America turned 236 years old this week, but in the financial markets that news was nothing compared to the scandal rocking London financial markets.

It came to light this week that Barclays — and potentially other mega banks — helped prop up or inflate the LIBOR rate over the past several years.

Why is LIBOR important?

It stands for London Interbank Offered Rate.  It is the rate that major banks can expect to be charged when they borrow money from another bank.  If a bank’s cost of borrowing was artificially higher than it should have been they would then have to charge their customers higher interest rates on loans.

In short, we all may have been paying slightly higher interest rates on every type of lending product because a few banks conspired together to artificially keep rates higher than they needed to be.

That’s big financial news.

The LIBOR scandal won’t provide any relief from your current loans and debts, but these articles just might help you:

Continue Reading

The Supreme Court announced on Thursday that, for the most part, they were siding with the healthcare law commonly referred to as Obamacare.

However, in an interesting twist they only agreed because Congress has the ability to create taxes, and to the Court, clearly the mandate was a tax increase.  Anything that you have to pay if you don’t pay something else in, at its core, a tax.

Of course Democrats in Congress never wanted to call it that because it never would have passed.  Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the law as constitutional it will be one of the largest tax increases in American history.

But that’s why we have a democracy: the branches of government that balance each other out.

Most of us are better served in watching our own finances that worrying about the Supreme Court. Here are some articles to help you do that:

Continue Reading

It is expected that the Supreme Court will deliver a ruling on the healthcare reform commonly referred to as Obamacare.

Whichever side gets a majority of the nine votes from the Justices — just five votes — can substantially impact healthcare costs across the  country.

Obama’s signature piece of legislation is on the firing line, and no one is sure how it will come out.  The only thing known is this: the result, to keep or to nix the law, will have a huge political and economic impact in America.

Are you ready?

Find yourself needing to prepare for higher costs (like healthcare)?  Here are some tips:

Continue Reading

China sent its first female astronaut into space this weekend (along with two male astronauts).

This signals growing competition in the space arena; China also has its own orbiting laboratory.  The team of astronauts will attempt to dock with the lab.  If they are successful, China will become the third country (behind the United States and Russia) to successfully dock with an orbiting space facility.

Will this signal something bigger for China’s growing economy?  And how will this impact relations with the United States and other democratic countries?  Or will we all be able to get along and work toward a greater goal of growing the global economy?

While you ponder these worldwide economic questions, be sure to check out some solid reads for your personal finances:

Continue Reading

This week’s rally on the stock market emphasized one investing principal that we should all take time to remember: consistency.

It was just two weeks ago that the market dropped so much during a one week period that all of the gains from 2012 were completely wiped out.  Now the markets just capped off the best week of the entire year.

The S&P 500 rose 3.73% in the past five market days.

With the markets going up, down, up, and down again, how can the investing principal be consistency?

For me it is the reminder to consistently be investing in the market.

My wife and I have our Roth IRA contributions coming out weekly now rather than monthly.  That means some weeks the price is higher than the price we paid last week, and other weeks are on the other side of the equation.

But we’re investing and building up shares in our index mutual funds for the long run.  This type of consistency makes it easy to shrug off the worst week of the year followed by the best week of the year because we know, eventually, there will be another worst and best week of the year.  As long as we’re building up shares and the market goes up over time — which, historically, it has — then we come out ahead.

Want to forget about the ups and downs of the stock market? Here are some great reads:

Continue Reading

After an unexpectedly low jobs report the stock market dropped more than 2% on Friday.

Added in with the losses from the rest of the month of May, put the S&P 500 down 9.1% for the month.  Nearly all of the gains in the S&P 500 from the rest of the year have been wiped out — the index is only up 1.63% YTD.

If you’re nearing retirement, you just took a significant hit to your portfolio and should adjust accordingly.

However, for those with many years left to retirement the idea of the stock market going down should be soon as a good thing because the same amount of investment will buy more shares at lower prices than they would have at the beginning of May.

It can be difficult to see stocks as being “on sale”, but that mentality can help you significantly in your retirement planning.  These great reads will help you, too:

Continue Reading