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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.
How many of you would love to rewrite your credit card contract, terms, fees, and interest rates and have the bank sign off on it? A Russian man did just that. Instead of filling out a credit card form like everyone else does, he changed a few things. Continue Reading…
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Account promotions have been a staple of the finance industry since toasters and sliced bread. The banks would offer free stuff to entice your business and grow their deposit base. Now the online brokers are getting in on the act.
Hopefully, at this stage, you’ve taken the time to compare online brokers. If not, don’t be sold by the flashy free stuff alone. If it seems too good to be true, it is! You still need to consider things like trading costs, fees, performance, and trading tools.
Once you have a broker picked out, finding a good sign up bonus can be enough to offset some early trading costs. That goes a long way when low costs are such a big factor in your investment returns.
You should be aware of a few things before you take advantage of any brokerage promotions: Continue Reading…
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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.
There is a sadder but wiser theory floating around somewhere. Who knew? Apparently, it doesn’t apply to financial decisions. A recent study tried to test the effects of sadness on our financial decision making abilities. It didn’t turn out well. Impatience is just one of the side effects of sadness. That just happens to be a no-no for your finances, especially investment decisions. Continue Reading…
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Investors like ratios and the P/E ratio (Price/Earnings ratio) is the most popular. Some of the most successful value investors use the P/E ratio (along with other metrics) as a starting point in their research to find stocks that continuously beat the market. The reason is value investors tend to look for good quality stocks with lower than normal P/E ratios.
It’s not just value investors that use this ratio. The P/E ratio is used to argue under and overpriced stocks by every investment strategy, sometimes, far too often.
Any good financial site will list the P/E ratio right along side the stock price and it’s the best place to find it. The P/E or price to earnings is the simplest way to value a stock. What the P/E ratio tells you is how much someone is willing to pay for $1 of earnings. Which makes it a better representative of a stock than price alone. Continue Reading…
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A number of tax code changes took effect at the start of this year. There were changes made to the 2013 tax brackets thanks to the Taxpayer Relief Act. The Affordable Care Act added a 3.8% Medicare Surtax too. With half the year behind us, now is a good time to start planning for these changes, if you haven’t already.
Now, 3.8% seems like a drop in the bucket. But if you qualify (not everyone does), remember its a surtax. It’s a tax on top of what you’re already paying.
Whether you qualify for the new 3.8% Medicare Surtax will depend on your net investment income or your Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI). It will be the lessor of: Continue Reading…
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Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.
The age of tying the internet to your TV is getting closer. Google introduced the Chromecast this week. It’s now the cheapest plug and play streaming TV device available. It also allows you to control your TV directly from your smart phone, notepad, notebook, or desktop. Continue Reading…