Round-up: financial crisis explained by stick figures (and more!)

• I recently came across The Subprime Primer-- a 45-page stick figure cartoon that is fun, painless, and actually suprisingly helpful in understanding how we got into this crisis. It was done last year, so it doesn't talk about what makes the situation so acute right now, but it definitely lays the groundwork. Enjoy (though beware of adult language!)
• And on the subject of the financial crisis, this is so simultaneously infuriating and amusing that I have to share it. An investigation of the credit rating agencies, which routinely gave lowest-risk AAA ratings to risky mortgage-backed securities, found an e-mail by one of the analysts bemoaning their reckless practices by saying: “It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.” (On the less-amusing side, “Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.”)
• My Two Dollars has an interesting discussion at Friends Asking Friends For Donations - How Do You Handle It?
• The Psychological and Emotional Attachment to What We Have and What We Want is a thoughtful recent post from The Simple Dollar.
  

Because you can't go wrong with cat pictures...

It's taking me more time than I expected to finish up the long, complicated, interesting post I'm working on. I should have it for you soon, but in the meantime, enjoy this:

(From I Can Has Cheezburger, found via plonkee money.)

Round-up: free museums and ice cream and more

Hope everyone's week is off to a good start! Now, without further ado:

• This Saturday, September 27th, is Museum Day 2008-- hundreds of museums found here are free if you print out the coupon on the website.
  
• And on Thursday (9/25) between 5 and 8pm is Cold Stone Creamery's annual "World's Largest Ice Cream Social" for the Make-A-Wish foundation-- you get a free 3 oz cup of ice cream (one of two flavors designed by Make-A-Wish kids) and a suggestion to make a donation to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Locations here.
  
• There are other "free" giveaways for Make-a-Wish this week too... on Tuesday you can get a 3-inch turkey sub at Blimpie's, on Wednesday there's small Mexi-Fries at Taco Time (except in IN, MI, IA, CO, and Seattle), and small Great Fries at The Great Steak and Potato Company on Friday.
  
• Fund your own sabbatical, writes Philip Brewer at Wise Bread.
• Plonkee at plonkee money posts that feminism is actually quite important to me.

Thousands of socially/eco-conscious items in one place at WorldofGood.com

Looking for products that are fair trade, environmentally friendly, support a cause, or mesh with your values in other ways? Tired of searching through dozens of individual websites that each only have a small selection? Enter WorldofGood.com, formed in partnership between eBay and a fair trade company, which is already listing nearly 10,000 products.

I was a little hesitant of the idea given the eBay angle, but I'm actually really liking WorldofGood.com. Not only is it incredibly convenient to have so many items in one place, but they're doing a terrific job of displaying (and letting you search based on) the social and environmental impacts of the products, and they seem to have a good method to ensuring that sellers and products are on the up-and-up.

There are two unique features attached to every WorldofGood listing: Trustology and Goodprint. Trustology is a listing of the independent organizations that have verified the seller and/or product-- groups like TransFair which certify a product is fair trade, or Rainforest Alliance which certifies on environmental and social standards, or Co-op America which certifies that the business or organization is deeply committed to social and environmental standards, or more than a dozen other groups. If a seller hasn't been verified by at least one WorldofGood-approved Trust Provider, they can't sell on WorldofGood; the Trustology box in an item's listing will show all applicable Trust Providers, and you can also search by Trust Provider.

Goodprint fills in the details of the social and environmental impacts of the products. There are four big categories (People Positive, Eco Positive, Animal Friendly, Supports a Cause) and subcategories within those (for example, "economic empowerment" and "preserving tradition" are two of the options within People Positive, while Animal Friendly could mean "animal welfare" or "species preservation.") And when you get to an item's page, you can delve even deeper-- there are thirty different detailed statements that can be associated with each product! These range from "Producer receives more than 75% of the retail price" to "Made in a producer-owned cooperative" to "Green energy fulfills 50% of required energy" to "From 100% sustainably harvested materials" to "No animal harmed, no animal testing, no animal ingredients." I love the level of detail here (although I wish you could actually search by these statements, rather than just by category and subcategory.)

