The product review gurus over at Consumer Reports have a new tool designed to make sure you don’t pay too much for a not-so-hot item.

According to the release:

The “Consumer Reports Value Index” is a snapshot in time of the relative value of products recently rated by Consumer Reports. The graph plots the overall score of each product from Consumer Reports’ Ratings versus the median online price from PriceGrabber.com, Consumer Reports’ shopping tool. Value zones are based on Consumer Reports’ experience rating and evaluating products over the past 72 years and vary by product category.

The index rates Cameras and TVs so far. Non-subscribers can view the graphics, but any details on products are for subscribers only. Of course, you can take the model number and zoom over to any other technology site (cnet.com, for example) for reviews.

Both the digital camera and the flat screen TV my family purchased recently end up in the medium value category on the upper right hand side. That’s good, according to the CR folks.

Allianz Life released their second study on women and money today.

While some of the Women Money and Power Phase II study findings are interesting, I can’t help but wonder: Would men have answered much differently?

For example women who were surveyed answered the following regarding financial information:

Information is overwhelming/too much/hard to sort through	44 percent
Information is complicated or hard to understand	36 percent
Materials are really boring and dry	32 percent
Don’t understand terminology/materials seem foreign	26 percent

I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that many guys feel the same way. It’s not a female thing to think that much of the terminology and materials that insurance companies utilize is hard for even finance majors to digest.

Here’s another example

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Two new reports on 18-29 year-olds came out today from public policy groups Demos and American Progress.

The message that came out of the joint press conference the two just held is that the younger generation is strapped, that they are progressive and willing to pay higher taxes for things such as universal health care and cheaper college tuition, and that the government needs a new deal.

Tamara Draut, who also wrote a book about the topic a couple of years ago called “Strapped: Why America’s 20 and 30-something’s Can’t Get Ahead,” blames lower wages and the rising cost of college and housing for the “fragile” state of young Americans, who will be lucky if they can “work or educate their way into middle class.”

She backs the points up with stats galore, all which can be found in the report. I encourage you to take a look.

For example, since the 1970’s, the median earnings for young workers ages 25 to 34 have declined for men and women at all education levels except for young women with bachelor degrees—those wages have increased by 10 percent.

Student loan debt is “dampening the ability to build assets and even make jump to home ownership,” said Draut. The average grad leaves with nearly $20,000 in student loan debt; in Minnesota it’s $23,375.

And four in 10 in this generation spend more than a third of their income in rent compared to 18 percent of 18-29 year-olds in 1970 and 30 percent in

I’m a member of Gen-X. And while I listened to the call, I was reminded of an entire genre of slacker fiction by authors such as Douglas Coupland that came out. The stories starred disenfranchised young adults who also complained about poor job prospects and other financial woes.

And while I glanced through the report I was struck by how much other age groups have also lost ground. Grandma’s with too much credit card debt? Sadly, yes. Is economic suffering really divided by age?

What do you think? Do you feel as if the deck is stacked against the under-30 set? Are you a poster-child for these reports, or exactly the opposite?

Not in 2008 according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies:

Falling consumer confidence and a weakening economy are
inhibiting remodeling spending according to Harvard’s Joint Center for
Housing Studies. The Leading Indicator for Remodeling Activity (LIRA)
reports that homeowner spending for home improvement activity will
continue to decline, falling by an annual rate of 4.8% through the end
of 2008.

Click on the chart for a look (thanks for the help Roadguy!)

How about you? Do you have home improvement projects on hold? For us, we’re going to touch up some paint and replace a drafty front door. Then we have to do some landscaping or we risk our children being swallowed by mud pits on rainy days. But we’re not planning to spend more than maybe $4,000 max on housing maintenance and improvement this year (cross our fingers).

It’s not as fun to put money into a house that may decline in value, even if it’s just in the near term.

The surveys on retirement pile up like an early-spring blizzard and are about as annoying. But they do what they’re designed to do: Get people to start thinking about retirement planning. The hope too, is that you’ll use their financial products and advisers to plan, of course.

The first is from Mass Mutual. The most interesting finding in their survey of 17,000 individuals:

More money saved does not equal more confidence. Only 44 percent
of high savers expressed confidence when making their investment
decisions, compared to 54 percent of low and medium savers.

What’s your number?

A lame ING survey (sorry ING, love the “high interest” savings account, but…) found that:

Americans view numbers relating to their sense of identity and their closest personal relationships as most important to them. The numbers frequently mentioned as significant are their own birthday (cited by 26% of respondents) or someone else’s birthday (22%). Other important numbers include a Social Security number (16%), a wedding anniversary (16%), a phone number (13%) and the number of children or siblings in one’s family (12%).

Only a small fraction (5%) consider a financial number, such as their retirement nest egg, as being among those most important to them. ING to the rescue.

The retirement game

The winner of the shameless attention grabbing non sequiter is Lincoln Financial, who did a survey that found 72 percent of Americans will spend less than one hour making their March Madness tourney picks this year compared to the 87 percent of respondents who plan to spend up to five hours in March thinking about retirement planning. I don’t buy it.

Who comes up with this stuff? And is it only so that their executives can make bad sports-money analogies (you know, crossing the finish line=retirement, get some skin in the game=start saving for retirement….)