Economics webBooks. How to Replace Six Vital Documents. This post is from GRS staff writer April Dykman.
Could you produce your birth certificate, car title, or an old tax return at a moment’s notice? You’re supposed to store vital documents in a fireproof box or keep them in a safe-deposit box, but how many of us actually do that? We may not need these papers often, but when we do need them, we really need them. You need vital documents to sell your car, travel overseas, apply for a job, get through an audit, refinance your house, and more. The good news is that if you’ve lost important pieces of paper, you can replace them — and it might be easier than you think. Birth certificate You need a birth certificate for everything from enrolling in school to getting a marriage license (if you don’t have a passport). NameBirth dateGenderParents’ namesPlace of birth Replacing a birth certificate costs $10-$20, depending on the state. U.S. driver’s licenseState-issued, non-driver identification cardU.S. passport.
The 7 Most Expensive Investing "Truisms" You Must Ignore - The Huffington Post. Investing isn't complicated. But it is often counterintuitive. That's why some people stop trying to understand investing and just accept financial truisms (that are often anything but true). While this approach makes life easy at first, it can lead to needless losses and a lot of sleepless nights.
Here are the top seven financial truisms you have to stop telling yourself and why. David Cay Johnston: The Dangers Of Low-Interest Rates. (The author is a Reuters columnist.
The opinions expressed are his own) By David Cay Johnston Jan 10 (Reuters) - The Fed's campaign to hold short-term interest rates near zero is a loser for taxpayers. A rise in rates would also burden taxpayers, but it would come with a benefit for those who save. Low rates keep alive the banks that the government considers too big to fail and reduce the cost of servicing the burgeoning federal debt. Raising interest rates shifts the costs and benefits, increasing the risks that mismanaged banks will collapse and diverting more taxpayers' money to service federal debt.
No matter which way interest rates go, taxpayers face dangers. The federal government paid $454 billion in interest on its debt in 2011. If rates return to, say, 6.64 percent, the level they were in 2000, one year's interest costs would equal the individual income taxes for all of 2011 plus the first few weeks of 2012. 233 Ways to Make Money. Many of our customers are entrepreneurs. In this post, I thought I’d try to light the entrepreneurial fire under some of our other readers by publishing the world’s longest list of ways to make money.
I aimed to include as many ways to make money that don’t require special training as possible (and I’ll add to the list over time so bookmark it now). Without further ado, the list… Update (April 20, 2011): We’ve grown considerably over the last few months and, accordingly, it’s time to scale our transcription team. 7 Ways Money Memories Can Affect Your Finances LearnVest. Growing up, my grandmother was a master seamstress, and I always had beautiful clothes without ever having to pay for them.
My taste for fine garments didn’t change as I got older, but it was a shock when I had to begin paying for them myself. I can still hear my mother telling me, “You have champagne taste on a beer budget.” I could have taken this as a warning to not spend money that I didn’t have. Instead, it felt as if I’d been told that I was no longer deserving of the finer things in life, which sent my sense of self-worth into a downward spending spiral. The consequences: $8,000 of credit card debt—along with disappointment, anger and blame. As children, we begin to form our beliefs and attitudes about money through value-laden messages that are passed on to us by our parents, grandparents and society.
What Money Memories Can Teach Us In order to move forward and navigate life with greater financial confidence as adults, we must look back. 1. My own is of receiving an allowance. 2. 5 Things to Do Every Decade for Financial Success LearnVest. 1.
Chart Your Course As you look back on your illustrious career, also look back on any retirement plans you may have had at former jobs. When you’re in your 50s, retirement should become something of a single-minded obsession. Consider consolidating your various 401(k)s and retirement plans to get a clear picture of how much you’ve built up. 2. Do you plan to keep working through retirement or will you have other sources of income, such as investments? 3. Depending on your other financial obligations in this decade of your life, see if you can free up additional funds to help kick your mortgage sooner rather than later, saving on the extra interest payments and easing your mind.