Now, the Goodprint statements are not individually verified in any way, which is unfortunate, but it's probably unrealistic to expect otherwise. But nothing's stopping you from doing your own research, plus you can look at the certifications in the Trustology box to ease your mind-- those organizations may not vouch for individual Goodprint statements, but knowing what a third party guarantees is true helps you give the benefit of the doubt on the further details they put forward.

As I mentioned, you can search by Trust Provider and/or Goodprint category or subcategory; you can also search by type of item, price, and/or the region where it was produced. (Products are sold at fixed prices, not auctioned like on eBay, FYI.) WorldofGood also has a Community section where buyers, sellers, and Trust Providers can create profiles, write blogs, and post articles-- there's some activity there but it seems kind of slow to me, but maybe things will pick up over time.

All things considered, I'm pretty excited about the new site, both personally and more broadly. Personally, I think it's going to make my holiday shopping much easier! And more broadly, I think (or at least hope) that the all-in-one-place convenience will encourage more people to give it a whirl and consider social and environmental factors in their buying decisions. Plus the eBay connection can help spread the idea of conscious consuming to new eyes, since WorldofGood listings get cross-posted on eBay (and supposedly eBay's promoting WorldofGood on the main site, although I couldn't find anything on a quick look today.)

Have you looked at WorldofGood? What do you think of the set-up? Do you think it'll make you and/or others more likely to buy products that are in tune with your values?

Round-up: free smoothies, free credit monitoring, happiness, and strategic charity

Sorry that things've been quiet around here-- some personal stuff (which is hopefully over now)-- can I make it up to you with a great round-up?

• Free 20 oz smoothie from Smoothie King this Thursday 9/18 before 10:30am-- several coffee-flavored types-- find a location here!
• Okay, it's not as tasty as smoothies, but you can get six to nine free months of credit monitoring from Trans Union, including access to your credit report and credit score, if you register at this site by September 24th. It's a settlement in a class action lawsuit, so broad that pretty much anyone who has a credit history qualifies.
  
• From Get Rich Slowly, check out The Psychology of Happiness: 13 Steps to a Better Life.
• An interesting question at Free Money Finance-- Charity at Home or Abroad -- Is One Better than The Other?-- should you look to get more "bang for your buck," or focus on your own community and country?

Carnival of Ethics, Values, and Personal Finance

Here's the September edition:

• Cash Money Life presents Should You Tithe When Times are Hard? posted at Cash Money Life.
• debergerac78 presents Procrastination’s a problem - but is it unethical? posted at The Business Ethics Blog.
• David Gross presents Bob Shrugged posted at The Picket Line.
• Peter presents Is Tithing Biblical? posted at Bible Money Matters.
• GrrlScientist presents High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families posted at Living the Scientific Life.
• Penny Nickel presents The true costs of driving-- how much could you save on transportation? posted at Money and Values.

Submit for next month with this form.

Improve your finances: organize a union at your workplace!

On this Labor Day, here's some personal finance advice that might surprise you-- if you're looking to improve your financial situation, organize a union! (Or if you've got one already, work on making it stronger and more effective.)

There are a lot of big financial benefits to being a union member:

• Wages. The average "union wage premium" in the U.S.-- the amount that union members make above non-union members-- is currently 11.9%, after controlling for age, gender, race, education, industry, and state. This effect is particularly pronounced for low-wage workers, in the range of 20%, but even at the high end there are still significant benefits: workers at the 80th percentile of wages (those who make more than 80% of other wage-earners) have a wage premium of 9.0% and those at the 90th percentile have a wage premium of 6.1%, still significantly higher than the cost of union dues (typically around 2%, sometimes lower.)
  
