Aaron Wilmont asked:

Congress will begin debating if a Consumer Financial Protection Agency should be created, that will help to make credit agreements transparent. Banks complain this would obstruct credit.

All in all, consumer credit counseling services are in demand for many people, because of the lack of understanding of the contracts involved. There have been attempts made to protect borrowers from the confusing agreements with some transparency and Congress is being urged by the present administration to make lenders agreements even more transparent.

On the whole, this is basically an attempt to make it less of a risk for people that are taking loans to understand clearly what is entailed in the loan agreement to the dismay of some lenders.

Having stated this, however, it should be duly noted that this is really not so very different from the Georgia predatory lending laws that were enacted from the fall of 2002 to the spring of 2003 that required investors that purchased secondary mortgages to hold liability for wrongdoing in the original loan.

The predatory lending law was later repealed as it was felt it might prevent credit for the borrower that needed it most. This is what banks are complaining of with the transparency from lenders that Congress is currently debating, the fear of choking off credit from those borrowers that need it.

Regarding the ethics of many of the credit counseling firms as well as the many free and non-profit Debt consolidation and debt help organizations, a good general rule of thumb to use regarding them is that when debt settlement appears too good to be true, in most cases it probably is, and the only way to be sure according to financial experts is seek the advice of a credit counselor prior to agreeing to pay an amount decided upon by a credit card company in general. This is your due diligence as a consumer, as well as good common sense overall.

In many cases with some adjustments to the person’s budget they are able to pay off the debt and when using a licensed credit counseling company it is possible for them to help make arrangement to have the payments lowered to an affordable price. Choosing this type of option rather than agreeing to a payment is the fact that it will not affect the person’s credit rating in the same manner.

There are actually many different places where it is quite possible to find reliable credit counseling companies like the website for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling or the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies. Just go to your favorite search engine and type those names in and their website url’s will appear along with other related resources. Just remember that when dealing with a non-profit credit counseling company a fee of approximately $20 per month can be expected and in cases where it is not possible to pay one of these companies the fee can be waived until the financial debt issues have been satisfied.

The “three-legged stool” is considered the basic model of retirement savings. It’s a metaphor that has been used since the late-1940s as a way to describe saving for your future. No one is quite sure how the concept was started, but it’s one that stuck. While the legs of the stool were different in the past (they relied heavily on other types of retirement options), today those legs have grown and transformed into a completely different kind of stool.

The problem is: most Americans don’t even have a complete stool, let alone a steady one. This can be attributed to many factors. According to the 2005 Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS), released annually by the Employee Benefits Research Institute, 31% of current retirees believe that Social Security will be enough to sustain them for the rest of their lives. You don’t have to be a government expert to know that Social Security may not last forever. Even if Social Security lasts, most agree that for the system to survive there will have to be some sort of benefits cut for future retirees. Essentially, that means one of the stool’s legs is a bit shorter and a bit weaker. Care to have a seat? Me neither. Those who have only relied on the one leg of retirement planning their whole lives may find that the stool will become a bit difficult to depend on in their later years. But this can all be prevented. After all, there are still two legs left.

The second leg in the modern stool era is a company pension plan. In May of 2005, United Airlines was allowed to default on its employee pension plan. It’s a move that will save the company millions of dollars, but will leave its employees looking for alternative sources of retirement income. Most companies today are switching to 401(k) plans, where the employer has the option to match a percentage of the contributions to the plan. 401(k) plans are more secure than pension plans and they have more rollover options, but employer-sponsored retirement funds are simply one more option in a plan that should contain several strong legs. You should work with a financial professional to craft a specific 401(k) strategy, including rollover options, so that you’re confident the second leg can bear some retirement weight.

The final and increasingly popular leg of the stool is personal savings. Sadly, many people feel they have no major options for future retirement savings. In times of shaky employer provided retirement funds and uncertainty over Social Security’s future, a real personal savings plan remains the strongest of the legs, but ONLY if you plan for your future. You’ve probably heard of IRA’s before, but can you name all the different types and which one suits you best? IRA’s are specific retirement funds set aside for you to save for the future. You can also fund your retirement by investing in mutual funds or any other form of securities you wish. Depending on your current financial situation, you’ll want to consult with a financial expert to decide what plan is best.

There are a few simple steps you can take to start exploring your personal savings retirement options. The first is to contact an independent financial professional who can council you on more options and details regarding your retirement. The second is to calculate your post-retirement income. Calculating your post-retirement income is one quick and easy way to start preparing for retirement. According to the RCS, currently, only 4 in 10 workers have done the simple calculating needed to determine a sufficient post-retirement income. Calculating your post-retirement income is easy and very essential to planning for retirement. Oftentimes, people don’t believe they’ll need a whole lot of savings to retire on. Sometimes, seeing the results can light a fire underneath your retirement plan and cause you to re-think your savings strategy.

