It seems that even your credit card’s rewards points are not safe from the terror of inflation. This is a real credit card offer I got the other day (click for larger image): Are we supposed to be fooled by this? I’ll let things sink in a bit before I do any speculating as to (more…)
I know my writing often sounds like I’m preaching for everybody to be value investors. That’s simply not true! I only feel that some people can be value investors due to the temperament and the time needed to perform analysis. So what do I tell the general public who couldn’t care less about reading financial statements, or sitting in front of the computer day-trading?
Mutual funds are still the no-brainer solution for the average joe. Much “marketing” debate has been made about management fees. They’re not wrong to be critical but everything is really dependent on the “net” returns you’re able to achieve. My only concern is that consumers do the minimum work of researching the track-record of the fund and the fund manager. A long, consistent and positive tracking record is a must for active-managed funds.
But when John Bogle, founder of Vanguard, decided to balk the norms of the financial industry and aggressively market passive index funds, it was a strong indictment on the vast majority of managers who fail to beat their corresponding benchmark indexes. Vanguard’s promotion of this strategy still trumpets strongly, but there are signs of shifting towards actively managing their index funds, even if it’s just a little bit!
You might be wondering why an investing website like Investor Geeks is discussing a topic like long-term care insurance. Well, it would be a shame to learn all sorts of great investing strategies on this website, grow your portfolio, and then watch it quickly disappear if you get sick or injured and require long-term medical assistance. Protection of assets should be a concern of all investors.
An ARM can be a huge money saver, or a time bomb. Unfortunately, there are a lot of time bombs out there.
Everybody knows that one of the first critical parts of getting your financial house in order is to create a budget. How can you know if you are living within or beyond your means without one? How can you figure out where best to cut expenses if you don’t know how you’re spending your money?
Budgets, at least as presented by most experts, are very much an all or nothing proposition. What good is a budget that doesn’t include all your expenses? Quite good as it turns out.
Whether it’s due to bad or irrational decisions, youthful naiveté, a bad streak of luck, or situations totally beyond our control, we’re all faced with mounting debt at some point.
If it gets bad enough, some of us may even have to work with our creditors to forgive some of our debt just to remain solvent. But did you know that getting a break on your debt could greatly effect your tax situation? How about the effect of accepting a settlement offer has on your credit report?
Today President Bush signed into law a bill that is designed to encourage 401K participation. There are many good points to this bill and estimates are that it will increase the number of people participating in retirement plans. The numbers are still foggy but you are looking at anywhere from 30% to more then double (more…)
After launching in February as the first person-to-person lending site in the US, Prosper.com has seen a good deal of activity. Now that it’s been 6 months since they opened their doors, I used Google Blogsearch to see what people’s experiences were out there in the blogosphere.
Almost all of us hear some variation of this from our credit card or car loan company: your interest rate is a variable rate of 14.99% based on Prime plus 6.74%. That means your current rate is 14.99% but may change at any time, so if the prime interest rate goes up or down 0.5% so will your card. Let’s look at the Prime rate closer, and I’ll share some tips to enhance your credit search.
Sherman, set the wayback machine to the winter of 1999! This was a time when everyone thought they were a financial genius. You couldn’t loose, or so we thought. I was a conservative investor even in those days but a co-worker was talking about a great investment tip he heard from a friend who had heard it from their doctor. That in it self should have been a sign.
