by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaHungary's agony continues with both currency and stock markets falling sharply yesterday while bankers continue to report acute credit shortages. At the same time contagion has started to extend its ugly reach right across eastern Europe, with Ukraine, the Baltics and Serbia (at a minimum) all in ongoing negotiations with the IMF, with the credit crunch which has followed in the wake of the global financial turmoil really starting to bite.

"Many central and eastern European countries simply don't have either the financial strength or the technical expertise to bail out banks,'' said Lars Christensen, a senior emerging-markets analyst at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen. "It's like an Iceland look-a-like contest and there are a number of candidates looking very fragile at the moment.''

Emerging-market banks plunged this morning after Standard & Poor's warned that Korea's lenders will struggle to refinance ...

When you finally payoff that loan it is a huge accomplishment, don’t change your budget and continue to make the payments to yourself.

We purchased our first car back in October 2003 with a 5 year (60 month) loan at 0% APR. This was a great deal and looking forward to paying the loan off in the next few months. We also decided to enter into a 2-year lease for our second car due to our work commutes. Just recently, we made our final lease payment and decided to turn the car in, going from a 2-car to a single car household.

Since we no longer need a second car, we have decided to continue to save our monthly payments into a new account to be used as a down payment for the next car …