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How Do Rising Interest Rates Affect Credit Cards?

March 17, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

How Does The Federal Reserve Raising Rates Affect My Credit Cards? You heard that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. How does the Fed increasing interest rates affect your credit cards personally? It’s actually pretty easy to tell. First off, your credit cards are most likely tied to something called the prime rate, not the federal funds rate. The rate the Federal reserve raises is the rate the Fed charges banks for overnight loans. The prime rate is the interest rate that banks charge their most valuable (wealthy) customers. The prime rate moves in step with the Fed Funds rate. Before the Fed raised rates, the fed fund rate was 0% (technically 0% – 0.25%), now it is 0.25% (technically 0.25% to 0.50%). The prime rate was 3.25% and now it is 3.50%. How do rising interest rates affect your credit cards? Simple. Your credit card interest rate is the prime rate plus another amount. The other amount is made up by the credit card issuer and you agreed to it when you signed the credit card application. Finding out how much your interest rate is, is easy. Just check your statement or log on to your credit card’s website. …

Fed Day 2022 – Fun and Rates

March 16, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

It’s Fed Day, boys and girls, and the markets are feeling pretty good this morning, having already priced in negativity from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Markets are up, although they trimmed the earlier pop. All eyes are on the Federal Reserve Board meeting where the Fed is expected to raise interest rates. Usually, rising interest rates mean putting the brakes on business and stocks, so why is the market happy? Inflation is higher than anyone would like, and the biggest, baddest, bluntest, tool in the inflation fighting basket is higher interest rates. In other words, everyone wants higher rates in order to fix inflation, and everyone is expecting the Fed to give them what they want. So, the markets are up. What’s the catch? Well, higher rates really do slow down the economy, and while inflation has surged as of late, remember it’s coming off of years of very low inflation and a pandemic. It may be that the inflation we see is a temporary surge. While it cannot be ignored, it can be overreacted to, and this is where things get tricky. Raise interest rates too high, too fast, and crash the economy. Raise rates too slowly and let …

What Is the Difference Between PPI and CPI?

March 15, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

These days everyone is worried about inflation. The financial media often distill reporting about inflation down to a single, easy to understand number. “Inflation rose 5% in March,” they will say. What are they talking about, exactly? What is the CPI? What is the PPI? And, what is the difference between the PPI and CPI? What Is the PPI? The PPI is the Producers Price Index. The PPI is an index that measures the average change over time in the selling prices by the producers of goods. The PPI measures price changes from the producer’s perspective. The main Producer’s Price Index is composed of the approximately 10,000 PPIs for individual products and groups of products generated each month. What Is the CPI? The CPI is the Consumers Price Index. The CPI measures the average monthly change in the prices of a set of goods and service commonly consumed by U.S. households. The CPI measures price changes from the consumer’s perspective. The CPI measures a specific set of items and services that are set in advance. How Are the PPI and the CPI Different? To understand the difference between PPI and CPI, we need to look at their construction and purpose. …

Credit Check Total Reviews Scam or Legit?

February 15, 2023March 12, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

After a review of Credit Kama here on FinanceGourmet, a reader asked if I would look into another service he had found called Credit Check Total at creditchecktotal.com. Credit Check Total Reviews With many financial services, the reality of the offering differs significantly from what the bold, large-type headline suggests. The Credit Check Total website leads with the bold headline that you can “see your whole credit picture” of all three credit reports and credit scores for just $1. The devil, as they say, is in the details. Further down the page, but to their credit, not buried in the fine print, is information you need to determine if this near free credit report offer is right for you, or if Credit Check Total is a scam. It says that when you order the $1 credit reports and scores, that you will automatically, and without the ability to opt-out begin a trial membership that costs $29.95 per month. The real trick here is that you have just a 7-day trial period. If you don’t cancel during those 7 days, then those $1 credit reports actually cost you at least $30.95. When I looked into whether or not Credit Karma was …

Are Gold Mutual Funds a Good Way to Invest In Gold?

February 9, 2023March 9, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

Recently, a client explained to me how he thought gold was a good investment and protection against inflation. I’m not going to talk today about if he is right or wrong. Instead, I’ll mention that his fabulous do it yourself investment solution was Fidelity’s Gold Fund. Good call? Gold Mutual Fund Holdings Well, it came as quite a shock to him that actual gold is only the sixth biggest investment in the fund. Five bigger investments in the mutual fund are in companies that have something to do with the gold industry. Granted, those companies’ stock prices will be heavily influenced by the price of gold, but certainly not on a one-for-one basis, and it is very possible for gold companies to have problems (and thus lower stock prices) unrelated to gold prices. If the point of investing in gold is to get an alternative investment from the stock market itself, investing in the stock of gold-based companies does not achieve that goal. — Is Bitcoin better than gold for this purpose? Gold companies are very susceptible to environmental lawsuits and regulations. Not to mention, gold happens to be mined in some very unstable countries throughout the world. A military …

