Personal Finance Daily: Trick yourself into spending less, saving more

Personal Finance Daily MARCH 08, 2012 Thursday's Personal Finance Stories By MarketWatch Don't miss these top stories: Six tricks to spend less, save more for retirement Solar storm bears down on earth 15-year fixed-rate mortgage hits record low 3 investments that will crash the hardest We all know what we should do. Often, that's simple — it's just not easy. So, trick yourself into doing what you should, Robert Powell advises in his retirement column today. He offers six smart tips to trick yourself into spending less and saving more for retirement, ranging from using a Roth IRA for emergency funds to factoring Social Security into your retirement portfolio. Also today on MarketWatch, we look beyond the ups and downs of Wall Street and the woes in the euro zone to ... space. Yes, as you read this (probably) a powerful solar storm is hitting the earth and it has the potential to affect power grids and communication systems. Or not. These things, like the financial markets, are very hard to predict. According to a report from the Associated Press, hours after the storm arrived, officials said there were no reports of problems with power grids, GPS, satellites or other technologies that are often disrupted by solar storms. We have some spectacular photos from NASA of the solar flares. — Anne Stanley , Managing Editor, Personal Finance Six tricks to spend less, save more for retirement Here are six simple ways to trick yourself into spending less and saving more for your retirement, including auto-rebalancing and how to figure Social Security into your portfolio assessments. Six tips to help you spend less, save more for retirement Solar storm bears down on earth A strong geomagnetic storm is racing from the sun toward earth. Its arrival could affect power grids, airplane routes and space-based satellite navigation systems, according to U.S. space-weather experts. See the slide show: Images of sun in active solar-flare phase. ECONOMY AND POLITICS 15-year fixed-rate mortgage hits record low The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage hit a record low of 3.13% this week, according to Freddie Mac's weekly survey, released on Thursday. Read more: 15-year, fixed-rate mortgage hits record low. U.S. jobless claims rise to five-week high New applications for U.S. unemployment benefits hit the highest in five weeks, but still couched in a range implying better job-market conditions. Read U.S. jobless claims rise to five-week high. INVESTING 3 investments that will crash the hardest On MarketWatch's Trading Deck today, Jeff Reeves looks ahead to the summer and asks if we'll have a repeat of last August's steep declines. If so, he says, there are three areas where investors should be particularly careful. Read more: Three investments that will crash the hardest. Plunge protection team hedging on Greece Central bank observers could be forgiven for thinking a Federal Reserve discussion of more free money looked suspicious coming just one day ahead of a Greek debt swap that could ignite Europe's crisis again. Plunge protection team hedging on Greece. Will Iceland decide to go loonie? These days, Iceland especially doesn't hate Canada. It might even adopt the Canadian loonie as its currency, in fact. Even though that's only been proposed, it's being discussed openly more and more in Iceland's financial community and press. Will Iceland decide to go loonie? Gold bugs digging out, again Last week was heartbreaking for the gold bugs, not for the first time. But they're digging out, again. Read more: Gold bugs digging out, again. Labor costs becoming a challenge to Fed, companies We're getting a fuller picture of the U.S. labor markets: more jobs, slower productivity, and a bigger cost squeeze, writes Kathleen Madigan. Read more: Labor costs becoming a challenge to Fed, companies. Is Apple vs. Amazon winner-take-all battle? Amazon investors are rightly nervous about the impact of Apple's latest iPad entry and the price cuts of the iPad 2 will have on Kindle Fire sales. Read more: Is Apple vs. Amazon a winner-take-all battle? Get the latest news on our mobile site: http://www.marketwatch.com/m MarketWatch has sent you this newsletter because you signed up to receive it. To ensure you receive this newsletter in the future, please add marketwatchmail.com to your list of approved senders. Sent to: kumaresan.selva.blogger@gmail.com Unsubscribe | Subscribe Copyright 2012 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved. MarketWatch, the MarketWatch logo, and BigCharts are registered trademarks of MarketWatch, Inc. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy (updated 6/26/07). MarketWatch - Attn: Customer Service, 201 California St., San Francisco, CA 94111