Strategi keuangan pribadi dalam menghadapi krisis ekonomi

How real people grow their wealth

For most people, wealth does not come in a windfall but instead gathers gradually as a result of years of hard work and diligence.

Bankrate readers offer their tips for growing wealth. You'll find no winning lottery numbers or surefire stock recommendations among them, but all are sensible suggestions for savings.

1. Grow your own food

I have a plot in our local community garden that I share with two of my friends.

It is a fun, inexpensive hobby for us -- plus it keeps us active and teaches our children important life skills.

We keep our 20- by 30-foot parcel planted year-round, and it provides our three families with fresh, organic produce.

-- Anonymous

2. Set limits and stick to them

I try to save at least three to four part-time paychecks so that I can elect to make a hefty payment on a credit card account and buy myself a little something I waited to get.

Also, I have inventoried my home and gathered up all half-full or almost empty bottles of lotions, soaps, hair creams, cleaning products and vowed not to make a purchase until we absolutely had not one drop of a particular thing. So I have not been to the store to buy these items -- including makeup and colognes.

I limit my driving and only buy $20 (of gas) at a time about once a week …so $80 a month. Not an ounce more.

As for groceries, I am using only fresh or frozen vegetables. At the store I purchase only the item that is $0.99 per pound and pull out my cookbook to find an exciting way to cook it and make great meals. Chicken can be cooked 100 different ways.

-- Sharon Dorsey

3. Buy savings bonds

I have always made a 10 percent deduction on my pay.

If you do it every week, you will see that you don't miss it. After a few years it can really accumulate into a nice sum of savings. The best vehicle is savings bonds. You buy them and just hold them.

-- Michael de Gennaro

4. Redirect your raises

Anytime I get a raise or a bonus, I don't have the additional money deposited into my checking account.

I have already proven I can live without the money, so first I direct it to my 401(k).

Once I maxed out my 401(k) contributions, my raises went directly into my HSA.

Once that was maxed out, they went directly into a savings account.

I now have my 401(k) fully invested, my HSA fully funded and a great emergency fund.

-- Sam Hohman

5. Split raises in half

Each and every job raise should be split -- half you keep and half is put into a monthly retirement vehicle. It is a foolproof way to retire early.

-- Chere

6. Track spending

Tracking spending (even for 30 days) allows you to know exactly what you spend.

Have you ever gone to the ATM and two days later asked yourself, "I know I got $60 on Tuesday -- where did it go?"

You may remember some of it, but you will not remember all of it. Tracking spending takes out the guesswork and puts you firmly in control of your finances.

From there, it's easy to determine what you can cut or, better yet, what you can save.

-- Jude Gilford

7. Spend less by budgeting

We found that if we keep track of our spending on a month-to-month basis, we spend less.

We are also good at paying ourselves first through auto-pay on the paycheck that goes into savings and 401(k) accounts.

We also are good at putting our loose change in the change jar so that maybe we can take that trip someday.

-- Brenda

8. Save by using credit

My husband and I do not carry any significant amounts of cash -- have approximately $20 to $40 maximum in each wallet.

All purchases -- food, gasoline and nominal retail purchases -- are on the card. All credit purchases are paid up completely every billing. Savings are twofold: 30-day float and no credit card interest ever for the past 30 years or more. Our motto is, if we pay any interest charges, they must be tax-deductible!

-- Kathleen McHugh

9. Take advantage of rewards

I charge all food, gas and household bills such as electricity, car loan and house insurance.

I pay the card off each month. I am left with reward points to turn into cash, restaurant certificates, gift cards at various stores and so on. I actually make $40 to $70 a month by doing this.

-- Diann Williams

10. Save with coupons

Use coupons at the grocery store and put that money in a piggy bank. It's amazing how much it adds up.

Years ago the stores gave you cash back for coupons you used, but now it's just deducted from the balance you owe at the store and your receipt shows how much you saved. But you haven't really saved if you aren't actively saving that money -- you are just spending less.

Start saving by taking the amount of cash out of your wallet and putting it away.

-- Lisa Anderson

11. Use direct deposit

The best savings secret is using direct deposit from your paycheck into a savings account.

I also have direct deposit to an additional savings account at a bank that I don't frequent very often for my vacation and Christmas fund. Even small amounts add up if you leave it alone.

-- Karla

12. Leverage automatic savings

The key in our household is automatic deposits. Here are some examples:

1. Every month we have a set amount taken out of our checking account and put into our two children's college savings plans -- $50 each.

In this way we are setting aside $600 per year for each child for their college education. At $600 each year for 18 years we will have a lot more than I, or my parents, had saved for my college education. They will be expected to work, apply for scholarships and take out loans if necessary to help fund their education.

