Wealth

Lahdi Moutchia's miracle windfall - a $34,757 bank error in her favor - bought her a house in Camden and a car. It must have been fun while it lasted. Moutchia's house in the 1100 block of North 34th Street has been listed for sale, and a Superior Court judge in Camden yesterday ordered that the proceeds from the sale be deposited in an escrow account. The situation that led to her problems began Dec. 7, when she looked at her statement from the Midlantic National Bank/South.

Every sixth grader knows that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. Thus it should follow that anyone who wants to get rich ought to concentrate on making better mousetraps. Well, surprise. A recent study by the Federal Reserve Board implies that if you want the world to beat a path to your door nowadays, you should forget about improving the mousetrap and think instead about improving the path. Today's real wealth-building opportunities, according to the Fed, won't be found in productive enterprises like manufacturing, construction, oil refining or farming.

Lorraine Neff got the Big News by phone. She was a 21-year-old schoolteacher then, living in West Philadelphia and earning about $9,000 a year. "Your mother and I think you ought to know," said her father, that he was now giving her a large block of shares in his prosperous manufacturing company - shares that would ultimately be worth several million dollars. "I was totally unaware of my own wealth," she recalled over lunch at a Center City restaurant recently, and shook her head.

What if humanity disappeared tomorrow? According to Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us, in an interview with Scientific American, nature would reclaim the planet awfully quickly. In the event of an ecumenical rapture or a 12 Monkeys-style plague, Manhattan's suppressed underground rivers would quickly reclaim the Big Apple's core; mosquitoes would thrive; feral cats would rule the roost; and the Statue of Liberty would wait for an enraged Charlton Heston who, like Godot, would never arrive.

WASHINGTON - The wealth gaps between whites and minorities have grown to their widest levels in a quarter-century. The overall gap between rich and poor also widened, according to an analysis of census data. The Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project looked at U.S. Census data and found that the recession and uneven recovery had erased decades of minority gains, leaving whites on average with 20 times the net worth of blacks and 18 times that of Hispanics. The analysis offers the most direct government evidence yet of the disparity between predominantly younger minorities, whose main asset is their home, and older whites, who are more likely to have 401(k)

Mary Curtis is getting ready to give it all away. Five decades of hard work as a doctor, five decades of owning homes that were bought cheap and sold expensive, five decades of saving money so that now the nest egg is measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Her two children and two grandchildren already have been showered with gifts. Down payments have been made on houses. Two generations of college tuitions have been footed. Trips have been bankrolled to Australia, Hawaii and Japan.

I reply to David O'Reilly's March 2 article on inherited wealth, in which I was quoted. While it is true and, I think, useful for us to understand that wealth does not of itself bring happiness and does bring its own particular kinds of difficulties and challenges, there is more. The root of the isolation, confusion and guilt that plague owning-class people is the same as the root of the difficulties and challenges faced by working-class people: an economic system that is based on acquisition by a few from the productivity of the majority.

On Jan. 15 at Bryn Mawr College, Acel Moore addressed the Main Line Martin Luther King Association. An excerpt: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of America, a nation in which character would be the test of an individual's worth, not only remains unfulfilled but will probably stay that way well into the 21st century. Yes, a younger generation of blacks and other "people of color" have never experienced the humiliation of Jim Crow laws, have never witnessed segregation, have always had an opportunity to vote.

Ancient truth: Capitalism creates winners, big time, but it also creates losers, without remorse. This was a truth ignored by many during the recent dot-com frenzy. Some of them should have known better; some simply were too young to have the scars that breed wisdom. The recent hemorrhage of paper wealth on Wall Street was a heck of a lesson in Capitalism 101 for young whizzes who - like so many before them - thought their generation was so brilliant, so blessed, so ahead of the curve that the ancient rules had been waived.

Aruby Odom-White earns $175,000 a year as a psychiatrist and has reported a net worth of $670,000. Her husband, Ronald A. White, runs a law firm paid millions doing work for the city. She had no experience selling drinks, food or newspapers. And yet Odom-White was deemed a "disadvantaged" businesswoman in order to gain a lucrative share of newsstands and bar/restaurants at Philadelphia International Airport. It was all perfectly legal. The rules governing Philadelphia's program to assist minority contractors say that neither great wealth nor a lack of work experience is a bar to the wealthy getting concessions work at the airport.

Personal financial success - however you define it - is more likely if you've set goals and have a plan to reach them. Oh, and you'll need a job, too. Get some advice on setting goals (and getting a job) from these sites. You've grown up. You may or may not be what you wanted to be. But now what? What do you want to be next? At the U.S. News Money site, Kimberly Palmer summarizes some of the guidance from a book by eldercare expert Bart Astor, Roadmap for the Rest of Your Life - which Palmer says is meant to help baby boomers set goals and pursue them.

WASHINGTON - America as a whole has regained the household wealth it lost in the recession and then some, thanks to higher stock and home prices. The average household, though, has a way to go. The Federal Reserve said Thursday that U.S. household wealth jumped $3 trillion to $70.3 trillion in the first quarter. That topped the peak of $68 trillion in the third quarter of 2007, just before the recession began. The recession cost Americans $15.6 trillion in wealth. Because of inflation and a rising population, the average household has recovered only about 45 percent of the wealth it lost, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The Burning Air By Erin Kelly Pamela Dorman Books. 321 pp. $26.95 Reviewed by Katie Haegele   The Poison Tree and The Dark Rose , Erin Kelly's first two novels, were engrossing thrillers with wonderful plot twists and loose ends that didn't get tied up until the very last page. Set partially in the '90s, both novels are romantic and gothic, with crumbling London mansions and pouty heroines who go around smoking clove cigarettes and studying medieval tapestry.

Housing bubbles - involving unsustainable home price inflation - are again on the worry list. Are rising real estate prices a sign of recovery, or of impending doom? The jury is out. Signs of a new bubble , based on the prices of homes compared with their underlying value, show up in California and Texas, according to economics and finance blogger Nin-Hai Tseng on CNN Money. However, she says, "joblessness has held back many would-be buyers. And while more borrowers are being approved for new mortgages, lending standards at banks remain tight.

Despite their constitutional right to an attorney, poor criminal defendants are often represented by harried public defenders struggling to keep up with huge caseloads. But that's better than their lot in civil disputes, which can involve matters as serious as domestic abuse, child custody, and housing. In those cases, poor Americans often stand at the bar entirely alone. Without the access to an attorney that criminal defendants were assured by the Supreme Court's historic Gideon v. Wainwright decision 50 years ago, indigent civil litigants have to turn to legal-aid agencies.

A secure retirement usually depends on years of careful preparation. You need to know what the obstacles are, where to turn for help, and what resources will be waiting for you once you retire. These sites can help. You need to get familiar with the Social Security website. Use it to apply for benefits, including for disability and Medicare. Long before retiring, the site can help you estimate the benefits you'll be entitled to. If, say, you are a victim of domestic abuse or identity theft, you can use the site to block access to information about you. www.ssa.gov Social Security 's "retirement planner" has links that will reveal the age at which you'll qualify for full Social Security benefits, how you'll get dinged if you retire early, and your life expectancy.

Long-term unemployment - being jobless for more than six months - in this bad economy has become a serious national problem. So far, though, nobody seems to know what to do about it. The "scariest thing in the world" is long-term unemployment, says Matthew O'Brien, an associate editor at the Atlantic magazine. In this article, O'Brien says there are two labor markets now: one for people who have been out of work less than six months, and one for the long-termers. And woe be to the latter group.