A recent AP story details the plan of Toys R Us to readopt layaway for the holiday season. And I say HOORAYYYYYY. Too over-the-top? Sorry. Yeah.

Layaway is a tool used by retailers to keep customers buying during tough credit times. The practice started back in, you guessed it, the Great Depression. Customers make a down payment on an item, and then continue to make payments on the item prior to taking possession of it when it is paid in full. It is quite the alternative to taking possession of an item prior to actually owning it. Back in the day (1980s), layaway was a huge strategy for retailers such as Marshalls and TJ Maxx. But the strategy disappeared when retailers figured out that they could instead “sell” you a store credit card, give you the item now, and then charge you ridiculous amounts of interest. Not only that, but since the customer had possession of the item, they were much more likely to make the payment on a non-standard payment schedule (read: late). That is why layaway disappeared. Don’t get it twisted.

And this is why layaway has reappeared. Consumers aren’t qualifying for the revolving credit that stores offer, therefore stores are turning to their old friend, layaway. And as you might have guessed, layaway has returned with a newfound sense of benevolence. Hooray, big business is still allowing consumers to buy things they can’t afford (Google search: sarcasm). But I would take layaway any day, over delay of pay.

About Green Candy™

Green Candy™ (www.GreenCandy.com) is an online financial assessment tool that helps Gen Y-ers and Millennials get on the right financial track before the “debt hits the fan.” Introduced by radio personality, comedian and financial expert Pete the Planner (www.PeteThePlanner.com), Green Candy’s ™ various “pods” allow users to assess their financial health and competency in common areas such as Debt, Budgeting, Investing, Charity, Risk Management and Major Purchases, as well as in areas unique to Gen Y. A subsequent series of targeted worksheets, podcasts, tip sheets, and action plans guides them to the financial promise land. Green Candy™: Get in control before the debt hits the fan.

About Pete the Planner

Pete the Planner (www.PeteThePlanner.com) is expert financial planner Peter Dunn’s super-saving alter ego. Peter is an award-winning comedian and rising star in the financial world. Named one of “Indy’s Best and Brightest” in finance in 2007 and media in 2009 by KPMG, Peter was also declared one of NUVO magazine’s “30 under 30 to Watch in the Arts” for comedy. Peter is the author of What Your Dad Never Taught You About Budgeting (2006) and is the host of the popular radio show Skills Your Dad Never Taught You on News Talk 1430 (WXNT). He blogs regularly at www.petetheplanner.com/blog. Pete appears regularly on Fox News and Fox Business as well as various CBS stations. His newest book, 60 Days to Change, is due out in November.

Don’t get me wrong. I am huge fan of the obvious, and in fact, as a quasi-journalist, I often restate the obvious. So I am pleased to inform you, based on recent study by Equifax, Moody’s, Economy.com, that if you make less than $30k per year you have over a 30% chance of default or delinquency on your mortgage. Wow, that’s refreshing. What is also interesting to note is that you have over a 5% chance of default or delinquency if you make $80k per year.

This just in to the Pete the Planner newsroom….the grass is green.

Be sure to sign up for book updates here. My new book, 60 Days to Change: A Daily How-To Guide With Actionable Tips for Improving Your Financial Life will be available in November.

My neighborhood is having a community Garage Sale this weekend. I saw the sign on my drive to work. I never participate in these sorts of things because I’m generally freaked out by strangers milling around my garage. However, I decided that I would participate this weekend in the name of (financial) science. It’s Eat What You Earn Weekend. Okay, I made that up. But why not?

We are going to use the money we make in this impromptu Garage Sale to pay for dinner on Saturday night. If we make $20, then we eat cheap. If we make $150, then I’ll be calling a cab….kidding.

Do it.

About Green Candy™

Green Candy™ (www.GreenCandy.com) is an online financial assessment tool that helps Gen Y-ers and Millennials get on the right financial track before the “debt hits the fan.” Introduced by radio personality, comedian and financial expert Pete the Planner (www.PeteThePlanner.com), Green Candy’s ™ various “pods” allow users to assess their financial health and competency in common areas such as Debt, Budgeting, Investing, Charity, Risk Management and Major Purchases, as well as in areas unique to Gen Y. A subsequent series of targeted worksheets, podcasts, tip sheets, and action plans guides them to the financial promise land. Green Candy™: Get in control before the debt hits the fan.