2. Part of our paychecks goes to various savings accounts automatically:

1. Savings accounts for each of our children (both are under age 8) to buy them clothes or other necessary items. We save $10 per month for each, so that is $120 per year for each child, plus birthday and Christmas money they receive from relatives helps toward clothing expenses.
2. A money market fund for future vacations to the tune of $50 every two weeks, which turns out to be $1,300 per year. We usually take a big vacation every two years, so we have at least $2,600. Any money not spent on a previous vacation is left in the account.
3. A money market fund for the down payment on our next vehicle. Whenever we pay off a vehicle, that money gets set aside instead of spent, currently $150 every two weeks, which turns out to be $3,900 per year. We try to go at least two to four years after paying off a vehicle before replacing it.
4. A savings account for Christmas spending; we save $80 per month, or $960 total, to put toward Christmas presents for family and friends.

3. We fund our 401(k)s directly through our employer, taken out of our paychecks pretax. Paying for our retirement comes first.

By having our money moving automatically around to various savings accounts or into the college funds or 401(k) plans, there is no way not to have that money available for those reasons.

-- Jen Richardson

13. Don't touch the money

I have a certain amount allotted to a bank account each payday that I do not use to pay bills, nor do I withdraw that account. I never miss the money because it is allotted before my pay is deposited.

-- Christina

14. Pay attention to progress

I keep a chart of my debts and assets, including school loans, car loan, mortgage, my savings account and 401(k).

Then I watch them closely, actually daily right now, to see my savings grow and my debts come down. At the top of the chart I put how much I originally owed, and it has been very motivating. My savings account shows me daily how much I'm earning -- by doing nothing!

I've always been a saver, but don't have much. For many years, I was a single mom with two children, no education and no child support -- earning $5 an hour in Southern California.

The kids are now on their own, and I've been at the same job for almost 10 years making a decent income. I just can't figure out why I didn't make the chart before. It has significantly helped me save while paying off my debts.

-- Cindy Troyer

15. Save a little each week

I needed to save money for several long-term goals and ongoing bills, such as a new car, vacation fund, emergency vet fund for my pets and my personal emergency fund, and so on.

So I created an ING account for each fund. I started out the first week by putting $1 in each account. The second week I put $1 into each account plus an extra $1 into the personal emergency fund, third week went $1 into each account plus $2 into the personal account, and so on.

The second month I put $2 a week into each account plus the extra $1 into the savings. Third month was $3 into each account each week plus the extra.

Doesn't sound like much, but you slowly learn to live without the money -- paying yourself first!

At this point I am putting away almost $100 a week spread out over several accounts. Some accounts are just gathering funds for long-term goals, for instance a new car, while others get tapped into on a regular basis.

-- Alexis Heydt

16. Check grocery store ads

I have found that one of the best ways to save a few bucks is to watch out for grocery store ads.

I retired about 10 years ago and love to grocery shop. At my local grocery market there is never a week that goes by that they don't have a great discount on something. I save on average $40 to $45 per week, or $1,300 to date this year.

Every item I buy is something to eat or use for the household. It beats the heck out of coupons.

-- David Swanger

Sumber :

Rencana Awal US Bailout

Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way

By CARTER DOUGHERTYPublished: September 22, 2008

A banking system in crisis after the collapse of a housing bubble. An economy hemorrhaging jobs. A market-oriented governmentstruggling to stem the panic. Sound familiar?

Swedish National Debt Office

Bo Lundgren, minister for fiscal and financial affairs during the 1992 crisis.

• 
  

It does to Sweden. The country was so far in the hole in 1992 — after years of imprudent regulation, short-sighted economic policy and the end of its property boom — that its banking system was, for all practical purposes, insolvent.

But Sweden took a different course than the one now being proposed by the United States Treasury. And Swedish officials say there are lessons from their own nightmare that Washington may be missing.

Sweden did not just bail out its financial institutions by having the government take over the bad debts. It extracted pounds of flesh from bank shareholders before writing checks.Banks had to write down losses and issue warrants to the government.

That strategy held banks responsible and turned the government into an owner. When distressed assets were sold, the profits flowed to taxpayers, and the government was able to recoup more money later by selling its shares in the companies as well.

“If I go into a bank,” said Bo Lundgren, who was Sweden’s minister for fiscal and financial affairs at the time, “I’d rather get equity so that there is some upside for the taxpayer.”

Sweden spent 4 percent of its gross domestic product, or 65 billion kronor, the equivalent of $11.7 billion at the time, or $18.3 billion in today’s dollars, to rescue ailing banks. That is slightly less, proportionate to the national economy, than the $700 billion, or roughly 5 percent of gross domestic product, that the Bush administration estimates its own move will cost in the United States.

But the final cost to Sweden ended up being less than 2 percent of its G.D.P. Some officials say they believe it was closer to zero, depending on how certain rates of return are calculated.

