• Since talk has shifted from ‘heading into’ to ‘knee deep in’ a recession, the Wallet has some tips for what to expect in a recession.
• If you’re heading for college soon (or have kids who are) and are worried about paying for it, learn how to save a boatload on college.
• If you’re running your own business and growing concerned, you may want to read this First-time CEO’s recession survival guide. This particular CEO is in the real estate industry, which has been hit hardest so far.
• What about Christmas shopping in a recession? Sadly this year it already cost a Wal-Mart employee his life, maybe it’s time to re-think the real meaning of the holidays…

That should keep you busy a while. How has the recession affected you? Are you worried about it? Leave a comment!

• Tip’d goes public from fivecentnickel.com
• Save thousands by negotiating your mortgage loan rate with your lender from Own the Dollar [hint: Researching on sites like SmartHippo can help!]
• Thinking of refinancing your home loan? It may be a good idea if you fit certain criteria.
• And finally, in a time of economic uncertainty, it may be a good idea to take steps to make your performance review a success.

Know of any we missed? Leave a comment!

My take on this, is it’s a good thing… Specifically for consumers, but also for lenders because those that are transparent and accountible will rise to the top, while the deceitful and dishonest will probably go out of business. The article does mention the possibility of it giving big banks an advantage and pushing away smaller institutions, but as we’ve seen on Smarthippo.com, smaller banks usually have the best rates and reviews, so I’m not sure if it would really hurt that much.

I am, however, pretty skeptical of whether or not this will be effective as from the sounds of it, it’s not *exactly* enforced and those who break the guidelines don’t seem to be reprimanded, so for now I think it’s a thought in the right direction and hopefully will lead to better things. Would love your opinion on it though. Leave a comment.

• Election fun is over, back to economic reality (Blown Mortgages)
• Bailout money goes rogue (The Big Picture)
• Mortgage rates drop for second straight week (MortgageLoan.com)
• A visual guide to the financial crisis (The Mint blog)
  
• Government announces loan modification and foreclosure prevention plan (Quicken Loans blog)
  

I’m always looking for great sources of financial/mortgage-related news. If I’m missing one, drop a comment!

Fortunately the net is filled with killer resources for helping you manage your money better, from blogs to communities to apps–and you might even have a little fun while you’re at it! Here’s some of my favorite resources, please add yours in the comments!

Mortgages/Loans blogs

• Blown Mortgage
• Economic life and loan information
• Straight Talk About Mortgages

General/personal finance blogs

• Consumerism Commentary
• Everybody loves your money
• Get Rich Slowly
• Free Money Finance
• No Credit Needed
• The Wallet by the Wall Street Journal

Apps

• SmartHippo.com - Save money on your mortgage with the power of community
• Mint.com - the leading personal finance management solution
• WeSeed - learn how the stock market works with pretend investing

Communities

• Banktastic - Network and share news and questions with others interested in finance
• Tip’d - is a social news sharing site like Digg, but specifically for financial and business news

Twitter

Here are some interesting people in the finance industry on Twitter (NB-there are tons more, this is just a random sampling!).

• @tylerosby
• @tvanderwell
• @Alex_Stenback
• @myCMPS
• And of course, don’t forget to follow @smarthippo!

ING Direct has been talked about lately, yesterday about how online banks can offer lower mortgage rates and today about its ‘we the savers’ microsite.

Meanwhile, E-loan is exiting the mortgage business after posting an $87.4-million net loss in the third quarter. More details…

Intuit wins Forrester’s Groundswell award for company transformation. My observation as a social media person entering the financial industry is that in some respects it’s lagging other industries, therefore it’s refreshing to see a company like Intuit winning this type of award. More… (bottom of the page)

And in other news…
The Wall Street Journal reports that ‘Economists predict home prices will bottom next year.’ Yikes! Another year of this…

It’s easy to place blame on ‘greedy’ home buyers when trying to understand the collapse of the mortgage market. However, a lot of people going through foreclosure right now just didn’t see it coming-they had good jobs, had owned homes before, and many even had savings in the bank. The New York Times reminds us of real people in financial hard times with this article “After the house is gone”(free registration)

Though not all hope is lost, as WSJ’s the Wallet reports on “Other help for struggling homeowners.”

And finally, on the other end of the spectrum, the Consumerist explains how rating agencies are behind bogus ratings that led to smart investors paying for too much for mortgage-backed securities.

1. Control your money

Ok, personal finance management software was *almost* done to death at Finovate… But that tells you that being able to take control of your own finances is something front of mind right now. Whether companies like Mint, Quicken Online and Wesabe catches on, we’ll have to see, but it’s clear the need is there. Is it really surprising that people don’t want to put all their trust in banks right now?

2. Power of community

SmartHippo was not the only community-oriented site at Finovate! The whole idea of being able to collaborate with other consumers for the purpose of collectively saving money or to learn more about managing money was big. WeSeed uses a community to help you learn about the stock market. Inner8 brought a community feel to matching you with the best stocks (call them match.com for investing, as they said), and FiServ, has an online app called MyMoney that uses an existing community–Facebook– to help Gen Yers manage their money on a site they already spend a lot of time on!

3. New technology making banking more efficient

Finally, it’s no surprise that using new technology to make banking more efficient was evident at Finovate. Like any industry, mobile was a hot trend: mFoundry launched it’s white label iPhone app that allows iPhone users do all their personal banking on the go. (Personally, I would use this all the time). Vidoop had some interesting techniques to keep your passwords and personal info safe (For example, after entering your username, the site would call you and you hit the # key). CheckFree now allows you to deposit checks via scanner (finally!) and CreditKarma showed off its new tool which allows you to preview your credit score, and how certain factors would affect it.

So that would be my key takeaways from the show. A good show all around and inspiring for start ups in the financial industry.

While I’m still new at all this, I would love your comments on the show, or my observations. Leave ‘em below!

SmartHippo CEO George Favvas was among the 24 presenters of a 7 min. demo. George previewed some new features which will make their way to the SmartHippo web site later this month, and also took a minute to address the financial crisis and the role companies like SmartHippo can take in changing the financial industry to avoid future meltdowns.  While he was the only presenter to overtly address the crisis, it was definitely an underlying theme and pressing topic at the event.

If you missed the show, the Banktastic blog did excellent coverage of the show, from reviews of the demos to interviews with the presenters, oh don’t forget to check out the interview with George…

Oh yea, if you were following SmartHippo on twitter, you would have had access to my live coverage of the event.

UPDATE:

Here’s some more coverage of Finovate:

• The Consumerist did a fantastic summary of the presenting companies, including SmartHippo, in this post…
• If you missed the conference, organizer NetBanker also did a series of posts about each of the presenters.