I do know that Read More

For the last 5 years or so it’s been extremely easy for people and business to access capital from lending institutions.  How many times have you seen advertisements for credit cards, bank loans, and 0% no payment financing in the last 12 months.  I’d venture to say that you’ve seen it 10 times a day, each and everyday.  Financial companies have launched massive advertising campaigns that flood Mailboxes, T.V.’s, Magazines, and the Internet with offers trying to put money into our hands.  We’ve become so accustomed to these offers that it’s created this feeling of entitlement to accessing credit whenever it’s needed.  No longer do people see getting a loan as a privilege, it’s created a sense that it’s a right.

I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say “if I need some extra money I can always throw it on a credit card” or “I get 10 offers a day in my mailbox to get money, I’m even Read More

Lately I’ve been hearing lots of conversations about how people in our country are living well beyond their means.  Often times the root of all our financial problems are resolved in a matter of minutes; blame it on the people who are addicted to buying and have no idea how to save.  I’ve often wondered are people really living lifestyles of the rich and famous on a shoe string budget or is it simply getting harder to get by on an average wage?

While their is clearly a segment of our population that is living well beyond their means and buy everything on credit, I think most people are simply struggling to get through daily life.  There’s no doubt that the cost Read More

Home values have fallen dramatically and they continue to slide further and further south.  If you own a home, there is no doubt that you’ve felt this drop in equity.  One of the biggest reasons for the massive decline in home values is due to record levels of foreclosures.  Until the foreclosure problem is solved, there is going to be a continued drop in home values across neighborhoods.  Are you willing to use $300 billion of your tax payer money  to cure the disease of foreclosure and keep your house from losing it’s value?

The anger and frustration that many homeowners feel when presented with the idea of using their hard earned tax money to “bailout” homeowners is no doubt warranted.  I hear people ask why we should use our Read More

I know what you’re thinking.  How on earth could paying $5 dollars a gallon for gas be good for me?  If you’re like me, you probably get a sick feeling in your stomach each time you see the gas gauge on your car, truck, or SUV fall dangerously close to that horrifying “E” line.  The last thing any of us want to do is drop another $50-100 bucks into our tanks.  While this pain is far from fun, it might just be a necessary evil and there are some upsides to having high priced fuel.
For the last 5 years or so I’ve been saying that I hope gas goes to $5 bucks a gallon.  I remember when Read More

We’ve all heard the phrase “financial bailout” repeated over and over again for the past month; in fact more times then we all probably care to remember.  Perhaps it’s time to coin a new phrase that better describes the real challenges we are currently facing.  Despite all of the financial turmoil, stock market decline, and housing slump, one factor in this equation of economic recession trumps all, Confidence.  While financial bailout is a fitting term for how we are treating this problem, I think that Confidence Bailout would be a more fitting cure.

The majority of the challenges that are plaguing our economy right now can all be traced back to a lack of Read More

Typically I’m the last one to say that we need more Government intervention, however there seems to be a real lack of oversight within the financial sector.  I’m all for free markets and capitalism, believing that markets will self regulate themselves, but at what point do you step back and say we need a referee?

Besides my family, I have two passions in life; finance and sports.  The two of these tend to share many similarities including competition, winners and losers, and hopefully respect for the players and all involved.  Over the past two weeks I’ve been asked about a thousand times to help explain the financial disaster which has recently occurred in the stock market and how it could come to this.  One of the best Read More