My cousin in Atlanta called me this week to tell me she’d started a new business as a “virtual assistant”. Basically that means she’s a personal consultant for people who don’t have the time or organization to get some of their own critical tasks done.

I’m ecstatic for my cuz (who knew somebody we called “New-New” would turn out an entrepreneur?), but her idea got me thinking. I know at least two other people in various stages of starting similar businesses in different parts of the country. Clearly, somebody sees a market for making money off people like me, who’s lives have gotten so muddy with distractions and repetitive tasks that the real things we need to focus on often get lost.

So while I hope NewNew gets rich rich, it brings up a good question for people like myself: how can you reach your own full potential unless you get control of your own time? And how DOES someone as busy as me, or busier (I’m a dad, working a more-than-full-time gig, and have several side hustles, including this one), carve out the time needed for planning and organizing for future success, or to enjoy what you’ve already got?

If you were ever in a situation where you felt your time was a commodity you just didn’t have enough of, how did it affect your life at work and by extension, your finances? And how did you take control of it?

Bush finally signed a housing relief bill yesterday that’s supposed to help people stay in their homes by providing affordable, government-backed loans for people who can’t afford and need to refinance out of their current mortgages.

The plan also has some other tenets in it, like $3.9 billion in “neighborhood grants” (can’t wait for the indictments on the first people to get caught bilking the system on those) and more regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They’re the government-backed mortgage companies that are also getting bailed out under the new bill.

Anyway, how many people are ultimately helped by the bill remains to be seen. But it still brings up an old question for me: how many people are really “deserving” of said help as opposed to those who simply got too greedy and bought cribs they knew they shouldn’t have? I don’t mean to sound cruel, and surely there was a ton of predatory activity in the housing market. If you got vic’d by some shark of a banker, I’m all for you getting help on my tax time.

But what about people like myself, who stayed renters while other fools dove nose-long into crap like interest-only loans, 40-year mortgages, ARMs and the like — where’s my help in buying a house? Might it not make more sense to let some of the froth out of the market by letting those folk lose the house so someone who can actually afford it might pick it up at a decent price?

Roxbury in Boston, Harlem in New York, Bronzeville in Chicago. All of them famously “black” neighborhoods that had fallen on hard times for decades but are undergoing renaissances now with houses being renovated and new stores opening up.

But then there’s the newer, richer and sometimes white residents: do they belong? Is it a good thing to change a neighborhood’s character as long as property values go up and streets get cleaned?

I was on NPR on Monday talking about gentrification. It’s another fallout from the housing boom: prices jumped so high that in many places that had been mostly black for what seems like forever, many black folk can no longer afford to be there. In Harlem, a black real estate agent is being blamed for handing the hood over to whites on a platters; in eight metro areas around the country, more whites are moving back into cities than moving out. 

Are there examples of gentrification where you live and do you agree or disagree with the idea that neighborhoods should be ‘preserved’ for blacks, whites or whoever was there first?

Is it me or are ATM fees out of control? I mean, it’s one thing to pay $4 a gallon for gas, but 7.5 percent just to withdraw own money is ridic. I got hit up like that on Sunday in Chicago. I learned a long time ago to use my debit card most of the time while traveling (but tell the cashier ‘credit’ instead of debit to avoid transaction fees when I buy stuff). Beforehand, I withdraw enough money for food and water on the road and cab fares.

But I ran out of cash in Chicago and had to use the hotel’s ATM. I was at a Sheraton so I figured they’d have a major bank ATM and I wouldn’t get juxed as much as I would by one of those independent machines. Psh. Want that $100 you deposited? That’ll be $104.50, bruh. Thanks.

I would’ve gotten hit by the machine twice but it was down when I checked out. I had to force the cabbie to take a credit card (they hate to do that because they have to take the receipts somewhere to get the money – not as easy as just getting cash). I still ended up paying Chase a $3 fee to withdraw 40 bucks – a 7.5 percent transaction fee just to withdraw my cash. Shame on y’all. 

What’s crazy is I chose my bank – PNC – to avoid ATM fees altogether. They have branches and ATMs all over Cincinnati and are based in Pittsburgh where my family lives. West of Ohio, though, not so much.

What’s the highest ATM fee you’ve ever had to pay and what do you do to avoid them?

A friend asked me how to decide if she needed a financial planner. The answer is that all depends. Getting a financial professional and deciding which one is right is like choosing a doctor: it all depends on your individual circumstances and there are some things you should do on your own before you call one.

Everyone should have several months of living expenses in an emergency fund, little to no credit card or other unsecured debt and be stashing money in a retirement fund like a 401(k) or IRA. These the building blocks to long-term financial stability that most people can do for themselves. Some might need help picking investment choices for their 401ks or IRAs, but many companies have simplified those options so that all you need to do is pick a portfolio based on when you plan to retire.

If you haven’t done those things, paying a financial planner won’t make a lot of sense in the same way that it’d be foolish to pay a doctor to tell you why you’re getting fat knowing you haven’t done a sit-up in 15 years.

