Housing prices going down ... Health-care costs going up

Housing prices going down: That makes news because it has happened so rarely.

Health-care costs going up: That makes news even though it happens all the time.

In both cases, the potential hit to Americans' pocketbooks is huge. And that's why looking at what made news in Personal Finance in 2006 is such an important exercise:


You want to know where your money is going to disappear in 2007.

In the case of housing, the news is only mortifying if you're a home seller and need to unload quickly. Otherwise, the fact that sales are chilled and values stagnant has only a psychological effect: How much less rich will you feel when your No. 1 asset, your home, isn't appreciating at a double-digit pace anymore?

With health care, the news is only bad if you get sick, or if you happen to be among the millions of workers getting smacked by bigger insurance premiums from their employers. Unfortunately, that covers almost everyone -- unlike our health-insurance system itself, which will leave at least 40 million without coverage in 2007.

There are other issues as well that will affect your personal finances in 2007, and in our Year-End Review & Outlook we pinpoint eight more. Read our coverage, plus find out from Robert Powell what Social Security calculations are important for you to be making today and learn why paying points to buy down the interest rate on your mortgage turns out in almost every case to be a bad deal, on Thursday's Personal Finance pages.

With the long run-up in housing prices, you kind of expected that we were due for a fall. If only the same could be said about health-care costs.

Source: MarketWatch.com

Steve Kerch, assistant managing editor/personal finance