Courses Offer Assistance With Money Management

Consumer Credit Counseling of Spokane and the Washington State University Cooperative Extension are offering separate courses on personal financial management.

The extension service is making available a home-study series developed at Cornell University: “Financial Fitness.”

The three-art program covers spending, saving and reducing dependence on credit. Materials include basic information and charts that will enable users to calculate expenses, compare them to income, and assess savings and credit options.

Lessons will be mailed every two weeks. The cost is $10.

To register - the deadline is Feb.3 - mail a check payable to Cooperative Extension to: WSU Cooperative Extension; N222 Havana, Spokane, WA.; 99202.

More information is available by calling Chris Koehler at 533-2048.

The Credit Counseling program is “Money Control,” a four-part workshop that starts Wednesday and continues Feb. 8, 15, and 22. The courses, which discusses money behavior and ways to gain control over spending, will be held in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.

The Spokane location is in the lower level conference room at N1912 Division. In Coeur d’Alene, the sessions will be held in the Bank of America Building at 401 Front.

The classes last from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Cost is $18 for clients of Consumer Credit Counseling, $25 for nonclients.

To register, call 327-3777 or 1-800-892-6854.

Best consistently prosper

Industries have their ups and downs, but the best companies consistently prosper.

To emphasize that lesson, David L. Babson & Co. of Cambridge, Mass., last week pointed clients to American International Group and General Re, two strong firms in the propertycasualty insurance business, which in 1994 experienced its eighth straight year of intense price competition and high underwriting losses.

AIG’s stock is up 430 percent over the past decade; General Re’s, 288 percent.

Other strong companies cited by Babson: Wal-Mart, whose stock tumbled last year and now may be a good buy, and Johnson & Johnson.

Money market waivers

With money-market funds now yielding an average of 5.3 percent, nearly twice what they were a year ago, you might think they wouldn’t be aggressively luring customers. Not so. According to Money Fund Report, 58 percent of money market funds are waiving all or a portion of their fees to increase yields, commonly for months at a time.

One of the best deals around is Strong Money Market Fund (800-368-1030), now paying 6.3 percent and guaranteeing to waive all fees through June.

What’s an investor to do? If you have a lot stashed in a money fund - at least, say, $50,000 - and tend to compare yields in Barron’s or elsewhere, it’s probably worth switching your money around. Remember, though, you’re paying more taxes on higher yields, trimming some of the advantage, and that almost all funds that cut fees do so temporarily.

Moving to higher-yielding funds nonetheless makes sense - as long as you’re comfortable with the way the game is played. “It’s not as if money funds are changing their fees overnight,” says Walter Frank, editor of Money Fund Report. “Just make sure you keep your eye on the comparative yield of the fund.”