"Money File"-Wealth Within The "Weekly World News"
Friday, August 31, 2007SUSIE GHARIB: In the money file tonight, finding sound financial advice in unexpected places. Here's Chuck Jaffe, senior columnist at Marketwatch.
CHUCK JAFFE, SENIOR COLUMNIST, MARKETWATCH: The "Weekly World News" published its last issue this month, ending 28 years of chronicling the exploits of Bigfoot, alien babies or dead celebrities. For years I read the supermarket tabloid mostly for its incredible personal finance stories, like the one explaining how to tell your financial future in a pizza or the one about the guy who found a bottomless wallet than never ran out of cash or the poor, confused soul who stored his money in a Swiss cheese, rather than a Swiss bank.
That being the case, there's tremendous irony that after all of the make-believe, wild-eyed, demented stuff that "Weekly World News" ever published, its final story may have been its best, most accurate and most truthful. The very last article in the last ever issue was a column suggesting that Americans need to get back to basics, cutting out the small excesses that ultimately bury people under a mountain of debt. Americans would benefit from cutting back on household overhead by starting new personal routines, like reading books instead of renting DVDs or walking around town rather than hitting the gym. Rather than being out of this world, the point was down to earth: instead of craving the next big thing, be satisfied with the last thing that's good enough. It will make a huge difference in your finances without dramatically curtailing your lifestyle. Learn to prioritize, reads the very last paragraph in "Weekly World News" history, and teach your family the same. Not only will you save a bundle, you'll find riches you never expected. I'm Chuck Jaffe.
