It all starts with a plan + MORE Sep 23rd

BRUSSELS – European Central Bank President Mario Draghi says the bank is ready to provide another round of cheap long-term loans to banks if necessary, in a move that would keep borrowing rates low and support the fragile recovery.
Draghi on Monday told European Parliament lawmakers the bloc’s economic recovery still “needs to be firmly established.”
He said that in addition to keeping its benchmark interest rate low, the ECB is also prepared to offer a new round of cheap LTRO loans for banks, “if needed.”
The previous two so-called Long Term Refinancing Operations helped ease Europe’s debt crisis by injecting almost 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) into the financial system. That reduced fears that banks might collapse and bring down the public finances of weak states like Spain or Italy.
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Blayne Haggart needs a plan. The 40-year-old academic in St. Catharines, Ont. wants to get serious about investing for retirement. Over the last decade, Haggart and his wife Natasha have taken turns furthering their education, each completing a doctorate while the other worked. Along the way these former government workers managed to put aside a tidy sum in high-interest savings accounts in addition to the money they’ve accumulated in defined benefit pension plans. Now it’s time to get that cash working. “We’re very conservative investors,” says Haggart, “and for a while we were postponing any long-term investment decisions because we weren’t quite sure where we’d be in the future.”
Just like an athlete preparing for a big event, the Haggarts need to get their game faces on. But before they start investing, they need to define their goals.
Training for a marathon is different than training for a sprint, and weight training can add bulk or simply tone your muscles. You wouldn’t start an exercise regimen unless you knew what kind of results you wanted…

An article from the Urban Institute profiled a young woman who “gave up on her local bank five years ago” and now relies exclusively on storefront cheque cashing companies (such as payday loan companies). Her “bank account” is a pre-paid or re-loadable debit card. She admits that she sees no need to ever use a bank again. These less traditional money stores are more accessible to her and offer lower service fees than do traditional banks. This approach takes living paycheque-to-paycheque to a whole new level. Unfortunately, based on the information provided in the article, these non-traditional money exchanges and lenders are increasingly used, by low income earners and surprisingly also used by those earning $50,000 annually.
Living paycheque-to-paycheque provides no cushion or contingency for life’s surprises. Not only are there no savings to rely upon, but future opportunities are limited because no credit history is built. Alternative income sources such as pawn shops can only be tapped into as long as the flow of personal salable goods is available for pawning…