Most Watched YouTube Videos Of All Time (Non-Music Video Edition Why your personal brand matters Click here to submit a question, idea, or a personal experience and you could have one of the Remake America experts address it directly. “Personal branding is how we market ourselves to others,” says Donna DeBerry, a marketing and branding expert. A personal brand takes entrepreneurship to a more meaningful level, and it's something that can increase sales through carefully planned action. DeBerry's has four tips to reach current and potential customers through personal branding: Be seen online and off: Your customers have many choices, and you need to go to where they are.
Ultimate guide to guys' suits Three Styles That Help You Stand Out No. 1: The New Slim, Trim Double-Breasted • If you want a double-breasted suit to look modern—and not like something from a gangster flick—keep it short and trim. And avoid Dick Tracy-grade shoulder pads, too. • Keep the jacket buttoned (including the interior button). It doesn't hang well when undone. • And unlike with single-breasted suits, unless you want to look like a singer in the '80s R&B band, go for a higher-cut six-button suit instead of a low-slung four-button model. No. 2: The Young Man's Three-Piece • A three-piece suit announces itself loudly and clearly—which means you sould opt for a relatively subdued shirt-and-tie combo to provide balance. • Fitwise, think about the vest. • Mix it up. No. 3: The Winning Peak Lapel • For the best-fitting peak-lapel suits, stick with two-button models. • These are elegant business-to-evening suits. • Want to one-up the dude in the office next to yours? The Cheat Sheet • Show some cuff. More from GQ:
7 Weird Ways to Hurt Your Credit Score The FICO credit score equation might be a black box, but there have been thousands of articles written about what you should and shouldn't do when it comes to your credit score. Most of them are pretty obvious--pay your credit card bills on time, don't apply for a lot of credit, and keep your nose clean. There are, however, a lot of weird ways you can hurt your score without you even realizing it. Closing Credit Cards. [Related: Money Mistakes Everyone Makes] Not Filling Out A Moving Form. Asking Banker to Check Score. Not Paying Library Fines. Unpaid Parking or Speeding Tickets. [Related: 4 Habits That Damage Your Credit Score] Pay Less Than Owed. Cards With No Limit. Jim Wang writes about personal finance at Bargaineering.com. More From US News & World Report FICO credit scorecredit scorecredit bureausCredit Cards
5 Ways to Increase Your Net Worth with Employee Benefits When you get your offer letter from a prospective employer, what do you do? You find the salary number, wave the paper triumphantly in the air, and completely miss many of the other potential financial benefits contained in an employer's benefits package. It's understandable to focus on your salary or wage when looking over your pay stub. You have a budget and you need income to support your spending. Raises are often based as a percentage of your salary, which means the larger your salary, the greater your earnings potential. However, many employers offer additional benefits and few realize how to set up those benefits to increase personal wealth. Fix Your Withholdings The average tax refund for 2012 was $2,700. You can expect to lose a portion of your refund's value to price inflation throughout the year. Get Your Employer Match on Your 401(k) Speaking of 401(k) plans, many employers offer a match contribution for employees who utilize the company 401(k) plan for retirement savings.
Fortune 500 Top 20 Given the sluggish recovery and a strapped consumer, you’d expect to see corporate America trudging along, not racing for glory. In fact, the Fortune 500 are thriving as a group. Unlike the U.S. economy, they’ve shown quicksilver agility, rapidly shifting their product mix and producing more goods at little new cost. This nimbleness belies the immense size of these companies and, frequently, their advanced age. The Fortune 500 generated a total of $824.5 billion in earnings last year, up 16.4% over 2010. That beats the previous record of $785 billion, set in 2006 during a roaring economy. [Related: The Purpose of Spectacular Wealth, According to a Spectacularly Wealthy Guy ] Looking deeper into the list, several macro trends emerge. These big numbers can’t last. Courtesy: Exxon Mobil Corporation 1 Rex W. It’s tough to beat the kind of year Exxon Mobil had in 2011. Exxon has certainly benefited from rising oil prices, particularly during the last quarter of 2011. Courtesy: Wal-mart 2 6.
Meet the Money Manager Who Is Beating Berkshire Hathaway and Owns It Too | Breakout Much has been made of "the lost decade" for stocks, a 10-year span in which investors in the S&P 500 index saw no gains. And yet, noted value investor Thomas Gayner, president and CIO of Markel (MKL), saw his portfolio gain more than 100%. Understandably, when we caught up with him on the sidelines of the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, his commitment to the Benjamin Graham/Warren Buffett—style of investing was concise and unbending. "It works," Gayner says of this style. "There are certainly times when value goes out of favor—that has always been the case, there's nothing different or new about that—but that's sort of why it works," he says in the attached video. What's also interesting is that his top stock, which accounts for about 12% of a $2.5 billion portfolio, is badly lagging the market—not just for a few quarters, but for the past three years. So while growth investors are busy getting their heads around things like Facebook (FB), Gayner isn't worried.
