When it comes to your taxes, there are few things scarier than the prospect of a tax audit.
The good news is that most people aren’t audited.
Further, most audits are actually taken care of through the mail. Many audits are routine, and require only that you send in a piece of missing documentation.
However, most people still prefer not to be audited at all.
How many insurance companies do you have?
Not just insurance policies, but how many insurance companies are you juggling?
If you are working with multiple insurance firms you might be missing out on significant savings that you can get by bundling your insurance policies.
Most Americans have several lines of insurance to cover various aspects of their lives: car insurance, homeowners or renters insurance, and life insurance are some of the most common policies. Price shopping is common by consumers and often the lowest bid company wins.
But is that the best strategy?
Although the foreclosure crisis is making far less headlines than it once did, it is still a big problem in America.
In fact, underwater mortgages are back to 2011 levels, currently at 11 million homes or 22.8% of all residential mortgages.
For those 11 million homeowners, an underwater mortgage represents an impossible financial situation to rectify because homeowners can’t sell their home but also can’t afford the payments and for most, it will likely be many years, at least, before they see the value of their home return if they see it at all in their lifetime.
When a homeowner can’t meet their mortgage obligation, the bank or mortgage lender holding the loan suffers because the bank still has to make the payment to the investors holding the loan. These toxic loans aren’t draining the balance sheets of these large banks but it does affect profitability and that’s bad for business at a time when banks have underperformed the stock market since 2009.
For four years, banks have tried to get these bad loans off their books.
Continue Reading
The recent rally of the stock market stumbled at the end of the week with a release of a “negative” jobs report.
I say “negative” because the headlines you saw were things like “Negative jobs report dampens markets” and “Silver lining in poor jobs report”.
This left me confused and somewhat annoying with business and economy reporting.
The “negative” jobs report that is being referred to is one that says only 120,000 additional people were employed in the economy in March than there were in February. That sounds like good news to me — it’s a positive number!
The “negative” aspect kicks in because the number for February hiring was 240,000. So the reports read that hiring is slowing, which might be true, but you still added over 100,000 jobs into the economy. That’s a good thing. It would be time for a negative report if the number showed that fewer people overall were employed in the economy.
If you’re a retail or individual investor you may feel like the little guy can’t win in the stock market.
The individual investor is a little fish in the vast ocean we call the world’s investment market and only the biggest of the investors can actually get ahead.
Many of us have said that in the past but we were hoping that it wasn’t true. The market is supposed to be set up so everybody has the same information and although insider trading is difficult to police, some high profile cases over the past couple of years have made big investors a little less likely to share illegal information when others aren’t looking.
How does it make you feel to know that insider trading was not only legal, but your elected officials were taking part?
Thanks to the recent signing of the STOCK Act, or Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge Act, members of Congress can no longer profit from insider trading. Continue Reading
April is National Financial Literacy Month, and that means it’s a great time to reflect on your finances, and think about what we can be doing to improve financial literacy for our children, and for others around us.
One of the best places to start when it comes to improving your finances is the basics.
It seems unnecessary to go back to basics; after all, many of us feel like we have the basics down pat. However, no matter how advanced we think we are in the world of finances, it never hurts to have a refresher on the responsible use of money.
So often we look at our property tax bills and decide—based on the whole bill—that our taxes are too high.
I know I do.
The problem with that view though is that property taxes are never a single number, but a combination of several.
Most of us tend to think our property taxes are too high, but then we get a bit hung up on the components. We may want a lower tax bill, but at the same time we might support high spending levels in certain areas, or even just one in particular.
There are constituencies behind each category of our property taxes, which is why it’s so hard to get lower taxes overall.
It seems you can do everything online these days except wash your clothes — and some genius will no doubt figure that out fairly soon.
One of the great benefits of the Internet is the many ways it helps us save money. From tax filing to wedding registries, the World Wide Web has a lot to offer.
For those that aren’t familiar, a blog carnival is a place to show off the best articles in a particular niche. Publishers submit articles they think would be a great fit for a carnival and the site running it that week determines what articles make the cut. It’s a great way for a site to show off their best stuff and a great way for readers to learn about a subject and get introduced to new sites.
This particular carnival deals with Passive Investing (hence the name). The purpose of the carnival is to get knowledge out about passive investing and to have a place where those interested in passive investing can learn more and share articles.
If you have a site with an article that would be a great fit for the Carnival of Passive Investing then make sure to submit your article via the carnival submission form.
Over 50 articles were submitted but only 18 made the cut.
And now to the 16th Carnival of Passive Investing! Continue Reading
For years, American Express has had the luxury/executive card market to itself with its wildly successful Platinum Card®. Visa® has entered the upscale luxury card market with its Black Card (the card is backed by Barclays Bank Delaware).
The Visa Black Card is working to differentiate itself from other credit cards with its appearance and exclusivity.
The Visa Black Card is made with carbon (no, you shouldn’t concern yourself with how a card looks but it is kind of neat that’s it’s carbon – maybe it could come in handy in a MacGuyver situation?). Also, membership is limited in order to ensure top-quality service for members. That’s a big distinction from most of the plastic credit cards on the market today.
Let’s take a look at the features and benefits that the Visa Black Card offers, shall we?