As a professional financial planner, I often come across finanical products that are such bad ideas that I don’t even know how (or why?) someone got them to market. Usually the answer is flat out greed. A company willing to make a buck at the expense of its customers is always out there.
A [...]
Instead of sending me your rewards catalog, I’m just going to collect a table of information. The reason is that from the catalogs I’ve seen, comparing the items you can get is kind of a worthless process. Most catalogs don’t show a specific model number or other details that would be necessary to [...]
One if the most frequent questions I get from people is what kind of insider tips and tricks do I know as a financial planner. Of course, most people don’t want to hear it, and sometimes it can take a while to explain. Today, one of those secrets is revealed over at [...]
In news that will not be met with happiness on Wall Street, the inflation data for January was not good. A 0.3 jump in the core CPI index spells the end of rate cuts from the Fed.
Wondering what the big deal is? The CPI or Consumer Price Index is a widely watched measure [...]
Putting a little bit of a damper on all the recession talk, Wal-Mart reported good 4th quarter earnings after refocusing on low prices during the Christmas shopping season. Wal-Mart in particular is a well regarded barometer regarding the economy because of its ubiquitous nature and lowest common denominator demographic. The theory basically [...]
Ok, it’s official. Pretty much everyone in America is getting a tax rebate this summer. The IRS says they’ll start mailing checks in May. So how would you like to get a nice tax-free bonus on your tax rebate? Here’s how.
Your tax-rebate is part of the economic stimulus package recently [...]
A client asked me what they should do with their economic stimulus tax rebate they will get later this year. (So will you!). Usually I tell people to pay down debt if they have any. They don’t have any. They also have already maxed out their IRAs for 2008. But, they have kids! So I [...]
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