Aug 17
This morning the Federal Reserve (Fed) announced that it lowered its discount rate by 50 basis points to 5.75%. Quicken Loans Chief Economist Bob Walters says the Fed’s actions are welcome, if not long overdue.
Aug 17
Seller concessions are a great way to make a home more attractive to potential buyers. A true win-win for both buyer and seller!
Aug 17
As the list of mortgage lenders who have failed, are failing, or are
remaining very quiet about their status continues to grow the addition of
each new name has reached the level of “so what else is new?” This week,
however, there was a development that is certainly worth mentioning.
Aug 17
Residential building permits and housing
starts continued to fall in July with the latter measure of the
nation’s economic health dropping more than at any time since January
1997.
Aug 17
The effects of compounding returns over time can be extremely powerful. The period of time over which a typical person builds the bulk of their financial assets is 20 – 40 years: from when they start working and investing to when they start to deplete their portfolio in retirement.
Aug 17
A couple of Yale professors recently published an interesting study in which they claim to have proven that if you are going to choose active funds vs. index funds for a portion of your portfolio, the actively-managed funds that are the most concentrated will in general perform better over time than those that are more diverse.
Aug 17
Aug 17
The NY Times recently published a controversial article in which they discussed some emerging academic research claiming that accepted rules of thumb for calculating how much to save for retirement significantly over estimate the amount that is actually required.
Aug 17
Shares of Fortress Investment Group, the first publicly traded U.S. hedge fund, went public on Thursday. This will likely herald the beginning of a flood of hedge funds looking to take advantage of public market liquidity, following their private equity cousins who have already dipped their toes into these waters.
Aug 17
The WSJ published a thought provoking article a while back titled “the retirement lies we tell ourselves”. The basic thrust of the article is that most people have unrealistic assumptions about what it is going to take to have enough money to retire. The “lies” include:
Aug 17
I’ve been very busy lately while fixing up my house, starting a new job, and various other things, so I thought I would post some links. When I do have some free time I like to read about personal finance, entrepreneurs, and various social networking sites about money and business. Since I haven’t had much time to write, I thought it was a good idea that every Friday, I will post some interesting links for the week. Anyway, here are some interesting articles, stories, etc.
Aug 17
I was checking out Forbes.com and saw a list of the fastest-growing jobs from now until 2014. I’ve actually already seen this at the U.S. Department of Labor website a long time ago, but I thought I would post it anyway.
Aug 17
I’ve seen this a few different places and always got a chuckle out of it, so I thought I would post it as well. Besides, it’s not all that often you can get sound (although obvious) financial advice from Saturday Night Live.
Aug 17
When banks turn evil
This article shows you some of the ways that banks try to fee you to death (to the tune of more than $50 billion a year in service charges), and shows you what to do about it.
Aug 17
How Class Works
A set of graphs and breakdown of the classe. So what class are you?
Aug 17
I hadn’t heard much about this until now, but apparently the process of piggybacking to raise your credit score is sending quite a scare through the credit industry. Basically what happens, is someone with a good credit score will add someone with a poor credit history, or none at all, as an authorized user on an account with a good payment record. Normally this is done when parents want to establish credit for their children.
Aug 17
Although some of these rules are common knowledge (or at least should be), and some are rules I don’t necessarily agree with, I thought it was interesting anyway. The list has tips on everything from consumer spending to real estate.
Aug 17
When I posted the list earlier from Money.com, I forgot to add something to rule #23.
When it comes to buying airline tickets, almost everyone knows that buying in advance saves money. But not many people konw to check for airline tickets on Wednesday from midnight to 1a.m. in the time zone where the airline is headquartered. That’s when the computer systems of most airlines get rid of the reserved but unbooked lower fare reservations. You will most likely get a pretty good discount at that time.
Aug 17
The Profit Calculator
The wild risks, unexpected niches, and day-in-day-out grind behind making a dollar in New York City… for everyone from a drug dealer to Goldman Sachs.