As the wild stock market gyrations continue, investors are reawakening to the performance benchmarks of their mutual funds to see if their fund choices are at least doing better than the market indexes. With most actively managed mutual funds underperforming the current market, investors are, once again, feverishly moving their funds out of stock funds [...]
Continue Reading →Credit card vs debit card which do you think is the smartest choice? Ever since the financial crisis, consumers have turned over a new leaf with regards to their use of credit, which is why debit card usage has skyrocketed in the last few years. For many people it was out of necessity, as their credit [...]
Continue Reading →Entrepreneurs and self-employed people devote an untold number of hours towards their business, wearing multiple hats and juggling an infinite number of tasks. For many, their business is their future security which is why they are willing to spend so much time working in it. Because of that, and the fact that most business owners [...]
Continue Reading →For the largest generation in history, retirement dreams have turned into pipe dreams as the “new normal” economy seems to be taking hold. Now crossing the retirement threshold at a rate of 10,000 per day, Baby Boomers are reassessing their retirement plans, and some are even wondering if they will ever be able to retire. [...]
Continue Reading →Unless you’re a Ron Paul enthusiast, you may have missed it among the relatively few minutes he has been given in the seemingly endless number of Republican debates; that is his call for the abolition of the Federal Reserve and a return to the gold standard. Other politicians, including more recently Newt Gingrich have made [...]
Continue Reading →Consumers beware, foreclosure fraud is rampant in today’s post financial meltdown era. Unquestionably, the worst of the carnage left after the financial meltdown has been the millions of foreclosures that continue to plague the housing market. Although the number of foreclosures has dipped back under 1 million in 2011, it is expected to increase again in 2012, after a lull in processing caused by the “robo-signing” foreclosure fraud scandal at the hands of some of the major banks.
Continue Reading →As if the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, spawned from the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, wasn’t controversial enough, it is now under fire as a result of President Obama’s “recess” appointment of its new director, Richard Cordray. The quotation marks are there because the appointment is certain to come under legal challenges by [...]
Continue Reading →Car dealer scams, particularly financing, has become more prevalent in recent years. As if the car buying experience wasn’t bad enough, it has become a nightmare for many unwitting car buyers who, for one reason or another, aren’t able to use conventional means to finance their purchase. Along with the dozens of other scams that have proliferated in [...]
Continue Reading →Will the Unbanked Ever Become Bankable? With the rise of pre-paid debit cards, payday loans and pawn shops, we learn more about a large segment of the population that lurks in the shadows of the financial system in our country called the “unbanked.” These are people from a variety of backgrounds and for any number of [...]
Continue Reading →You may be used to receiving credit card offers in the mail, but if you receive a letter from Union Workers Credit Services inviting you to join their membership plan, shred it immediately and warn your family and friends to do the same. When I received my own offer in the mail, I couldn’t believe [...]
Continue Reading →So, the big news hit the wires over the weekend: Nine Eurozone Countries to be Downgraded by Standard & Poor’s. Excuse me while I yawn. Was anybody actually surprised by this? For the few people who thought the Eurozone experiment would actually work – 16 countries with completely different cultures, economies, and fiscal policies give [...]
Continue Reading →In what appears to be the biggest financial news story of the week (it was a real slow week for financial news), we learn that the venerable, personal finance pop icon, Suze Orman, has come out with her own pre-paid MasterCard, called the “Approved Card.” This is not totally surprising. After all, the Kardashians left [...]
Continue Reading →The recession seems to be taking a back seat as more people pull out their credit cards to pay for everyday items. According to The Christian Science Monitor, consumers racked up a total of $64 billion in credit card debt for the year 2011, and January 2012 has already seen an increase in credit card [...]
Continue Reading →Many people deal with credit card debt all of their lives with most of them giving little or no thought to what happens with their debt after death. The fact that nearly 60% die without a will is a strong indication that they’ve given absolutely no thought to it. As a consequence, those that survive the [...]
Continue Reading →Sponsored Links
