Financial News: Dr Boyce joins AOL Black Voices

Syracuse, NY – Dr. Boyce Watkins of Syracuse University has recently joined America Online as a financial writer and expert commentator.  He will be the resident Financial Expert for AOL Black Voices, the premier Black news website in America, with over 100,000 readers per day.  Dr. Watkins has been on the faculty at Syracuse University for 8 years and has worked with many major media outlets, including CNN, BET, ESPN and CBS Sports.  He is also the author of “Financial Lovemaking 101: Merging Assets with Your Partner in Ways that Feel Good”.

In his role with AOL Black Voices, Dr. Watkins will provide analysis on the economy, employment issues, celebrity finances, and money management. He will use his unique style of informative, compelling, yet down to earth financial analysis to promote financial literacy within the Black community.  The site will syndicate his popular financial series' "Financial Lovemaking", co-hosted with S. Tia Brown (formerly a Senior Editor with "In Touch Weekly" Magazine) and "Get Your Paper Straight", a radio segment hosted with George Kilpatrick of Power 106.5 and WSYR radio.

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Your Black News: New York Pastor Gets $600K Pay Package

Dr Boyce Watkins

www.BoyceWatkins.com

I read today about the financial compensation package of pastor Brad Braxton of the New Riverside Church in Manhattan.  Here is the breakdown of Braxton’s compensation:

$250,000 in salary.

$11,500 monthly housing allowance.

Private school tuition for his child.

A full-time maid.

Entertainment, travel and "professional development" allowances.

Pension and life insurance benefits.

An equity allowance for Braxton to save up to buy a home.

On top of that, Braxton immediately hired a new second in command at more than $300,000 a year.

The total value of the package is estimated to be $600,000 per year. 

All I can say is “wow”.  No disrespect to this man or his congregation, but he would NOT be preaching at my church.  What was most problematic about the church’s decision to give Braxton such a ridiculous compensation package was that they didn’t seem to clear it with the membership, many of whom are filing suit over Braxton’s pay. As a Finance Professor, I must admit that I personally become uncomfortable hearing men and women of God talking about money more than I do.  I must disagree with Rev. TD Jakes, who said that “Jesus is a product”.  Sorry brother, Nikes are a product.  Cheeseburgers are a product.  Jesus is a spirit that should lead us to pursue a good that is greater than our bank accounts.  I am not sure how many pastors agree with that assessment. 

Dr Boyce in the NY Times: Is The Rushcard a good thing or Predatory?

In a speech today, the Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke talked about the need to “strike the right balance: to strive for the highest standards of consumer protection without eliminating the beneficial effects of responsible innovation on consumer choice and access to credit.”

Where exactly regulators think that “balance” lies has varied greatly over time. Throughout American history, politicians and their constituents have viewed access to credit as alternatively empowering and exploitative. We can’t seem to decide: Is making credit available to “subprime” borrowers helping them, or taking advantage of their ignorance?

In the 1970s, efforts to deregulate the financial industry began in earnest. Regulators began repealing or amending laws that restricted banks’ activities (such as the rates of interest they could charge on a loan or pay on a bank deposit). With more freedom to tailor their financial products to the risks potential borrowers presented, banks experimented with new credit terms for different types of customers. This led to much greater access to credit across the board.

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Study Finds that Black Male Unemployment is out of control

A recent study indicates that of the major ethnic groups impacted by unemployment during the current U.S. recession, Black men have experienced the greatest job losses since the crisis officially began in November 2007.

"What's missing from national media coverage of this recession is plainly a great deal of [honesty] about who's losing their jobs. This is overwhelmingly a blue-collar, retail sales, low-level recession," said Andrew Sum, professor of economics and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Mass., which published the study.

"The Impacts of the 2007-2009 National Recession on Male Employment in the U.S. through January 2009; The Massive Concentration of Job Losses Among Males Especially Black Men and Blue Collar Workers" tracked employment losses in the recession across gender groups of workers overall, and in the four major ethnicities— Asian, Black, Hispanic and White. Thestudy found that:

 

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Predatory Lending in the Black Community: Is Russell Simmons a Perpetrator?

Dr. Boyce Watkins, one of the world’s leading Financial experts and Black Social commentators, spoke with BBC World news about the RushCard, which has been heavily adopted in Black communities.

Watkins wrote this commentary about the Rushcard and you can click the image below to listen in on the interview.  Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and Financial Writer for America Online.   He asks whether or not Russell Simmons is a pimp or if he is helping the Black community.

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Tax Mistakes You Want to Avoid

Gentlemen (and ladies), start your engines. Tax Day is less than a week away.

But as you race toward the finish line, be mindful of common tax-filing errors. Some mistakes could cost you money. Others could raise red flags at the IRS. Tax software will do math and point out tax breaks you might overlook, but these programs are only as good as the information you enter.

