 |
What are your financial New Year's Resolutions for 2012? Tell me how you plan to apply the SMAC certification to your resolutions. Send your responses to this week's Color of Money question to colorofmoney@washpost.com. Be sure to include your full ...
More popular than Congress? Paris Hilton... Economists? favorite charts to explain 2011 North Koreans mourn Kim Jong Il Notable deaths of 2011 Financial New Year?
Those are all good resolutions and all obtainable. But without a plan they are just promises. Kelly Campbell, a certified financial planner, believes every resolution or goal should be ?SMAC certified.? Campbell writes in a blog for U.S. News & World Report that SMAC is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable and Compatible.
So, for example, if you want to get out of debt, it?s going to take more than just writing that goal down on paper. You have to be purposeful about it. Come up with a plan for how you?ll find the money to pay off the debts. Which debt will you tackle first? (I always suggest that you start with the debt with the lowest balance. Paying that off quickly will give you an emotional burst).
?Every time you set goals, think of them with the idea of ?SMAC certification,?? Campbell writes. ?This simple idea will get you from goal setting to goal accomplishing.?
What are your financial New Year?s Resolutions for 2012? Tell me how you plan to apply the SMAC certification to your resolutions. Send your responses to this week?s Color of Money question to colorofmoney@washpost.com. Be sure to include your full name city and state. Put ?Financial New Year?s Resolution for 2012? in the subject line.
Join me online at 11:45 a.m. for my live video chat and then at noon ET for my text chat. These are my last chats of 2011, so be sure to send your money questions in early for the text chat or read the archives later.
Around the country, some people have really gotten into the spirit of the holiday by anonymously paying off the balance of other people?s layaway purchases.
Many of the layaway angels have visited Kmart stores, donating more than $412,000 to more than 1,000 layaway accounts, says Shannelle Armstrong, a spokeswoman for Sears Holdings Corp., which owns Kmart?s 1,300 stores.
Strangers at a Kmart in Lafayette, Ind., have paid for more than 15 layaway accounts, totaling almost $4,000. ?It?s pretty awesome,? Vic Sutherland, a store manager at that Kmart, told the Tucson Citizen. ?With the economy the way it is, you wouldn?t expect it.?
In California, a man paid off 63 Kmart layaway accounts totaling $9,800, and an Alabama man donated $11,000 to pay the accounts of 75 families, reports the Tucson Citizen.
The Northwest Florida Daily News reported that a donor paid off the balances for 20 people at a Wal-Mart in Florida. It cost the donor $2,700. Now one grandmother will be able to give her 4-year-old granddaughter the Disney Princess mirror and matching table and chairs she wanted.
As a token of my appreciation to my readers, I will be randomly giving away some of my leftover Color of Money book club selections from 2011.
Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.
More about badgesGet a badgeTo pause and restart automatic updates, click "Live" or "Paused". If paused, you'll be notified of the number of additional comments that have come in.
Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.
Join Pres. Obama. It's time to do it again.>>Are you in? Join Barack Obama's campaign now.>>Help Pres. Obama keep moving America forward.>>Join the 2012 campaign at BarackObama.