An update on 2009 financial resolutions
TEXT OF STORY
Tess Vigeland: All right, ‘fess up. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions last year? I kept one — out of three. Two of those were financial, as we discussed on last week’s show. And lots of you made money resolutions this year as we all tossed in the seas of the economic crisis. So in January, we aired some of the promises you made to yourself. And now we’re checking back in with three listeners to find out how the year shaped up for them.
Julie Larsen: My name is Julie Larsen and I’m calling from Tucson, Ariz. Last year, I was faced with the prospect of being laid off. I work in the travel industry. I knew it was coming; I had time to prepare. I just wanted to trim my expenses, not spending on clothes, music and going out to eat less.
I was laid off in April, and I was out of work for six months. I did not burn through all of my savings. In 2010, I hope to have a more stable career. The travel industry has been hard hit. Transitioning into teaching seems like that would be a much better career plan for me.
Jack Deuterman: Jack Deuterman and I’m from Jamestown, N.C. As I recall, I said that I was going to lay low, make very few trades, not do anything radical until I can tell exactly what was going on with the stock market and the economy. I paid off my mortgage, I put in a new heating system — and that was a wonderful investment of that money. I did a little bit of trading to try and get in on the bottom. After I bought AIG at $3, it went down. But I am very itchy to get back in. I wasn’t watching that closely last year; I will be doing it more closely this year.
Christon Achong: My name is Christon Achong, and I’m calling from Houston, Texas. From the start of this year, they were save as much money as possible, try to use credit unions more instead of banks and pay everything I can in cash. When I look back at my bank account, I see that I saved almost $50,000. I also see that I placed it into a credit union that’s earning pretty decent interest. I’m still sticking with that adage that I came up with, “When banks collude, the customer gets screwed.” And I’ve been pretty ruthless on containing costs. We still do things, so I was able to go to Disneyland, but every single cost was already accounted for. So we paid for all with cash.
In 2010, I’m going to keep keepin’ on: saving cash, keeping my head low and waiting for the economy to get better.
Vigeland: OK let’s do this again. Go to our Web site, Marketplace.org, and tell us what your financial resolution — or resolutions — are for 2010. We’ll air the best of them next week. And hold ’em to account a year from now.
Stories You Might Like
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