Here are some common last-minute blunders, and how to avoid them:

Automatically not itemizing.

A 2002 study by the Government Accountability Office found that more than 2 million taxpayers who claimed the standard deduction could have lowered their tax bills by itemizing.

Deductible expenses include interest on your mortgage, property taxes, charitable contributions and unreimbursed medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of your adjustable gross income.

Ordinarily, that threshold puts the medical-expense deduction out of reach for most taxpayers who have employer-provided health care.

But the economic downturn has led employers to shift more of the cost of health care to their workers in the form of higher deductibles, co-payments and co-insurance. That means more taxpayers could rack up enough unreimbursed expenses to claim the deduction, says Mary Canning, dean of the schools of taxation and accounting at Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

Automatically itemizing.

 

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The Cost of Raising Children

By: Sarah Horner
April 8, 2009
An article from MSNBC.com entitled, "Budgeting for Baby: What does it really cost?" outlines exactly how much having and raising a child will cost you.
"If you've never been a budgeter, now's the time for a financial reckoning. Experts recommend that parents-to-be and new parents dedicate themselves to whittling down their credit-card debt (ideally — and here's some tough love — to zero), while at the same time, building an emergencies-only savings account of six to nine months' worth of expenses. Do whatever it takes to meet this goal: Spend on a cash-only basis and write down every expense — or use a free online spending tracker like Quicken.Intuit.com or Wesabe.com — so you have a visceral idea of where your money goes. And be prepared to sacrifice. "If you want to prioritize the expense of a child, well, you may not need as many minutes on your cell phone and you may not need as many meals in a restaurant," says Chatzky. "And by the way, you're not going to be going to restaurants much once you have a child, anyway!""
To read the entire article, Click here

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Dr Boyce Explains to NPR How Madoff Got Rich

Dr. Boyce Watkins explains to Farai Chideyah how Madoff got away with stealing $50 Billion dollars in the largest Ponzi Scheme in American history. Click the image to listen!

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Black Money: Obama’s Team is Very Wealthy

When President Barack Obama moved into the White House earlier this year, he took several of his fellow Chicago millionaires with him.
Newly released disclosure reports show virtually all of the top Chicagoans serving in the West Wing had assets valued at a million dollars or more at the end of 2008.
In several cases, the reports provide the first detailed look at the finances of some of the president's top aides and friends from Chicago who have risen with him. They also show the salary haircut many have taken to be in the White House, at least until they return to the private sector.
Some of the wealth can be attributed to the fact that the top staff members surrounding Obama — such as Chicagoans Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett — are from a big city where salaries tend to be higher. Many of the comparable senior staffers with the previous two presidents came from Austin, Texas, and Little Rock, Ark., where salaries for top professionals tend to be the lower than in Chicago.

 

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Some Cash Strapped Cities Printing their Own Currency

A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money.

Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are aiming to help consumers make ends meet and support struggling local businesses.

The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

Workers with dwindling wages are paying for groceries, yoga classes and fuel with Detroit Cheers, Ithaca Hours in New York, Plenty in North Carolina or BerkShares in Massachusetts.

Ed Collom, a University of Southern Maine sociologist who has studied local currencies, says they encourage people to buy locally. Merchants, hurting because customers have cut back on spending, benefit as consumers spend the local cash.

 

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Your Black Money: Why Do Athletes Go Broke?

From Sports Illustrated

What the hell happened here? Seven floors above the iced-over Dallas North Tollway, Raghib (Rocket) Ismail is revisiting the question. It's December, and Ismail is sitting in the boardroom of Chapwood Investments, a wealth management firm, his white Notre Dame snow hat pulled down to his furrowed brow.

In 1991 Ismail, a junior wide receiver for the Fighting Irish, was the presumptive No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. Instead he signed with the CFL's Toronto Argonauts for a guaranteed $18.2 million over four years, then the richest contract in football history. But today, at a private session on financial planning attended by eight other current or onetime pro athletes, Ismail, 39, indulges in a luxury he didn't enjoy as a young VIP: hindsight.

"I once had a meeting with J.P. Morgan," he tells the group, "and it was literally like listening to Charlie Brown's teacher." The men surrounding Ismail at the conference table include Angels outfielder Torii Hunter, Cowboys wideout Isaiah Stanback and six former pros: NFL cornerback Ray Mickens and fullback Jerald Sowell (both of whom retired in 2006), major league outfielder Ben Grieve and NBA guard Erick Strickland ('05), and linebackers Winfred Tubbs ('00) and Eugene Lockhart ('92). Ismail ('02) cackles ruefully. "I was so busy focusing on football that the first year was suddenly over," he says. "I'd started with this $4 million base salary, but then I looked at my bank statement, and I just went, What the...?"

 

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