About Pete the Planner

Pete the Planner (www.PeteThePlanner.com) is expert financial planner Peter Dunn’s super-saving alter ego. Peter is an award-winning comedian and rising star in the financial world. Named one of “Indy’s Best and Brightest” in finance in 2007 and media in 2009 by KPMG, Peter was also declared one of NUVO magazine’s “30 under 30 to Watch in the Arts” for comedy. Peter is the author of What Your Dad Never Taught You About Budgeting (2006) and is the host of the popular radio show Skills Your Dad Never Taught You on News Talk 1430 (WXNT). He blogs regularly at www.petetheplanner.com/blog. Pete appears regularly on Fox News and Fox Business as well as various CBS stations. His newest book, 60 Days to Change, is due out in November.

Be sure to watch Pete the Plannet in Fox News at 2:45 PM est today. I’ll be talking about the huge uproar over Overdraft fees. Find out who is to blame.

Tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell your clergy (sorry, I got carried away)

Indiana University recently announced a plan to address the concerns over rising tuition. President Michael McRobbie discussed the new plan on September 1st, 2009. The plan calls for tuition “credits” to offset tuition increases for “good” students. Students that maintain full time status, hold a B average, and our considered in-state will receive about $300 in tuition cuts.

Recently, Indiana University, as well as Purdue University, have been under pressure by state lawmakers to adjust their increases in tuition. Please allow me to boil it down for you. The lawmakers suggested an acceptable range of tuition inflation. IU disagreed, and raised tuition significantly more than the lawmakers recommended. The lawmakers got mad, and held up building project approvals, and then IU created this plan to appease them. 

But let’s consider the very essence of the problem. Lawmakers felt that IU raised their tuition too much in the face of a daunting economy. It was felt that students (and families of students) would be asked to  sacrifice more economic resources in a time when economic resources are scarce. However, the real problem is this: well educated students will be flooding the job marketplace with giant amounts of debt and no jobs to be had. So whereas the “good” student will now be facing these prospects with less debt, the “bad” student will be facing these prospects with more than the already distinguished “good” student. 

Performance in college is much like performance in the mainstream economy. Some individuals rise to the top and flourish, while others sink to the bottom. This is where things get a little hairy. People will succeed and people will fail. And those that succeed create a better path for themselves along the way via incentives, and opportunities created by their hard work. As you may agree, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that age-old process of incentivisation and achievement is beautiful. 

The problem is this: the “bad” students, those that create their own financial disadvantages via sloth, are going to be at an even bigger disadvantage when it comes to getting control of their financial lives. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that these students receive a hand-out. I’m simply suggesting that there are always going to be below average students (thus the average), therefore this new program simply puts these below-average students in a deeper hole in relation to their achieving peers. It will probably incentivize a few hundred students to push for that B average, but it more likely will put a bigger financial divide between the good and bad student. 

IU must realize that their incentive program, while noble, will actually put their average and below average student at a bigger economic disadvantage than ever before. They would have been better served to cut tuition across the board, and leave the dangling carrots to the corporate world.

About Green Candy™

Green Candy™ (www.GreenCandy.com) is an online financial assessment tool that helps Gen Y-ers and Millennials get on the right financial track before the “debt hits the fan.” Introduced by radio personality, comedian and financial expert Pete the Planner (www.PeteThePlanner.com), Green Candy’s ™ various “pods” allow users to assess their financial health and competency in common areas such as Debt, Budgeting, Investing, Charity, Risk Management and Major Purchases, as well as in areas unique to Gen Y. A subsequent series of targeted worksheets, podcasts, tip sheets, and action plans guides them to the financial promise land. Green Candy™: Get in control before the debt hits the fan.