One of the biggest mistakes future retirees can make is planning their retirement alone. While something can be said for a “can-do” spirit, trusted financial professionals are more likely to find better ways to help you save money for retirement. When workers were asked about the most helpful tool for saving for retirement in the 2005 Retirement Confidence Survey, the largest percentage of workers surveyed (27%), said they believed advice from a financial professional was the most helpful. Aside from post-retirement income, it’s also important to have some sort of long-term care outlook, in case long-term medical care is needed after you retire.

While Congress debates the future of Social Security, there is always hope the program will be saved and improved. But there are never guarantees in life or politics. Only you can decide what kind of retirement plan you’ll have and how comfortably you’ll be able to live in the future. If you choose to rely solely on Social Security, you may find the going to get rough in the future, especially considering inflation and rising healthcare costs.

If you choose to plan carefully with a financial professional, you have a personal say over your future, instead of leaving your future financial security in the hands of elected officials or employer-sponsored plans. If your retirement is filled with less worry and financial strain, you’ll have more opportunities to live out your days actively, rather than just passing time, sitting on your wobbly stool.

Carbon offsets have received some bad press of late, some of it deserved but much of it misdirected. This is due in part to the fact that there is no single prevailing quality assurance standard or government oversight of the voluntary emissions reductions (VER) market. However, the variety of standards means that there are high quality and lower quality offsets, and therein lies the challenge.

The truth is there are many praiseworthy carbon reduction projects. To increase the odds of selecting one, offset buyers must become educated consumers. Only through education can buyers ensure they are purchasing the right carbon commodity for them and avoid the traps that have tripped up the most well-intentioned greening efforts.

Buying Carbon Offsets: A Quick Primer

Carbon offsets serve a number of purposes. In the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS), under the auspices of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), European companies can invest in emissions reduction projects in developing countries and claim the reductions as their own. That’s because greenhouse gases, unlike local pollutants such as mercury, are global: reducing one ton of CO2 in China has the same result as reducing one ton of CO2 in Germany.

Cognizant of this fact, and seeing an opportunity for wealthier countries to reduce their emissions at the lowest cost while simultaneously contributing to international development, the framers of the Kyoto Protocol included the CDM as a cost containment mechanism. In the US, where there is not yet a mandatory federal cap-and-trade scheme in place, offsets can be purchased by those companies that would like to voluntarily reduce their carbon footprint but find it too expensive to curtail their own emissions without an incentive to do so.

There are several key components of an offset that every potential buyer should examine closely before making a purchase:

Five Easy Pieces: Your Offset Quality Checklist

Verification standard: There are numerous standards under which an offset project can be certified (a good comparison of the major standards can be found here). The most important criterion for many buyers is additionality, or whether the project goes beyond business as usual. If you are about to invest in a project that can’t meet the additionality standard: think twice! A rigorous additionality requirement is the most important component of a high quality offset.

Project type: As with additionality, some standards are more selective of the types of emissions reductions projects they will certify. Moreover, from a public relations perspective, some project types can be more appealing to stakeholders than others. For example, while a wind farm and a landfill gas capture project may have identical emissions mitigation potential, the former might look better on your company’s annual report.

Project location: The geographic location of an offset project may be important to a company looking to make an investment in a strategically significant region. Where a project is based can also introduce geo-political risks. Knowing where a project is based can allow buyers to factor country risk into their pricing considerations.

Co-benefits: Some projects provide employment in the local area. Others create clean drinking water as a by-product. Auxiliary benefits such as these can make offset purchases more attractive.

Likelihood that offsets will be accepted under a future compliance regime: As the US Congress debates a mandatory, federal cap-and-trade scheme, there is speculation as to which offsets, if any, will be permissible in meeting compliance obligations. While there is no way to be certain that offsets from a particular project will be accepted, a good rule of thumb is that the more rigorous the protocol a project adheres to, the higher the probability that those offsets will be fungible.

These factors, amongst others, demonstrate the need for transparency in the offset marketplace. When buyers know exactly what they are buying – when they can see all project documentation and compare offsets from projects based on the criteria that matter most to them – they will be making an informed decision that they can defend to their stakeholders. And thankfully, opportunities to buy high quality offsets at a reasonable cost and in a transparent and liquid marketplace are closer than you might think.