Beyond that, it gets dicier. There are financial advisers and planners who have more general practices and can help you plan for everything from retirement to purchasing a home to investing. There are private bankers and wealth managers who specialize in handling high-net worth individuals and others who focus on succession and estate planning for entrepreneurs. I even know one guy who’s business is in “family governance”: helping rich families write by-laws for themselves to prevent wealth from being squandered from generation to generation.

Choosing the right one requires you to take an honest look at what you’re already doing for yourself and assessing what your own goals are.

I’m a pretty good saver. I’ve never been scared of a 401(k), and if anything, I’ve erred on the side of stashing away too much money and not having enough cash flow. In short, I’m not frivolous.

Well, I’m kind of not frivolous. Saving’s no problem but I’ve never been good about managing discretionary income. Like this weekend. I took my sons to the movies, always a worthwhile expense. After that,  we went to the Apple store because I want a new iPhone. I decided against it because I’m going away to a convention this week and need the cash. But before the weekend was over, I spent more on crap like eating out than I would have on the iPhone. Now I’ll have to dip into savings  for my trip this week and won’t have an iPhone to show for it. I’d have been better off buying it.

That’s the crux of my problem: I deny myself stuff I want in the name of being frugal, only to crack like a dam in a flood and end up with nothing to show for the money I spent. Which brings me to this: I’ve been wanting a high-def TV for a while and found a great deal on Amazon last night for one that has everything I want.

Now, with the economy being shaky and my natural cheapness kicking in, I’m loathe to blow $1,700 for the TV. But I’ve thrown away more money than that this year and still don’t have a decent TV to watch my Steelers play when the season starts back up about a month from now.

So, should I buy the thing, or leave it be? And what would be your advice for curing my particular spending problem?

You learn a lot sometimes staring into a blank camera with a tiny speaker jammed up your earhole. Like how the poor economy is affecting people in other places: in Texas, everyone else’s misery is actually helping employment because of the booming oil industry; in Cali, everyone’s nervous about bank failures because of the collapse of IndyMac (which by context clue you should have figured out by now isn’t based in Indy).

That’s what I learned last night in the 10 minutes or so I was on PBS’ the News Hour with Jim Lehrer talking about the economy. It was the first time I was on the show and  other than threatening my sons with their lives if they made any noise while the mic was live (no nuts, please), everything went great. Either way, watch this to hear about what the panel had to say about the economy in different regions of the country, then post and tell me about your experiences. We we way off the mark or dead on? Are people in your area losing jobs or still working but hurt by high gas and food prices and long commutes?

Sorry for yet another housing post, but there’s just so much going on in that part of the economy and it affects so many people that it’s hard to ignore. The latest twist: now banks and mortgage brokers want you to come to the table with a ton of cash before they’ll lend to you, in some cases as much as 25 percent.

Honestly, I don’t think this is a bad thing in and of itself. A house is too big a purchase for anyone to make without having to come to the table with at least some of your own cash. And I’d never want to be in the position of knowing the bank owned 100 percent of my crib, leaving me with no equity. You should have at least some downpayment.

The problem is it’s been the banks, mortgage companies and brokers the past few years that changed the game so drastically, allowing people to get loans without bringing any money to the table at all. Now that folks are used to no downpayment loans, the lenders want to change the rules to suit their business models. Great for them, not so much for all the folks who can’t afford a 20 percent downpayment on a house that costs way more than it should because the banks helped the cost of a house explode so much due to their own lending practices.

Unbelievable.

I had an interesting conversation on the radio yesterday about the housing implosion and its impact on black wealth. I was on-air with Kai Wright, who wrote a story in the New Yorker about mortgage fraud and how it devastated some black families and threatened generational wealth. He also wrote about the topic this week on TheRoot.com.

I actually expected to get into more of a debate with Kai given I’m not as willing as he is in his writing to give borrowers a pass for making bad decisions. There were plenty of scams and schemes cooked up by mortgage lenders to dupe people into bad loans, and many of them were aimed at black folk. But not everyone was tricked: some folk knew better and just got greedy, or decided to take the ‘easy’ route to a new crib instead of saving until they were ready.

In the end, though, we found a lot of common ground. Here’s the show.

Last week I wrote about the sob stories of pro athletes who don’t manage their money well and end up blowing millions of dollars in just a few short years.

Today, the flipside, courtesy of a Wall Street Journal story about one of my favorite ballers of all time: Steelers hall of famer Franco Harris. If you don’t know why he’s famous, just Google “immaculate reception”. But you don’t need to know about his football heroics to understand why a lot of younger athletes need to emulate what he’s done in retirement. Franco retired in ‘84, at a time when athletes didn’t make nearly as much as they do now. But the WSJ story says he retired with NO DEBT AND a lot of what he made as a player saved up.

He had his degree and went into the food business, and has ultimately made more money as an entrepreneur than he ever did on the field. Maybe Ron Mexico Mike Vick, Chris Henry and half of the players who retired from the NBA need to look up the man’s number and ask for a little advice.