Investing & Retiring

Getting out of debt can be challenging, especially if you have little experience in managing your finances and need support. Using a counseling agency can be a great way to get debt relief. The agency can possibly negotiate reduced interest rates for you to pay back all your unsecured debt. You then make a single
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When checkout clerks ask, “Paper or plastic?” they are referring to the type of bags desired, but they could be asking about your preferred method of payment. In today’s digital society, cash purchases are increasingly rare, but that does not mean it is always preferable to “Charge it.” Many studies have proven that people who
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Donald Trump ran a successful Presidential campaign based in part on being unconventional and shaking up the status quo. Those are not properties valued on Wall Street, where predictability and stability are preferred. While stocks overall have responded positively to Trump’s stated policies, individual stocks have suffered from one of his greatest sources of unpredictability
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Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) may be the best resource for low-income Americans that you have never heard of. They are matching savings accounts that are targeted to promote savings in lower-income families and help them to achieve a savings goal that might otherwise be beyond their reach. Typical goals are buying a home, starting a
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When picking retirement funds, it’s easy to get confused by the different options available. For many households, saving for the next month is difficult enough, let alone thinking further into the future. To enjoy a happy and financially stable retirement, however, it’s crucial to make the right investments. Most Americans use a combination of bonds
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The end of a year is a time to assess what happened over the past 12 months and look forward to the promise of new opportunities. That is true with most aspects of life, and your financial portfolio should be no exception. Give your holdings a year-end review and consider these strategies as you do
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It may be the holiday season, but personal finance is something Americans need to take seriously throughout the year. Keeping everything in check can be challenging, but you can improve your chance of success by using financial technology, or “fintech”, including gadgets and software that make managing your finances easier. The first aspect of personal
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“Strangle options” have a violent name, but have a vital role in investments. Strangle options are use both put and call options effectively to place bets on how stable the movement of a stock will be, regardless of the direction of the move. Puts and calls are contracts that allow you the right to buy
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The long-running bull market may have instilled investor overconfidence in stocks when it comes to 401(k) accounts — or it is possible that people just don’t pay attention to the composition of their 401(k) plans. For whatever reason, a study from Fidelity Investments suggests that too many 401(k) accounts are too heavy in stocks and
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Theft of debit card information from ATMs is on a major rise, according to FICO. From the beginning of the year until April 9th, debit card information theft rose 174% over the same period in 2014 through ATMs located on bank properties and a staggering 317% in ATMs on non-bank properties. The surge represents the
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There are unicorns on Wall Street? Indeed there are, but not the fictional beasts that are a favorite of pre-teen girls. As defined on Wall Street, unicorns are private companies that have valuations of over $1 billion. Generally, these are startups expected to create disruptive growth as they mature. There are well over 100 unicorns
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Are lottery tickets a component of your retirement program? Then you sound like an extreme risk-taker when it comes to investing. Do you throw up every time you hear that the stock market dropped? Then odds are you are a conservative investor. All kidding aside, it is wise to take time to seriously assess your
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When most people hear about numbers at the box office, they think of Hollywood and the movie industry. However, Broadway theater productions can rack up impressive numbers, with some shows crossing the billion-dollar plateau in worldwide box office receipts. Collectively, Broadway brought in a record $1.37 billion in revenue in the 2015-2016 season — not
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Let’s say we offer to hold 10,000 dollars of your money and pay you back $9,900 after five years. Why would you agree to a deal like that? That is the very sort of thing that is happening in Europe, with bonds that are literally generating negative interest rates. Germany, France, Sweden, and Denmark all
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Imagine that you visit an ATM to withdraw cash and instead of completing your transaction through scanning a card and entering a PIN, you simply tap the screen and scan a code to receive your cash. You don’t have to imagine it; in some locations, you can experience it. Cardless ATM transactions through mobile apps
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When it comes to the many different ways you can invest your money, investing in guns is probably not the first thing that pops into your mind. Firearms are usually bought for protection or sport. However, some people buy them as an investment, hoping that their value will increase over time. This has especially been
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Much of Wall Street was pleased in June when all but two of the largest U.S. banks passed the so-called “stress test” applied by the Federal Reserve. What is this stress test, where does it come from, and why do the results matter to Wall Street? The stress tests come from the Dodd-Frank legislation that
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Did you ever stare at the inside of your luxurious Bentley automobile and think, “Something’s missing, but I can’t quite put my finger on it?” We haven’t, either. For fun, let’s assume you did manage to buy a Bentley. As long as you’re dreaming, why not make it the Bentley Bentayga SUV? Bentley refers to
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Today’s keyword for equities is “volatile.” Great Britain’s vote to leave the European Union (the “Brexit”) is just the most recent example of sharp drops followed by a relatively rapid rally. Investors are often tempted to overreact, fearing that they will lose out if they do not act immediately. For nervous investors, navigating volatile markets
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What does it mean when a bond has a negative return? It simply means that a bond is worth less at maturity than its value at purchase. As strange as it may sound, negative nominal (face value) bond yields have occurred in the past. Investors can accept such a rate to maintain a low risk
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There are zillions of investing strategies. Some good, some bad, and some are just…. Everybody knows why they are investing. Correct? Well, let’s invert this and ask ourselves what efficient investing can give us in return. This is where the 4 M’s can drastically improve your net worth if you or whoever manages your money
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Many Americans assume that their financial advisor is legally obligated to act in the best interest of the consumer and disclose any conflicts of interest. However, that is only true for those who are held to a fiduciary standard, such as Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) or Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs). Brokers and other agents may
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By: Alex Reichmann, Counterfeit Money Expert and CEO of iTestCash.com According to the United States Department of the Treasury, about $70 million in counterfeit notes are being circulated in the U.S. with one out of every 10,000 notes being fake. The thing about counterfeit money is that it is not easy to keep track
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Private-sector pensions are a vanishing breed. Defined-benefit pension plans are being replaced by defined-contribution plans such as 401(k)s, mainly because pension plans are costly for employers to fund and maintain. As a result, employers are beginning to offer lump-sum payout options to their retirees to replace the traditional lifetime monthly payments of a pension. Once
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If you are closing in on retirement age, you are keenly interested in how the three remaining Presidential candidates — Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders — plan to deal with the fiscal challenges of Social Security and Medicare. If you are not close to retirement age, you should be even more interested, as
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