26 Jul, 2011
Documents Financial Documents
One of the ways to make things easier on yourself come tax time is to have your financial documents already organized. Happily, this doesnt have to be a big production. Getting the framework in place doesnt need to take very long, and once you have things set up, its fairly easy to keep with it.
Having a system for your financial documents is a good way to help you access information that you need quickly, as well as help you get everything you need for tax purposes simply and easily.
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26 Jul, 2011
Since I’ve started working from home, I’ve noticed how much stuff we really own. We have piles of books that won’t fit on our shelves, school supplies being stored until the new semester starts, and a bunch of family items lying around. In short, our offices are cluttered with a ton of items that we either need to sell, store, or toss. We are tackling this problem this weekend and over the next two weeks. If you have found that your home is packed to the brim with your stuff too, then you may want to simply your life like me.
The easiest way to declutter your home is to just throw all of your old junk away. Some
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26 Jul, 2011
Laing Laura Laing
Math for Grownups by Laura Laing, a personal finance writer with a background in Mathematics and who once taught high school math for four years, is a book that seeks to reteach you all the arithmetic you forgot from school. And this book delivers on that simple promise.
One of the common complaints about our educational system is that high school is mostly preparation for college. If you dont go to college, very few of the classes translate to real life (how many high schools offer any sort of personal finance education?). Even if you go to college, your high school classes are simply preparation for the college classroom, not college life.
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25 Jul, 2011
Fund Portfolio Mutual Fund Mutual Fund Portfolio Portfolio
A portfolio is simply an investment or group of investments designed to maximize returns while minimizing risk. A mutual fund portfolio is the same thing, an assortment of mutual funds designed to maximize returns based on your personal risk tolerance. To get started planning YOUR mutual fund portfolio:
- First, evaluate your personal risk tolerance.
- Next, decide your asset allocation.
- Then, allocate your cash.
Risk tolerance is your ability to handle (tolerate?) the inevitable declines in the value of your investments (no one needs “help” handling increases!). Ris
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25 Jul, 2011
You can diss your boss in public only so many times before he becomes your former boss. John Walsh, acting director of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, learned that lesson the hard way on Friday after President Obama nominated a different bank regulator, Thomas J. Curry, to take over leadership of the agency.
As regular remembers may remember, John Walsh first criticized the Obama administration’s record on financial reform in May, when he told members of the Financial Services Roundtable that newly-passed laws could hit the industry like a “tsunami.”
The following month Walsh did it again, this time in a foreign country. Speak
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25 Jul, 2011
Mortgage Mortgage Mods
Two of the nation’s largest banks are letting people out of expensive mortgages, including people who never asked for the help. Chase and Bank of America are offering some homeowners big reductions on interest rates, and in some cases even lowering the principal of the loans, according to bank statements and a recent story by The New York Times.
The unexpected modifications come even as hundreds of thousands of Americans try—and often fail—to apply for changes that would make their mortgages more affordable.
“I don’t get it,” says Lawrence J. Whit, an ec
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