Safely Earn More Interest on Your Money

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I am always a bit curious when I read a cover story headline like the one on Kiplinger Magazine this month. It says 18 Ways To Earn 5% or More On Your Money. A lot of readers will make an assumption that goes along with that headline that they are talking about low-risk investments or no-risk savings products. After all, it doesn’t take a degree in advanced personal finance to know that there are literally thousands of ways to earn 5% or more on your money. Of course, most of those also come with a way to lose 5% or more on your money too. That is not what the article is about. Instead, this particular article, whose article title inside the magazine is, “Great Rates In A Low-Yield World” manages to give a better clue. The article is NOT about where to open a savings account to earn 5% or more. It is about how to get 5% YIELD on your investment. That is, 5+ percent as income, and not counting losses on invested capital. Real Earnings Are About More Than Dividends and Interest Unfortunately, while the article does indeed uncover available investments earning a 5% or higher yield, …

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Warren Buffet Wrong About Moody’s

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Warren Buffet testified before Congress that Moody’s rating agency should not be blamed for its enormous role in the financial collapse that occurred following the blow up in the real estate market and the subsequent implosion of collateral mortgage options, or CMOs. These securities eventually became the so-called toxic securities that continue to weigh down the balance sheets of many financial companies. Buffet is not dumb nor is he being led to say certain things by Berkshire Hathaway’s large stock holding in Moody’s. Rather, Buffet is saying that Moody’s and the other rating agencies including Standard and Poors and Fitch can’t be held responsible since what they missed is the same thing that everyone else missed. In other words, they weren’t any worse than anyone else. The problem with this line of thought is that the whole point of Moody’s business is that it knows MORE THAN EVERYONE ELSE. Otherwise, what is the point of paying them to rate securities. If Moody’s role in the securities industry is nothing more than the corroboration of information that others have already figured out, then what is the point of what they do exactly? Don’t forget that numerous investment concerns including pension plans, …

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Capital One World MasterCard No Hassle Rewards Miles

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Existing Capital One MasterCard holders may or may not be getting the same deals, but new credit card offers from Capital One are arriving in the mail to new credit card users. These are not reserved for highly qualified borrowers with high credit scores either. How do I know? One good piece of financial advice that I frequently give is to use phony names when signing up for certain things, especially promotional offers and magazine subscriptions. The reason is that these companies like to turn around and sell your name and address to other companies that then send you plenty of junk mail. These mailing lists can be more profitable than the actual business of writing a magazine or newsletter! Nothing helps sort out a real “Urgent! Response Required,” mailing from a phony one like seeing one of the fake names that you used to sign up for something in the past. Just like the one that appears on my no annual fee Capital One No Hassle Rewards World MasterCard offer that came to my house under a name used for magazine subscriptions. Since that isn’t even a real person, let alone someone with a high credit score, we know …

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Inflation Stays Tame – Fed Not Raising Rates Soon

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Everyone is worried about if and when the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates, even though the Fed itself continues to say that it is not considering doing so. That is what happens when interest rates are so low (basically just above zero) that everyone knows the only way they can go is up.

Yahoo Buys Associated Content

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There are plenty of other things Yahoo gets from buying Associated Content, not the least of which is a big fat swath of Internet real estate that ranks obscenely high in Google search results and Bing search results. A great deal of the traffic generated from these high ranking searches is monetized via, you guessed it, Google AdSense which pays content publishers based upon ads placed by Google on those websites. Yahoo, can now switch out those Google Ads and replace them with their own Yahoo Ads.

Where to Find Legit Work at Home Jobs

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Many people like the idea of working from home. There is more flexibility. It allows parents to spend more time with their kids. Dads who work from home have more opportunities to participate in events they traditionally miss like afternoon school plays, or soccer practice. Likewise, many moms who have built up great careers are looking for a way to not lose everything that they have built, while at the same time not missing out on raising their children. In order to keep their personal financial plans on track, taking on some work at home sounds great. Unfortunately, the universal allure of work at home jobs makes it a great target for scammers. The idea of someone paying a good wage for working from your own home at a home-based business that requires no experience, no start-up costs, and no set time commitment sounds too good to be true. It usually is. Being aware is the best financial advice you can get. How To Find Legitimate Work at Home Jobs Real work at home jobs that are not scams do exist. However, they don’t come wrapped in rainbows delivered on a unicorn’s back. By taking another look at working from …

