Analysis Topic: Personal Finance
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
You Must Understand These Two Cardinal Rules of Debt / Personal_Finance / Debt & Loans
By: Investment_U
Andrew Snyder writes: It’s a tough subject. Nobody wants to admit they spent years of their lives - and thousands upon thousands of dollars - in an effort that may quite easily turn out to be detrimental to their financial well-being.
On Friday, I spoke to a small church group about what it takes to build lasting, liberating wealth. It was the second time we met and I knew going into the evening that it wouldn’t be easy.
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Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Will Your Retirement Accounts Survive The Coming Tax Code "Revolution"? / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Dan_Amerman
Suppose that you live in a capital city under siege, that is surrounded by revolutionary armies. And while you don't know the exact timing or specifics, you do believe that the overthrow of the current regime is close to a 100 percent certainty. So you take your life savings and enter into a series of binding contracts with the current regime, under advantageous terms for you. The revolutionary armies enter the capital city, the current regime is ousted, the new regime repudiates the contracts of the previous regime – and you are left penniless.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Best Cash ISA vs Budget 2015 Scrapping Tax on Savings Interest on First £1,000 / Personal_Finance / ISA's
By: Nadeem_Walayat
It's that time of the year again when many savers will be busy rushing to capitalise on their use it or lose it £15k cash ISA annual allowance, though having been raised in July 2014 from £5.5k to £15k does not make today's exercise as big a deal for most savers. Still up until this week it had been a case of ensuring cash is deposited in tax free ISA's than in taxed deposit accounts. However, now everything may be changing for many if not most savers following the Budget 2015 announcement to scrap tax on the first £1k of interest earned which with today's abysmal typical interest rates of 1.5% covers savings pots of as much as £65,000!
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
The Only Time Debt Is Profitable / Personal_Finance / Debt & Loans
By: Money_Morning
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: The other day I saw an ad for a mattress store that offered financing, so you can “sleep in peace” on your brand-spanking-new $7,000 mattress set. (Talk about irony!)
Debt is the American way. It makes the impossible possible. It’s seen as benign or even good.
It’s not.
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Wednesday, March 18, 2015
MONEYFACTS on Budget 2015 - Help to Buy ISA, £1000 Savings Allowance, Pensions Freedom... / Personal_Finance / UK Tax & Budget
By: MoneyFacts
Sylvia Waycot, Editor at Moneyfacts.co.uk, comments:
“This is a great budget for savers. After years of being left out of the cold they can finally enjoy the warmth of being under the Chancellor’s new roof.”
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Tuesday, March 17, 2015
How to Grow Tomatoes Indoors From Seed, Germination, Pruning, Over 1 Year - Money Saving Guide / Personal_Finance / Money Saving
By: Sami_Walayat
In this comprehensive guide spanning a whole year, I will show how literally anyone, even a 9 year old child can easily grow tomatoes indoors from seed germination, planting, pollination, pruning and then enjoying the fruits of a whole year of crops of hundreds of healthy fresh organically grown tomatoes that in addition to self satisfaction will save you lots of money!
Monday, March 02, 2015
Child Trust Fund CTF Current Best Savings Interest Rates / Personal_Finance / CTF
By: MoneyFacts
On 4 November 2014, to an almost national sigh of relief, the Government published draft regulation changes that will finally allow transfers from Child Trust Funds (CTFs) to Junior ISAs (JISA). The changes are expected to take effect from 6 April 2015.
Moneyfacts has compared the remaining cash versions of CTFs with equivalent JISAs to see if it is worth transferring…
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Monday, March 02, 2015
Students Getting a PhD in Subprime Debt - U.S. Debt Breaking Bad Part 3 / Personal_Finance / Student Finances
By: James_Quinn
In Part One of this three part article I laid out the groundwork of how the Federal Reserve is responsible for the excessive level of debt in our society and how it has warped the thinking of the American people, while creating a tremendous level of mal-investment. In Part Two I focused on the Federal Reserve/Federal Government scheme to artificially boost the economy through the issuance of subprime debt to create a false auto boom. In this final episode, I’ll address the disastrous student loan debacle and the dreadful global implications of $200 trillion of debt destroying the lives of citizens around the world.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Retire Abroad and Offshore Your IRA / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Casey_Research
By Nick Giambruno
Money represents your energy and your time: the days, the weeks, the months, the years it takes you to earn it, and all the things you hope to do with it.
In short, money is like stored life.
Taxation, inflation, and artificially low interest rates are therefore similar to a needle and syringe tapped directly into your vein, sucking the life right out of you.
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Monday, February 16, 2015
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Pension Fund Managers / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: John_Mauldin
We do not have to look to Greece to find massively underfunded obligations. Here in the US we can find hundreds of examples, willingly created by politicians and businessmen who proclaim they are working for the public good. We call them pension funds, but they’re just another form of unfunded debt. A sovereign bond is a promise to pay a certain amount of money over time. A defined-benefit pension fund is a promise to pay a certain amount of income over time. The value of either is determined by the ability of the government or the pension fund (or its sponsor) to pay.