The tumultuous events of the last few weeks have produced a lot of tight-lipped nods in Stockholm. Mr. Lundgren even made the rounds in New York in early September, explaining what the country did in the early 1990s.

A few American commentators have proposed that the United States government extract equity from banks as a price for their rescue. But it does not seem to be under serious consideration yet in the Bush administration or Congress.

The reason is not quite clear. The government has already swapped its sovereign guarantee for equity in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance institutions, and the American International Group, the global insurance giant.

Putting taxpayers on the hook without anything in return could be a mistake, said Urban Backstrom, a senior Swedish finance ministry official at the time. “The public will not support a plan if you leave the former shareholders with anything,” he said.

The Swedish crisis had strikingly similar origins to the American one, and its neighbors, Norway and Finland, were hobbled to the point of needing a government bailout to escape the morass as well.

Financial deregulation in the 1980s fed a frenzy of real estate lending by Sweden’s banks, which did not worry enough about whether the value of their collateral might evaporate in tougher times.

Property prices imploded. The bubble deflated fast in 1991 and 1992. A vain effort to defend Sweden’s currency, the krona, caused overnight interest rates to spike at one point to 500 percent. The Swedish economy contracted for two consecutive years after a long expansion, and unemployment, at 3 percent in 1990, quadrupled in three years.

After a series of bank failures and ad hoc solutions, the moment of truth arrived in September 1992, when the government of Prime Minister Carl Bildt decided it was time to clear the decks.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the opposition center-left, Mr. Bildt’s conservative government announced that the Swedish state would guarantee all bank deposits and creditors of the nation’s 114 banks. Sweden formed a new agency to supervise institutions that needed recapitalization, and another that sold off the assets, mainly real estate, that the banks held as collateral.

Sweden told its banks to write down their losses promptly before coming to the state for recapitalization. Facing its own problem later in the decade, Japan made the mistake of dragging this process out, delaying a solution for years.

Then came the imperative to bleed shareholders first. Mr. Lundgren recalls a conversation with Peter Wallenberg, at the time chairman of SEB, Sweden’s largest bank. Mr. Wallenberg, the scion of the country’s most famous family and steward of large chunks of its economy, heard that there would be no sacred cows.

The Wallenbergs turned around and arranged a recapitalization on their own, obviating the need for a bailout. SEB turned a profit the following year, 1993.

“For every krona we put into the bank, we wanted the same influence,” Mr. Lundgren said. “That ensured that we did not have to go into certain banks at all.”

By the end of the crisis, the Swedish government had seized a vast portion of the banking sector, and the agency had mostly fulfilled its hard-nosed mandate to drain share capital before injecting cash. When markets stabilized, the Swedish state then reaped the benefits by taking the banks public again.

More money may yet come into official coffers. The government still owns 19.9 percent of Nordea, a Stockholm bank that was fully nationalized and is now a highly regarded giant in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea region.

The politics of Sweden’s crisis management were similarly tough-minded, though much quieter.

Soon after the plan was announced, the Swedish government found that internationalconfidence returned more quickly than expected, easing pressure on its currency and bringing money back into the country. The center-left opposition, while wary that the government might yet let the banks off the hook, made its points about penalizing shareholders privately.

“The only thing that held back an avalanche was the hope that the system was holding,” said Leif Pagrotzky, a senior member of the opposition at the time. “In public we stuck together 100 percent, but we fought behind the scenes.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 15, 2008

An article and a picture caption on Sept. 23 about Sweden’s response to its 1992 financial crisis misstated the government position at the time for Bo Lundgren, who described Sweden’s strategy and commented on the United States’ proposals for resolving its own crisis. A correction in this space on Sept. 27 repeated the error. He was minister for fiscal and financial affairs — not finance minister or deputy finance minister.

Source:

What US government should do is make US company have to received moral and trust punishment before receive bailout and for limitating the excess ammount of money supply prohibited by the bailout itself.

But in US bailout, companies are so closed and restricted to report their losses because they don't want to give ashame and left behind by their customers. But the mistakes are in that point, because it makes government doesn't know how big bailout should be given by the government so there will be enough money supply and the problems themselves can be fixed in relatively short time.

Awal Krisis Ekonomi Global

Krisis ekonomi global ini dimulai dari krisis ekonomi yang menimpa Amerika Serikat (AS). Krisis ekonomi yang menimpa Amerika Serikat berasal dari kredit macet sektor perumahan AS atau istilah kerennya subprime mortgage. Krisis subprime mortgage berawal dari gagal bayarnya sejumlah kredit perumahan oleh warga Amerika Serikat sendiri.

