An antianxiety pill for the emerging markets. Financial lessons for all ages - Aug. 1, 2013. An early start to financial education yields the best results. NEW YORK (Money Magazine) Make it fun. "A game can be a spark plug to get kids thinking," says Dan lannicola of the Financial Literacy Group consulting firm. One diversion: Tykoon, a free iPhone app that shows your child how payment for small chores can add up to the price of a big-ticket purchase.
Talk the talk. Related: Teaching kids financial literacy One Lamb suggestion: Ask how they think your family could cut costs. Test your smarts. Answer a brief set of questions on subjects such as investing and borrowing; if you get anything wrong, you can follow links to online resources for further learning. Related: Financial education -- Does your state make the grade? We’re living in an Ayn Rand economy. This article originally appeared on AlterNet. Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” fantasizes a world in which anti-government citizens reject taxes and regulations, and “stop the motor” by withdrawing themselves from the system of production. In a perverse twist on the writer’s theme the prediction is coming true. But instead of productive people rejecting taxes, rejected taxes are shutting down productive people. Perhaps Ayn Rand never anticipated the impact of unregulated greed on a productive middle class. Perhaps she never understood the fairness of tax money for public research and infrastructure and security, all of which have contributed to the success of big business.
She must have known about the inequality of the pre-Depression years. But she couldn’t have foreseen the concurrent rise in technology and globalization that allowed inequality to surge again, more quickly, in a manner that threatens to put the greediest offenders out of our reach. Corporations Stopped Paying. Larry Fink's radical retirement recommendation.
FORTUNE -- BlackRock Inc. chief executive Larry Fink said during a speech Tuesday that longer life spans and underfunded retirement plans are the defining challenge of our age, and went so far as to recommend that the U.S. consider making retirement savings mandatory. Fink acknowledged that retirement under-funding is not a new issue, but times have changed and the problem has become more pressing. "We're at a point now where the interest rate cycle makes it very difficult [for investors to save]," he said, during remarks delivered to a group of NYU Stern business school students. "If you can no longer buy a 30-year bond with a 7% yield, how will investors achieve the necessary savings outcome? " "The current system is not working, and we need a comprehensive approach that includes some form of mandatory savings in addition to Social Security," the 60-year-old Fink added.
Fink explained that only two-thirds of Americans have saved for retirement and most have saved less than $25,000. Dividend stocks rule. But for how long? Want yield with that? McDonald's and other stodgy dividend-paying stocks are soaring. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul R. La Monica. Other than Time Warner, the parent of CNNMoney, Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie, La Monica does not own positions in any individual stocks.
The stock market is hotter than Tiger Woods' golf game. But even though the Dow and S&P 500 are hitting new records on an almost daily basis, an interesting shift has taken place lately. McDonald's (MCD) is looking golden. Other so-called consumer durable stocks, like Coca-Cola (KO), Pepsi (PEP) and Procter & Gamble (PG), are up 17% this year. The Dow Jones Utility Average (DJU), a collection of 15 power companies, has gained 6.5% during the past month and 15% so far this year. Another kind of utility -- telecoms -- is also lighting up the market this year. And then there are health care stocks. None of these companies scream growth. Related: Quality stocks may still be attractive. Drive Off With the Best Deal on a New Car -- Savings Experiment. Experts weigh in on whether it's cheaper to buy or lease your car.
Getting a new car can be an expensive expenditure, but there are ways to save money in the process. Here, our experts break down the costs of buying versus leasing a new vehicle. When it comes to purchasing a new car, you'll likely be financing (unless you are paying in full). Initially, this requires a down payment of 10 percent of the price of the vehicle, plus sales tax. That means you'll need to have anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 up front. Leasing is far less costly. You'll need to pay about $1,000 to $2,000 in fees, have the first month's payment and pay a security deposit.
In addition to lower up front costs, monthly lease payments tend to be lower than financing payments. If you're in it for the long haul, savings are on your side, too. Pension lump sum vs. rollover - Aug. 29. (MONEY Magazine) You're lucky to have the choice. Most traditional pensions provide for monthly checks only, though that's changing. More companies are offering lump sums at retirement, and Ford and GM recently gave 140,000 retirees and beneficiaries who are already collecting checks the option of sticking with those or taking all the cash now. At first glance, a lump sum may appear to be a no-brainer.
After all, a few hundred thousand dollars in hand seems more valuable than a few thousand bucks a month. But the right choice depends largely on your situation, including how confident you are about investing and what other retirement resources you have. Here's what you need to consider to reach a decision. The allure of a sure thing A guaranteed income for life is especially attractive if Social Security doesn't cover all your everyday expenses — or you desire the extra peace of mind monthly pension payments can provide. When to pass on the check Related: Boost retirement income, minimize risk. Personal Finance Tips You Should Rethink | Terrible Financial Advice: Top 10 Tips You Shouldn’t Follow. It seems like everyone from bloggers to your next-door neighbors doles out financial advice these days. It can be difficult figuring out who to believe, and bad tips can pop up as frequently as thunderstorms in the summertime.
In fact, some seemingly sensible advice can turn out to be a bad idea of the highest magnitude, and some “conventional wisdom” really isn’t. Even widely held beliefs can turn out to be clunkers, as this roundup from financial experts illustrates. LIST: 10 Ways to Improve Your Financial Health Next Use a Debt-Settlement Company. The Way Companies Are Getting Financed Is Completely Changing. There are lots of trends people have been talking about in tech financing--"superangels"; delayed IPOs; secondary market sales; and more.
