News & Opinion
Kiplinger
- - Beat inflation with a card that complements your spending habits and rewards your purchases.
- - Find your target return, to stay ahead of the rising cost of living.
- - Each month editor in chief Knight Kiplinger answers readers' questions about the ethical way to handle their personal finances.
- - Watch for Congress to reinstate this break soon: Giving your IRA distribution to charity could allow you to skip the income tax.
- - Readers weigh in on teaching kids to save, paying for grades and more.
CNN Money
- - Six months after Rob Hruskoci closed his business, a debt collector called and demanded payment that day for the $5,000 balance on his business credit card.
- - With gas prices spiking and the economy in a tailspin, the people who provide luxury extras are finding a once-lucrative gig is now a tough trade.
- - When hackers infiltrated Citibank ATMs at 7-Eleven stores, they revived the fear of everyone looking to get out a few bucks for a Slurpee - is using this machine safe?
- - A big reason that Fiona Saulness has saved as much as she has for retirement is real estate.
- - Question: I have a pretty vanilla investment portfolio and an advisor who tells me to stay the course every time I call him while freaking out about the market. This money is my nest egg. I invest conservatively with mutual funds not individual stocks/ bonds. In other words, should I stay the course or freak out and sell?
- - We've reached a dubious health milestone: More than half of insured Americans are now taking at least one "maintenance" drug for a chronic condition, according to a recent health industry report.
- - If you don't fully understand what they're selling, you probably shouldn't be buying.
- - If you're one of the lucky 30 million American workers still covered by a traditional defined-benefit pension plan, you'll likely be faced with a crucial and irrevocable decision when you retire: should you take your pension in the form of a guaranteed monthly check for life or should you grab all of your pension money up front and manage the funds yourself? The vast majority of retirees choose the lump sum - 90% of them, according to the Society of Actuaries. Before you join them, consider the risks.
- - If you don't have the time or the skills necessary to manage your portfolio, it might be worth hiring a professional financial adviser.
- - Getting to this summer's Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium requires patience, persistence and determination - and that's just for the fans.
- - Want to help the country save a quick million barrels of oil a day? Drive 5% less. Slow down. Inflate your tires.
- - Worst month for stocks since the Great Depression. A bear market. Oil blows past $140. These are the times that try long-term investors' souls.
- - Would you pay over $5 for all-natural cleaner made with eucalyptus essence? How about a 20% premium for paper towels made from 100% unbleached recycled paper? Shoppers are often asked to pay more for environmentally friendly goods, but they might want to think twice before shelling out.
- - High expense ratios don't necessarily mean better fund performance, but they do take a bite out of your overall returns.
- - As you may already know, June is the most popular month in this country for weddings. So now that the marrying month is almost over, I thought it might be a good idea to turn the focus to - what else? - divorce!
NCNBlog.com
- - As a reminder, the Declaration of Independence - (highlights are mine)
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the [...]
- - If you want to rapidly reduce your debt, the best thing you can do is make extra payments, as often as possible, to your creditors. But, there are some other things you can do - things that are free or inexpensive - that can help.
1. Make credit card payments as soon as possible. Most credit [...]
- - Currently, we live in a house provided by my employer. We love our house, but at some point in the future, we’ll want to buy our own house. To that end, I’ve created a new savings goal.
For the past six months, I’ve been tracking housing costs in our local area. We have picked out three [...]
- - A few months ago, I put together a series of posts, focused on helping readers save money and reduce debt. I called the series 33 Days And 33 Ways To Save Money And Reduce Debt. (Clever title, no?) Since then, the number of folks visiting my site and subscribing to its feed has grown, and [...]
- - I don’t know how closely you’ve been paying attention to the financial news, but, apparently, stock prices are falling, gas prices are rising, and Larry Kudlow is still “right on America”. Frankly, while I watch CNBC and keep up with the stock market, I’m a “buy-and-hold” type of guy. So, while the news looks depressing, [...]
- - I just received an email from the folks over at Streetread. So, I decided to take a quick look at the site. Here are the details:
The site does two things -
1. It aggregates headlines from several popular financial sites. (Think Business Week, Yahoo Finance, The Wall Street Journal, etc.)
2. It helps you gather information about [...]
- - I’ve been working my way through the archives of No Credit Needed, looking for dead links and consolidating a few categories. Well, tonight, I stumbled upon this post - written more than two years ago - labeled “Psycho Shopper“.
If you read the post, you’ll find out that I purchased 14 boxes of fabric softener sheets. [...]