Di negara Amerika Serikat, konstitusi AS memberikan dukungan sepenuhnya bagi warga negara Amerika Serikat dalam mempunyai rumah dan itu diatur di dalam undang-undang. Adapun hal ini membuat banyak warga AS mengajukan kredit ke bank untuk mendapatkan kemudahan tersebut. Sebagai contohnya Mickey yang penghasilannya $5000 per bulan hendak mengajukan kredit perumahan, dan ia diberikan rumah seharga $400.000 dengan cicilan $2000 selama jangka waktu 25 tahun. Kemudian KPR Mickey tersebut digabungkan dengan berbagai KPR-KPR lainnya dan dipaketkan dalam sekuritas atau surat berharga yang bernama CDO atau collateralized debt obligation atau berupa portofolio gabungan aset-aset mortgage (kredit perumahan) yang dapat diperdagangkan.

Kemudian CDO ini sendiri dijamin oleh asuransi atau yang biasa disebut credit default swap atau berupa penjaminan (CDO's risk management) atas CDS yang diperdagangkan dimana apabila CDO mengalami gagal bayar, maka penjual CDO akan membayarkannya sesuai kontrak insurance CDS ditambah bonus premi yang dibayarkan oleh pembeli CDS setiap bulan sebagaimana layaknya sebuah premi asuransi. Dan CDS ini juga dapat diperdagangkan.

Di dalam CDO dan CDS sendiri ada klasifikasi terhadap KPR, yang pada umumnya dibagi menjadi dua yaitu performing loan KPR atau prime mortgage dan potential non performing loan KPR atau subprime mortgage. Adapun yang menjadi awal dari krisis ini adalah kurang pengawasannya sistem keuangan terhadap subprime mortgage yang ada.

Penyebab utama dari krisis ini adalah deregulasi terhadap perundang-undangan Glass-Steagall Act di AS sendiri yang membatasi lingkup kerja antar bank investasi, asuransi, dan bank perkreditan. Glass-Steagall Act adalah perundang-undangan yang dibuat untuk mengatasi krisis ekonomi global di era 1930-an dimana ribuan bank di AS bangkrut. Perundang-undangan ini membatasi bank investasi untuk membeli aset-aset tyang dimiliki oleh bank perkreditan begitu juga sebaliknya.

Adapun peraturan ini dihilangkan oleh pemerintahan Kongres AS semasa Menteri Keuangan Robert Rubin dengan disahkannya Undang-undang Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Undang-undang ini membuat bank investasi, bank umum, dan asuransi saling bersaing memperebutkan seluruh ekonomi AS. Hal ini mengakibatkan adanya sejumlah kerakusan dan ketidakpatuhan terhadap syarat pemberian kredit-kredit perumahan guna mendapatkan sejumlah uang dan sekuritas untuk diinvestasikan oleh sejumlah perusahaan-perusahaan keuangan tersebut.

Sebagai contohnya seorang pria yang berumur 50 tahun bisa memperoleh KPR dengan periode 40 tahun dimana itu tidak layak diberikan menurut umur debitur. Debitur yang penghasilan rata-rata perbulannya hanya $ 2500 bisa memperoleh KPR untuk rumah seharga $500.000. Debitur dapat membeli rumah sampai 7 buah untuk diinvestasikan kembali karena mudahnya mendapat subsidi dan kemudahan prosedur KPR di AS.Dan berbagai pelanggaran-pelanggaran persyaratan pemberian KPR lainnya sehingga membuat jumlah subprime mortgage (KPR yg jelek atau junk mortgage) meningkat dengan sangat pesat ditambah dengan jumlah supply rumah atau market rumah di AS sendiri sudah sangat berlebih oleh karenanya.

Hal ini mengakibatkan adanya bubble yang besar dalam sistem perekonomian yang dimulai dari bubble housemarket, bubble subprime mortgage, bubble CDO, bubble CDS, dan instrumen-instrumen investasi lainnya yang underlying asset-nya yaitu subprime mortgage. Dan bubble ini sendiri meletus pada kuartal I tahun 2008 ini. Hal ini mengakibatkan devaluasi asset dan gagal bayarnya (default) KPR (mortgage), CDO, CDS serta anjloknya harga rumah karena kelebihan dari sisi supply.

Hal ini mengakibatkan kerugian yang sangat besar bagi kreditur dan debitur KPR, pembeli CDS, pembeli CDO, dan ekonomi AS secara keseluruhan. Dengan begitu banyaknya warga AS yang investasinya berbentuk rumah, penurunan harga rumah membawa kerugian yang sangat besar bagi warga AS karena selain harganya anjlok, mereka juga harus membayar sejumlah kredit (mortgage) yang jumlahnya tetap. Dan juga institusi keuangan AS dan internasional yang investasi pada subprime mortgage juga mendapati kerugian karena investasi mereka tidak terbayarkan sehingga membuat puluhan bank AS berbagai institusi keuangan di seluruh penjuru duniadunia terpaksa menyatakan kebangkrutan seperti Lehmann Brothers dan Bear Stearns.