But so far, few people have been putting the dots together: the entire financing landscape for companies is changing. And, excitingly, it's increasingly not just technology companies. There are many new financing options for growing companies that weren't available a decade ago. Here's how we break them down (we'll visit each one in turn): CrowdfundingAcceleratorsSuper-angelsLate-stage private equityThe long-delayed IPO Crowdfunding Crowdfunding startups has long been a dream deferred. Direct crowdfunding via equity financing is still a big no-no, because SEC rules make it difficult for non-accredited investors to invest in startups. One of the most exciting such examples is AngelList, a "Match.com for investors and startups" that lets startups vie for capital from angels and (increasingly) VC firms. Another exciting example is Kickstarter.
Accelerators. How much gold should you own? - Video - Personal Finance. How to reach $1 million in three easy steps - Mar. 21. Chris and Amy Stacey, from Tacoma, Wash., are five years away from a million. Here's how they're doing it.By Paul J. Lim and George MannesApril 5, 2011: 10:52 AM ET (MONEY Magazine) -- Remember that old Steve Martin joke about the secret formula for becoming a millionaire? "First, get a million dollars ... " Okay, getting the odometer on your investment portfolio to click over into seven digits isn't quite that easy. While $1 million may not be worth what it was back when Martin was a wild and crazy guy in the late '70s, achieving that iconic number still has profound allure. Martin may have oversimplified, but the reality is that getting your portfolio to the $1 million mark is not nearly as difficult as you may think, even if you've managed to put away only a fraction of that amount so far.
The slightest tug on one or two of these levers can dramatically affect your path to $1 million. Lever 1: How Much Time You Allow When you think about getting rich, what jumps to mind? Share this. Debunking Credit Score Myths. Your credit score has nothing to do with your age, gender or career. Yet nearly 60% of those who responded to a recent survey believe that employment history is a factor to nudging up a credit score. Another 39% of 1,006 people asked by Visa Inc. thought age played a role, while more than one fifth of people surveyed believed that the ability to speak English and national origin were factors.
Loan applications, which do ask personal background questions about date of birth and gender, are invariably linked to credit reports in consumers' minds because they are often used together by lenders to make a decision. This is entirely separate from the information used to build a credit score, which instead relies on transactional information about how a borrower has managed his or her bills and credit lines. A good or bad credit score plays a major role in financial, housing and employment opportunities but less than half of Americans regularly check their score, the Visa survey reported. 1. 2. ‘Aftershock’ Book Predicts Economic Disaster Amid Controversy. Robert Wiedemer’s new book, “Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown,” quickly is becoming the survival guide for the 21st century.
And Newsmax’s eye-opening Aftershock Survival Summit video, with exclusive interviews and prophetic predictions, already has affected millions around the world — but not without ruffling a few feathers. Initially screened for a private audience, this gripping video exposed harsh economic truths and garnered an overwhelming amount of feedback. “People were sitting up and taking notice, and they begged us to make the video public so they could easily share it,” said Newsmax Financial Publisher Aaron DeHoog. But that wasn’t as simple as it seems.
Editor's Note: Over 30 million have watched The Aftershock Survival Summit. This wasn’t the first time Wiedemer’s predictions hit a nerve. Realizing that the worst was yet to come, Wiedemer and company quickly penned “Aftershock.” “We got lucky,” DeHoog said. . © 2014 Newsmax. Meet the millionaires - Buffett's world (1) - CNNMoney.com. Number of millionaires is projected to rise rapidly - May. 5. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Despite the Great Recession, which wiped out $15.5 trillion in household wealth in the United States alone, the number of millionaires in this country and abroad will grow rapidly over the next decade. In the U.S., the total number of families with a net worth of over $1 million, including real estate, will double by 2020, according to a report by the Deloitte Center for Financial Services. Overall, the U.S. and Europe have the greatest concentrations of wealth than any other region, although emerging markets are narrowing the gap.
China will lead the way in millionaire growth, the report said, followed by Brazil and Russia. By 2020, China and South Korea will rank in the top 10 of countries with the greatest total number of families worth more than a million dollars. "There is going to be very fast growth, but it will take a lot longer to reach anything like the wealth in the developed world," said Andrew Freeman, lead author of the report. Singapore's financial rise: Going swimmingly. How the market in Apple 'weeklys' is rigged. If you're looking for evidence of manipulation, Friday's close was picture-perfect Volume rose sharply and Apple's share price collapsed in the last half hour "The easiest way to think of options," wrote The Market Skeptics's Eric deCarbonnel in a prescient 2009 post, "is as a type of insurance.
Investors pay a premium to protect themselves against sharp swings in the market. If these sharp swings don't happen, those selling options (option market makers) keep the premiums as profit. " "In a legitimate free market," he continues, "every single option market maker would have already gone bankrupt, especially with the volatility over the last two years. Luckily for option market makers, U.S. markets are neither legitimate nor free. " If he were looking for a case to make his point, deCarbonnel couldn't do much better than the trade that started last summer in Apple "weeklys" -- puts and calls that expire every Friday.
In that respect, Friday's close was picture-perfect. So what happened?