- - I have been so impressed with many of the responses to this recent Reader Poll About Emergency Funds. Next week, I’ll write a post, summarizing many of those responses, and share the final poll results with you.
Some of the comments (and a couple of emails that I received) really got me to thinking. So, I [...]
- - As I mentioned a few days ago, my old laptop, the Toshiba, is dying. I ordered a new laptop from Lenovo, an IdeaPad Y510, and it arrived yesterday. After it arrived, I spent some time tweaking its setup. I downloaded and installed Itunes, OpenOffice, and Firefox - three free programs that, together, allow me to [...]
- - I want to thank all of you who have decided to subscribe to No Credit Needed, either via RSS or via Email (or both!). I hope you are enjoying my blog. I usually post new articles once or twice a day, depending on how much time I can squeeze out of my busy life.
For those [...]
Wereindebt.com
- - Stick a plate of food in front of you, and you’ll get the feeling that you need to eat all of it. Be the one dishing out the plate of food, and you may put a little too much on it.
This is where portion control comes into play. Portion control has been something that I [...]
- - Yesterday, we said that we were going through with the bathroom remodel. This means that we needed to figure out just how we were going to come up with the $15,000 that it’s going to cost us.
We have a few options. We can take out a personal loan, which we are against in general. We [...]
- - You ever get the feeling that things just aren’t going your way? Well, the bathroom here in the condo sue is making me feel like that lately.
After getting multiple estimates and thinking about it, we’ve decided just to go whole hog and have the bathroom remodeled. This whole process will cost us about $15,000.
We spent [...]
- - We have some news to report here at We’re In Debt. For starters, I have started to write for Qvisory, a nonprofit organization that strives to help people address money challenges better.
This has been in the works for a little while and it feels good to be able to finally announce it. Be sure to [...]
- - There are a couple of financial deadlines that you should meet if you fall into the right category. Those are that your taxes are due tomorrow by 11:59pm and that the Debeers diamond class action settlement is due May 19th.
The IRS is going to be looking for your tax return tomorrow. If by chance, you [...]
- - Springtime has come to Boston, finally! This doesn’t mean that we’re out of the woods just yet. You never know when an April or May snowstorm is going to show up. What it does mean though, is that it is time for a spring cleaning.
Today the Queen of Debt, went crazy on the cleaning, while [...]
- - The taxes are done. Finally. You can definitely tell that I am somewhat of a procrastinator, especially when it comes to sending money to the tax man.
The total that we ended up paying was more than we were thinking that we were going to pay. Our calculations were off. The good news is that what [...]
- - It’s tax time here at the We’re In Debt household. That means that our posts will be fairly short for these next couple of days. We’ll let you know how it goes.
- - In this time of contraction, we have started to downsize our lives. This basically means that we are selling some items and replacing them with less costly items that do the same job.
For example, I sold my more expensive laptop and purchased a cheaper laptop with the same amount of power. All told, we netted [...]
- - Time to go.Dear Whole Foods,
We have been avid shoppers of your stores for the longest time. Even while we were paying off our debts, we made a point to shop at your stores. The Whole Food’s experience just made us feel better about what we were putting into our bodies.
Times are a changing though. With [...]
- - Tonight the Queen of Debt was telling me how much better she felt, because she was able to see how well we were doing with our budgets. This is because of our new chalkboard budget.
Of course, I am proud of both of us as well. But I am more proud of her and the progress [...]
- - We buy a lot of “staples” from Amazon. We have found it to be cheaper and more convenient than going to a Costco, Sam’s Club or BJ’s. Recently though, Amazon launched a new Subscribe & Save feature.
The best part about the Amazon Subscribe & Save feature is that they give a 15% savings simply for [...]
- - Our bathroom isn’t getting any better. We’ve had quite a few contractors out to give us estimates, and we are just waiting to get all of the estimates in so that we can make a decision. The choices seem to be:
Fix the glitch. Just fix the problems, which will take quite a bit of effort [...]
- - Two years ago we started writing about debt. Over that time we have paid off our credit cards, lowered our monthly expenses and are actively working hard at paying off our student loans and car loans.
Years 1 & 2 have been great. We have learned a lot from other personal finance bloggers and through the [...]
- - The Queen of Debt does a great job of keeping us on budget. By on budget, I mean that if we have budgeted $375 for the month for our groceries she’ll spend $374.99 that month. This is great because it means that we didn’t spend more than we agreed that we would spend.
I have a [...]
Freemoneyfinance.com
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