Share Buyback Myths

March 4, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

Arrgghhh! Share buybacks, or stock repurchases, are a tool that publicly traded companies use to manipulate their shareholders into making them think that they are working for them. Unfortunately, with big business schools still teaching a curriculum that starts with The Wealth of Nations and doesn’t much update from there, there are all too many stock analysts and pundits out there pushing share buybacks as good corporate governance. Returning Capital to Shareholders The gold standard of returning capital to shareholders is paying cash dividends. There is a catch though. You can’t use accounting to create cash that you pay out. The other catch is that shareholders don’t like it when you cut a cash dividend once you start paying it. In other words, if you are going to pay a cash dividend, you better really be in a good position. Share Buybacks Wasting Money Enter share buybacks. A share buyback is where a company takes the extra cash it has and instead of paying a cash dividend, which it can’t play around with, it buys back its own shares. A share buyback is supposed to happen when a company feels its shares are undervalued. That isn’t what really happens anymore. …

Credit Karma Review – Complaints Accuracy Legit?

November 10, 2022March 2, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

Earlier we discussed how I first found out about Credit Karma and how, as a seasoned financial professional, I was inclined to think that Credit Karma is a scam offer for free credit scores. I decided to do a review after seeing some Credit Karma reviews that don’t really answer my questions (or the questions others seem to be asking.) Most importantly, I want to know is Credit Karma safe. Is Credit Karma legit? Update: Read here about an opt-in service Credit Karma review credit monitoring as a free additional service. Update #2: There is a free Credit Karma tax offering now available. Here is our Credit Karma tax review. Before we get started, there is one very important thing to be aware of. There are scam websites out there that take advantage of people thinking they are going to CreditKarma.com. Remember, Credit is with a ‘c’ and Karma is with a ‘k’. If you somehow end up on either KreditKarma or CreditCarma chances are you are in for a scam. If you get asked to enter a credit card number, be sure you are on the right website first. Second, this review is only about CreditKarma’s free credit score service. …

Russia Invades Ukraine

February 24, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

Thinking about your investments as war starts is kind of cold and calculating, but also perfectly natural. What should I do when Russia invades Ukraine? First, remember, investors do not like uncertainty. Nothing is more uncertain than the course of war. Expect a market downturn with every new development that isn’t the war ending. Second, remember that the markets tend to overreact to initial news because everyone is both reacting, and trying to predict how others will react. Third, remember if you have a well-diversified portfolio, this sort of thing should not affect your investing strategy. Markets go up and markets go down. As far as your long-term investments are concerned it doesn’t matter whether the markets went down because of war, or just a cyclical phase of the market cycle. Do not panic. Do not sell unless you were already planning it. Fourth, if you are actively investing for the long-term in your 401k, IRA, 529 plan, or whatever else, KEEP GOING. This is exactly how dollar cost averaging works for you. Your investments when the markets are down become your buying at the bottom in the future. Do not miss the opportunity. Dollar cost averaging does the work …

Market Correction… Barely

February 23, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

So, the S&P 500 closed low enough on Tuesday to make it 10% lower than its closing high on January 3rd marking, officially at least, a correction in the stock market. If you aren’t seeing a lot of fuss, that’s because it really isn’t that big of a deal. Back on January 3rd, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who thought the market was overvalued, that it had run up too high for too long. So, when the market began a slow sideways, sloping down, trend over a two-month period, nobody really worried about it. It’s as if those prices on January 3rd weren’t real and the market was getting back to reality. Even now, there are plenty of people out there saying that the market is still too high. They might be right, and frankly another two-month long drop down another 10 percent probably won’t be much of a fuss either. After all, while this correction is a market down 10 percent from its peak, it’s a market that is zero percent down from last October, and zero percent down since last July, and still very much up from before that. In other words, unless you …

Is Draft Kings Stock a Buy?

February 19, 2022 by Finance Gourmet

Draft Kings stock got hammered on Friday (2/18/22). Why? Well, there are plenty of self-important, chest-puffing, stock analysts’ pieces out there for you to read up about if Draft Kings is a sell, a buy, or hold, but you don’t have to read them. The promise of far too many recent IPO stocks, stocks heading for IPO, and plain old venture capital backed unicorns is “unlimited growth potential.” This is the key to big venture capital raises, and huge IPO numbers. Profits? Nope. Stable customers? Puh-lease. Silicon Valley tech bros and their Wall Street counterparts don’t like being shackled down by old world metrics like GAAP and reality. They prefer knowing exactly how much potentially unlimited limitless is out there. Everything else is for brick and mortar stocks. How Draft Kings Got Unlimited Potential Once upon a time almost no states allowed online gambling and betting. In fact, it was just over two decades ago that the Feds got mad at all the online gambling websites out there pretending they weren’t violating U.S. law by having some part of their operation outside the United States. It took the Feds about a year to scare the banks into cutting off the …