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It's a good thing the husband was able to buy us (free!) 'tickets' to the Brighter Life Session on Personal Finance by Sun Life Financial. The session was held this Saturday, September 7, from 10 in the morning to 12 noon at the spacious Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Net Lima in Bonifacio Global City. We live nearby so we got to the venue early and had the chance to meet and chat with some Sun Life Financial Planners. Randell Tiongson of www.randelltiongson.com was the invited no nonsense resource speaker. It was a time well-spent and I came home with a number of takeaways. Financial Literacy As an accountant by profession, I am financially literate in theory. I mean I understand cash flows, the concept of income and loss and the analysis of which scenario would bring in more profit or savings. The problem is I don't apply those skills to my personal finances. I should. We should. Which leads me to my second takeaway... Personal Finance Personal Finance = 80% Behavior + 20%...

An update by Karl Denninger at Market Ticker today got the old synapses firing. Denninger points out that pension plans are in trouble and cites a Wall Street Journal article strongly suggesting accounting fraud in public pension plans. The WSJ says: Based on their preferred accounting methods -- which discount future liabilities based on high but uncertain returns projected for investments -- these plans are underfunded nationally by around $310 billion. The numbers are worse using market valuation methods (the methods private-sector plans must use), which discount benefit liabilities at lower interest rates to reflect the chance that the expected returns won't be realized. Last year we warned about the same phenomenon in private sector pensions in Some Key Questions and The Limits of Optimism . In every case the culprit was the same - overly optimistic assumptions about investment returns allowed a financially deficient structure to be sold to key constituencies as safe and sou...