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Stocks In Dow Jones Industrial Average and Dow Jones Transportation Average

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Dow Jones Indexes publishes lot of averages and indexes. They are best known for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Down Jones Transportation Average. Personal financial planning on FinanceGourmet.com The Dow Jones Industrial Average is featured on most stock market news reports and makes an appearance on the nightly news. It is often referred to as just The Dow, or Dow Jones. The Dow Jones Index is composed of the stocks of 30 big U.S. companies which are supposed to represent the majority of the US economy and industry, with the exception of the transportation industry; they have their own index. Dow Jones Industrial Average Components The Companies In the Dow Jones Industrial Average 3M Company (MMM) Alcoa Inc (AA) American Express (AXP) AT&T (T) Bank of America (BAC) Boeing (BA) Caterpillar (CAT) Chevron (CVX) Cisco (CSCO) Coca-Cola (KO) du Pont (DD) Exxon Mobile (XOM) General Electric (GE) Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) Home Depot (HD) Intel (INTC) IBM (IBM) Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) JPMorgan Chase (JPM) Kraft Foods (KFT) McDonald’s Corp (MCD) Merck & Co (MRK) Microsoft (MSFT) Pfizer (PFE) Procter & Gamble (PG) Travelers Companies (TRV) United Technologies Corporation (UTX) Verizon Communications (VZ) Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) Walt Disney Company (DIS) …

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Printing Tax Returns TurboTax or TaxCut

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Whether you waited until the last minute or filed months ago, there is one last 2009 tax tips and tricks that you need to follow. Print out a copy of your tax return from your TurboTax software or print out your taxes from your TaxCut software, or whatever other tax software program you used to file your Federal Income Taxes. Many people have the misconception that the TurboTax file saved on their computer as they worked on their Income Taxes is a regular file that can be opened and printed with a regular software program like Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat Reader. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The files generated by popular tax preparation programs like TurboTax and TaxCut is a proprietary file that can only be opened in the tax program. While next year’s version of the program will most likely be able to open that tax file, you have to buy it first. That isn’t very helpful if you need to produce a copy of your taxes in September to get a small business loan or open up a bank account. There are ways to hack open TurboTax files, but why go through all that trouble? Print …

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How To Get Government Grant Money Free Step By Step Instructions

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If you are wondering if getting free money from the Federal Government by getting government grants is a realistic and true way to make money and profit by knowing what other people don’t know, then read Free Government Grants For Moms Dads Business and Others. You may also be interested in other personal finance tips and advice. If you are already convinced that you can go out there and get your share of this multimillion dollar giveaway from the Federal Government just by finding and winning grants from the government, then read on. How To Find Government Grants Do a Google search for government grants or US Government Grants and you’ll see that the top result is grants.gov Notice that it is dot GOV and not dot com. If grants.gov is not your top search result, then you got a little too fancy with your search. Remember that nobody pumps up the real government grants webpage. There is no profit in that. If you want to shortcut the process, you can just trust me about the website and go to grants.gov directly. (Do yourself a favor and open it in a new window so you can follow along here.) While …

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Free Government Grants for Moms and Government Grants for Dads

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When I write personal finance articles for Finance Gourmet, I put on my Financial Planner hat. Just a few short years ago, I was a professional financial advisor with all of the required securities licenses. I had my Series 7 License, my Series 66 License, and my Life and Health Insurance licenses as well. In addition, I was a Certified Financial Planner, or CFP if you prefer. Most of my clients were upper class, high-income, people with either a high-paying job, or they owned their own business. As a result, most of the people I worked with day in and day out as a financial consultant were well educated, either through formal education, or as graduates of the School of Hard Knocks. They also knew a little something about money. While it might be those who don’t have any money, or those who really don’t know anything about personal finance who need the most help, they also are the ones who can’t or won’t seek professional financial advice. As a financial adviser, you find out quickly that trying to “win” discussions with clients who believe something that is incorrect is not worth the effort. No matter how many facts or …

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