Are you still interested in ShareBuilder?
If you are, then you can get $25 bonus when opening a new account. This offer is only good for joint, individual and custodial accounts, not for IRA or ESA accounts. The bonus will be credited to your new account within four to six weeks after the first transaction is [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Taking a casual look at my investment performance over the last few months isn’t pretty. What’s that you say? Yours isn’t either? It seems like no one’s is. I was thinking about this the other day. Did I do everything right? I diversified. I have money in US [...]
Mortgage Rates May be Falling, But Changes Make Borrowing Costly
The news keeps talking about mortgage rates that continue to fall to almost unheard of low levels. We’re talking about 30-year fixed rate mortgages hovering just over 5%, and 15-year rates under 5% right now. These rates are sharply lower than just a few years ago. [...]
About the Author: Jeremy is a retirement planning specialist and founder of Generation X Finance and the guide to Financial Planning at About.com. To learn more, follow Jeremy on Twitter.
I’m very intrigued by everything going on with the housing market right now. We were out of town visiting friends this past weekend and had a lengthy discussion about the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, downsizing houses, and foreclosures.
We’ve been fortunate to be in an area that is not seeing plummeting house prices, but [...]
Finding a job in your industry is easier when you have a personal brand that can serve as an online resume and a place to document your expertise. But what happens when the industry you’re in goes into decline, suffers massive layoffs, and there simply aren’t many jobs to go around? Could it be time to [...]
If you need to be amazed and bewildered by the complexity (and stupidity) of the lending business, look no further than the “produce the note” phenomenon. This post may seem different from my usual focus, but I thought it was worth mentioning:
from Action News 6 in Philadelphia (italics and bold fonts are mine – Steve):
“I [...]
For those of you just joining us, this is my portfolio that is leveraged with money borrowed from my home equity line of credit (HELOC). As the money borrowed is used to invest, the interest charged is tax deductible. For more details, check out my modified smith manoeuvre strategy.
It’s been a couple of months since [...]
Photo courtesy of Southernpixel
When I was a freshman in college I worked a variety of retail jobs at the local mall. I worked at GNC Nutrition for a while, and then a shoe store, and then an athletic apparel store. At all three jobs I had to report the local weather back to the home [...]
How’s your eating? While surfing the net, I found some great resources that covered one of my favorite topics: tasty food! And it’s not everyday you find the terms “cheap” and “gourmet” juxtaposed in the same statement either. So let’s check out what I uncovered.
Eat For Under A Dollar?
Sometime ago, I heard [...]
I wasted a little time to build up my Lending Club portfolio.
Only a few days in the peer-to-peer lending business, I already have, believe it or not, 20 loans (notes) in my portfolio 8 of them are $25 loans and the rest are $50 loans at a total value of $794.68. Right now, I [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Credit card issuers are getting more and more proactive in dealing with inactive credit cards these days. They want to protect themselves against default by increasing APRs on credit cards for some cardholders, then closing inactive cards without any warning. Now they will just give you cash to close your accounts, whether they are inactive [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Got AMEX Credit Cards You No Longer Need? Turn Them into $300 Cash
When I had started blogging in 2006, I never expected to be any good at it. In the 10th grade, I had one teacher (hi Mrs. Paige), who criticized my writing so badly I was moved from the honors level to a place where a couple of sentences qualified as a full term paper. [...]
For anyone who follows personal finance, David Bach needs no introductions. He’s one of the best-selling financial writers of all time and his Finish Rich series includes eight consecutive bestsellers. With over 15 million copies of his books floating around, you’ve probably encountered one of them at some point.
I’ve always been a fan of David [...]
About the Author: Jeremy is a retirement planning specialist and founder of Generation X Finance and the guide to Financial Planning at About.com. To learn more, follow Jeremy on Twitter.
Finding creative and inspirational ways to help you repay your debt can keep you motivated and moving the the right direction.
One of the sad things I found when helping my brother-in-law get out of debt, was that he couldn’t even remember where he spent most of the money. Without knowing where the money went, [...]
When I wrote about my grandfather’s legacy last year I mentioned that people will always remember him for his jokes. Every time I saw Grandpop he had a joke to tell, I can’t remember them all but one of them came to mind this week and I wanted to share it with you.
A woman was [...]
This is another book review from, our favorite millionaire, QCash.
“Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett’s Omaha: A Hedge Fund Manager’s Dispatches from Inside the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting” by Jeff Matthews is a history lesson of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Matthews uses the 2007 and 2008 annual general meeting, and more importantly, [...]
Photo courtesy of psmithy
In a typical week I receive variations of this same question several times via email, comments and from followers on Twitter. For the most part, my answer is, “It depends.” But on a few occasions, when people share more details of their overall financial plan, I tell them to go for it. [...]
I have been thinking of getting into peer-to-peer lending as alternative way to invest for quite some time, but the idea has been put off repeatedly because I wasn’t sure about the prospect of making meaningful money from it. Even though the returns on loans at peer-to-peer lending sites such as Lending Club and Prosper, [...]
Original Post on The Sun’s Financial Diary
Lending Club Note Trading: Another Way for Peer-to-peer Lending
With the stimulus package details finalized, President Obama proudly announced the fastest tax break in history, which will begin to reach the middle class’ pockets after April 1. You’ll get the full impact of the tax reduction if you make less than $150,000 a year as a couple, according to the new IRS tax rates. [...]
Did you know that this week is America Saves Week? America Saves Week is still relatively new with this being just the third year, but it drives home an important issue. As a whole, Americans typically don’t save enough money. Whether it’s saving for retirement, saving for college, or just putting money into an emergency [...]
About the Author: Jeremy is a retirement planning specialist and founder of Generation X Finance and the guide to Financial Planning at About.com. To learn more, follow Jeremy on Twitter.
Next month, my wife is traveling for a pharmacy conference. Since I can work from anywhere with an Internet connection, I thought I’d follow her and take advantage of the free hotel room the government is giving her (as part of an agreement for her participating on some policy boards). Unfortunately, as the [...]
QuickBooks is small business accounting software, made by Intuit, the same company that created the user friendly tax software, TurboTax. QuickBooks has made my life much easier over the past week as I’ve gathered the business finance records for our accountant.
Quickbooks Accounting Software
I neglected recording our business income and expenses throughout the year so I [...]
In general, I don’t usually write about writing or blogging. I assumed that most of you weren’t very interested. However, I’ve received plenty of emails and questions lately about it, so I thought I would address how the blogging business model works as a way of bringing in income. And I know many of you [...]
“Alea jacta est (the die is cast)”
Julius Caesar, January 10, 49 BC as he led his army across the River Rubicon in northern Italy.
If I wasn’t pompous enough with that opening quote, forgive me, I tried. The events of one’s own life are monumental in the extreme. We entered into a contract to [...]
A reader wrote me last week very excited about the prospects of holding your own mortgage within an RRSP. Yes, that’s right, under the right conditions, you can use your own RRSP to fund the mortgage owing on your house and pay yourself back on a monthly basis.
As this sounds great on paper, after some [...]