• Benefits (most of this is from the government's Employee Benefits in Private Industry, March 2007 Summary, a PDF):
• Health Insurance. In the private sector as of 2007, 88% of union members have access to health insurance through their employer and 78% participate, while 69% of non-union members have access and 49% participate. The difference in take-up is probably because non-union workers have to pay much more of the premiums than union members do; union members in the private sector on average pay 8% of the premium for single coverage and 12% of the premium for family coverage, while non-union members pay 20% of the premium for single coverage and 32% of the premium for family coverage. (Union workers are also significantly more likely to have dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage.)
  
• Retirement. Union members are significantly more likely to have access to retirement benefits than non-union workers (among private sector workers it's 85% of union members and 59% of non-union members; among public sector workers, 97% of union members and 83% of non-union members.) However, it's even more dramatic when you look at defined-benefit pension plans, which 69% of private-sector union members have access to, compared to just 15% of non-union workers.
  
• Other benefits. Union members are more likely to have access to a whole host of other benefits, too. 76% of union members in the private sector get life insurance from their employer compared to 56% of non-union members; 61% of union members have short-term disability coverage from their employer compared to 36% of non-union members. Union members are more likely to have paid holidays (84% to 76%) and those who do have paid holidays have more on average (10 for union members compared to 8 for non-union workers.) They're also more likely to have a number of other types of paid leave (from vacations and sick days to funeral leave and jury duty), albeit generally by relatively small margins.
  
• Security/Stability. Unlike the "employment at will" at most non-union jobs in which you can be fired without notice for any reason, in a union job after you're off probation typically you can only be fired if there's actually just cause for it (determined by a neutral third-party.) There's also often language prohibiting the contracting out of work that can be done by employees. And if you do get laid off there's more likely to be severance pay, and you may be kept on a recall list and have the first shot at it if your job or a similar job returns.
  
• Career development. Union members are more likely than non-union workers to receive employer-paid benefits for education and training. The other great part about career development in a union is fairness in promotions; the effects of favoritism are greatly diminished when you can challenge being passed over for someone who's less qualified than you.
  
• Health and safety. I can't access the primary sources that it's citing, but this link talks about a number of studies which found that health and safety is better at union workplaces-- injury and illness rates are lower. Not only does work-related illness and injury effect your quality of life, but it can have short and long-term financial consequences, too.
  

These are all extremely important, and on a personal note I really appreciate them. I love having no monthly health insurance premium, a $10 co-pay for doctor's visits and paying $1 for prescriptions. It's a cool feeling that I've qualified for a pension at age 26 (a small one, and rightfully so, but I'll get at least $7000 a year-- even after considering inflation that's probably the equivalent of $1000-$2000 today, which isn't too shabby-- and if I stay longer the amount keeps going up.) And as I watch as my boyfriend has to haggle personally for every dollar, I truly appreciate knowing I can count on a couple of wage increases every year, and that when it comes time to bargain new ones, my coworkers and I are all working collectively to do so.

But as a proud union member, I have to say that some of my favorite benefits are actually the non-economic ones. Solidarity-- knowing my coworkers are on my side and I'm on theirs if something goes wrong, that we can and do stand up for each other and support each other. A voice at work-- having labor-management committees in which employees can sit across the table with management and talk about where we think our employer should be going, what changes could be made to help us be more effective. The knowledge that I am accountable to my employer, but my employer is also accountable to my coworkers and me.

Of course unions have their downsides too, and some unions can be very ineffective. But really, unions are as strong or weak as their members. If you have a union you're not happy with, then organize your coworkers and make some changes! Do what you can to make your next contract negotiations more successful. Go to your union meetings and start discussions about the issues that concern you. If you think that some of the priorities and provisions in your contract are off, make your case to your coworkers-- and organize them! Run for an elected position in your union. If you've got a problem with the higher-ups at your union rather than the people at your worksite, then look for another union to affiliate with or go independent. There's no reason not to insist on getting your dues' worth and beyond.

Are you a union member or have you been one in the past? What pros and cons have you experienced? What do you think the net financial (and non-financial) effects are/were for you?