About Pete the Planner

Pete the Planner (www.PeteThePlanner.com) is expert financial planner Peter Dunn’s super-saving alter ego. Peter is an award-winning comedian and rising star in the financial world. Named one of “Indy’s Best and Brightest” in finance in 2007 and media in 2009 by KPMG, Peter was also declared one of NUVO magazine’s “30 under 30 to Watch in the Arts” for comedy. Peter is the author of What Your Dad Never Taught You About Budgeting (2006) and is the host of the popular radio show Skills Your Dad Never Taught You on News Talk 1430 (WXNT). He blogs regularly at www.petetheplanner.com/blog. Pete appears regularly on Fox News and Fox Business as well as various CBS stations. His newest book, 60 Days to Change, is due out in November.

Have you ever felt like you aren’t given an opportunity to help? You know, you aren’t asked to be on committees, you aren’t asked to rally the troops at work, or you aren’t allowed to use your special talents to enhance the lives of your coworkers or people in your community. This is a quite a common feeling, specifically for those in Gen Y. A lot of it has to do with the fact that as a young person, you generally aren’t placed in a leadership role. But the funny thing about leadership is that sometimes you have to take it by force. And if you aren’t tripping into any leadership opportunities to help others, then you need to create your own.

There is something refreshing about ambition and achievement. Ambition is the desire and drive to do something more than you are currently doing. And achievement is the end result of acting on your ambition. The crazy thing is that most people get lost in the middle. Somewhere between identifying desire and finishing a journey is where people usually fall off the horse. Which means that many times people don’t ever actually ever get on the horse. Expressing desire to help or lead, without actually doing anything is weak. Don’t get me wrong, good for you for having the desire to help or lead, but shame on you for keeping it only as a pipe dream. It kinda goes back to the concept of dreaming of winning the lottery without actually buying a ticket. It cost $1 to dream, and it only takes a little action to achieve. 

Do something. Do anything…to set you on the action track. Organize a can-food drive at your office. The achievement would be quite gratifying. Start writing a book. Why the hell not? It’s fun. Just don’t ever say that you are thinking about writing a book. That means that you are too lazy, stupid, or scared to type one word into…well…Word. Just start. Helping and achievement are addictive. Just get started. Set a goal to do 10 push-ups per day for a week. Just do something to get some achievement momentum. Once you have that momentum (and confidence) then startexpanding your projects (helping).

Feel free to continue to coast along, but I assure you that doing lots of big things is a hell of a lot more fun.

Over the last few years I have developed a series of hypothetical questions that I consistently ask myself. While this characteristic is congruent with someone that is on the verge of institutionalization, it is also responsible for my unique form of financial advice. If I am going to help my generation get a grasp on their money lives, then I need to recreate a process of financial discovery. I strongly believe that we, as a financial community, need to hit the reset button. We have been advising every single generation, for the last several decades, the exact same way.

But here is the (not so) harsh reality. Retirement and financial independence will he completely different for us than it is for our predecessors. The main culprit in this forced change is our: health. We are going to live a helluva lot longer than our parents. It is unrealistic to believe that we can work half our lives, only to not work the other half. I don’t want to be the one to break this to you (it should be someone like Oprah or Ryan Seacrest), but you are going to live to 100. You might as well photoshop wrinkles on your senior picture just to get used to it. You need to start switching your financial thinking to adjust to your newly discovered longevity.

Ah, yes…I had a point, and here it is. Why not put yourself on the road to retirement right now? This topic is immense enough to write a book, alas I’m going to condense it down to a couple of paragraphs. Our “retirement” is going to consist of doing a job that you are comfortable doing until the day you die. It’s all about redefining your passions, skills, and work ethic. You don’t want to work that 60 hour per week middle management job? Cool with me, just find something else that you want to do. The limiting factor, of course, is your income needs. Your career decisions have, and always will be dependent on your income needs. Unless you decide to eliminate that factor. 

I swear to you, dear friend, that I have a point, and it’s right around the corner. Stick with me. How much money would you need to make for you to walk away from your job and do something that you enjoy for the rest of your life? There are a number of factors that figure into your ability to answer this question:

1. Is your current job the final solution? It’s quite possible that your current job is a job that you’re passionate about. It is a job that you can continue to work some way, shape, or form into retirement. This would be great, and you are well on your way to understanding how our “retirement” will be different.

