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| Personal finance news - CNNMoney.com |
| Why spend $300 a night for a hotel? Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:52:54 EDT Book a hotel in a popular destination and you know what to expect: a bed, a mini-fridge, and a big bill at checkout. In Europe's big cities, for example, you can easily spend anywhere from $150 to $300 a night (hotels in Florence average $205). |
| Money makeover: Married couple, separate finances Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:05:29 EDT Michelle Spranger and Scott Zuckerberg have been husband and wife for eight years, but they've yet to marry their finances. |
| Advice for the reluctant landlord Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:31:50 EDT With plans to start a family, Michael and Becky McCullough, 33 and 31, wanted more space. So last year they snapped up a four-bedroom foreclosure in Brookhaven, Ga., for $480,000. |
| Investing in the world's best balance sheets Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:12:58 EDT At the G20 summit in Toronto last month, the leaders of world's largest economies embraced a brave new theme: Halting the alarming, potentially ruinous growth in already mountainous sovereign debt. |
| Money's new More Money blog Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:48:50 EDT |
| Not enough cash? Get your priorities straight Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:40:38 EDT You know what your financial priorities are supposed to be: Max out retirement savings. Build a cash cushion for emergencies. Get rid of any credit card debt. Save for your kids' college education. Pay off the mortgage before you retire. |
| Great gadgets for better health Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:45:02 EDT Gadgets to keep the doctor (or dentist) away. |
| Keep your cool in a scary market Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:54:58 EDT You knew it couldn't go on forever. And deep down, the spectacular run-up in stocks that began when the bear market bottomed in March 2009 was actually making you a little nervous. An 80% surge in just 13 months was starting to feel a lot like bubble territory. So yes, a breather was probably in order. |
| Which grads snag the best salaries Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:07:59 EDT Attending school in California and becoming an engineering major can really pay off for college graduates -- by thousands of dollars a year. |
| Figuring out the Dow Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:40:13 EDT Question: How can I compute the Dow Jones Industrial Average on my own each day? --Sam Cordova, Los Angeles, Calif. |
| What the bond guru sees coming Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:06:48 EDT Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of Pimco and manager of the planet's biggest bond mutual fund, has some so-so news and some bad news. |
| The silver lining in Europe's mess Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:22:37 EDT During the mortgage meltdown in 2008, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel quipped that you should "never allow a crisis to go to waste." He was referring to the Obama administration's policy goals, but it's not a bad maxim for investors. |
| How I learned to love postal rate increases Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:14:44 EDT I'd known about Forever Stamps for perhaps three years but was wary of buying them. You buy a stamp at today's first class rate and it's good forever, no matter how high the first class rate goes. At first glance, a great hedge against one of life's certainties -- postal rate increases. It's like death and taxes. Right? Since 1958, the frequency of rate increases has gone from five years down to less than two years (1958 was the first increase in 26 years, the current 44-cent rate will have been in effect for a mere 20 months). The typical increase used to be a penny, now it's two cents. Given the increases in both the frequency and amounts, Forever Stamps could be one of the greatest inflation hedges since common stocks and home ownership. And even us disabled, retired guys have better things to do than counting stamps, buying smaller value stamps and sticking two or more stamps on every letter to use up our pre-increase stamp supply. Nevertheless, my brilliant analysis seemed to put Forever Stamps into the category of "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." After all, for the inflation hedge to work you'd need to buy enough stamps to last through some number of rate increases. Let's be real, who would go out and buy a supply of more than one year's worth of stamps? Only some wacko would go out and do something like that just to beat some hypothetical future rate increase imposed by an agency that some people, many of whom are decidedly not wackos, think is going to disappear. Yes, I am that crazy And so, on May 1, 2008, 12 days before first class rates increased to 42 cents from 41 for the first ounce, I walked into the town Post Office and officially became the town's resident wacko. The clerk said he had Forever Stamps and he also said he did not sell many and couldn't understand why more people did not use them. Figuring there must be a catch to what seemed to me like a great deal, I asked if there was a limit on the number I could buy. He said the limit was whatever amount he had in stock. |
| Bankruptcy can save your house from foreclosure Sat, 24 Jul 2010 10:58:33 EDT Slick TV commercials and online ads tell delinquent borrowers that they can save their homes by filing for personal bankruptcy. But is it true -- or just too good to be true? |
| New wave of credit card abuses Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:58:25 EDT A 2009 federal crackdown on abusive credit card practices has exposed a litany of other ways consumers are being hosed. |
| A retirement portfolio of global proportions Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:20:58 EDT Question: What is the difference between a total world index fund and a total international index fund? How you see such funds as part of a retirement portfolio? --Dave, Apple Valley, Minnesota |
| How to save $1 million by 65 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:13:50 EDT Question: I'm 28 and would like to have $1 million by the time I retire at 65. What are some of the investing options I should consider? --Joshua Sin, Fresno, Calif. |
| Retiring? What to do with your 401(k) Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:26:58 EDT Question: When I retire, should leave my money in my company's 401(k) or roll it into an IRA? --Mark, Plymouth, Minnesota |
| How recent grads can learn the investment ropes Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:43:31 EDT Question: I'm a recent college graduate who has a decent job that pays the bills. I also have around $10,000 in a savings account and contribute $100 a month to my 401(k). How should I begin to invest my money? Should I go to a broker? Manage it on my own? Help! --Sophia, New York City |
| Hello pension, bye-bye saving? Not so fast Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:31:11 EDT Question: I'm retired on a pension and will soon start receiving Social Security. So I'm wondering, once you're retired do you still need an emergency fund of three to six months' worth of living expenses as you did when you were working? --Jim, West Farmington, Ohio |
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| Word of the day |
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 31, 2010 is:
sirenian • \sye-REE-nee-un\ • noun
: any of an order (Sirenia) of aquatic herbivorous mammals (as a manatee, dugong, or Steller's sea cow) that have large forelimbs resembling paddles, no hind limbs, and a flattened tail resembling a fin
Example sentence:
"Looking humanlike in certain aspects, sirenians are thought to be the basis of the myth of mermaids." (Michael McCarthy, The Independent [London], February 28, 2009)
Did you know?
"Sirenian" traces back via Latin to Greek "seirēn," which is equivalent to our word for the sirens of Greek mythology. And what is the connection between sirens and sirenians? Modern sirenians do not resemble the half bird, half woman creatures who lured sailors to their doom with their sweet singing. But as our example sentence states, sirenians are considered by some to underlie the ancient legends about mermaids. In European folklore mermaids were sometimes called "sirens," and apparently this confusion resulted in the granting of sirenians the name they bear today.