Monday, February 16, 2015
A Way Forward for Greece / Personal_Finance / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Frank_Hollenbeck
The current Greek crisis is exposing the elephant in the room - a worldwide problem getting progressively worse by the day. It’s a problem that has plagued developed economies for the last two millenniums. A problem currently metastasized into a full-blown cancer before our eyes: fraudulent fractional reserve banking (see here and here).
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Will Pensioner Bonds Election Bribe Lift General UK Savings Interest Rates from Catastrophic Lows? / Personal_Finance / Savings Accounts
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The recent news for the extension of the Coalition Government's 4% Pensioner Bonds election bribe for a further 3 months to at least Mid May 2015 looks set to soak up at least £25 billion of the savings held by interest rate starved pensioners at an estimated cost to the tax payer of at least £1.2 billion. Whilst the bond is only open to the over 65's, nevertheless it will result in a flow of funds away from the commercial banks and to the government run NS&I that should prompt at least a limited rise in savings interest rates, especially for the directly competing fixed rate bonds such as the 3 and 4 year bonds that could now nudge above 3%.
Thursday, February 05, 2015
When Pro Players Fritter Away Millions / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Dennis_Miller
By Dennis Miller
How is it possible for one man to burn through $400 million and wind up filing for bankruptcy, $27 million in the hole? Boxer Mike Tyson made it happen, and he’s in good company among professional athletes. Yet other professional athletes parlay their sizable earnings into nest eggs that grow and last.
Why the two divergent paths?
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Saturday, January 31, 2015
Self Assessment Tax Return Filing Deadline Today, Last Chance to Avoid £100 Fine / Personal_Finance / Taxes
By: N_Walayat
Britians' self assessment tax payers have just 12 hours left to go (Midnight 31st Jan) in filing online returns and paying any taxes due to avoid the automatic £100 fine and interest due on outstanding tax that could easily see the total penalty mushroom to over £1000!. Whilst those who have put off filing returns maybe thinking it is now too late to start need to realise or recall just how easy it has become to file online returns with the HMRC that includes as you go input validation and automatic calculation of tax due.
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Thursday, January 29, 2015
Are You Sure You Want to Delete This? / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Dennis_Miller
As I sat in my office with tears streaming down my cheeks, my wife walked in and asked, “What’s wrong?”
After a short sniffle, I blurted out, “I just deleted Dad!” The absurdity of my remark hit us both, and we burst out laughing. Dad had been dead for over two years.
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Wednesday, January 28, 2015
How to Find the Best Offshore Banks / Personal_Finance / Current Accounts
By: Casey_Research
By Nick Giambruno
It’s hard to think of a topic where following the conventional wisdom can be more dangerous.
And that topic is banking.
It’s generally accepted as an absolute truth by the public and most financial experts that putting your money in a domestic bank is a safe and responsible thing to do. After all, if anything were to go wrong, your deposits are insured by the government.
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Saturday, January 24, 2015
10 Reasons Why You Need an Offshore Bank Account / Personal_Finance / Current Accounts
By: Casey_Research
By Nick Giambruno
You may have wondered: “What’s the difference between having a bank account at Bank of America and having an offshore bank account?”
The truth is, there’s possibly all the difference in the world.
Here are the top 10 reasons why you need an offshore bank account.
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Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Can a Doublewide Save Your Retirement / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Dennis_Miller
The rumors are true: Florida is full of 55-plus communities with rows of doublewide mobile homes. The nicer ones have amenities like golf courses, swimming pools, clubhouses… you name it. As you’d expect, the living cost is modest. But here’s the part that blows people away: many of the people who live in these communities are quite wealthy.
That’s right—not everyone living in a doublewide is a NASCAR fan.
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Thursday, January 15, 2015
The Most Overlooked Threat to Your Buying Power / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Dennis_Miller
Decades ago, one of the first things I did when I started looking after our aging parents’ money was move a substantial sum from their checking account to an interest-bearing account. When I asked why they had so much sitting in their checking account, they answered, “You never know. We may want to buy a new car.
For a long time, the conventional wisdom was to keep 20-35% of a retirement portfolio in cash. Today holding that much cash in the bank or your brokerage account is like a leaky faucet. It leaves your purchasing power going drip, drip, drip. And a bundle hidden under a mattress? Don’t even think about it!
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Thursday, January 15, 2015
New 4% Pensioner Bonds Election Bribe - Grab it While You Can / Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The government in a blatant election bribe for the over 65 pensioner grey vote has today put on sale the 65+ Guaranteed Growth Bonds issued through the NS&I that pay 2.8% for 1 year and 4% for 3 years (gross). Demand has been heavy all day which means website / application access has been sporadic resulting in server error pages. However there is nothing on the market that comes anywhere near matching the 3 year bonds so do persist as the issue could be fully subscribed within a couple of weeks, thereafter the risk is that the government might not release a second tranche (election bribe).
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