The tax filing deadline is fast approaching. If you haven’t filed your taxes yet, you’re not alone. According to the IRS, about 25% of all taxpayers wait till the last two weeks to file their taxes. For those sitting in that 25%, you have until the deadline of Monday, April 18 to file your taxes this year.
To Mail or eFile
You have two options available to you when you file your taxes each year. If you still choose to mail your tax return, as long as it is postmarked on or before the tax filing deadline of April 18, the IRS considers it filed in a timely manor. You may want to mail it a few days early to avoid any possible long lines at the post office. Continue Reading…
The 2010 IRA contribution deadline is fast approaching. With only a few weeks left, you still have time to make your 2010 contributions. If you have done any retirement planning in the past, a traditional or Roth IRA plays a role in achieving your retirement goals.
There are two views of putting money to work in the market. The first is quietly sitting down, studying balance sheets and deciding on an investment that you’ll probably stick with for a few years. The other is the fast pace, high stress picture you get from movies like Wall Street. With row upon row of traders, two or three computer screens each, yelling at every single up and down tick of a stock. Exactly how realistic that is, I don’t know, but it makes for good movie drama.
Volatile markets are great for the day traders. They offer great opportunities to make money, but as a trader you have to be watching the market movements on a minute by minute basis. Not everyone has the time or the risk tolerance to invest this way. Sometimes it’s better to play things safe during highly uncertain times.
Some people call it research, others analysis, maybe its due diligence, and even worse, homework. It’s certainly not fun, can be overly time consuming, but with investing it’s an absolute must or it will cost you.
When you see market corrections or moves like we have the past few days, things have a tendency to look more ominous than they really are. The markets don’t like uncertainty and that is exactly what they’re getting. With uncertainty you get high price fluctuations in stocks, bonds, and commodities, which is great for traders but tough to watch for the average investor.