A Cheat Sheet on Tipping Do's and Don'ts Tipping can be daunting. While most of us know that it's appropriate to tip our server at a restaurant, it's not always clear whether to tip the hotel concierge, funeral chaplain or dog groomer. If you leave a tip, how large should it be? Is 20 percent an across-the-board solution? Will your tip leave you looking like Donald Trump or Ebenezer Scrooge? Are there situations where tipping isn't necessary? This list from Bankrate should help you answer these questions as well as give you specific gratuity guidelines. Cash for the hotel staff Thomas Farley, a New York-based manners expert for WhatMannersMost.com, says be prepared for a variety of tips at hotels. Farley's suggestions: Hotel porter toting your bags: $2 to $3 per bag. Etiquette coach and trainer Constance Hoffman, of Social and Business Graces Inc. in Los Angeles, says, "Don't leave the maid's tip on the nightstand as that has sexual connotations. [Related: 9 great castle hotels] Tipping the wait staff Hoffman's tipping guidelines:
Obama's spending: Runaway or reasonable? Beat Bad Financial Habits to Boost Savings Break bad habits: The science of habit change Does it really take just 21 days to change a habit? Experts say it's not that simple. "Breaking bad habits successfully depends on your readiness to act," says Heidi Beckman, clinical health psychologist at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics and speaker on financial behavior change. John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education at SmartCredit.com, agrees. "If it was easy, we'd all have big savings accounts, and none of us would have credit card debt," he says. Beckman says habits change more quickly when you're in the action stage versus the ambivalence or preparation stages that come before. Create a positive picture in your mind of the result you want, and act as if the bad habit is gone. Break bad habits: Resist impulse buying "We're wired for instant gratification," says Ulzheimer. Practice telling yourself "no" when tempted to spend, and try these tactics. Break bad habits: Automate finances Begin the plan for your retirement.
Nine Degrees That Put You on the Fast Track to $100K - Monster.com Deciding on a college major is difficult -- should you follow your passions, or should you choose a four-year degree that promises to net a high salary? There are good arguments for both paths, but if you choose the latter, consider the disciplines on this list: the top nine four-year degrees that get top earners (for this list, that's the top 25 percent, or the 75th percentile) to $100,000 in a decade or less, according to the salary experts at PayScale.com. And here's a surprise: It's not just those often-touted engineering degrees that make the cut -- liberal-arts degrees are well-represented, too. 1. Find petroleum engineering jobs.2. Computer engineers usually have training in electronics, as well as hardware and software design. Find computer engineering jobs. 3. Economics is more than the study of money. Find economist jobs.4. Find chemical engineering jobs.5. If you ever asked your math teacher, "Will we need this stuff in the real world?" Find mathematician jobs. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Austerity vs. Stimulus: Spain and China Provide Another Test of Competing Ideas | Daily Ticker Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! For the past few years, economists and policymakers have been locked in a philosophical debate: Austerity vs. Stimulus. Another test of the competing theories kicked off this week as Spain announced new tax hikes and spending cuts while China increased government spending in order to jump-start its economy. If recent history is any guide, China's economy will get a short-term boost from the stimulus while Spain will fall further into its economic morass as a result of their respective choices. Of course, these two countries find themselves in starkly different positions: China is sitting on huge surplus and thus can "prime the pump" without going into debt while Spain is struggling to bring down its budget deficit, which hit 8.9% in 2011. "We have very little room to choose," Rajoy said before the Spanish parliament. Opposition leaders objected to Rajoy's move and the nation's mining union marched in protest.
The Top 10 Million Dollar Mistakes Made By Successful Entrepreneurs Mistakes are good, they are often looked down on as a bad move or the next step to failure. I believe that mistakes are all part of the recipe for success . After starting six Multi Million Dollar companies all before the age of 30 ‘Ryan Blair’ , a world renowned serial entrepreneur admits to his fair share of million dollar mistakes, as well as some billion dollar successes. In this post I share with you, Ryan Blair sums up pretty nicely in his current bestseller Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain what his Top 10 Million Dollar Mistakes have been on the way to the top. The Top 10 Million Dollar Mistakes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. There are more, but I think you get the idea. (Video) Ryan Blair ViSalus Sciences CEO Success Advice Tags: Billionaire , Donny Deusch , Entrepreneur , Ivanka Trump , Millionaire , nothing To Lose , Rich , Ryan Blair , Serial Entrepreneur , Success Story , ViSalus
How the Richest 400 People in America Got So Rich Yahoo! editors have selected this article as a favorite of 2012. It first appeared on Yahoo! Finance in July and was one of the most popular stories of the month. Readers debated how people really get rich in the U.S., with user One-Eyed Jack commenting that "I would really like to know how many of the 400 were born into millions and how many actually made it on their own." User John replied: "I am a first generation millionaire and also a first generation American. In 1992, the 400th richest person in America made $24 million. In 2007, the 400th richest person in America made $138 million (or $87 million, inflation-adjusted). Now, that almost certainly wasn't the same guy. According to the IRS, which recently released 2009 data from the 400 richest individual income tax returns, the real runaway growth in wealth has come from capital gains. The average income of a top-400 earner grew by 650% between 1992 and 2007 to a whopping $344 million. Three last things: (1) Who are these people?