2. You should accept less. Do you want to know how you know whether you have answered the income question correctly? You should be willing and able to accept less money to do a job that you truly enjoy. Why? Because, as will be true when you retire, you will finally put your needs and wants into perspective once you have chosen your final career. In order to live the retirement lifestyle that we will be faced with, you will have to live on less money.

3. You should regularly ask yourself the “how much to quit” question, and the dollar amount should consistently decrease. Look, I already know that I’m asking a lot of you. I’m asking you to accept less money in a time when everyone is looking for more money. And now I’m asking you to settle for less money every time that you ask yourself this question. I believe that you will finally have the right mindset to act on this hypothetical, once that your income needs start to decrease. You will have accepted this concept as reality, and you are closer to being prepared to live it. 

I consistently ask myself this major question. And I can honestly tell you that my income needs have consistently decreased. If you are currently in a career that doesn’t “do it for you”, then start asking the tough questions. The hardest part isn’t even decreasing your income needs. The real challenge is finding what you truly love, once you find that you will easily be able to decrease your income needs (or wants).

About Green Candy™

Green Candy™ (www.GreenCandy.com) is an online financial assessment tool that helps Gen Y-ers and Millennials get on the right financial track before the “debt hits the fan.” Introduced by radio personality, comedian and financial expert Pete the Planner (www.PeteThePlanner.com), Green Candy’s ™ various “pods” allow users to assess their financial health and competency in common areas such as Debt, Budgeting, Investing, Charity, Risk Management and Major Purchases, as well as in areas unique to Gen Y. A subsequent series of targeted worksheets, podcasts, tip sheets, and action plans guides them to the financial promise land. Green Candy™: Get in control before the debt hits the fan.

About Pete the Planner

Pete the Planner (www.PeteThePlanner.com) is expert financial planner Peter Dunn’s super-saving alter ego. Peter is an award-winning comedian and rising star in the financial world. Named one of “Indy’s Best and Brightest” in finance in 2007 by KPMG, Peter was also declared one of NUVO magazine’s “30 under 30 to Watch in the Arts” for comedy. Peter is the author of What Your Dad Never Taught You About Budgeting (2006) and is the host of the popular radio show Skills Your Dad Never Taught You on News Talk 1430 (WXNT). He blogs regularly at www.petetheplanner.com/blog. Pete appears regularly on Fox News and Fox Business as well as various CBS stations. His newest book, 60 Days to Change, is due out in September.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – WISH-TV’s 24-Hour News 8 teams up with financial guru Peter Dunn, a.k.a. “Pete the Planner” for the “Money Watch 8 Challenge: 60 Days to Change.” This on-air / on-line program provides viewers the information and tools to help examine, evaluate and improve their overall financial lives.

“We’re working alongside our viewers to get through these challenging times together,” said Jeff White, president and general manager of WISH-TV and MyINDY-TV. “The more news, information and resources we can provide viewers, the better equipped they will be to improve their lifestyle and financial future. This program is designed to help them succeed.”

The “Money Watch 8 Challenge: 60 Days to Change” kicks off on Wednesday March 11, 2009 during “24-Hour News 8 at 11PM.” 24-Hour News 8 anchor, David Barras will introduce viewers to three local families taking the challenge. Segments will be featured throughout with week with new topics such as budgeting, debt and risk management beginning every Wednesday night at 11:00 p.m.

“We can’t change the economy, but we can change ourselves,” said Peter Dunn, C.E.O. of GreenCandy.com. “If you watch, you will improve your current financial situation.”

The “Money Watch 8 Challenge: 60 Days to Change” is another resource 24-Hour News 8 is providing viewers as part of its overall “Money Watch 8” commitment. For more information on the “Money Watch 8 Challenge: 60 Days to Change,” along with a list of upcoming segments, times and evaluations, log onto WISHTV.com or 60DaysToChange.com