Archive for February, 2010
Shopping for a mortgage can be intimidating. There are thousands of mortgage lenders and hundreds of ways lenders can tweak home loans to distort their real costs. You’re also facing the excitement of buying a [...]
February 26th, 2010. Topics: Banking, Home Buying, Mortgages. Read More »
The CARD Act—a set of new regulations designed to limit credit card trickery—went into effect this week even though Congress proposed the act over a year ago. Since then, there’s been a lot of talk [...]
February 23rd, 2010. Topics: Buyer Beware, Credit Cards. Read More »
Last week, a long-time reader e-mailed a superb question: If you must choose, should you save first for retirement or save for a down payment on your first home?
Obviously, both are important. The younger you [...]
February 22nd, 2010. Topics: Home Buying, Retirement, The Stock Market. Read More »
Savvy investors know that a single mistake can wipe out months—even years—of solid returns. And beginning investors often make their share of the same four common blunders. In fact, tactics for identifying and avoiding these [...]
February 17th, 2010. Topics: Retirement, Stocks, The Stock Market. Read More »
Picture this: You’ve just completed your tax return for the year. You’re stoked because you qualified for a ton of deductions this year, so you’re getting a huge refund. You are about to send of [...]
February 16th, 2010. Topics: Tax Preparation. Read More »
Do you have a credit card that raised your interest rate within the last year? You’re not alone. Credit card companies raised nearly everybody’s APRs because as of this month, the CARD Act prohibits them [...]
February 12th, 2010. . Read More »
Have you ever wondered if you can itemize deductions on your tax return? Actually, have you ever wondered what, exactly, itemizing means? If so, you’ve come to the right place. I’m going to teach you [...]
February 11th, 2010. Topics: Tax Credits and Deductions, Tax Preparation. Read More »
You don’t need a Ph.D. in economics to know that economic bubbles—and their ensuing POPS!—can take us all for a wild ride.
Bubbles occur anytime asset prices appreciate unrealistically; and they happen more often than [...]
February 10th, 2010. Topics: Economy, The Stock Market. Read More »
There is a thin line that differentiates investing and gambling.
We might consider professional gamblers—poker players, for example—a breed of speculative investors. Of course, we might also call investment professionals who take wild risks in [...]
February 8th, 2010. Topics: Gambling, The Stock Market. Read More »
To make a successful investment, you must know when to buy and when you should sell. The reality is that there are only a handful of companies worth holding onto for long periods of time—and [...]
February 4th, 2010. Topics: Stocks, The Stock Market. Read More »
